Chorale Will Perform Bach on a Grand Scale

Orange County recently got to hear Bach sung in the radical one-singer-per-part version British scholar Andrew Parrott and others consider historically accurate.

Sunday at Chapman University, we’ll get the flip side of the coin when William Hall musters some 130 singers and musicians for a performance of Bach’s Magnificat and Vivaldi’s Gloria.

“It’s amazing to me for someone to say we know that Bach wrote one to a part,� Hall said in a recent phone interview from his office at Chapman University in Orange.

“It is an interesting concept, but Bach is well documented. There is no question he never wrote about one on a part. He talks about the singers. He names names.

“It’s like a 10-year syndrome. Every 10 years we get a book about period instruments or practices. But when people make great pronouncements like that, I say ‘Wait a moment. That certainly was not what was going on at the time.’ Think of three trumpets, two oboes, two flutes, strings and an organ. And put voices in next to that. There’s no way four voices would be heard.�

Hall isn’t against scaling things down.

“I can get 130 voices to sound like 16 at times by using the right vocal approach,� he said. “You can do some wonderful things to bring out the articulated sound that Bach demands. Vivaldi is a different school, a different sound. The difference is the Romantic approach of the Italian school, as opposed to the Lutheran sound of the Bach school. The two make a nice pair. It’s fun to create different sounds.�

Nor is he opposed to other aspects of historical performance practices.

“It’s going to be highly ornamented vocally and instrumentally,� he said. “Some things in Vivaldi just long for ornamentation. And so do some of the solos in the Magnificat.�

Hall and the chorale recently released two double compact disc recordings: Verdi’s Requiem, recorded live in June in a concert at St. Paul’s Outside-the-Walls Basilica in Rome, and Bach’s Mass in B Minor, recorded after the October 2000 performance at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.

The Hall Chorale is now in residence at Chapman, where Hall is chairman of the music department.

“When we get into the master’s program, the chorale will be a teaching choir for the master’s candidates,� Hall said. “Next year is my 40th year at Chapman. In a sense, we’re starting to celebrate early. This is really the first combined effort with the University Singers.�

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* The William Hall Master Chorale, Chapman University Singers and Alumni Soloists will sing Vivaldi’s Gloria and Bach’s Magnificat on Sunday at 5 p.m. in the Memorial Auditorium at Chapman University, One University Drive, Orange. $20. (714) 997-6504.