Bach Society of Minnesota

The Bach Society of Minnesota was founded in 1933 by students at the University of Minnesota who wanted to perform music of the great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the oldest Bach societies in the United States, the ensemble features the timeless music of both Bach and those he inspired.

Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig, Germany, in 1750, after a remarkable career. He composed sacred choral music, organ and keyboard music, and other instrumental works, and served as cantor and music director at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig. He wrote hundreds of church cantatas and performed during Lutheran Sunday services. He also composed longer, larger-scale choral works. These include the Saint Matthew and Saint John Passions, Mass in B minor, Magnificat, and Christmas and Easter Oratorios.

Bach choirs, festivals, and societies emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when scholars and singers renewed an interest in the composer’s artistry. His works were catalogued and published, inspiring a greater appreciation of the Bach corpus.

Professional as well as amateur singers have loved the intricacy, timeless beauty, and profound meaning in Bach’s music and have gathered to perform it for generations. In 2018, several hundred Bach societies, choirs, and festivals exist around the world. They range from Brisbane (Australia) to Budapest (Hungary), and from Pretoria (South Africa) to Palo Alto (California).

In 1933, University of Minnesota (U of M) music students of Professor Donald Ferguson suggested that members of two music fraternities, Phi Mu Alpha and Sigma Alpha Iota, prepare a Bach cantata under Ferguson’s direction. They then formed a society and rehearsed before performing at the university for the first time. Prior to Ferguson’s efforts, there had been since 1898 only one major Bach choir in the United States: the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The Bach Society, under Ferguson’s direction, met each week for rehearsal. Then, near the end of the year, it held an "open rehearsal" to which the public was invited. During April of its first year (1934) the society performed the Mass in B minor. This great work would be repeated many times throughout the history of the Bach Society. A fifty-three-member choir sang that first concert at Northrop Auditorium.

Six years later, the society organized a four-evening Bach Festival. The event included a night of instrumental music, an evening organ recital, and two nights of choral works featuring Bach’s Saint John Passion and Mass in B minor. In 1950, nearing age seventy, Ferguson reached the mandatory retirement age for the U of M and retired from the Bach Society. (At the October 1983 ground breaking for a new School of Music building, Ferguson, age 101, was present. The new building was christened Ferguson Hall.)

During the 1950s various attempts were made to revive the festivals during a period of transition. In 1959 Dr. David LaBerge, an associate professor of psychology at the university, reorganized the Bach Society into a large chorus of 100 singers and reinstated the annual festivals. Unlike Ferguson, LaBerge performed more than just the music of Bach. In the 1960s and 70s choruses grew even larger when the group performed regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra in Northrop Auditorium. At the time, the venue could seat nearly 5,000 people.

When LaBerge retired in 1980, Henry Charles Smith became music director of the Bach Society in addition to serving as resident conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra. During the 1980s both organizations collaborated on annual concerts of Handel’s Messiah. In 1985 the society celebrated the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth.

At the urging of more recent artistic directors, the society reduced the number of singers in keeping with the performance practices of Bach’s time. As a result, only three or four performers sang per voice group of a SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) choir.

Subsequent artistic directors include Paul Oakley, who succeeded H. C. Smith in 1987; Roderick Kettlewell, 1997; Myles Hernandez, 2000; Thomas Lancaster, 2004; Paul Boehnke, 2007; and Matthias Maute, 2016. Under Maute’s direction the society shares its mission to communicate “the depths and passions of Bach’s compositions through period instruments and historic practices.”