Bach's Bethlehem

The first settlers of Bethlehem, Pa., were a small religious group of Moravians (followers of John Huss) who, according to legend, held their first meeting in a stable, thus gave the place its name. Later, during the Revolutionary War, the Moravians attracted attention to Bethlehem by taking the lead off the roof of their church, melting it down for Colonial bullets. General George Washington was serenaded by the Moravian Trombone Choir, already an important group of trumpeters whose chief function was to announce festival days, births and deaths, from the church belfry. He also went to the church, listened to the choir.

Bethlehem's destiny as a musical centre might have been thwarted when Steel intervened. Instead, no less a tycoon than Charles Michael Schwab boosted it and it was an outgrowth of the same Moravian choir which, more than 100 years later, gave the first complete U. S. performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's supreme Mass in B Minor. Now Bethlehem is as much Bach's as Steel's.

For the 24th recurrence of this most unique of U. S. music festivals, crowds flocked to Bethlehem last week, paid admission to the Packer Memorial Church at Lehigh University.-- The program this year consisted of ten of the 267 chorale-cantatas written by Bach during his Leipzig cantorship (an average of one a month). And, as always, the great Mass in B Minor. Soloists for the cantatas and the Mass were Sopranos Ernestine Hohn-Eberhard and Esther Dale, Contralto Mabel Beddoe, Tenors Arthur Kraft and Arthur Hackett, Bassos Charles T. Tittman and Robert M. Crawford and Organist T. Edgar Shields. The local choir of 241 voices sang the choruses assisted by 40 members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The Mass. It is doubtful if Bach, an ardent Lutheran, ever intended his monumental Mass to be given in the Catholic Church. Nor was it practical because of its great length for use in the Lutheran service (it takes nearly three hours to perform). It was conceived probably with little thought for its future, as an expression of Bach's own deep, personal faith, inspired by the simple piety that led him to inscribe even the little clavier pieces composed for his children with the words In Nomine Jesu. Yet the text adheres to the form of the Ordinary of the Roman Mass. It begins with the Kyrie Eleison, Greek words which mean "Lord have mercy upon us." The conventional divisions follow: the Gloria (Gloria in excelsis Deo, "Glory be to God on high"), the Credo (Credo in unum Deum, "I believe in one God"), the Sanctus (Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, "Holy, holy, holy") and the Agnus Dei which begins "O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world," and ends "Grant us thy Peace." Choruses, solos, duets -- Bach wrote with a prodigal hand. Deeply pleading is his opening Kyrie, but for many there is in all music no passage more moving than the Crucifixes in the Credo, no climax more splendid than the Et Resurrexit which follows it.

The Conductor. For the Bethlehem Bach Festivals, particularly for the annual presentations of the great Bach Mass, all credit is due Director John Frederick Wolle. Like Bach, Director Wolle comes from a long line of musical ancestors. His great-grandfather and his grandfather were organists in the church at Bethlehem. His father was a clergyman, a botanist. When Director "Fred" had his choice of college or an apprenticeship in the local drugstore he chose the drugstore because it gave him more time for music. Later, in Germany, he became imbued with the spirit of Bach, and when he returned to Bethlehem and became organist at the Moravian Church, it was with the idea of making Bach's music known there. Today the Bethlehem performances under Wolle are the object of a national pilgrimage.

* May is the big month for TJ. S. music festivals. Worthy ones held recently were the Harrisburg (Pa.) Mozart Festival, the Ann Arbor (Mich.) May Festival, the Keene (N. H.) Chorus Club Festival, the Chicago-North Shore Music , Festival (Evanston, Ill.) and the National Negro I Music Festival (Philadelphia).

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