September 16, 2025 • 40 mins
From the podium to the podcast mic, our conductor is once again taking center stage on Bach Talk. Ron Klemm and Scott MacDonald sit down with Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger as he reflects on his 40 years with The Bach Society of Saint Louis and shares insights about the music he loves. In this episode, he also takes us inside Mozart’s immortal Requiem, the opening work of our 85th season, exploring what makes it so powerful and why it continues to move audiences.
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(00:00):
This is Bach Talk.
(00:17):
Dona nobis pacem.
Grant us peace.
The gripping final chorus to Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
You're hearing The Bach Society of Saint Louis from their recent performance in 2025 as they concluded their 84th concert season with this powerful and deeply personal work.
(00:42):
Now, St. Louis' oldest continuously operating chorus turns the page and kicks off its milepost 85th anniversary season and they do so with another setting of that same text, another masterpiece that has passed the test of time.
(01:25):
Hello and welcome to Bach Talk.
I'm Ron Klemm.
And I'm Scott MacDonald.
Certainly an organization like The Bach Society could choose to rest on its laurels after 85 seasons of incredible music, but not so.
Current music director and conductor A.
Dennis Sparger has led and grown the chorus since 1986.
(01:50):
He continues to strive for more vision, more innovation, and of course more artistic excellence.
The opening concert of The Bach Society's 85th season will feature Mozart's immortal and enduring Requiem.
(02:20):
Ron and I visited Dennis at his home this summer to talk about Mozart, about the upcoming 85th season, and to reflect on his 40 years at the podium of The Bach Society.
It's so wonderful to be in this beautiful, bright breakfast room.
Say that three times real fast.
We've enjoyed it many, many times.
(02:42):
Dennis Sparger, our music director and conductor, is our host today.
Glad to have you.
Thank you for being here.
But now usually you and I are on the other side of the table.
Absolutely.
And you help me and we grill our guests and pepper them with all sorts of questions.
Are you ready to be the recipient of those peppering of questions?
(03:05):
Well, I realize the answer always has to be yes if we're going to move forward.
The Bach Society has been around for a long time, but it's been through so much.
Think about that legacy.
What does that mean to you?
Well, it's just amazing that Dr. Heyne's vision of bringing the music of Bach to St. Louis has been able to survive now for 85 years.
(03:30):
And we're really positioned to go another 85 years.
We've just have moved into a very positive position, I think, with our board and with our chorus and with our orchestra and our audience.
Of course, wonderful things are happening.
And I know for Dr. Heyne, it was a little rough going at different times.
(03:51):
Audiences would be there and then they wouldn't be.
And financial support was there and then it wasn't there.
And at one time, I think after about 12 years in, The Bach Society was running in today's about $115,000 in debt.
And they continued on and got through that period.
(04:13):
I know Dr. Heinde worked for many years without compensation because he believed in this so strongly.
And just things have gotten better and better.
And we're really proud of this organization.
You're talking about Dr. William Heyne, who founded The Bach Society back in 1941 and conducted that first performance that we talked about and that he got all those questions right.
(04:35):
But you have actually out-tenured him because this is the beginning of your 40th anniversary season with the Bach Society.
Oh, my goodness.
It's just unbelievable.
It is.
Well, yeah, it kind of is.
But also you have seen so many ups and downs.
(04:55):
And I wonder if there's anything that stands out on either end of that, that immediately you think about in that tenure, in that period.
Well, I think of the times that quite often when budgets were down, repertoire would suffer.
There are certain works like the St. Matthew Passion.
It calls for a double orchestra, double chorus, six soloists, a children's chorus.
(05:19):
It's an expensive work to undertake.
So that would have to be set aside for a few years.
And yet sometimes out of these difficult moments can come on new opportunities.
I remember in the 90s, we were a little low in the budget and it was suggested that we do an a cappella concert.
(05:40):
What?
The Bach Society as chorus and orchestra.
That's how Bach composed his music.
And my executive director at the time, John Walsh, suggested that we sing the Rachmaninoff Vespers in Russian, of course.
Of course!
So we took that on and it turned out to be a wonderful experience.
And we've done it several times since.
(06:01):
And our singers just really take to the music.
So we've been able to make the best of worst situations.
I remember there was a point where cash flow was a significant issue and came to the point where we were hoping and praying that we wouldn't get a snowstorm at Christmas because Christmas always was the way where you could balance the season out financially.
(06:25):
And if we lost that, we would have been in deep trouble.
Well, I think it was my third year with The Bach Society where we were giving two consecutive nights of performances at Powell Hall and the windchill for both nights was 50 below.
And yet we had performers and we had an audience and we carried on.
(06:47):
So many people.
We were at the Chorus America conference together and we talked to a whole bunch of people.
And almost to a person, they would talk about what effect COVID had on their organization.
Now, those were the people who were there.
Yes.
And remember, a lot of organizations did not survive.
(07:09):
They didn't make it through.
And we have, first of all, Melissa Payton is the best executive director there ever was.
And we're very blessed to have her and know you other people, you can't have her.
But the point is that there were some incredible initiatives during that time.
Do you remember some of those things and why they were so important that got us through?
(07:29):
Well, we didn't have many options.
So we turned to doing things digitally so people could watch and listen at home.
We took our fall Bachtoberfest party and we had it online.
And, you know, I performed here from our den and others were in their homes and this all kind of worked.
(07:54):
And we made some money from it.
And Christmas, we were able to use a televised broadcast from several years earlier.
And yet we brought in some new and fresh material to be a part of it.
And that worked.
And our audience stayed with us, our donors stayed with us.
And we made it through the year.
Now, while all of that was very, very positive, the downside is that our singers were not being served, you know, for well over a year.
(08:21):
These wonderful people who come out every week to rehearse the great music and the wonderful feelings they get from being a part of the organization.
They were on hold while the staff was pretty well working to get all of these things accomplished.
And choirs were some of the last things to come back because of the nature of using your voice.
(08:45):
Sure.
And so it was it was pretty special when we all came back.
I remember that first rehearsal.
And we came back wearing masks.
Yeah, we did.
And trying to protect one another and ourselves.
And I think we did a few concerts that way.
And then we eventually could be weaned off of them.
And now we seem to be back to normal, if there is a normal.
A lot of people are still struggling with with getting audience back and we seem to be doing OK.
(09:11):
So we feel very blessed.
We've done better than OK.
Absolutely.
It's really wonderful.
So 85th anniversary season for The Bach Society, your 40th anniversary season.
What goes into thinking about what you're going to do?
How do you decide, OK, here's what we're going to do for this event for this season?
(09:32):
A big question.
I'm required to have a three year plan always that not only identifies what the repertoire will be, but what solo requirements are involved and what the cost will be so we can can budget for this.
So we don't just budget from year to year.
It's like a three year plan.
So so the board especially has a good feeling for where we're going with the organization.
(09:58):
So a lot of what we're doing this year was in the works three years ago.
And and my plan was to do at least, you know, a big work by Bach and to include other composers that will really resonate with our audience.
So, you know, here we have Mozart and Handel and for Christmas, John Rutter.
(10:21):
How about that?
It's always wonderful, exciting to hear.
So that's how this was all set up.
I want to talk about that opening concert in just a moment.
So can you stick around or do you have to go somewhere?
Oh, I can stick.
Oh, that's right.
You're home.
I'm already home.
Yes.
That's music director and conductor A. Dennis Sparger.
With Scott MacDonald, I'm Ron Klemm.
(10:41):
This is Bach Talk.
My wife and I have had the joyous privilege of going to both Salzburg and Vienna and seeing a lot of the Mozart sites.
Oh, yes.
And I will tell you about the contrast.
I cannot get over the contrast between Salzburg and Vienna.
(11:02):
It reminds me at least a little bit of the difference between a rural area or even a Midwestern city and the major city.
Singers and other people want to find their fame and fortune.
They leave St. Louis and go to Vienna and go to New York or LA or something like that.
What was Mozart's deal?
Yeah.
And if you can think of those cities back in the 18th century when they were even smaller.
(11:26):
Well, as you know, Mozart was raised as a child prodigy.
By the time he was three years old, he was recognized for his extraordinary abilities.
And by the time he was five, he started writing his first piece of music.
And his father and mother were taking him on tours of all the major capitals throughout Europe and gaining all of this fame.
(11:46):
Audiences were being just overwhelmed by what this young child could do.
But by the time he became a teenager and it was time for him to start finding a job, a steady job, no one was making an offer.
So he was pretty well stuck with coming back home to little provincial Salzburg where then he worked for the archbishop.
So this began by the time he was 17 years old.
(12:10):
And the archbishop didn't have that great of an interest in music.
And he wanted the liturgical works to be shorter, like no mass could be more than 20 minutes in length because the archbishop didn't want to be standing around at the altar waiting for the choir to finally finish singing.
So this didn't turn out to be a very good job.
He was not really appreciated at all.
(12:30):
And he'd made a few trips to Vienna with the archbishop and he realized, wow, this is where I want to get back to.
And eventually he just kind of created enough of a problem.
He was literally kicked out by the seat of his pants.
And so he moved on to Vienna in 1781.
This is 10 years before he died.
And this was the musical capital of the world at the time.
(12:53):
And Mozart was really well accepted there.
You can imagine this is a guy who now could be writing symphonies, his concertos, chamber music, operas, and of course, his public performances.
And he did teaching as well.
And people just thought the world of him.
His exceptional talents soon led to a really strong friendship with the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who was the director of the Imperial Court Library.
(13:20):
And this guy was an avid patron of many of Vienna's musicians.
And he also maintained an interest in old music in his personal library.
So Mozart had access to that library.
And through that, he became acquainted with the oratorios of Handel and the instrumental works of Bach.
And this encounter with these two Baroque giants just had an influence on his own writing, especially in portions of the Requiem.
(13:48):
Yeah.
Which makes sense why you programmed it as one of the initial works of the season, because it ties into the Bach Society.
Yes.
When you start hearing those fugues.
Yeah.
And Mozart was really, I think, transported by reading all of these fugues by Bach and realized that.
And his wife was extremely impressed with polyphony.
(14:09):
So that also encouraged him to write in this direction.
Here's a guy who's known for symphonies, concertos, opera, big time.
Oh, yes.
What drove him to write a Requiem?
You know, Mozart was not writing much any sacred music in Vienna.
There was no need for it there.
He was rather discouraged at that point.
(14:32):
So here in July of 1791, Mozart's final year, he had the opportunity to write a Requiem.
He was being commissioned.
He was visited by a solicitor that is like a lawyer representing someone with this anonymous offer for a commission.
And he was offered the fee of 225 florins.
(14:53):
Now, that doesn't mean much to us.
No.
But it was about half of his fee for writing an opera like the Marriage of Figaro.
So here, an opera that might be four hours long, all he has to write is like a one hour piece and make half the fee.
So this was pretty exciting to do it.
Yeah.
So his only requirement is that he was supposed to keep this quiet and deliver the sole copy, only one copy, to the Requiem as soon as possible.
(15:20):
To this whoever?
Well, it was only after Mozart's death that it was learned that this all was the result of a commission from Count Franz von Waldeck of Schloss Stuppach, a fellow Freemason who'd ordered the Requiem as a memorial for his 20-year-old wife, who died earlier that year.
Now, it was his practice to commission these works and then copy them into his own hand and pass them off as his own work.
(15:48):
Oh, no.
And to encourage Mozart's immediate attention, he provided half the fee right up front.
Now, you know the legends.
The legends are still out there that there's a mysterious stranger came during a storm and Mozart was ill and distraught, and he believed that he'd been summoned to write his own Requiem.
(16:11):
Well, not so.
No.
Actually, that July was a month of great happiness for Mozart.
On the 26th, his wife Constanza delivered a son.
And at this time, their first son, Carl Thomas, was almost seven.
Between those two births, they had lost two sons and two daughters who died at birth or infancy.
(16:32):
As many people did in those days.
So, this was a time when the Mozart's were really surrounded by joy and hope.
I can mention it was just a month earlier that Mozart composed his beautiful motet Ave Verum Corpus, a sublime and optimistic little piece.
So, these were some good days for Mozart at that time.
(16:53):
He was up to his eyeballs in projects, right?
Was it just the money?
I mean, is that why he took on this project in the first place?
Well, for sure.
Mozart was making good money.
Yeah.
He also spent good money.
Oh, okay.
I don't know anyone like that.
Yeah.
So, that was part of the deal of what was going on.
(17:14):
Now, we would like to think that because he had not had an opportunity to write sacred music, he may have just felt like he needed to do this as well.
We're never going to know for sure.
Right.
But, when he accepted this commission to compose a Requiem, he had already spent two months working on the Magic Flute.
So, for a while, at least he was able to work on both of these projects at once.
(17:38):
By mid-August, and we're talking a month later, he received a commission to write La clemenza di Tito.
Oh, yeah.
Another opera.
Clemency of Titus, which was scheduled for production in Prague in three weeks.
Well, if anybody could do it.
And he did.
So, he stopped all work on the Magic Flute and the Requiem and really got busy.
(18:01):
He composed this opera within, believe it or not, 18 days.
That's unbelievable.
So, accompanied by his wife Constanze and his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Mozart journeyed to Prague for the premiere on September 6th.
Well, after that, he returned to Vienna, completed a clarinet concerto, and attended the premiere of the Magic Flute three weeks later.
(18:24):
By this time, illness had began to interrupt his creative flow.
But he completed the Masonic Cantata Das Lob der Freundschaft by November 15th.
He continued working on the Requiem as his health continued to deteriorate.
But did he know he was running out of time?
Do you think he thought he was going to get very, very ill?
(18:48):
Yeah.
And there was no quick recovery, obviously, but he must have had...
Not until the final days.
Up until the final days, like five, six, seven days, he thought he was going to recover from this.
During these final days, his friends would gather around his bedside and sing portions of the Requiem with him.
He died on December 5th at 1255 in the morning, leaving the Requiem unfinished.
(20:10):
We can't talk about the Requiem without acknowledging that not every note of the Requiem was Mozart's.
He passed away with some part of the Requiem still left to finish.
And you mentioned that his student, Süssmayr, was one of the three, at least, students who continued on to finish this work.
(20:32):
Can you talk more about those?
Oh, sure.
Well, let's start with what Mozart actually composed.
He wrote the first movement in full.
Everything you hear in the opening movement is totally Mozart.
Then he wrote the choral parts and the baseline for the rest of the work, at least from the Kyrie through the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, in addition to the Offertory.
(20:56):
Now, he kind of skipped over a few movements getting to the Offertory because he wanted to know how the Offertory was all going to turn out before he wrote the ending of the Lacrimosa because he wanted it to lead to the Offertory.
In a few places, he even provided suggestions for the orchestration.
And he knew the orchestra parts could be filled in later.
(21:18):
Sure.
And of course, he did leave instructions that the opening movement would be used again at the end with just a different text for that purpose.
With the down payment already spent and sources of income were now removed, it became imperative for Constanza to deliver a completed Requiem and collect the balance of the commission.
(21:41):
By the way, she ultimately sold the Requiem five times.
Wow.
And this was quite possible then.
There were no copyright laws, just exclusivity that was going on.
But she knew that she had to have that Requiem completed before she could turn it over and get the balance.
So she turned to three of Mozart's pupils to do this job.
(22:02):
The incomplete work was first given to the 30-year-old Jakob Freystädtler, who completed the Kyrie Fugue by filling in, not always accurately, the instrumental doubling parts.
He soon returned the score and it went to the 26-year-old Joseph Eybler, who is also a pupil of Albrechtsberger and a protege of Haydn, parenthetically.
(22:23):
A composer of some merit, Eibler succeeded Antonio Salieri as Kapellmeister of the Austrian court.
He was forced to resign from this position in 1833 when he suffered a stroke while conducting, ironically, Mozart's Requiem.
Why are we laughing?
(22:43):
That's terrible.
Tragedy plus time.
Yeah, exactly.
And like others, Eibler had been at Mozart's side in the final weeks and helped care for him.
So he filled in the instrumental parts from the Dies Irae to the Confutatis, that's a long span, and then composed measures 9 and 10 of the Lacrimosa.
But after working on it for several weeks, he returned the score.
(23:05):
Constanze then turned to her third choice, which was Süssmayr, a 25-year-old composer who eventually made his mark in German Singspiele, which is kind of like musical comedy today.
He removed all the contributions of both of these guys and then completed all the unfinished movements.
He even claimed to personally have composed the Sanctus Benedictus and Agnus Dei, but Constanze reported years later that she provided him with some of Mozart's sketches.
(23:35):
Oh, what a wise woman.
So how much can you speak to the actual, the physical process?
You know, you mentioned returning the score.
Was this something where they were handed, you know, the actual folio and were given to write in the notes and literally hand the same score back?
And this is how scholars in more recent times have been able to go back and analyze the handwriting and the ink and determine who was doing what.
(24:04):
AI will never replace Mozart.
But I am looking to the day when I'll bet you that someone will plug in all of Mozart's work and all of his, you know, his style and all of that type of thing and leave out these other guys that finished it.
(24:24):
And then we're going to have another version by anonymous.
Well, there have been more than 30 completions to the work.
Well, The Bach Society has sung at least three, maybe four.
Someone has to do it.
And quite often composers who are quite good at this still don't quite match what Mozart would have done.
(24:44):
Sure.
I want to take a step back here and take a look about the context in which the Requiem was written.
Obviously, it was written on behalf of this mysterious commissioner who was commissioning it out of tribute to his late wife.
But we can't ignore that this was in 1791.
(25:05):
This was a religious work being written by one of the top composers of the day in Vienna, not a particularly religious city, but the center of the aristocracy, of at least of the region during the French Revolution, when both the notions of religiosity and aristocracy were, if not crumbling, radically unquestioned.
(25:27):
Yes.
Yeah.
What would it have meant for one of the leading composers of Vienna to compose a monumental Requiem in 1791?
An amazing event.
And of course, that work went on to be performed a lot.
For Mozart, it was very important, I think, because it reaffirmed his religious convictions as a Roman Catholic.
(25:53):
He was closer to God than what we may think, especially if you've seen the film Amadeus, and you notice the kind of personality that was portrayed there, which may have been a little overboard.
Mozart did write to his father saying, God is ever before my eyes.
(26:13):
I realize his omnipotence, and I fear his anger, but I also recognize his love, his compassion, and his tenderness toward his creatures.
Now, as you listen to the Requiem, you'll probably notice a sense of anxiety in the work, as Mozart wrestles with these concepts of life and death, of heaven and hell.
(26:38):
But all of this kind of comes together with his personal feelings about it all.
You have had much experience with this work.
I lost track.
It was like eight or nine or 10 times that you've done this.
What have you learned?
What I learned with every performance, prepare.
(27:02):
I find it's always very important to go back and study a work from the beginning, to not take anything for granted that you think you know what you're doing, but to restudy it, dig in for something a little deeper, look for something you missed the last time.
But you wouldn't repeat a work, well, of course, 40 years, I guess, but every three or four years, as you have done with the Mozart Requiem, unless it meant something to you personally.
(27:28):
Oh, yes.
It's a profound work.
It just reaches, I think, into you so well.
I could say something about the first time I performed it.
Well, I didn't perform it.
I prepared it.
When I was a senior in college, our choral director was on sabbatical.
So a substitute was brought in for the year.
And as it turned out, he was not doing such a good job with the concert choir.
(27:52):
So eventually, he took out the very top singers for a little chamber choir.
And then he said, Sparger, teach the rest of the people the Mozart Requiem.
So I had all of these rehearsals to kind of teach it from the beginning.
And so that was my first experience.
Baptism by fire?
By fire, yes.
And then, of course, in 1963, with the assassination of President Kennedy, the Mozart Requiem was the memorial work that was performed.
(28:21):
And so many of us of that vintage remember sitting and watching that service on television and hearing Bernstein conduct that.
Very moving.
So when I founded the Masterworks Chorale in 1974, three years later, we were performing the Mozart Requiem.
I performed it again and again.
So this will be like my 10th or 11th time in doing it.
(28:44):
It's just an amazing piece.
Speaking of moving performances, I don't think there's any question that The Bach Society's inaugural concert of the 85th anniversary season will indeed be a moving event.
And I want to get into that right around the corner.
So stick around and we'll do that.
(29:04):
That's music director A.
Dennis Sparger of The Bach Society of Saint Louis, along with Scott MacDonald.
I'm Ron Klemm.
This is Bach Talk.
(29:31):
In contrast to the Mozart Requiem, which you have done, what, pushing a dozen times, I looked at the repertoire list for The Bach Society of Saint Louis since, I don't know, since The Bach Society started doing something other than Bach back in Heyne's day.
(29:51):
And I found the Schubert Mass in G, which you have programmed on the initial concert for this season, I found it exactly once.
Yes.
Am I right?
Yes.
I remember that performance.
Okay.
That shocked me, surprised me anyway, because it's just such an elegant work.
(30:13):
And maybe it's just understated.
Lovely work, understated.
Is that it?
Yeah, sure.
You wanted to dust it off again or what?
Well, this work was selected because I had originally planned on doing Mozart's Mass in C minor.
That's right.
And in the Mass in C minor, oddly it scored for two sopranos, no alto, tenor and bass.
(30:33):
But because the Mass in C minor, like the Requiem, was never finished, and again, there was no financial support for it, so that's why Mozart didn't come back to it, that he has very little for the tenor and even less for the bass.
So I thought, I wanted to find a work for the other half of the concert that would complement the drama, the intensity, the richness of the Mozart with a work that's a little bit lighter in scope.
(31:03):
They would also provide a little more work for the tenor and bass.
Well, yes, we want to hear them if they're going to show up.
Yeah.
So I thought the Schubert might be the work that would balance.
And as we found that we were going to replace the Mass in C minor with the Requiem, the decision still held very well that the Schubert indeed was a nice balance for that composition.
(31:26):
Another thing I've kind of learned, and it took me a long time to learn this, is that one should as much as possible make friends with the audience.
That if you can begin a program with something that's easier on the ear, something that the audience feels in tune with right away, then they're willing to go wherever you want to go on the second half and they'll stay with you.
(31:50):
This is the work, correct me, which you do often, but correct me if I'm wrong, this is work of a teenager, isn't it?
18 years old.
Unbelievable.
How is that even possible?
Well, because some of our great composers just had it right from the beginning.
(32:12):
As you know, Bach was into his 20s before he was really composing.
He spent all of his youth gathering all of this information and putting it all into his head and then out it began to flow.
But people like Mozart and Schubert and Mendelssohn, they just get into it right away.
Schubert wrote over a thousand pieces.
(32:33):
In the year that he wrote this mass in G, he wrote 200 works in that one year.
It's really something.
But there's another reason for keeping the Schubert in this concert, and that is this concert will be in memory of our accompanist, Sandra Geary.
And I wanted to make that turn because that's why you chose the Mozart Requiem as well.
(32:57):
Yes.
But I thought the Schubert Mass is a reflection of the qualities that we most admired in her.
Isn't that right?
Grace, charm, elegance, balance, understatement.
She preferred to not be in the limelight, but to support others.
(33:19):
And this little mass also is, I think, content to stay in the background.
I think it's content to be the smaller half of a big program with Mozart as the featured artist.
We could talk for a long time about Sandra Geary and what she meant to the Bach Society for 32 years.
(33:40):
I still remember those first rehearsals and thinking right away, oh, we've got something here.
And there's a special skill set for that.
Part of it is reading your mind.
But she was indeed someone who was a helper, as she said.
Someone who would help the organization not try to lead it in any way.
(34:04):
But there were those few times when you chose a particular piece specifically to put a spotlight on her.
And I was so glad that you did that.
One of those we're going to do again, this first concert.
In 2001, the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo wrote a setting of the Ubi Caritas, where there is love and charity.
(34:29):
There is God.
There is God.
And we did that a cappella piece.
And it's just beautiful.
About 10 years later, the composer was rehearsing at one of the college choirs in America.
And he just sat at the piano and just started playing, and then cued them to sing.
And then he would cue them to stop singing.
(34:50):
And he would continue improvising and then cue them back in.
And fortunately, I think someone was recording it.
So he was able to transcribe it and then publish the piano part.
And it extends that work to a little more than double its length.
But it's just lovely.
And of course, it was perfect for Sandra, because she played so expressively, so musically.
(35:16):
More than just playing the notes, there was real music every time she sat at the piano.
(35:56):
We have had a chance and are still grieving, of course, but we've had our opportunities to do that.
The audience has not.
Yes.
And so I'm so glad that and we looked for quite a while for a special hymn that we could use for the audience to participate.
And of course, we found the most famous Irish hymn of all.
(36:19):
And we look for arrangements for it.
And then you said those dreaded words to me.
Well, you know, we could always write our own arrangement.
And so the audience is going to be able to sing Be Thou My Vision with the choir and it'll be and the orchestra and the orchestra will be a very, very special.
I think special moment.
(36:40):
Yeah.
What else do you want to accomplish in year 40?
Just to spend time with the people I love so much and making the music I love so much.
And getting to Powell Hall again for the first time in a while.
Yes.
You know, our the last two years while while Powell Hall has been undergoing all of this redevelopment, that's just turning out so beautifully.
(37:05):
We were able to have our Christmas concerts at the 560 Music Center at Washington University.
And and the concerts went very well there.
And our audience was very gracious to show up and we sold out all the performances there.
But it's not the same.
But it's not the same.
Yeah.
And and it's so great to be back in Powell.
Yes.
(37:26):
Yeah.
I'm already thinking about now how do we work the candlelight procession?
Oh, yes. You are.
Well, you do pretty well on that side of the table.
Well done.
Don't you think, Scott?
Oh, I agree.
It made my job very easy.
So you might keep me for year 41.
We'll see.
We'll see.
The jury is still out.
(37:48):
That's Bach Society music director and conductor A.
Dennis Sparger along with Scott MacDonald.
I'm Ron Klemm.
This is Bach Talk.
(38:22):
More music from Mozart's Requiem in the Beyer edition from a concert in 2019 by The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
Musical portions today featured selections from concert performances by The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor, as well as longtime Bach Society accompanist Sandra Geary.
(38:49):
Our recording engineer is Paul Henrich.
And special thanks to Dennis for being our guest and host today.
Bach Talk would like to hear from you.
If you don't mind, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform.
Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story, and keep the conversation going.
(39:14):
If you have comments, questions, or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or for any of our guests, we'd love to hear them.
You can fill out the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org/bach-talk or send us an email directly at bachtalk@bachsociety.org.
(39:37):
Additional assistance was provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations.
With Ron Klemm, I'm Scott MacDonald.
(40:16):
Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
This is Bach Talk.
(00:17):
Dona nobis pacem.
Grant us peace.
The gripping final chorus to Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor.
You're hearing The Bach Society of Saint Louis from their recent performance in 2025 as they concluded their 84th concert season with this powerful and deeply personal work.
(00:42):
Now, St. Louis' oldest continuously operating chorus turns the page and kicks off its milepost 85th anniversary season and they do so with another setting of that same text, another masterpiece that has passed the test of time.
(01:25):
Hello and welcome to Bach Talk.
I'm Ron Klemm.
And I'm Scott MacDonald.
Certainly an organization like The Bach Society could choose to rest on its laurels after 85 seasons of incredible music, but not so.
Current music director and conductor A.
Dennis Sparger has led and grown the chorus since 1986.
(01:50):
He continues to strive for more vision, more innovation, and of course more artistic excellence.
The opening concert of The Bach Society's 85th season will feature Mozart's immortal and enduring Requiem.
(02:20):
Ron and I visited Dennis at his home this summer to talk about Mozart, about the upcoming 85th season, and to reflect on his 40 years at the podium of The Bach Society.
It's so wonderful to be in this beautiful, bright breakfast room.
Say that three times real fast.
We've enjoyed it many, many times.
(02:42):
Dennis Sparger, our music director and conductor, is our host today.
Glad to have you.
Thank you for being here.
But now usually you and I are on the other side of the table.
Absolutely.
And you help me and we grill our guests and pepper them with all sorts of questions.
Are you ready to be the recipient of those peppering of questions?
(03:05):
Well, I realize the answer always has to be yes if we're going to move forward.
The Bach Society has been around for a long time, but it's been through so much.
Think about that legacy.
What does that mean to you?
Well, it's just amazing that Dr. Heyne's vision of bringing the music of Bach to St. Louis has been able to survive now for 85 years.
(03:30):
And we're really positioned to go another 85 years.
We've just have moved into a very positive position, I think, with our board and with our chorus and with our orchestra and our audience.
Of course, wonderful things are happening.
And I know for Dr. Heyne, it was a little rough going at different times.
(03:51):
Audiences would be there and then they wouldn't be.
And financial support was there and then it wasn't there.
And at one time, I think after about 12 years in, The Bach Society was running in today's about $115,000 in debt.
And they continued on and got through that period.
(04:13):
I know Dr. Heinde worked for many years without compensation because he believed in this so strongly.
And just things have gotten better and better.
And we're really proud of this organization.
You're talking about Dr. William Heyne, who founded The Bach Society back in 1941 and conducted that first performance that we talked about and that he got all those questions right.
(04:35):
But you have actually out-tenured him because this is the beginning of your 40th anniversary season with the Bach Society.
Oh, my goodness.
It's just unbelievable.
It is.
Well, yeah, it kind of is.
But also you have seen so many ups and downs.
(04:55):
And I wonder if there's anything that stands out on either end of that, that immediately you think about in that tenure, in that period.
Well, I think of the times that quite often when budgets were down, repertoire would suffer.
There are certain works like the St. Matthew Passion.
It calls for a double orchestra, double chorus, six soloists, a children's chorus.
(05:19):
It's an expensive work to undertake.
So that would have to be set aside for a few years.
And yet sometimes out of these difficult moments can come on new opportunities.
I remember in the 90s, we were a little low in the budget and it was suggested that we do an a cappella concert.
(05:40):
What?
The Bach Society as chorus and orchestra.
That's how Bach composed his music.
And my executive director at the time, John Walsh, suggested that we sing the Rachmaninoff Vespers in Russian, of course.
Of course!
So we took that on and it turned out to be a wonderful experience.
And we've done it several times since.
(06:01):
And our singers just really take to the music.
So we've been able to make the best of worst situations.
I remember there was a point where cash flow was a significant issue and came to the point where we were hoping and praying that we wouldn't get a snowstorm at Christmas because Christmas always was the way where you could balance the season out financially.
(06:25):
And if we lost that, we would have been in deep trouble.
Well, I think it was my third year with The Bach Society where we were giving two consecutive nights of performances at Powell Hall and the windchill for both nights was 50 below.
And yet we had performers and we had an audience and we carried on.
(06:47):
So many people.
We were at the Chorus America conference together and we talked to a whole bunch of people.
And almost to a person, they would talk about what effect COVID had on their organization.
Now, those were the people who were there.
Yes.
And remember, a lot of organizations did not survive.
(07:09):
They didn't make it through.
And we have, first of all, Melissa Payton is the best executive director there ever was.
And we're very blessed to have her and know you other people, you can't have her.
But the point is that there were some incredible initiatives during that time.
Do you remember some of those things and why they were so important that got us through?
(07:29):
Well, we didn't have many options.
So we turned to doing things digitally so people could watch and listen at home.
We took our fall Bachtoberfest party and we had it online.
And, you know, I performed here from our den and others were in their homes and this all kind of worked.
(07:54):
And we made some money from it.
And Christmas, we were able to use a televised broadcast from several years earlier.
And yet we brought in some new and fresh material to be a part of it.
And that worked.
And our audience stayed with us, our donors stayed with us.
And we made it through the year.
Now, while all of that was very, very positive, the downside is that our singers were not being served, you know, for well over a year.
(08:21):
These wonderful people who come out every week to rehearse the great music and the wonderful feelings they get from being a part of the organization.
They were on hold while the staff was pretty well working to get all of these things accomplished.
And choirs were some of the last things to come back because of the nature of using your voice.
(08:45):
Sure.
And so it was it was pretty special when we all came back.
I remember that first rehearsal.
And we came back wearing masks.
Yeah, we did.
And trying to protect one another and ourselves.
And I think we did a few concerts that way.
And then we eventually could be weaned off of them.
And now we seem to be back to normal, if there is a normal.
A lot of people are still struggling with with getting audience back and we seem to be doing OK.
(09:11):
So we feel very blessed.
We've done better than OK.
Absolutely.
It's really wonderful.
So 85th anniversary season for The Bach Society, your 40th anniversary season.
What goes into thinking about what you're going to do?
How do you decide, OK, here's what we're going to do for this event for this season?
(09:32):
A big question.
I'm required to have a three year plan always that not only identifies what the repertoire will be, but what solo requirements are involved and what the cost will be so we can can budget for this.
So we don't just budget from year to year.
It's like a three year plan.
So so the board especially has a good feeling for where we're going with the organization.
(09:58):
So a lot of what we're doing this year was in the works three years ago.
And and my plan was to do at least, you know, a big work by Bach and to include other composers that will really resonate with our audience.
So, you know, here we have Mozart and Handel and for Christmas, John Rutter.
(10:21):
How about that?
It's always wonderful, exciting to hear.
So that's how this was all set up.
I want to talk about that opening concert in just a moment.
So can you stick around or do you have to go somewhere?
Oh, I can stick.
Oh, that's right.
You're home.
I'm already home.
Yes.
That's music director and conductor A. Dennis Sparger.
With Scott MacDonald, I'm Ron Klemm.
(10:41):
This is Bach Talk.
My wife and I have had the joyous privilege of going to both Salzburg and Vienna and seeing a lot of the Mozart sites.
Oh, yes.
And I will tell you about the contrast.
I cannot get over the contrast between Salzburg and Vienna.
(11:02):
It reminds me at least a little bit of the difference between a rural area or even a Midwestern city and the major city.
Singers and other people want to find their fame and fortune.
They leave St. Louis and go to Vienna and go to New York or LA or something like that.
What was Mozart's deal?
Yeah.
And if you can think of those cities back in the 18th century when they were even smaller.
(11:26):
Well, as you know, Mozart was raised as a child prodigy.
By the time he was three years old, he was recognized for his extraordinary abilities.
And by the time he was five, he started writing his first piece of music.
And his father and mother were taking him on tours of all the major capitals throughout Europe and gaining all of this fame.
(11:46):
Audiences were being just overwhelmed by what this young child could do.
But by the time he became a teenager and it was time for him to start finding a job, a steady job, no one was making an offer.
So he was pretty well stuck with coming back home to little provincial Salzburg where then he worked for the archbishop.
So this began by the time he was 17 years old.
(12:10):
And the archbishop didn't have that great of an interest in music.
And he wanted the liturgical works to be shorter, like no mass could be more than 20 minutes in length because the archbishop didn't want to be standing around at the altar waiting for the choir to finally finish singing.
So this didn't turn out to be a very good job.
He was not really appreciated at all.
(12:30):
And he'd made a few trips to Vienna with the archbishop and he realized, wow, this is where I want to get back to.
And eventually he just kind of created enough of a problem.
He was literally kicked out by the seat of his pants.
And so he moved on to Vienna in 1781.
This is 10 years before he died.
And this was the musical capital of the world at the time.
(12:53):
And Mozart was really well accepted there.
You can imagine this is a guy who now could be writing symphonies, his concertos, chamber music, operas, and of course, his public performances.
And he did teaching as well.
And people just thought the world of him.
His exceptional talents soon led to a really strong friendship with the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who was the director of the Imperial Court Library.
(13:20):
And this guy was an avid patron of many of Vienna's musicians.
And he also maintained an interest in old music in his personal library.
So Mozart had access to that library.
And through that, he became acquainted with the oratorios of Handel and the instrumental works of Bach.
And this encounter with these two Baroque giants just had an influence on his own writing, especially in portions of the Requiem.
(13:48):
Yeah.
Which makes sense why you programmed it as one of the initial works of the season, because it ties into the Bach Society.
Yes.
When you start hearing those fugues.
Yeah.
And Mozart was really, I think, transported by reading all of these fugues by Bach and realized that.
And his wife was extremely impressed with polyphony.
(14:09):
So that also encouraged him to write in this direction.
Here's a guy who's known for symphonies, concertos, opera, big time.
Oh, yes.
What drove him to write a Requiem?
You know, Mozart was not writing much any sacred music in Vienna.
There was no need for it there.
He was rather discouraged at that point.
(14:32):
So here in July of 1791, Mozart's final year, he had the opportunity to write a Requiem.
He was being commissioned.
He was visited by a solicitor that is like a lawyer representing someone with this anonymous offer for a commission.
And he was offered the fee of 225 florins.
(14:53):
Now, that doesn't mean much to us.
No.
But it was about half of his fee for writing an opera like the Marriage of Figaro.
So here, an opera that might be four hours long, all he has to write is like a one hour piece and make half the fee.
So this was pretty exciting to do it.
Yeah.
So his only requirement is that he was supposed to keep this quiet and deliver the sole copy, only one copy, to the Requiem as soon as possible.
(15:20):
To this whoever?
Well, it was only after Mozart's death that it was learned that this all was the result of a commission from Count Franz von Waldeck of Schloss Stuppach, a fellow Freemason who'd ordered the Requiem as a memorial for his 20-year-old wife, who died earlier that year.
Now, it was his practice to commission these works and then copy them into his own hand and pass them off as his own work.
(15:48):
Oh, no.
And to encourage Mozart's immediate attention, he provided half the fee right up front.
Now, you know the legends.
The legends are still out there that there's a mysterious stranger came during a storm and Mozart was ill and distraught, and he believed that he'd been summoned to write his own Requiem.
(16:11):
Well, not so.
No.
Actually, that July was a month of great happiness for Mozart.
On the 26th, his wife Constanza delivered a son.
And at this time, their first son, Carl Thomas, was almost seven.
Between those two births, they had lost two sons and two daughters who died at birth or infancy.
(16:32):
As many people did in those days.
So, this was a time when the Mozart's were really surrounded by joy and hope.
I can mention it was just a month earlier that Mozart composed his beautiful motet Ave Verum Corpus, a sublime and optimistic little piece.
So, these were some good days for Mozart at that time.
(16:53):
He was up to his eyeballs in projects, right?
Was it just the money?
I mean, is that why he took on this project in the first place?
Well, for sure.
Mozart was making good money.
Yeah.
He also spent good money.
Oh, okay.
I don't know anyone like that.
Yeah.
So, that was part of the deal of what was going on.
(17:14):
Now, we would like to think that because he had not had an opportunity to write sacred music, he may have just felt like he needed to do this as well.
We're never going to know for sure.
Right.
But, when he accepted this commission to compose a Requiem, he had already spent two months working on the Magic Flute.
So, for a while, at least he was able to work on both of these projects at once.
(17:38):
By mid-August, and we're talking a month later, he received a commission to write La clemenza di Tito.
Oh, yeah.
Another opera.
Clemency of Titus, which was scheduled for production in Prague in three weeks.
Well, if anybody could do it.
And he did.
So, he stopped all work on the Magic Flute and the Requiem and really got busy.
(18:01):
He composed this opera within, believe it or not, 18 days.
That's unbelievable.
So, accompanied by his wife Constanze and his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Mozart journeyed to Prague for the premiere on September 6th.
Well, after that, he returned to Vienna, completed a clarinet concerto, and attended the premiere of the Magic Flute three weeks later.
(18:24):
By this time, illness had began to interrupt his creative flow.
But he completed the Masonic Cantata Das Lob der Freundschaft by November 15th.
He continued working on the Requiem as his health continued to deteriorate.
But did he know he was running out of time?
Do you think he thought he was going to get very, very ill?
(18:48):
Yeah.
And there was no quick recovery, obviously, but he must have had...
Not until the final days.
Up until the final days, like five, six, seven days, he thought he was going to recover from this.
During these final days, his friends would gather around his bedside and sing portions of the Requiem with him.
He died on December 5th at 1255 in the morning, leaving the Requiem unfinished.
(20:10):
We can't talk about the Requiem without acknowledging that not every note of the Requiem was Mozart's.
He passed away with some part of the Requiem still left to finish.
And you mentioned that his student, Süssmayr, was one of the three, at least, students who continued on to finish this work.
(20:32):
Can you talk more about those?
Oh, sure.
Well, let's start with what Mozart actually composed.
He wrote the first movement in full.
Everything you hear in the opening movement is totally Mozart.
Then he wrote the choral parts and the baseline for the rest of the work, at least from the Kyrie through the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, in addition to the Offertory.
(20:56):
Now, he kind of skipped over a few movements getting to the Offertory because he wanted to know how the Offertory was all going to turn out before he wrote the ending of the Lacrimosa because he wanted it to lead to the Offertory.
In a few places, he even provided suggestions for the orchestration.
And he knew the orchestra parts could be filled in later.
(21:18):
Sure.
And of course, he did leave instructions that the opening movement would be used again at the end with just a different text for that purpose.
With the down payment already spent and sources of income were now removed, it became imperative for Constanza to deliver a completed Requiem and collect the balance of the commission.
(21:41):
By the way, she ultimately sold the Requiem five times.
Wow.
And this was quite possible then.
There were no copyright laws, just exclusivity that was going on.
But she knew that she had to have that Requiem completed before she could turn it over and get the balance.
So she turned to three of Mozart's pupils to do this job.
(22:02):
The incomplete work was first given to the 30-year-old Jakob Freystädtler, who completed the Kyrie Fugue by filling in, not always accurately, the instrumental doubling parts.
He soon returned the score and it went to the 26-year-old Joseph Eybler, who is also a pupil of Albrechtsberger and a protege of Haydn, parenthetically.
(22:23):
A composer of some merit, Eibler succeeded Antonio Salieri as Kapellmeister of the Austrian court.
He was forced to resign from this position in 1833 when he suffered a stroke while conducting, ironically, Mozart's Requiem.
Why are we laughing?
(22:43):
That's terrible.
Tragedy plus time.
Yeah, exactly.
And like others, Eibler had been at Mozart's side in the final weeks and helped care for him.
So he filled in the instrumental parts from the Dies Irae to the Confutatis, that's a long span, and then composed measures 9 and 10 of the Lacrimosa.
But after working on it for several weeks, he returned the score.
(23:05):
Constanze then turned to her third choice, which was Süssmayr, a 25-year-old composer who eventually made his mark in German Singspiele, which is kind of like musical comedy today.
He removed all the contributions of both of these guys and then completed all the unfinished movements.
He even claimed to personally have composed the Sanctus Benedictus and Agnus Dei, but Constanze reported years later that she provided him with some of Mozart's sketches.
(23:35):
Oh, what a wise woman.
So how much can you speak to the actual, the physical process?
You know, you mentioned returning the score.
Was this something where they were handed, you know, the actual folio and were given to write in the notes and literally hand the same score back?
And this is how scholars in more recent times have been able to go back and analyze the handwriting and the ink and determine who was doing what.
(24:04):
AI will never replace Mozart.
But I am looking to the day when I'll bet you that someone will plug in all of Mozart's work and all of his, you know, his style and all of that type of thing and leave out these other guys that finished it.
(24:24):
And then we're going to have another version by anonymous.
Well, there have been more than 30 completions to the work.
Well, The Bach Society has sung at least three, maybe four.
Someone has to do it.
And quite often composers who are quite good at this still don't quite match what Mozart would have done.
(24:44):
Sure.
I want to take a step back here and take a look about the context in which the Requiem was written.
Obviously, it was written on behalf of this mysterious commissioner who was commissioning it out of tribute to his late wife.
But we can't ignore that this was in 1791.
(25:05):
This was a religious work being written by one of the top composers of the day in Vienna, not a particularly religious city, but the center of the aristocracy, of at least of the region during the French Revolution, when both the notions of religiosity and aristocracy were, if not crumbling, radically unquestioned.
(25:27):
Yes.
Yeah.
What would it have meant for one of the leading composers of Vienna to compose a monumental Requiem in 1791?
An amazing event.
And of course, that work went on to be performed a lot.
For Mozart, it was very important, I think, because it reaffirmed his religious convictions as a Roman Catholic.
(25:53):
He was closer to God than what we may think, especially if you've seen the film Amadeus, and you notice the kind of personality that was portrayed there, which may have been a little overboard.
Mozart did write to his father saying, God is ever before my eyes.
(26:13):
I realize his omnipotence, and I fear his anger, but I also recognize his love, his compassion, and his tenderness toward his creatures.
Now, as you listen to the Requiem, you'll probably notice a sense of anxiety in the work, as Mozart wrestles with these concepts of life and death, of heaven and hell.
(26:38):
But all of this kind of comes together with his personal feelings about it all.
You have had much experience with this work.
I lost track.
It was like eight or nine or 10 times that you've done this.
What have you learned?
What I learned with every performance, prepare.
(27:02):
I find it's always very important to go back and study a work from the beginning, to not take anything for granted that you think you know what you're doing, but to restudy it, dig in for something a little deeper, look for something you missed the last time.
But you wouldn't repeat a work, well, of course, 40 years, I guess, but every three or four years, as you have done with the Mozart Requiem, unless it meant something to you personally.
(27:28):
Oh, yes.
It's a profound work.
It just reaches, I think, into you so well.
I could say something about the first time I performed it.
Well, I didn't perform it.
I prepared it.
When I was a senior in college, our choral director was on sabbatical.
So a substitute was brought in for the year.
And as it turned out, he was not doing such a good job with the concert choir.
(27:52):
So eventually, he took out the very top singers for a little chamber choir.
And then he said, Sparger, teach the rest of the people the Mozart Requiem.
So I had all of these rehearsals to kind of teach it from the beginning.
And so that was my first experience.
Baptism by fire?
By fire, yes.
And then, of course, in 1963, with the assassination of President Kennedy, the Mozart Requiem was the memorial work that was performed.
(28:21):
And so many of us of that vintage remember sitting and watching that service on television and hearing Bernstein conduct that.
Very moving.
So when I founded the Masterworks Chorale in 1974, three years later, we were performing the Mozart Requiem.
I performed it again and again.
So this will be like my 10th or 11th time in doing it.
(28:44):
It's just an amazing piece.
Speaking of moving performances, I don't think there's any question that The Bach Society's inaugural concert of the 85th anniversary season will indeed be a moving event.
And I want to get into that right around the corner.
So stick around and we'll do that.
(29:04):
That's music director A.
Dennis Sparger of The Bach Society of Saint Louis, along with Scott MacDonald.
I'm Ron Klemm.
This is Bach Talk.
(29:31):
In contrast to the Mozart Requiem, which you have done, what, pushing a dozen times, I looked at the repertoire list for The Bach Society of Saint Louis since, I don't know, since The Bach Society started doing something other than Bach back in Heyne's day.
(29:51):
And I found the Schubert Mass in G, which you have programmed on the initial concert for this season, I found it exactly once.
Yes.
Am I right?
Yes.
I remember that performance.
Okay.
That shocked me, surprised me anyway, because it's just such an elegant work.
(30:13):
And maybe it's just understated.
Lovely work, understated.
Is that it?
Yeah, sure.
You wanted to dust it off again or what?
Well, this work was selected because I had originally planned on doing Mozart's Mass in C minor.
That's right.
And in the Mass in C minor, oddly it scored for two sopranos, no alto, tenor and bass.
(30:33):
But because the Mass in C minor, like the Requiem, was never finished, and again, there was no financial support for it, so that's why Mozart didn't come back to it, that he has very little for the tenor and even less for the bass.
So I thought, I wanted to find a work for the other half of the concert that would complement the drama, the intensity, the richness of the Mozart with a work that's a little bit lighter in scope.
(31:03):
They would also provide a little more work for the tenor and bass.
Well, yes, we want to hear them if they're going to show up.
Yeah.
So I thought the Schubert might be the work that would balance.
And as we found that we were going to replace the Mass in C minor with the Requiem, the decision still held very well that the Schubert indeed was a nice balance for that composition.
(31:26):
Another thing I've kind of learned, and it took me a long time to learn this, is that one should as much as possible make friends with the audience.
That if you can begin a program with something that's easier on the ear, something that the audience feels in tune with right away, then they're willing to go wherever you want to go on the second half and they'll stay with you.
(31:50):
This is the work, correct me, which you do often, but correct me if I'm wrong, this is work of a teenager, isn't it?
18 years old.
Unbelievable.
How is that even possible?
Well, because some of our great composers just had it right from the beginning.
(32:12):
As you know, Bach was into his 20s before he was really composing.
He spent all of his youth gathering all of this information and putting it all into his head and then out it began to flow.
But people like Mozart and Schubert and Mendelssohn, they just get into it right away.
Schubert wrote over a thousand pieces.
(32:33):
In the year that he wrote this mass in G, he wrote 200 works in that one year.
It's really something.
But there's another reason for keeping the Schubert in this concert, and that is this concert will be in memory of our accompanist, Sandra Geary.
And I wanted to make that turn because that's why you chose the Mozart Requiem as well.
(32:57):
Yes.
But I thought the Schubert Mass is a reflection of the qualities that we most admired in her.
Isn't that right?
Grace, charm, elegance, balance, understatement.
She preferred to not be in the limelight, but to support others.
(33:19):
And this little mass also is, I think, content to stay in the background.
I think it's content to be the smaller half of a big program with Mozart as the featured artist.
We could talk for a long time about Sandra Geary and what she meant to the Bach Society for 32 years.
(33:40):
I still remember those first rehearsals and thinking right away, oh, we've got something here.
And there's a special skill set for that.
Part of it is reading your mind.
But she was indeed someone who was a helper, as she said.
Someone who would help the organization not try to lead it in any way.
(34:04):
But there were those few times when you chose a particular piece specifically to put a spotlight on her.
And I was so glad that you did that.
One of those we're going to do again, this first concert.
In 2001, the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo wrote a setting of the Ubi Caritas, where there is love and charity.
(34:29):
There is God.
There is God.
And we did that a cappella piece.
And it's just beautiful.
About 10 years later, the composer was rehearsing at one of the college choirs in America.
And he just sat at the piano and just started playing, and then cued them to sing.
And then he would cue them to stop singing.
(34:50):
And he would continue improvising and then cue them back in.
And fortunately, I think someone was recording it.
So he was able to transcribe it and then publish the piano part.
And it extends that work to a little more than double its length.
But it's just lovely.
And of course, it was perfect for Sandra, because she played so expressively, so musically.
(35:16):
More than just playing the notes, there was real music every time she sat at the piano.
(35:56):
We have had a chance and are still grieving, of course, but we've had our opportunities to do that.
The audience has not.
Yes.
And so I'm so glad that and we looked for quite a while for a special hymn that we could use for the audience to participate.
And of course, we found the most famous Irish hymn of all.
(36:19):
And we look for arrangements for it.
And then you said those dreaded words to me.
Well, you know, we could always write our own arrangement.
And so the audience is going to be able to sing Be Thou My Vision with the choir and it'll be and the orchestra and the orchestra will be a very, very special.
I think special moment.
(36:40):
Yeah.
What else do you want to accomplish in year 40?
Just to spend time with the people I love so much and making the music I love so much.
And getting to Powell Hall again for the first time in a while.
Yes.
You know, our the last two years while while Powell Hall has been undergoing all of this redevelopment, that's just turning out so beautifully.
(37:05):
We were able to have our Christmas concerts at the 560 Music Center at Washington University.
And and the concerts went very well there.
And our audience was very gracious to show up and we sold out all the performances there.
But it's not the same.
But it's not the same.
Yeah.
And and it's so great to be back in Powell.
Yes.
(37:26):
Yeah.
I'm already thinking about now how do we work the candlelight procession?
Oh, yes. You are.
Well, you do pretty well on that side of the table.
Well done.
Don't you think, Scott?
Oh, I agree.
It made my job very easy.
So you might keep me for year 41.
We'll see.
We'll see.
The jury is still out.
(37:48):
That's Bach Society music director and conductor A.
Dennis Sparger along with Scott MacDonald.
I'm Ron Klemm.
This is Bach Talk.
(38:22):
More music from Mozart's Requiem in the Beyer edition from a concert in 2019 by The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
Musical portions today featured selections from concert performances by The Bach Society of Saint Louis Chorus and Orchestra, Dennis Sparger, music director and conductor, as well as longtime Bach Society accompanist Sandra Geary.
(38:49):
Our recording engineer is Paul Henrich.
And special thanks to Dennis for being our guest and host today.
Bach Talk would like to hear from you.
If you don't mind, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to rate and review our podcast on your favorite platform.
Wherever you listen, your feedback helps us reach more listeners, tell our story, and keep the conversation going.
(39:14):
If you have comments, questions, or suggestions about Bach Talk for our team or for any of our guests, we'd love to hear them.
You can fill out the quick and easy comment form on our website at bachsociety.org/bach-talk or send us an email directly at bachtalk@bachsociety.org.
(39:37):
Additional assistance was provided by Andie Murphy and Charissa Marciniak of Right Relations.
With Ron Klemm, I'm Scott MacDonald.
(40:16):
Bach Talk is a registered trademark of The Bach Society of Saint Louis.
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