The Oxford Bach Soloists perform Bach Revived as part of the Oxford Lieder Festival on 21 October. In addition to cantatas by Bach the concert also features organ music by Schumann performed by Robert Quinney, Director of the Choir of New College, Oxford.
We caught up with Robert to learn more about his career path to date:
“I came to New College from Peterborough Cathedral, where I was Director of Music for an indecently short, but very enjoyable and rewarding time – about sixteen months from Easter 2013. Before that I was Sub-Organist at Westminster Abbey for nine years, following four years in a similar position at Westminster Cathedral. So prior to my arrival in Oxford I’d worked for most of my career in London, and for all of it in professional church music rather than academia. I had also done quite a lot of continuo playing in period instrument ensembles, something I’ve always enjoyed. And there was something of an academic hinterland – I’ve always maintained an interest in Bach especially, even getting as far as one term of a PhD at Cambridge, before I heard the siren call of Westminster!”
And what direction do you plan to take things in now you are at New College?
“New College is indelibly associated with the work of my predecessor, Edward Higginbottom. Whilst I am conscious of my role in maintaining that tradition I also realise that maintaining a tradition also means reinventing it, and I hope my particular musical preferences can bring something new and potentially valuable to the enterprise. I’ve certainly been delighted with the way the choir has responded to what I’ve asked them to do – it’s an enormous pleasure to work with such intelligent and responsive musicians.”
Robert Quinney in New College
The focus of the forthcoming concert is on the musical relationship between Bach and Schumann. Why do you think Schumann idolised the music of Bach and what aspects of Schumann’s music show that influence?
“I think Schumann regarded Bach as something of a musical father-figure: somewhat remote, even unreachable, but a source for his own creativity. His reception of Bach is interesting, because Schumann’s music never self-consciously apes the idioms and styles of Bach’s music, but performs a fascinating reimagining in ‘Romantic’ terms, which in turn illuminates something in Bach’s music that makes him unique among his contemporaries – the extraordinarily rich and active inner life of the music, which makes it ripe for exactly the kind of reception Schumann performs upon it.”
We don’t immediately think of Schumann as a composer for the organ. He was famous for being a pianist after all and primarily as a composer of some formidable music for that instrument. How much organ music did Schumann actually write and how effective is it from the player’s point of view?
“There’s quite a lot of pianistic writing in the Six Fugues on BACH – particularly the second, which is a sort of toccata, full of virtuosic writing for the hands. This is really the only music for the organ by Schumann, though two other sets of short pieces – the Sketches and Canonic Studies, both for pedal piano – are these days most often heard on the organ. The writing is, I think, tremendously effective; Schumann fully understands the organ’s capacity for polyphonic writing but mixes this characteristic with a more obviously ‘Romantic’ sensibility. It certainly doesn’t feel or sound like music written by a pianist who doesn’t understand the organ.”
Was the instrument that Schumann was writing for closer to that of Bach’s day or the present? And how does it relate to the one you will be performing on in New College which is a fairly radical design from 1969?
“There were certainly some historic organs extant in Schumann’s time, though I’m not sure that Schumann knew any of them well. His Fugues are totally non-prescriptive of ‘registration’ (i.e. which stops to use), so it’s unlikely he had a specific instrument in mind. The organ at New College is the high watermark of the Neo-Classical movement in organ building in this country. It was conceived to excel in polyphonic music, and it certainly allows Schumann’s counterpoint to be heard with great clarity. It doesn’t have the warmth of a late nineteenth-century organ, but it isn’t an inexpressive sound by any means: since its recent restoration it has greater power, and a more singing tone than perhaps ever before.”
In the concert you will be playing two of Schumann’s Fugues – Nos 1 & 4. Why have you chosen those ones in particular and is there anything special you are planning to bring to the performance to make them your own?
“The first fugue sets out Schumann’s stall, building toward the end in a relatively conventional way. It’s the most ‘classical’ of the set (by which I mean that it does what we might expect of it, not that it is in some way like a piece of music from the ‘Classical period’), and thus makes a good partner for the unconventional fourth fugue. This uses a rather angular version of the BACH theme, then sets that in retrograde motion (i.e. it’s played backwards), in a way that completely changes the movement’s character. It feels as though all the energy is draining away from the music, but just as it’s in a kind of terminal decline there is a tremendous surge toward a restatement of the original subject, which in turn leads to a triumphant, even heroic climax. In this fugue perhaps more than any of the others we experience themes familiar from Schumann’s other keyboard music: opposition between two antithetical but inextricably linked ideas or personas; a sense of a personal journey being undertaken; an heroic subjectivity. With that material to work with, I don’t have to bring anything special to the performance; I just have to get the notes in the right order (as Bach himself is said to have observed about his own organ playing)!”
