John Butt of the Dunedin Consort on reassessing Bach: ‘All great music should sometimes make us feel uncomfortable’

Bach’s place in the classical canon has long been assured, but three February concerts from the Dunedin Consort will present his music in the context of what some of his lesser-known (but perhaps equally talented) contemporaries were up to, writes David Kettle

Walk into Leipzig’s Thomaskirche and you might be surprised at how – well, ordinary is seems. It’s not small enough to be intimate, exactly, but not big enough to be monumental either, and while there’s some bright stained glass, the plain walls give a sense of sobriety too. It’s very much a working church, hardly an obvious attraction for musical tourists, despite the simple, sober floor plaque marking the final resting place of the most illustrious figure to have worked there: Johann Sebastian Bach.

In fact, the Thomaskirche was just one of four ecclesiastical establishments whose music Bach oversaw during the 27 years he spent in Leipzig, officially as director of music at the Thomaskirche’s school. But it was for the Thomaskirche that he wrote at least three cycles of cantatas across the entire church year, and it was the church that hosted the first performance of his St Matthew Passion.

“During his first five or six years in Leipzig,” explains leading Bach authority John Butt, also artistic director of the Dunedin Consort, “he composed at an incredible rate.” And it’s some of Bach’s Leipzig works that the Dunedins perform in early February, in concerts not only celebrating that composer’s musical achievements, but also setting them in the perhaps more surprising context of the times.

John Butt PIC: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

“He was a school teacher, really,” Butt continues, “but his predecessors had made the role into something like director of music for the entire city. So he had a sort of dual identity. One of the things he had to do at the Thomasschule was dormitory inspections. It’s strange to think of Bach having that kind of role.”

Indeed, the composer has an almost god-like status for musicians and music lovers of our own times. But it wasn’t always like that. “As far as the 18th century is concerned,” Butt explains, “Bach was a relatively minor figure in Leipzig. It’s really only from the 19th century that the city started to capitalise on its heritage.”

The musical pillars of the Dunedin’s Leipzig-themed programme are three church cantatas by Bach himself, originally scheduled in the Thomaskirche for particular dates in the church calendar. “Bach’s Cantatas Nos 18 and 181 were performed on the same day, probably in February 1724, and No. 81 was just a couple of weeks earlier. So we’re linking back to almost exactly 300 years before the concert.”

Providing contrast, however, are pieces by two other composers from the same time. “Those are Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner, who were actually offered the Leipzig job before Bach was. Telemann was probably the most famous composer in German lands at that time, and also very friendly with Bach – he was godfather to Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Graupner is less well known nowadays, but he’s a fascinating figure, and a hugely prolific composer. The Overture we’re playing is a suite very much in the French style, possibly designed for real dancing, but very unusual in its changes of character within the pieces themselves.”

The aim, Butt says, is to provide context – and maybe shake a few preconceptions. “A few years back, we sort of re-ran Bach’s audition for the Leipzig job by performing the two cantatas he offered, then playing the closest pieces we could find by Graupner and Telemann, and asking the audience to vote. Everywhere we did it, the Graupner piece won. A lot of people might go into the concert thinking that the Telemann and Graupner pieces will sound like poor relations, but that’s just not necessarily the case. To us, Bach is a bit like a Mercedes: you feel like he’s not going to let you down with incompetence or poor workmanship. But it’s not quite as simple as that.”

Why does having that broader perspective matter? “It’s about being aware that the tastes of the past are more complex than we might have been taught, and that we might sometimes have to reassess our values. All great music should sometimes make us feel uncomfortable.”

The Dunedin Consort: Leipzig 300, Perth Concert Hall, 7 February, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 8 February and Wigmore Hall, London, 9 February, www.dunedin-consort.org.uk