SPOTLIGHT: Bach Festival explores ‘classical surround sound’ with Berlioz Requiem

Have you ever heard classical music written for a surround sound performance?

The Bach Festival Society offers that rare chance Sunday, Oct. 25, when 300 musicians, some strategically placed around the venue, present Berlioz Requiem at Steinmetz Hall.

“It is what I call a generational piece. You can go a whole generation and not hear this piece,” said John Sinclair, artistic director and conductor of the Bach Festival Society Orchestra and Choir.

Sinclair is also the kind of music professor many would wish for, who spices up lessons on the structure and movements of a requiem – the musical expression of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead and a form popular with classical composers – with references to conspiracy theories, zombies and opium. Then he ties it all back to Berlioz. (You can hear these stories on the Spotlight podcast.)

“This work is important because it was a trend setter. It was way ahead of its time. It explores ‘surround sound’ for the first time, and it also explores what a percussion section can do. … What's interesting is that it was trendsetting in its day, but it's equally as evocative and as powerful today,” Sinclair said.

Sinclair points out that Berlioz, surprisingly, was not a formally trained musician. Instead of being a deficit, the lack of training benefited Berlioz. He was unconfined by rigid expectations of adherence to a certain form.

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“A lot of composers coming out of the classic era might have had that 10-pack of crayons and used all 10 colors,” Sinclair observed. “Well, Berlioz’s got that 144-pack with the sharpener in the back, because there's all kinds of colors in this sound that you just don't hear orchestrally.”

The way that Berlioz Requiem is written means the performance will be staged in an unexpected way.

“The orchestra is in front as always, but he has brass choirs in four places, so that when [the Requiem text] talks about ‘the trumpet shall sound around the world and bring the dead to life,’ he literally has it from all places, as to imitate the ‘sound around the world’ surrounding you,” Sinclair said. He has placed these specific groups of musicians around the auditorium, so the audience experiences the intended effect.

With these logistics and the required size of the performing orchestra, you can see why this piece is so rarely performed, Sinclair noted.

“I have some conductor friends from all over the state who are dropping in for the concert or the rehearsal, and they're driving up all the way from Miami and all the way down from Panhandle just so they can hear and witness this live, because it just doesn't get done. Or, they may be wanting to see how one keeps this together, and I'm also curious as to that too,” he said, and laughed.