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The Cantata Singers was an amateur choir born out of professional scholarship and a desire to recreate authentic performances of the music of Bach and his predecessors with an emphasis on chamber chorus, chamber orchestra, and the acoustics of a stone-walled church.
In accordance with the practice of the period and the intentions of the composers, the music was performed in churches, and the arrangement of the choir, as well as any orchestral accompaniment, was reproduced in numbers and proportion. Authentic performance practice has often been a point of contention between musicologists, especially when the music is centuries old and the intentions of the composers only become evident through fastidious research if they can ever be conclusively determined. The Cantata Singers was one of the first groups in the USA to attempt authentic performances of Baroque music and set a standard for basing performances on expert direction supported by methodical research. As such, the story of the Cantata Singers is in large part the story of those scholars who directed the ensemble over time, such as: Paul Boepple, Arthur Mendel, Alfred Mann, Robert Hickok and Kenneth Cooper. Kenneth Cooper was to be the last of the Cantata Singers' conductors taking over for the 1969-1970 season.
Cantata Singers was founded in 1934 as Cantata Society of New York by Paul Boepple as an adjunct of the Dalcroze School, of which Paul Boepple was then director . He conducted the choir for only two years before he assumed conductorship of the Dessoff Choirs upon Madame Margarethe Dessoff’s retirement.
Arthur Mendel became Paul Boepple’s successor in 1936 and the organization soon after became known as The Cantata Singers. The Cantata Singers were incorporated in December 1941, with their stated purpose “to stimulate public interest in the performance of choral music, particularly that of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in the style of its period; and to offer the public an opportunity to hear this music and its membership the opportunity to sing it and thereby to contribute to the education of the musical public.” They were interested in presenting the choral works of Bach as nearly as possible to the way they would have been performed under J.S. Bach's own direction. In 1949, Arthur Mendel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for music research and the Cantata Singers served as his “workshop” as he continued his study of J.S. Bach's music in performance. Mendel has been celebrated as one of the foremost Bach scholars and, in particular, The Bach Reader (1945), has been widely influential and regularly republished. Under Mendel’s baton the Cantata Singers performed works by J.S. Bach including the St. Matthew Passion BWV 244 (1950), St. John Passion BWV 245 (1951), B-minor Mass BWV 232 (1951, 1953), Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 (1952), and Magnificat BWV 243 (1952). They also revived choral works by the 17th century German composer, Heinrich Schütz, including The Christmas Story and German Requiem (1952). Also in 1952, Arthur Mendel was appointed Professor of Music at Princeton University where he was the Departmental Chairman from 1952-1967. In order to manage his new responsibilities he resigned his post with the Cantata Singers in 1953. He was the organization’s longest running conductor and remained an attentive advisor and honorary member in the years following his 17-year tenure.
Alfred Mann was a professional musician who had performed with Cantata Singers under Arthur Mendel on double-bass, viola, and recorder, when he became Arthur Mendel’s successor in 1953. Also a specialist in the performance of Baroque music, especially J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel, Mann added works by Monteverdi, Dietrich Buxtehude, and G.F.Handel to the Cantata Singers repertoire.
Over time the Cantata Singers’ repertoire was expanded to include works from the Baroque all the way up to and including music of the 20th century. By the time Thomas Dunn was appointed conductor of the Cantata Singers for the 1959-1960 season, the audience for Baroque works that the Cantata Singers had worked to create had grown large enough that there were various opportunities to hear that music as other organizations were performing this music as well. That fact, paired with Thomas Dunn's own interests, inspired the new conductor to expand the choir’s repertoire once again, directing contrastive performances of Benjamin Britten’s St. Nicholas (1959), Arthur Honegger’s King David (1963), and Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem, (1965), as well as works by disparate composers such as Purcell, Haydn, Verdi, and Francis Poulenc. In 1959 Thomas Dunn had founded The Festival Orchestra and the two ensembles performed together on a number of occasions, notably the Midsummer Music Festival, organized by the Cantata Singers, which was held in 1963 and 1964, and served as a predecessor for what was to become the Mostly Mozart Festival.
Robert Hickok assumed conductorship of The Cantata Singers in 1966. Under his direction, The Cantata Singers, in an effort to combat a steadily rising financial deficit, began producing concerts that were a capella or supported by minimal accompaniment. These concerts also saw a renewed focus on earlier composers such as Josquin des Pres, Ludwig Senfl, and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.
During 1969-1970, the organization faced the ongoing challenge of meeting expenses and now had difficulty attracting and retaining members. Under Robert Hickok the choir had difficulty especially with filling the sections of men’s voices. Kenneth Cooper was to be the last of the Cantata Singers’ conductors taking over for the 1969-1970 season.
In addition to the influential music scholars who conducted the Cantata Singers, the choir engaged professional vocal and instrumental soloists on a contract basis to perform in many of their concert programs. Among these were the likes of Adele Addison, Betty Allen, Therman Bailey, Charles Berberian, Charlotte Bloecher, Helen Boatwright, Charles Bressler, Karl Brock, Patricia Brooks (Mann), Arthur Burrows, Jean Carlton, Walter Carringer, David Clatworthy, Phyllis Curtin, Jan DeGaetani, Loren Driscoll, Saramae Endich, Ellen Faull, Albert Fuller, Janice Harsányi, William Hess, Jon Humphrey, Belva Kibler, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Florence Kopleff, Jean Kraft, John Langstaff, Leon Lishner, Paul Matthen, Russell Oberlin, Judith Raskin, John Reardon, George Shirley, Tony Tamburello, Barbara Troxell, Nicholas di Virgilio, William Warfield, Brent Williams, Nancy Williams, and many others.
The organization to all intents and purposes ceased to exist after June 1970. Its only activity during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1971, was to try to raise money from members and friends to pay off some of the debts it had incurred. |
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Comment:
The Cantata Singers is a name that has been and continues to be used by a number of different vocal ensembles. Among them are the Vancouver Cantata Singers, the Cantata Singers of Ottawa, the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers, the Prince George Cantata Singers, and the Pleasantville Cantata Singers, and the Cantata Singers, Dublin. Perhaps the most famous of these ensembles active today is the one based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1964, and called simply, the Cantata Singers. There is also a vocal ensemble called The New York Cantata Singers that was originated in 1992. These choirs share not only similar names, but similar purpose, namely to present otherwise forgotten masterpieces, especially of the Baroque period, and with a particular interest in the Cantatas of J.S. Bach. |
