You’d think that naming the “bestest choral piece ever written ever” would be a subjective matter. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not; this is nothing short of hard science. If you disagree with me, it’s because you’re wrong. Sorry.

German joke time – Johann Sebastian Bach was a “sechs” maniac. He wrote six (sechs) Brandenburg concertos, six English suites, six French suites, six organ trios, six violin suites, six cello suites, six flute sonatas, (the list goes on …), and six motets. Joking aside, it is said that this is an homage to God’s making the world in six days and resting on the seventh – Bach wouldn’t presume God-like perfection by writing a seventh concerto, suite, motet, etc. Little did he know that he actually had achieved God-like perfection in practically every note he penned.

The motets were mostly written as funeral pieces. When a person died, Bach’s choir of St. Thomas church would gather outside the home of the deceased and sing a motet before the body was processed to the church for the funeral service. This motet is written for two 4-voice choirs, and is a tour-de-force of what styles were expected of a baroque composer and what the baroque voice was expected to do. This stuff is exceedingly difficult (but fun) to sing; the writing is simply amazing. A quick outline:

• 0:00 a vocal courante, sung antiphonally between the two choirs
• 2:17 one choir begins singing a fugue, accompanied by the other’s choirs continued courante
• eventually the other choir joins in on the fugue – both choir simultaneously sings the fugue AND the dance
• 4:40 a vocal chorale prelude – one choir sings a hymn, while the other provides commentary
• 8:40 another vocal antiphonal dance, this time a bourrée
• and because that’s never enough for Bach, at 10:07, a marvelous fugue which both choirs sing together

Sing this at my funeral, please.

Hooray, it’s Friday!

While Art Music is typically heard by sitting audiences, much of it is written in rhythms or forms that come directly from dances. Take the gavotte – a French dance, originally performed by peasants, and later adopted by the royalty (who added erotic kissing to the dance moves …) It has a distinct rhythm which makes it easy to identify.

This is a movement one of Bach‘s orchestral dance suites. It’s in trio form – which means there are two contrasting “songs” – the first ends at 1:15, and next you hear a second, contrasting “song”. When he second concludes, the first is played one final time. Trio is a simple but important form which is often heard in symphonies (minuet and scherzo movements), waltzes, and military marches.

Being involved in Art Music often is an experience that produces an oceanic feeling – a sense that we are connected to the past, present, and future, to people around the world, to the entire universe, perhaps. Music has to be experienced in order for it to be music and not just noise. It’s the old “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it” game. Whether the music is performed live, recorded, or in the imagination of a person’s brain, it is the human experience that makes it music and not merely vibrating air molecules (or imagined vibrating air molecules).

So every time you hear a piece by a dead composer, you’re still hearing the present, even if you sense a window to the past. And when you hear a new piece by a living composer, you might envision future audiences being moved by the same strains long after you’re gone. Still, you’re in the present, and the music is in the present.

It is part of the human experience to acknowledge that we are finite. Maybe music is one of the things we turn to because we want something to be infinite; we want a piece of our life experience to exist after we have departed from the world. And that’s when the oceanic feelings come sweeping into the heart.

This week I heard a brand new piece for organ and timpani by Kurt Knecht. The title – Toccata, Adagio, & Fugue – reminds us of a famous piece from the past by the same name by Johann Sebastian Bach. So even though I heard no Bach, in a sense, I still experienced Bach’s legacy. But despite the traditional title and forms, the piece has a harmonic and rhythmic edge – something fresh and exciting – that was emphasized by the untraditional instrumentation: organ and percussion. In the present, I was sitting by the composer himself, and next to one of Philadelphia’s most famous composers, as we heard music organized in a way never heard before (well, except in the composer’s head). In the future – who can really say? The musical ideas are recorded on paper and the piece has a chance at immortality. Even so, the notes on the paper are just dots – and the music itself must be somehow be in the present to become real.

What a thrill to be a part of a continuous, living, evolving, history of music!

Kurt is also a co-founder of MusicSpoke, a music publisher which is nothing short of revolutionary.