Today can be a lonely day for a person who does not watch or give a damn for the Oscars. My wife, daughter and granddaughters have abandoned me for an evening of speeches and plentiful cleavage.You might not know that those skimpy dresses are kept in their place by a special tape that is sold specifically to hold men's toupees while driving Porsche Carrera cabriolets.

Today I chose to dilute my melancholy of loneliness with a most religious but pleasant attendance with 9 other connoisseurs who know something good when they see it (or hear it). I went to the Dunbar Heights United Church to listen to an intimate performance of that Cantata BWV 22. 

Top foto Dr. Richard Bott  standing right from screen. Bottom, right Dr. Greg Caisley

About a month ago Greg Caisley (you can address him as Doctor as he indeed is a musical one), director and harpsichordist who does all kinds of other musical activities which you can learn about here announced this:

After almost a year of gestation, I'm happy to announce the formation of a new group dedicated to the performance every week of Bach cantatas. Every week we will present the cantata Bach wrote for that particular Sunday. The group is called the Bach Cantata Collective, and I am thrilled to have a masterful group of people who are very dedicated to this project working together with me. Every Sunday at 4 PM at Dunbar Heights United Church the group will present a Bach Cantata. More information will be forthcoming as the Sundays progress. Admission by donation. Please tell your friends.

Early this morning I was informed by my friend soprano Alexandra Hill who is part of the Bach Cantata Collective that due to a double booking problem the cantata was going to be performed at the adjacent gymnasium to the church. 

That the location was a tad less reverent location did not bother me in the least, if anything I almost felt guilty as I walked in with my wet shoes. For four years I had to maintain our high school gym floor at St. Edward’s High School, a Catholic boarding school in Austin Texas. With some of the money I made I bought my first camera an East German Pentacon-F. I would have never been allowed on that pristine gym floor with shoes!

There were 10 of us there so the intimate performance was more so. Musical director Greg Caisley informed us that Bach may have suspected that sometime in the future this cantata would be performed on an Oscar night. Therefore Bach made it 25 minutes long. I am not sure this was exactly the truth. I suspect that the cantata usually performed on the Sunday before Lent was the choice by any pastor ready to make a long sermon to his parishioners to repent and get ready for the Lenten days of the most important part of the liturgical calendar. After all as my religious mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C, taught me at St. Ed’s, “If Jesus had not risen on Easter, after his death on Good Friday he would have been nothing but a charlatan.”

The cantata was indeed short and sweet. The group was a small one featuring:

Maia Smith, Oboe
Ken Lin first violin
Manti Poon, second violin
Cicely Nelson, viola
Sophia Hsu, continuo (cello for those who might not understand the term!)
Greg Caisley, Harpsichord
Alexandra Hill, soprano
Katherine Evans, Alto
Stephen Baker tenor (solo)
Clinton Stoffberg, tenor
Jacob Gramit, Baritone.

I had heard many of the singers before, but especially tenor Clinton Stoffberg who had performed the part of St. John in Bach’s St. John Passion last year. And of course my friend, soprano Alexandra Hill whose soprano is a soprano powered by vocal chords as long as her long legs. You can imagine (particularly if you have ever seen her) how her voice can soar even in a chorus, as today she had no solo part. While there was no solo soprano aria there was one by alto Katherine Evans who sang it very nicely and very cleanly. I found her familiar and I soon found out. I may have seen her in her other musical role. She is apparently a very good trumpet player. Good vocal oxygen in her lungs because of the trumpet or is it the other way around.

In such intimate surrounding one can notice details. I noticed the baroque hair of oboist Maia Smith and Manti Poon’s (second violinist) violin case which was on the edge of the gym theatre’s stage. It was beautifully made in Verona. Inside where two round instruments. One was a thermometer and the other measured the dryness or dampness of a surrounding. Poon told me that things were fine and his violin would not warp on that day. In one of the panoramic photos above you might note the two little bright circles in the violin case on the right!

There was one problem that may have occurred but my insensitive ears could not have recorded. I was told that the ancient Sabathil & Son harpsichord was appearing for the last time. It was a recalcitrant instrument that needed constant tuning. In fact Alexandra Hill told me that in a past Bach cantata the instrument was so off during her performance of an aria that Caisley had to stop to re-tune!

I now know, with schedule permitting what I will do in subsequent Sunday afternoons but also be informed that this group will be performing at the church on Good Friday (April 18) Mozart’s Requiem.

Addendum:

We know that Bach wrote at least 300 cantatas of which two fifths are lost. So if you figure that Cantata 22 is an early one you would be wrong. Consider the meaning of the nomenclature used to catalogue Bach's works, the three letters BWV, Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Bach Works Catalogue) represent the numbering system identifying compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. The prefix BWV, followed by the work's number, is the shorthand identification for Bach's compositions. The works are grouped thematically, not chronologically.

So you would then be able to understand that while BWV 22 was composed in 1723, Cantata BWV 195 may have been composed in 1707.