An Interview with
Jos van Veldhoven

Classical Domain:   First, before we talk about Bach, I want to talk about the packaging of your recording of the b minor Mass, it's a slip-cased booklet and CD album — that is stuffed full of images illustrating several centuries of Christian imagery arts and crafts — did you used to work in a museum?

Jos van Veldhoven:   The booklet is the same as we have done with previous recordings on Channel Classics. I live in a 17th century house in the middle of Utrecht, which is a very old town in Holland. In the middle of the city is a tower, the Dom tower almost my neighbor is the Museum Catharijneconvent (the Museum for the history of Christian culture in the Netherlands). Naturally I know the museum very well.

They have very nice exhibitions, all religious subjects, paintings prints and other artworks. I went to the director and suggested we work together, we are good at making music, and they are good at showing art. He liked the idea and it's worked out well, our world wide distribution promotes his museum worldwide.

CD:   But I'm curious, when you tell people you are a conductor, and you're conducting Bach, do you have to tell them first, “I'm conducting with an historically informed interpretation,” or can you just say, “I'm conducting Bach.” Do you feel there is a need to qualify what your position is?

JV:   I'd say: “I'm conducting the b minor Mass.” What most people think is that the answer means that I'm a nineteenth or twentieth century type of conductor. Which is not the approach one now takes for Bach or for music of the seventeenth and sixteenth century.

The way you conduct early music, and also the music of Bach — the way you rehearse is fundamentally different than the way you rehearse with a symphony orchestra, or conduct an opera. You can't compare, in the first place, all the musicians both soloists and instrumentalists are chamber musicians. I mean every instrumentalist and every singer has extensive recital background. In the b minor Mass they are in a group of thirty or forty people, so for them it's a big ensemble. Still they are soloists. It's different from an orchestra or big choir, they have a very different structure and rules.

CD:   In a sense you have to make many decisions, you have to learn how to look at a score before you even approach the idea of your interpretation, it presents a different image than of the traditional symphony conductor?

JV:   Yes, that's true of course. You have to make many, many decisions. It might sound strange, but from you're starting point you have to contend with the fact that the music — even in Bach's time — is incomplete. If you compare a score of Bach and a score of Gustav Mahler, Mahler wrote down everything you can imagine. Down to the bowing of the strings, where you can breathe, metronome markings — Mahler even writes down how you should feel. Well nothing of this is in Bach's score, there are very often no tempo indications, no dynamic marking, no ornaments, no affettos. You have to find out for yourself about choices, and then decide what your choice will be. These investigations can lead to fantastically different performances, compare two recording of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, one with a big choir, the other with five solo singers. One sober and the other using elaborate ornamentation, but you could not tell which one from the number of singers.

CD:   That's why I am curious, you have to make a lot of decisions, when Maazel walks up on the Philharmonic's podium — and I hate talking music with musicians on this level, because I'm out of my depth — but when Maazel conducts Beethoven, a composer only a few generations removed from Bach, he thinks about Beethoven's message — he does not feel that he has to have scholarship to back up his personal interpretation, he does not approach Beethoven thinking “What am I going to get rid of to put this symphony across?”

JV:   Well he should actually (wry laugh), but that's another question.

It's really different regarding the music you're speaking about, for instance some contemporary music can be really difficult; but to perform it, it's mainly a matter of organizing the ensemble and rehearsing until the thing is done. In the eighteenth century, you have to make completely different kinds of decisions. One thing to remember, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the people are getting used to — this includes the musicians — are getting used to the idea of the composer as god. The music is sacred and you should not change anything. This is completely untrue of the music before this period, music is made by composers who were a part of an ensemble, who were musicians. It was very natural to add, subtract and change things in the score, it was a very different attitude. The score is not holy, the composer is not a god. He is, in a way, your friend. You should work with him, communicate and accept that he is giving you room, this is quite obvious, because he is not bothering to put everything down on paper. The same goes for the audience, the ideal audience is one that would be independent, freethinking, sensitive, and in that way picks up variations rather than looking for one single way to hear a work.

CD:   In a sense, more like a Jazz audience, they know the standard and appreciate the variation. For classical music it's a performance culture we can't understand today.

JV:   Absolutely, it's very true. My feeling is that in 2007 — concerning classical music — we are living in the nineteenth century. Basically nothing has changed after the nineteenth century. The way we make our concert halls, the way we make the orchestra, the way we listen to sounds, the way we appreciate certain effects in music — our aesthetics for sound — are all basically a product of the nineteenth century.

Now the nineteenth century was so different from the seventeenth century, that is a handicap when you start to listen to earlier music, you have to learn to get rid of these habits and clean your head and your ears.

CD:   I think we are in an exciting time for early music performance, Perhaps a greater flexibility and freedom, different from what I remember a decade or two ago.

JV:   I think it has changed, it's just evolution, I guess. We came from a time of in the 70's and 80's when people strictly followed the rules in the old treatises and sources they learned from. Of course in the beginning it was stiff, not yet flexible; but now the feeling among many (including myself) is that the more knowledge you have, for instance what we have learned from the eighteenth century, will give you a framework — one should stay within that framework — but within that framework, you're free to act.

You immediately then can hear when a conductor is working outside of the framework, you only have to be at a concert for two of three minutes to know what kind of musician he or she is.

Bach's music is always a very dense combination of feeling and intelligence, and you can't perform his music by just using one of the two methods. It needs a combination. There is a lot of thinking involved in Bach's music, a lot of study. There's an intellectual side, but there's also a sensitive side, he's full of feelings and emotions, and you have to find them both, so just being spontaneous is not enough for Bach.

CD:   Back to jazz for a moment, Bach has a concept of swing, it may not make any sense in this context, but in other words: his music can move with a flow that has to be perceived first to be communicated in performance.

JV:   That's very true, interesting. Bach uses the normal barring — so let's say a 4/4 bar, and musicians know that in a 4/4 bar the accents are always on the one and the three, and the two and the four are light beats and should be performed lighter. Among the things that distinguishes Bach from his colleagues in the period is that Bach makes so many exceptions to this rule, he puts important things on week sections of the bar, this causes what you are calling swing. Like in jazz where you have counterweights in the rhythm, so it is very similar, and it adds a lot to a performance when it is understood and done right.

CD:   You have been heading the Netherlands Bach Society for 20 years, but the organization has been around since 1922

JV:   Yes, we are the earliest early music organization in the world, though naturally the organization was far from a “period” music organization. It was all big orchestra and choirs. In the 80's we made the transition to period instruments, which was a courageous thing to do for a large organization, to change itself.

But it gave us all the benefits of the early music playing on period instrument, all our players are really specialized we are flexible, I try to follow the worldwide developments, all these are ongoing, early music research is about bringing this music back to life, we are not a museum.

CD:   OK, so now, what is it about Bach?

JV:   I think I might have given the answer, he's so full of emotion, but at the same time he engages our intelligence, he is so full of musical ideas. This precept is very intriguing, you have composers who can create beautiful structures, but the music is not alive — this is never the case in Bach.

I believe, for instance if you perform vocal music of Bach, you should always start by looking at the text. Bach had to take a text as his starting point, he was given a complete libretto or text and he had to set it to music. If you are prepared to take the text as a starting point for your decisions then you'll find more or less how Bach was thinking and see what his decisions were, and then how it shaped the musical result.

Some of my colleges have a more instrumental approach, I cannot help but feel that they are not as connected with the text. It sounds as if they are finding enjoyable music, a good dance, having a good time — but also they might seem not interested in the content behind the notes in Bach's music. There is always content behind the nice music you're listening to. I think if you are prepared to open this box (of content) to go into it, then there are new worlds to open. But many listeners don't know the worlds because they just enjoy the sounds they hear, the nice rhythms.

CD:   On to the Mass, let's start with this, do you feel the b-minor was meant to be performed?

JV:   Yes, and no, I know that might sound strange. Yes, because, in Bach's time it would be very unlikely for a composer to write music that wasn't meant to be performed. You could ask the same question for a collection of The Art of the Fugue or the Well-Tempered Clavier — is it meant to be performed? Yes, it's beautiful music and you can play it on your keyboard. At the same time it's a collection to prove that he was a great composer.

It's puzzling, why is Bach writing such a huge Mass at the end of his life? When you look at it superficially, then it looks like a catholic Mass, it's complete, it has all movements of a catholic Mass...

CD:    Written in a non-catholic country....

JV:   Yes, so why would Bach write a catholic Mass in a non-catholic country — it's completely un-logical? On the other hand, even for the Catholic Church the b minor Mass is very unpractical. Who would perform two hours of music in a Mass? It's longer than Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Even the longest Masses rarely go over an hour, Haydn Masses take around forty minutes, maybe an hour.

So it's not Catholic music, it's not Protestant music — so what is it?

I believe that from the moment that Bach did not have to compose that much music for practical purposes, after he composed enough Cantatas, Passions, and Oratorios, Bach had more-or-less all the music he would need for his church and he perform every Sunday from this collection. Now, we're talking now around 1735, Bach has fifteen more years to live, he did not know this at the time, of course.

It's very interesting he starts writing special projects, for example a project about fugues, which we call The Art of the Fugue; an project about variations, The Goldberg Variations; a project about keys in music, the Well-Tempered Clavier; a project about the choral: the Clavierbuch.  I believe that at the end of his life, Bach wanted to start a project containing the best vocal music he ever wrote in his life. He wanted to put all the possible genres of vocal music he could imagine, in one collection of music.

If what I'm saying is true, you'd need a text that would allow you to do this. It could have been a libretto, for an oratorio, or opera, the disadvantage of that is, with a libretto, there is already a pre-set division between what the soloist does and the chorus does, depending on how the roles are set out in the libretto. With the text of a Mass, the complete Mass you are absolutely free, as a composer, to divide the Credo into seven moment, five movements, nine movements, you are free to address certain genres to certain texts.

You have a lot of freedom, but Bach chose the longest possible variant within the form. This form of the Mass was used since the middle ages, and by composers that Bach new very well, and I think that Bach is not thinking in terms of Catholic or Lutheran, but pre-Reformation. Looking at the history of the Mass is one thing, but the b minor Mass is also the last monument of his life. It's the last thing he ever wrote, we know now that the last notes he ever wrote on paper are in the middle of the Credo. To choose a Mass is a big statement for a man who spent his entire life composing vocal music.

Then after all this, the other side of the question is “No,” I can not imagine that Bach thought that this work would be performed the day after he finished as the b minor Mass, there was no occasion in his time.

After Bach's death, his son Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, inherited the b minor Mass and only performed portions of it. He felt free to take out the pieces he liked and performed those. It was not until the nineteenth century that they started to think about performing the whole work. They were very impressed by the beauty and the workmanship of the Mass, but even then people felt it was not possible to perform the whole work. They said it was too difficult for mankind to perform.

CD:    So putting it up on a pedestal and knocking it down at the same time.

JV:   In a way, eventually, still in the nineteenth century, it was thought only impossible to perform in one night, so they split the work over two nights. But of course by the nineteenth century Bach's techniques were completely forgotten.

CD:    Are there any indications from Bach's score, pertaining to the number of singers, or is it manly understanding about the period in general?

JV:   Bach does in the b minor Mass exactly what he did throughout his life, in his other works, he puts all the instruments, in their names from the time. He lists the singer parts, but they are all in the single. soprano, tenor basso — he never uses the word choir in the score.

He has carefully divided the works so there are significant solos for each of the instruments and for the singers. For instance I don't use a chorus, I use singers, they are not a chorus. I do what we think Bach did all his life, I work with a group of singers and in the group of singers are the soloists for each vocal section.

In the most extreme case you could perform Bach's music, including the b-minor Mass with solo voices, so no choir at all.

CD:    The Rifkin idea...

JV:   There are arguments that, particularly for the cantatas, Bach only used four voices. They sung in unison the opening choir and the final chorale. There is no history for performing the b-minor Mass, since Bach died right after completing it. What I can say for myself, is that I deeply love the effect of (now and then) bringing in more than one singer. That is a procedure Bach knew very well, he named them repieno singers, he did not speak about a chorus, but he spoke about repieno singers. The word is Italian and it means “fuller,” so it's still the soloists singing, but now and then the other singers, in the section, join them. You then come close to the sound that we associate with a choir, but you still rely on the same five soloists who perform the complete b minor Mass. These soloists are standing in the middle of the ensemble.

CD:   How many other singers then for each part?

JV:   There are two other singers so the maximum size would be three.

CD:    So just to mention Rifkin again, for a moment, he is adamant about only using one....

JV:   Yes, he is a bit severe, he is determined to show that Bach should only be sung with one singer to a part. He seems not to like the use of repieno singers. There are some pieces that Bach wrote that included repieno singers, St. John's Passion is a good example, we have repieno parts saved from the Passion.

But Rifkin maintains that most Bach, including the b minor Mass should only be sung one voice to a part. I think that it is legitimate to use repieno voices, they were used all through the seventeenth century, in Northern Germany — name a composer and you will find proof that they used repieno singers.

The main point Rifkin makes, is that in the majority of traditional performances of Bach's Passions, the bass sits in front of an orchestra for hours waiting to stand up and sing four notes as Jesus, and then sits down. This is, completely idiotic, Bach would never have done this. Rifkin is completely right.

In the professional magazines like Early Music we have huge discussions, there was one between Rifkin and Ton Koopman, arguing whether one should use a 16 member choir for Bach's music, Rifkin arguing against the practice, of course — this went on for years. The main point Rifkin makes is that the soloists should be part of the ensemble, whether it is big or small, that is something not taken up by Ton Koopman — and he is obviously an early music specialist — but he still has his soloists standing in front of the orchestra. in this instance I think that Rifkin is right and there is no discussion any longer.

CD:    Issues of beauty aside, do fewer singers serve the counterpoint better?

JV:   The counterpoint is best served by solo voices, the b minor Mass can be very complex you may have twelve layers of music, in the traditional performances with a bigger number of strings and more singers, it is so difficult to make everything clear, especially for the inner parts. Now when you have one voice to a part it is absolutely clear, you can look through the music, it's like water.

So, if I make a decision for repieno singers it's based on original arguments. For instance, all through the seventeenth century and in Bach's time, composers were well aware of the music written in the stilo antico, that is: the style we think of as the polyphonic Renaissance choral writing. Typically this was composed for larger forces, what they called then da Cappella. Now, this gives me the argument that for the b minor Mass; those movements that are composed in this earlier style, like the second Kyrie, the Donna Nobis Pachem, the Gratias agimus tibi, — those are all polyphonic pieces, there are no independent orchestral parts, all the instruments are doubling the singers

So, this is typically the sections where one should use the repieno singers. The four part choruses, like in the Gloria and the Credo, where you have four singers in the slow singing and the transverse flute an violins that is typically the music that should be done by solo voices and not done by a choir. It brings the music very close to your heart. If you listen to the music in the Crucifixus, where the wounded Christ is suffering from his wounds — it's such a painful movement — Bach does everything in order to get the affettos in the heart of the listener. In the continuo you almost hear the hammering in of the nails, in the harmony there are very effective dissonances.

Then with four singers who understand this affettos, and can convey this in their voices, the sound is something not reachable by a chorus, not even the best chorus in the world. A chorus by its nature is anonymous, and as beautiful as it can be, with our version — you are presented with four people suffering, four people weeping.

My decisions are based by what I see in the score, so if Bach starts a fugue with vocal parts and then adds obbligato instruments, I always use solo voices, but if in the same fugue, Bach starts to doubles the vocal parts with flute or the oboe or violin, that is a natural moment to bring in the repieno singers as well. They may step in, in the middle of a movement — that is completely different from the conventional modern vocal score.

CD:   I want to get back to something you just said, Bach, say with a few notes of an oboe, can get so much emotional truth, and still be a master of the formal exercise....

JV:   Yes, an interesting idea, is that all the knowledge that Bach has, his knowledge of musical rhetoric, like in speech, the rules or tricks that will convince an audience. It's the same in music or politics. One can learn this structure, one could call it tricks.

CD:   Right but we often see these tricks as manipulations, music for film does this all the time...

JV:   Right, now you could write a book about the use of film music in relation so a movie scene, but as a listener you don't need to know about this, you want the effect. As a composer you must have this knowledge. You don't have to educate an audience, one that you are a part of, on how to listen. It might be nice for certain works to get a background, but it is not needed. Now when Bach writes for an oboe, it is full of these rhetoric elements, the choice of the tempo, the choice of the key, the musical figures he's using... and so many other possible elements. In Bach's day this was an elaborate technique, one that Bach was a master of. He uses it all the time, Even the choice of instrument, the trumpet represents something, a king or a god, the viola da gamba indicates another thing, the recorder or violin themselves give a message to the audience.

To a degree this language is lost to us, because we are not living in the eighteenth century, but it's there in the music. In a sense when Bach is writing a cantata or the Passions or the b minor Mass — he's not trying to please people with his music. Bach is choosing the instruments not for musical reasons but to further understanding of the text.

CD:    To go full circle, in this recording environment it is amazing that you were able to record the work.

JV:   I am grateful that I have the chance to record, but what I am most grateful for is that in this production, I am able to have the ideal cast. It is absolutely a miracle what these five solo singers do. There are people who have probably spent half their life performing Bach's music, and you can hear it, they really know what they are doing. I think this is very rare.

CD:   Are singers on the CD the same as those singing at the Metropolitan Museum concert?

Yes, We are really looking forward to the concert, this is our second tour of the United States. We were last here in 2002 bringing works of Bach and his processors in Leipzig.

Just one point I'd like to make, a performance, of course, is full of compromises. It is not a question of reaching something “authentic” we are not performing in Bach's church, we are using sopranos, we are using a little portable box organ on stage, Bach used a big church organ. That is true for all of us, Rifkin, Koopman, Suzuki, we all compromise because performance is the thing.

Once you have the framework, and all of these people I mentioned are within the framework; it's clear, they have spent their lifetime studying this music. So I don't like the issue we so often hear about what is “authentic.”

CD:   We have covered a lot of territory so lastly I'd like know is what else are you involved in?

JV:   I conduct, in general my programs I stay with music between 1600 and 1850, or so. I do a lot of Haydn and Mozart, as well as early nineteenth century music. I teach conducting in conservatories in Amsterdam and The Hague. I train conductors, in all sorts of music.

CD:   There is no secret desire to conduct Bruckner?

JV:   No, I have to be honest. The repertoire I am involved in is so rich and so big. From Monteverdi to Mozart. I have an ensemble in Holland and twice a year we perform an unknown opera from the seventeenth century, there is a great deal of music yet to be appreciated by the public. I feel that I have invested so much into this period that later music is not my world.

CD:   After the b minor tour, what do you have planned?

JV:   This is a Buxtehude year, the 300th anniversary of his death, so we have performed many of his works this year, and recorded his Membra Jesu Nostri. Upcoming we will be performing works by Heinrich Schütz, as he is having an anniversary year. Schütz is far too unknown, he is very important, he is an astounding composer. Handel, Haydn and Purcell all have anniversary years in the near future and we will create programs for their music.

Buxtehude also deserves to be better known, again he has some great compositions, but you have to bring people in and convince them, it's a slow process.

CD:   Well Buxtehude convinced Bach so that's all you need. Thank you very much Jos.