Emmanuel Church Offers Sacred Music in Sacred Setting

As the light-starved days of winter encroach on Boston, people yearn for a few glimmers of hope and brightness to illuminate the bleak season looming ahead. They seek an infusion of optimism and beauty to hearten themselves for the icy, dreary months approaching. Such an aesthetic jolt can be found at the invigorating weekly series of Bach cantatas performed at Emmanuel Church in Boston.

A fiercely religious man, Johann Sebastian Bach composed more than 300 cantatas to be included in Lutheran church services. He experimented with innovative harmonization and challenged preexisting notions of musical technique. However, he never sacrificed the emotion of his work to his passion for complex musical gymnastics; he is unique among composers of his age for his success at crafting pieces which sound elegantly simple, despite technical acrobatics.

These cantatas were performed weekly while he served as Kapellmeister at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Emmanuel Church, located at 15 Newbury St., is the only place in the world where the cantatas are performed on a weekly basis as part of a religious service.

Since 1970, the choir at Emmanuel has performed one of Bach's cantatas every Sunday during the academic year, free of charge. Within the luminous sanctuary of this 18th century Gothic church, the sacred music of Bach as well as Schutz and other composers, is sung, fiddled and drummed as sacred music was intended--during a service of worship. Not to mention that the music is exquisitely performed by a full orchestra and professional singers, many of whom have gone on to fame.

The enormous success of the cantata series started as a grassroots student endeavor. Craig Smith took over as music director at Emmanuel in 1970, while still a piano student under Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory. The church's choir director became ill and Smith was asked to temporarily fill in. He notes, "I sort of started one week and never stopped." At the beginning of his tenure, Smith decided to incorporate the performance of Bach's cantatas, which he loved passionately, into the liturgy.

Lenny Matczynski, executive director of Emmanuel Music, says, "When we started, we were all hippies. Back then it was radical to go into a church service." Matczynski believes that the power of the cantata series comes from the focus on one musical form; the musicians are able to exercise "sheer tenacity and determination" in order to explore the artistry of sacred music in depth.

The Emmanuel congregation and occasional visitors are wildly enthusiastic about Bach. This is the common thread that binds the community together, even more than the Episcopal faith observed here, as many members are Catholic, Jewish and atheists. Susan Zawalich, Administator of Dudley House and former administrator of Emmanuel Church, says that "the Bach cantata series is the touchstone for the rest of the music programs there, the generator of the church's activities."

The context of the service adds an element of integrity to the performance of the cantatas. motets and organ music. These pieces are compelling and thrilling as art for art's sake, but hearing them performed today in the original setting of a religious service can be especially poignant. Authenticity has glorious alchemical properties.

The Reverend William Wallace, rector of Emmanuel Church, believes that the power of Bach's cantatas is not limited to the religious. "Art has to be expressed with a genre; that's a given. Bach's genre is sacred music. You don't have to subscribe to Bach's beliefs to experience the art form." He also highlighted the fact that these cantatas were written for the liturgy, that it is "an incredible gift to be able to contain the soul of Bach's music within a service."

Emmanuel holds other concert series in addition to the cantatas: in recent years, these have explored the likes of Mozart, Debussy and Schumann. This year marks the beginning of a 7-year cycle devoted to Schubert. Many of Boston's most revered classical music figures have been anxious to become involved with Emmanuel: composer John Harbison, Seiji Ozawa, the director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Christopher Hog-wood, the director of the Handel & Haydn Society, regularly serve as guest conductors.

So does Christoph Wolff, Mason professor of music and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, considered by many to be the pre-eminent scholar of J.S. Bach and the Bach family alive today. "If students really want to experience and learn about the music of Bach," he says, "there is no better way than going to Emmanuel on Sundays. It will put them in touch with another world." Wolff praises Emmanuel for its diligent study of Bach, whom he says paved the path for composers all the way through the modern age. "Bach showed us that you can write in all 24 keys and mold music that is technically perfect and expressive so that it reaches the listener as well as the performer."

Like Wolff, director Smith encourages curious students to attend the Sunday services. "You can really start to get a sense of this wonderful repertory--what I think is the greatest sacred music ever written."

And it might help everyone forget the dismal gloom of winter for at least an hour.

Emmanuel Church is located at 15 Newbury St. next to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Arlington Green Line T stop. Services take place Sundays at 10 a.m., followed by a Bach cantata during the academic year. If you have any questions, call 536-3356. Very reduced student prices for concerts available.

Upcoming Emmanuel Music Events:

The Bach Cantatas

December 15--BWV 47

December 22 and 24--BWV 133

December 29--BWV 152 (Michael Beattie conductor)

January 5--BWV 171

January 12--BWV 65

January 19--BVW 181

The Schubert Series (Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m., The C. Walsh Theatre at Suffolk University, 41 Temple St., Beacon Hill, Boston)

January 5

Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 "Death and the Maiden"

Lieder to Texts of Claudius and Mayrhofer

Alegretto in C Minor, D. 915

Hungarian Melody, D. 817

January 19

Piano Sonata in A Minor, D.845

Lieder to Texts of Ruckert

Fantasy in C Major for Violin and Piano, D. 934