Contributors to this Volume

Abstract

Abstract:This article, which began life as a lecture at the Bethlehem Bach Festival in 2018, was mainly intended as a celebration of Greg Funfgeld's thirty-five years as the conductor and artistic director of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem—significantly longer than any other conductor of the Choir. But it was necessary to put this achievement into the context of the origins of the Bethlehem Bach Festival—how the concern to hear the major works of the Leipzig Kantor led to this annual tradition of performing not only the vocal works of Bach but also his orchestral and chamber music, as well as his keyboard and organ music. When Funfgeld became the conductor of the Choir, its performances were concentrated in two weeks in early May each year. Under his leadership, spring and Christmas concerts were soon added; then there were performances in schools, then lunchtime concerts, recordings, tours, and other opportunities for performing Bach. A subplot of the Funfgeld years in Bethlehem continues to be the influence of Westminster Choir College, where Funfgeld studied, and where others of his collaborators were either faculty or students, including myself, who in 2018 brought to an end thirty-four years of writing program notes for concerts and liner notes for recordings of the Bethlehem Bach Choir. It seems appropriate that such milestones should be recorded in BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, which celebrates its half century this year.