Joe Miller said he wanted to go out with a bang. And for the longtime choral director of Spoleto Festival USA, who is departing this year after 19 years in the role, Bach was the clear choice.
Spoleto musicians have performed the legendary works of Johann Sebastian Bach several times since Miller joined the festival in 2007, including his Passion oratorios in 2015 and 2019. But as the culmination of a decade-long project programming what he calls Bach’s “pinnacle pieces,” Miller picked what he considers “the greatest piece of music ever written”: the German composer’s “Mass in B Minor,” completed in 1749.
Miller will conduct the Spoleto Festival USA Chorus as well as its orchestra in performing the mass on June 7 at Charleston Gaillard Center. It will serve as not only the culmination of his time at the festival but also as a throughline to his own life in classical music.
Bach’s mass blends faith, intellect, global influence
Miller, 59, said he first fell in love with Bach’s work in graduate school at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His professors pushed him to learn Bach in a technical but also a spiritual way.
“I’m a very spiritual person,” Miller said. “And certainly, when I started learning the works of Bach—yeah, I could learn the way he thought about God, the way he thought about the universe.”
He noted how Bach — a devout Lutheran who composed most of his music under the employ of churches in Germany — ended all his pieces with “soli deo gloria,” which is Latin for “glory to God alone.” Miller said he could hear Bach’s spiritual beliefs in the music.
Bach’s interplay of intellect and creativity also appealed to Miller. A mathematician, he said, might take joy in counting the number of notes in each sequence, while a literary scholar might explore the relationship between text and music — showing how Bach’s mass can be enjoyed on numerous levels.
This fusion goes farther: In the mass, Miller can detect the Baroque styles of Bach’s era but also earlier Renaissance motifs. Bach also incorporated music from outside Germany, Miller noted.
“He’s looking back in the historical repertoire, and he’s showing every different style that he knows,” Miller said. “Bach didn’t travel that much, but he absorbed it through learning everyone’s music. He’s part Italian, not because he went to Italy to study, but because he studied Italian music and infused it in his own way.”
A mass that unites musicians, audiences — and eras
Kyle Kaplan, a visiting assistant professor of music at Connecticut College and former student worker at Spoleto, said “Mass in B Minor” was written as a kind of compendium for Bach’s work over his lifetime. Kaplan noted how the mass, which runs nearly two and a half hours, has a variety and heft to it that displays how Bach “was at the top of his game.”
“You can hear different influences, or you can hear different moments that do cite Renaissance and other slightly older techniques,” Kaplan said. “But it’s not done in a way that is like, ‘OK, now we’re in the old section.’”
For Miller, a central joy of rehearsing and performing Bach’s works comes from his interactions with members of the Festival Chorus.
Shane Thomas, a chorus member who studied under Miller both in Cincinnati and at the Westminster Choir College, said what makes their decade-plus collaboration impactful is Miller’s ability to make Bach’s music relevant for anybody, regardless of their background and history with the composer.
“Whether that person has just walked off the street and they saw this really cool concert because of a poster, or somebody who’s known Bach their entire life,” Thomas said, “it’s finding those ways of connecting every soul in both the choir, orchestra and the audience.”
Miller said he will have four rehearsals with the chorus and orchestra in the lead-up to the performance. These practices will give him a chance to further understand how people’s own lives intersect with Bach’s music.
“Well, I think that Bach is a conversation,” said Miller, who will serve as music director of the Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble next season. “And most of our rehearsal time will be spent on how we’re going to make the conversation work so that it feels like we’re speaking together and we’re speaking to each other.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: “Spoleto Festival USA Chorus + Orchestra: ‘Bach’s Mass in B Minor,’” 7:30 p.m. June 7, Charleston Gaillard Center, 95 Calhoun St. Tickets are $88 to $122.
Henry O’Brien is an arts journalism and communications graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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