A
Time for
Bach, a film commissioned by
William H. Scheide, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheide_Library) the founding
Artistic Director, resident scholar, and patron of the
Bach Aria Group. Written by
Marc Siegel and photographed by
Boris Kaufman, with
Baroque sequences drawn by
Philip Stapp, the film was produced, directed, and edited by
Paul Falkenberg in 1948. An original is archived at MoMA.
(
Please have patience with the wobbly beginning of this rare copy.)
An excerpt from chapter one of A Time for Bach:
The Story of the Bach Aria Group (1946-1996) is printed below. The entire chapter is available on RobertandSaraLambertBloom.com (http://robertandsaralambertbloom.com/)
Just as the war was ending, a young scholar-musician born in
Philadelphia on January 6,
1914, raised in his ancestral home in
Titusville, Pennsylvania, and who had immersed himself in the study of the music of
J.S. Bach since the mid-1930s, had the idea that he could do something to help.
The twentieth century has received spiritual shocks that make the tranquil experience of the nineteenth seem ridiculous. No more cataclysmic shattering of a world could be imagined. And yet the protagonists of music, that small minority for whom music has presumably become the serious matter of their lives, continue to propagate this shattered world as though it still existed unimpaired, Mr. Scheide wrote in 1946 in an unpublished article, "
The Need for a
New Music," that shows both his unwillingness to stand idly by and his faith in the power of a certain kind of music.
Nearly simultaneously with the founding the Bach Aria Group,
William Scheide commissioned a short film through which he announced the mission and revealed the inner workings of the
Group under his direction. A Time for Bach was written by Marc Siegel and photographed by Boris Kaufman, with Baroque sequences drawn by Philip Stapp; it was produced, directed, and edited by Paul Falkenberg, all respected professionals of the day. With the Group's newly gathered musicians making what was probably their first and last acting appearances (in alphabetical order:
Julius Baker, flute;
Robert Bloom, oboe;
Jean Carlton, soprano;
Norman Farrow, bass-baritone;
Bernard Greenhouse, cello;
Robert Harmon, tenor;
Sergius Kagen, piano;
Margaret Tobias, alto;
Maurice Wilk, violin), the twenty-minute film begins with fanciful composites of eighteenth-century engravings animated by Stapp while
Bach's great C
Major Fugue is heard, performed by the organist
Carl Weinrich. Overlaid scrolls the written message:
Few periods in history could be more different in mood than the time of Bach and our own. The joy of living of baroque culture and a transcendent religious faith characterize Bach's life and work.
It is a far cry from the harshness and furious tempo of the world in which we live. Many creative forces, however, challenge our time, trying to reconcile its contradictory elements.
Within this context, the film traces the rehearsal work of the
BAG, a unique ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists, first organized in 1946 by William H. Scheide. In reintroducing the little-known arias from Bach's more than
200 extant cantatas, the Group has offered to radio, record, and concert audiences a new Bach--gay and buoyant yet spiritual and deeply moving.
The Group's work represents an attempt to bridge two centuries and to bring to the present day something of the strength, the inspiration, and the
peace of mind of
Johann Sebastian Bach.
Cut to the harshness and furious tempo of postwar
America. With a snare drum tapping out a frantic cadence, the audio sharply shifts from the magnificent organ work to a screaming factory whistle while the camera pans down the
Empire State Building, the still fresh
American icon whose record height stood until the building of the
World Trade Center decades later, and then traces up an industrial smoke stack.
Ordinary people are shown hurrying amid symbols of both the mundane and the extraordinary events of their daily lives---a telephone, a tornado, an army tank; pipelines and protesters; a wrecking ball, and
Babe Ruth running the bases; marathon dancing; trains and apartment buildings and mills; crowded masses during travel, rest, and work. The drum's incessant beating accompanies the text of the film's breathless chant:
Run, run, run (to get your bread)
...(to get it all)...(or you'll be dead).
But then, symbolically, blinds, doors, and windows are opened to the sounds of Bach's serene oboe obbligato from the aria from Cantata 82: "
Ich habe genug" ("It is enough"). The camera pans across men and women at work on sculptures and drawings, pursuing academics, the literary and medical arts, the acts of voting and working together as citizens, capturing the sense of enlightenment and renewal for which the country was striving after the war.
- published: 15 Jul 2014
- views: 928