THE WORCESTER CHORUS was founded in 1858 to sing in what became Music Worcester’s annual festival. Ever since, the Chorus has offered rich experiences for music lovers from the Worcester area and beyond. The Chorus is best known for its annual December rendition of Handel’s Messiah, which for many years has been accompanied by a full orchestra in historic Mechanics Hall.

The Chorus regularly mounts other major choral masterpieces, such as Mozart’s Requiem, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Hadyn’s Creation, or Brahms’ Requiem. As part of Music Worcester’s ongoing THE COMPLETE BACH project, the Chorus will be performing Bach’s passions, the B Minor Mass, and selected cantatas.

To round out its repertoire, Worcester Chorus occasionally presents music from Broadway musicals and American popular music. The Worcester Chorus sometimes ventures beyond its home as well; in 2022 the Chorus sang Verdi’s Requiem in Carnegie Hall, and more recently Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Groton Hill Music Center (2024).

American Soprano, Susan Consoli has led an active and versatile career throughout the United States and abroad from Bach to Harbison to Gershwin. Ms. Consoli’s first solo was in 3rd grade, and has been making music ever since.
‍Many thanks to conductors Grant Llewellyn, Paul Goodwin, Harry Christophers, Bruno Weil, Laurence Cummings, Odaline (Chachi) de la Martinez, David Angus, John Finney, William Jon Gray, Craig Smith, Michael Beattie, David Alan Miller, Tom Hall, David Carrier, Kevin Leong, Daniel Perkins, Donald Teeters, David Hodgkins, Melinda O’Neil, Christopher Shepard, Jerome Laszloffy, Holly Krafka, Robert Duff, Peter Bagley, Pamela Mindell, Gerald Mack, Andrew Clark, Andrew Megill, John Harbison, Steven Karidoyanes, Lisa Graham, John Erhlich, William Cutter, Jonathan Barnhart, Michael Driscoll and Paul Phillips.
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Additional collaborators include directors/choreographers/composers Chen Shi-Zheng, Tero Saarinen, Anne Azema, Joel Cohen, Betsi Graves, Carson Cooman, Euan Tait, Peter Child, David Patterson and John Harbison (Boston premiere) A Clear Midnight and Vocalism.
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Festivals include: Festival CLASSIQUE au vert, Boston Early Music Festival, Movimentos Internationales TanzFestival, LAOKOON Festival, Ribeauvillé Festival de Musique Ancienne, Carmel Bach Festival, Rome Opera Festival, Great Waters Music Festival, Nantucket Arts Festival. Appearances with Boston Camerata & Tero Saarinen Dance Company include: Borrowed Light in Paris Théâtre National de Chaillot, Berlin, Hamburg, Wolfsburg, Oulu, Tampere, An American Vocalist, Saw ye my hero in Paris, Travellin’ Home in Ribeauvillé. Ms. Consoli made her Carnegie Hall debut performing Handel Messiah under the direction of Christopher Shepard. Ms. Consoli’s Emmanuel Music highlights include: Beethoven Ah perfido!, Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito, Handel Apollo e Dafne, Bach Mass in B Minor, Handel Alexander’s Feast, Bach Phoebus and Pan with Urbanity Dance, Bach St. Mark Passion, Bach St. Matthew Passion and over fifty Bach cantatas. Ms. Consoli was the Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow for the 2010-2011 season. Ms. Consoli’s recordings include Handel & Haydn Society All is Bright Avie Records and David Patterson Loon’s Tail Flashing Albany Records. Ms. Consoli resides north of Boston with her husband, Ryan Turner, their two children and sweet puppy. This marks Ms. Consoli’s 19th season with Emmanuel Music. Thank you to all my colleagues here on stage and beyond for all the musical memories.

Daniel is a versatile performer of a broad range of repertoires spanning opera, early music, contemporary music, and music theatre. As a winner of the 2021 Young Concert Artist Auditions, he recently he and pianist, Sophia Zhou presented debut recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Merkin Hall in New York City; McGrew and Zhou have also recently appeared with Buffalo Chamber Music Society, the Broman Concert Series at Mary Baldwin College, and Windsor Music in Boston. Recent concert engagements include performances with Elm City Consort, Bach Collegium Fort Wayne, and Music Worcester, among others.

An early music specialist, Daniel has performed many of J.S. Bach’s major works and over 30 of the church cantatas with conductors including Matthew Halls, John Harbison, David Hill, Koji Otsuki, Kenneth Slowik, and Masaaki Suzuki. He has made multiple appearances with Gamut Bach Ensemble at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Bach Vespers series at Holy Trinity Lutheran. Additional memorable early music credits include Douce Dame: Woman and the Ars Nova, a program exploring women’s voices in the 14th century through the music of Guillaume de Machaut and Phillipe de Vitry with Elm City Consort; Bach’s B minor Mass at Alice Tully Hall; Bach’s Magnificat on tour throughout India; and the Monteverdi Vespers 1610 and Händel’s Occasional Oratorio in New York and New Haven. He twice attended the Bach Institute at Emmanuel Music in Boston.

Daniel holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, Yale University, and University of Michigan. He is a committed teacher and pedagogue, having taught studio voice, lyric dictions, and music history at University of Michigan, Oberlin Conservatory, Bowling Green State University, and Adrian College. He currently maintains a small private studio in Stamford, Connecticut.

Hailed for his “voice of seductive beauty” (Miami Herald), baritone David McFerrin has won critical acclaim in a variety of genres. His opera credits include Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera, the Rossini Festival in Germany, and numerous roles with Boston Lyric Opera and other local companies. As concert soloist he has sung with the Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Handel and Haydn Society, and in recital at the Caramoor, Ravinia, and Marlboro Festivals. He was runner-up in the Oratorio Society of New York’s 2016 Lyndon Woodside Solo Competition, the premier US contest for this repertoire.

David is also a member of the renaissance vocal ensemble Blue Heron, winners of the 2018 Gramophone award for Best Early Music Album. Recent performance highlights have included two turns as Lucifer/the Devil––one in a filmed production of Handel’s La Resurrezione with Emmanuel Music and the other in Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” with Aston Magna Music Festival; the Cimarosa monodrama Il Maestro di Capella with Boston Baroque; and Monteverdi’s dramatic scena Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda with American Bach Soloists in the Bay Area,. David lives in Natick, Massachusetts with his wife Erin, an architectural historian and preservation planner; their daughter Fiona; and black lab Holly.

Bach’s Secular Celebratory Cantatas — We associate the choral music of Johann Sebastian Bach primarily with the Lutheran Church, the context in which he presented the vast majority of his cantatas. However, there is a small subset of these works that he wrote not for the church, but for the local nobility. One of the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire was based in Dresden, not far from Leipzig. As the center of political life in Saxony, it was an important court; and because that Elector was also the King of Poland, the court was Catholic rather than Lutheran. When members of the royal family visited Leipzig, it was Bach’s job to compose celebratory music. Many of his secular cantatas were written for this reason, including the two on today’s concert.

 Augustus the Strong died in 1733, and the succession of a new monarch was always a time of vying for position within the court reshuffle. It was for this reason that Bach submitted the first half of the B Minor Mass to Augustus III, asking to be appointed court composer. Such a petition was quite normal, and several other composers submitted applications at the same time. These two celebratory cantatas for the new ruler’s wife and son could be seen as part of the same general gesture—Bach wished to be recognized by the court, giving him more political power within his own milieu in Leipzig. (Bach was ultimately appointed Court Composer in 1736, giving him at least a little increased credibility with his recalcitrant bosses in Leipzig.)

 Parody: Secular Cantata – Christmas Oratorio — Because the secular cantatas were written for special occasions, they were not performed multiple times in their original state, as the church cantatas were.  Instead, Bach often mined these works to be reworked later as new compositions, in a process known as parody. BWV 213 and 214 are particularly wonderful examples of this; many of their movements were reused the following year when he composed his Christmas Oratorio.

 It’s not entirely fair to discuss these two secular cantatas only in terms of their ultimate transformation through the process of parody in the Christmas Oratorio.  But let’s be honest: these two libretti by Bach’s collaborator Picander, given their origin as texts in honor of royalty, are vapid at best and cringingly obsequious at worst.  The references to classical Gods seem arcane to our modern ears, and in our democratic age, texts that exist solely to venerate royalty (think “God Save the King”) simply no longer resonate. But it is certainly fascinating to see how Bach maintains the original musical Affekt from these “congratulatory” secular cantata movements in their transmogrification into new pieces that reflect upon the birth of another king—the baby Jesus.

 Rather than addressing those reinventions here, please see the Unlocking Bach episode in which we examine the parodied movements side-by-side.  You can find those podcast episodes on the dropdown menu of the TCB website.

 The Libretti: 18th Century Lutheran Classical Education — Given the centrality of the German language to Luther’s Reformation, it might be surprising just how important Latin and Greek remained in the gymnasium-based school system in Germany for centuries after his death. In this sense, the educational system was as much rooted in Renaissance humanism as it was in Lutheran theology.  Classes were taught principally in Latin, and Greek was often taught as well.

Although devout Lutherans were wary of what they saw as the pagan philosophy of the great classical writers, they nonetheless taught such Roman authors as Horace, Virgil and Cicero, as well as Homer, Sophocles, and Demosthenes in Greek. For this reason, it is not surprising to encounter such arcane classical references in today’s two celebratory cantatas. The cantata written for the new Crown Prince was based on the life of Hercules, whereas the cantata for the Electress referred to several different goddesses as exemplars of Maria Josepha’s virtues.

 Such classical references seem very far from our own literary tradition today, making secular cantatas like these often feel distant and opaque. But for the educated Lutheran elite (including Bach, whose own schooling was first-rate), these references would have been instantly recognizable.

 Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!, BWV214 — BWV 214 was composed for the birthday of Electress Maria Josepha of Saxony, performed on December 8, 1733. The text of this cantata was written by Bach’s frequent collaborator in Leipzig, Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici), who is perhaps most famous as the librettist of the St Matthew Passion. Typical of these celebratory cantatas, the libretto was crafted to extol the virtues of the ruling family. The second cantata on this program is a more complex allegory, but this first one, written in celebration of the new Electress, Maria Josepha of Saxony, is a much less subtle work of praise for the princess. The work is structured as a celebratory homage to the Electress, through the use of three goddesses: Bellona (war); Pallas (wisdom); and Fama (fame), representing the Maria Josepha’s different attributes.

 One of Bach’s greatest choral movements, the opening chorus is an exciting and thrilling song of celebration, featuring what may be the only time Bach begins a piece with a timpani solo. The text is overtly musical, referring to drums, trumpets, and strings. The middle section is explicitly a song of praise, with the text “Long live the Queen.”

 The three arias, each sung by a different goddess, explore different aspects of the Electress’s qualities as a ruler. The first, sung by the goddess of war, is somewhat unexpected for that subject. The soprano is accompanied by two flutes, with the low strings playing pizzicato. In this sense, the flutes act more like fifes in battle, creating a song of rejoicing rather than aggression. The central alto aria, sung by the goddess of wisdom, is an intimate duet between the singer and the oboe d’amore, with the alto exhorting the listener to celebrate and rejoice. Although the third narrator is the goddess of fame, Bach assigns the role to a bass voice. This movement features a trumpet solo with the strings, capturing the regal power of the royal family. The cantata finishes with yet another song of praise, wishing the queen a long life. It is set in a dance-like 3/8 meter, featuring the entire orchestra as well as short solo vocal lines.

 Incidentally, it is not known whether or not the princess attended the performance of BWV214 in her honor at Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse in Leipzig. Regardless, such compositions, which were part of Bach’s role as civic musician and conductor of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, were designed to demonstrate loyalty to the local ruling family in Dresden.

 Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen, BWV213 — Written for Crown Prince Friedrich Christian’s eleventh birthday, Picander’s text is an allegory about choosing personal virtue over worldly vice. The libretto uses Hercules as its avatar; the subtitle of this work is Hercules at the Crossroads, and through the five solo/duet movements, the work explores the choices Hercules must make. 

 The opening movement sets the stage, with the choir singing the role of the gods, pledging to watch over the young prince on earth. The beautiful soprano lullaby represents Vice tempting Hercules, beginning a debate throughout the cantata between Vice and Virtue. In the echo aria by the alto, Hercules pledges not to be flattered by the Vice that is tempting him. In the exciting and florid tenor aria, which features a duet between oboe and violin, Virtue promises Hercules that he will be raised on the wings of virtue to perfection. In the Passepied-like alto aria, Hercules pledges not to listen to Vice, saying that he has long since crushed the snakes that tried to kill him in the cradle. The final duet is a love song between Virtue and Hercules, pledging themselves to one another, before the cantata closes with a hymn of praise to the young prince. The god Mercury appears in this finale, telling Frederick that the time of his glory is ready to appear, reminding us that these secular cantatas for the royal house of Saxony were above all else works in praise of Leipzig’s rulers.

Bach 101: Cantatas, part 1

Unlocking Bach, episode 4: