Drawing Forth Bach’s Voice

Bach’s Mass in B Minor is more than 250 years old. The historical performance movement, which revolutionized the playing of Baroque music, is easily half a century old as well. At this point, can there be anything left to debate about performances of this mass?

“There are plenty of clear-cut issues,” says conductor Andrew Parrott, who will lead the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in a performance of the work Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Orange County.

“One can say, ‘Let’s do it as we’ve inherited the piece.’ Or, ‘Let’s tinker with it in various ways.’ Or, ‘Let us try to understand what Bach was doing.’ And even when we get to that, particularly because the piece as a whole was never performed in his lifetime, there are options that are perfectly reasonable or, if you will, all perfectly conjectural.”

Parrott has the credentials to engage in such a debate. He founded the first period instrument orchestra in England and led the first London period instrument performances not just of the B Minor Mass but also of Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion and the “Brandenburg” Concertos in the 1970s.

“The orchestra was very short-lived,” he said, “but it did predate the Academy of Ancient Instruments,” a premier early music ensemble founded by Christopher Hogwood in 1973.

That was also the year Parrott founded the Taverner Choir (now the Taverner, Consort and Players), which continues to play and record for Sony Classical. The group is devoted to music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

When it comes to debates about early music, most of the instrumental ducks are in a row now; there is basic agreement on style and other issues. What Parrott wants next is to bring singing into line. And that means addressing the size of choirs and the relationship of soloists to chorus. Parrott’s theories about the right parameters were published last year in his book, “The Essential Bach Choir,” from Boydell Press.

“I’m not interested in adding a modern [20-some voices] chamber choir to a period orchestra,” the conductor said in a recent phone interview from his home in Oxford, England. “That’s a hybrid. It’s not a medium Bach knew. It’s a modified choir in the grand oratorio tradition inherited from Mendelssohn in the early years of the 19th century. That has nothing to do with Bach’s starting point.

“The bottom line is, despite huge, huge resistance from some eminent musicologists and performers who should know better, Bach’s chorus was essentially one to a part,” he said.

So Parrott uses five soloists (two sopranos, alto, tenor and bass) as the entire choir, although each singer may be doubled on occasion by another singer. Altogether there are 15 vocalists on the tour; no more than two will sing at a time.

Why the extras?

“It’s a question of stamina. The piece is considerably longer than any of the cantatas. Also, we’re not just doing one concert but several, even though we’re traveling in between.”

How did Bach handle the problem? Parrott says research indicates that, in its day, the Mass in B Minor wasn’t done in its totality, so the issue didn’t arise.

Another difference will come in the arrangement of the singers. What audiences are used to seeing--”a chorus behind, an orchestra in the middle and soloists in front,” Parrott says--is another custom inherited from the late 19th century. Parrott will put his singers as a quintet to his right. The extra singers will stand elsewhere, depending on the venue.

“The important thing is that they don’t breathe down the neck of the principals,” Parrott said. “They’re at a distance. That creates a bigger sound than if you have one cluster of singers.”

Parrott acknowledges that even for audience members used to the smaller forces typical in all early music performances, this may be surprising.

“The whole thing is meant to be different,” he said. “Not for the sake of being different. But if we are thinking along historical lines, let’s get the history right, rather than living with inherited ideas.”

Parrott isn’t alone in his thinking on how singers should be set up for Bach. Conductor Joshua Rifkin came up with the same idea for his recording of the Mass in B Minor 1981. “He was laughed at, scorned, spat upon and dismissed,” Parrott said. “But no one bothered to get their brains around the argument, as he had done. He has done his homework.

“I’ve tried not so much to expand the specific arguments but to explore other ways of looking at the same argument.”

The important point is not to confuse quality with quantity.

“We have these preconceptions that a great piece requires great forces,” Parrott said. “That is clearly nonsense. You don’t need a big orchestra to play a great string quartet.

“So let’s get to the next stage and do a good quality performance, not to demonstrate a theory but to try to understand more what the music does and what it really is. What we lose is the grand power of communal struggle. I do love that tradition. It’s appropriate even with Handel oratorios. But what you gain by having an expert solo quintet team with or without extra singers is subtlety, refinement and spontaneity.

“I don’t want to come across as a boring pedant who is merely trying to make a historical point with a well-known piece of music,” Parrott said. “I want to bring the maximum out of the piece. I believe the most invigorating and richest way is to incorporate a radically new understanding of the vocal medium. The music itself just works so much better this way.”

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Andrew Parrott will conduct the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Bach’s Mass in B Minor on Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $29 to $35. (949) 854-4646.