Have you reserved your seats for the ClavierFest? This lively concert of Baroque music takes place this Friday, September 23, at 7:30PM, at Trinity Episcopal Church, 120 Sigourney Street, in Hartford. The concert is sponsored by CONCORA’s Friends of Bach; all proceeds support CONCORA’s performances of Bach.
This year’s edition of the ClavierFest features music of Johann Sebastian Bach, of course, along with selections by two others of the Bach family (Carl Philip Emmanel and Johann Christoph Friederich) and Georg Philip Telemann, performed on harpsichords, organ, lautenwerk, and clavichord.
The program includes the sinfonia (overture) and an aria from JS Bach’s Cantata 169 (Gott soll allein mein Herze haben). The aria, “Stirb in mir,” will be performed by one of CONCORA’s newest voices, countertenor Thomas Buckley.
We asked Thomas to give us an inside view of preparing this aria for Friday’s concert.
What grabs you about the aria that you will sing, “Stirb in mir,” from Bach’s Cantata 169?
Bach sets the aria in the meatiest part of the alto voice as if to show what the alto voice can do, from high to low and everything in between. For a countertenor, this creates somewhat of a challenge, as many of the intervals, trills, and melismas [runs] lie in a transitional area of the voice where one must constantly balance vocal weight with precision. But the aria also offers a chance to show what the rare countertenor voice can do.
Bach is brilliant about text painting, of course, and I find this to be especially true in his solo cantatas, such as Cantata 169, the source of this aria. As the instruments begin the introduction, he paints such a picture of longing and pain, and when the voice enters, it is on such a feeling of weight and weightlessness at the same time, a perfect expression of the longing to leave the earth and join with God.
What should we listen for as the aria unfolds?
Listen for the way Bach uses the alto voice to paint the text of this aria, which seems to me to be the last thoughts of a dying person who longs for release from earthly life. The instrumental interludes might represent the person's inner thoughts, and each time the soloist enters after these interludes, it's with a heightened sense of pain and longing. Listen for the tension and release that Bach creates with long notes stretched against changing harmonies and with duets in the instrumental parts. Read the text before you listen; allow yourself to be filled with the sense of longing that Bach has expressed so beautifully. The last line of the aria is especially moving, as the voice trills and descends, over a highly-chromatic accompaniment, into the lowest part of the voice, where it finally dies away.
I have had such a great time learning this aria and rehearsing with Ed and the others, and of course, with Bach, how can you go wrong?!
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