BWW Reviews: Piffaro Goes BACK BEFORE BACH at 2013 Philadelphia Bach Festival

Piffaro, Philadelphia's Renaissance woodwind players, were in concert at the Philadelphia Bach Festival at St. Mark's Church on Locust Street on May 4, 2013. The immediate thought that might come to mind is that Renaissance music and Bach are neither the same genre nor the same period... but in this case, that was exactly the point. The program's title, BACK BEFORE BACH, makes the point: music, though some of us are hard-pressed to believe it, existed before Bach, and Renaissance polyphony and Renaissance chromatics, filtered through Lassus and Praetorius in the Sixteenth Century, as well as by Palestrina and Byrd (alas, neither on the program), gave way as composers recognized their limitations to the more familiar Baroque counterpoint.

Piffaro took the audience through a collection of Sixteenth Century popular German tunes that reminded all that the bagpipe is not merely a Scots Highland instrument and then, aided by the Choral Arts Society's core singers, presented not one but nine versions, from Twelfth Century chant through Bach, of the hymn "Christ Ist Erstanden". Notable, aside from the familiar sounds of Bach, were not only the chant but Johann Walther's and Praetorius' arrangements, accompanied by shawms and their derivative schalmei, and by sackbut and dulcian, whence the trombone and the bassoon are later derived.

Two sections of the program were devoted to Praetorius' "Terpsichore," his collection of over 300 dance tunes. Neatly avoiding the best-known, "La Bouree" (known to popular music fans of the 1960's as it was incorporated into The Fifth Estate's "Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead" as well as to NPR listeners), one segment was bagpipe-oriented, while the other featured most of the instruments in Piffaro's collection (alas, crumhorns were on this occasion lacking).

Between the two came a rousing set of arrangements of "Ein Feste Burg Ist Under Gott" for recorder, with settings by Walther, Franck, Praetorius, and Bach; while the audience was delighted to hear the arrangements, especially Franck's four-part treatment of the hymn, it was evident that some listeners who had not read their program notes did not actually realize what they were hearing until the Bach settings (BWV 302 and 303) were played, when the more recognized version of "A Mighty Fortress" could be heard distinctly.

After intermission, a series of selections, mostly by Orlandus Lassus, were performed, once again by shawm and schalmei, the ubiquitous sackbuts, and dulcians. Lassus, the prime representative of Franco-Flemish Renaissance polyphony, was a fitting compromise for a program not containing any Palestrina, his rival for late-Renaissance supremacy. Particularly delightful were Lassus' "Sybilla Persica" and the modern "Stehl auf" composed for Piffaro by Kile Smith for their Vespers.

The final, and crowning, performance of the evening was the cantata "Es Erhub," by Johann Christoph Bach, cousin of J.S. Bach (and an uncle of Bach's wife), a tour de force combining the efforts of Piffaro, a violinist and bassist, and the Choral Arts Society. The opening vocal line, notable for some fine bass vocal work backed by dulcian and sackbut, was particularly impressive, as was, given the composition's theme of war in Heaven, the martial theme of the sackbuts. St. Mark's was an ideal place for its performance because of its striking acoustics, evidenced throughout the piece. Although written for a 22-piece ensemble, Piffaro and friends were more than able to perform the cantata as it deserved to be heard.

Although there was little Bach, per se, to be heard in this segment of the Bach Festival, this was a key feature of the Festival program, and should be so noted, as it was not only an illustrative but a musically delightful journey of the development of Renaissance musical conventions into Baroque. One may hope that Piffaro will be featured in future Bach festivals as well (perhaps with Palestrina... and even a crumhorn or two).

Photo Credit: Andrew Pinkham

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