Forty-four years ago, while still a graduate student of music, Lawrence Doebler began work on the Bach “Mass in B Minor” from the perspective of one day preparing the piece for presentation by choral students.
“The [Mass] was on my bucket list of things to do,” the professor and director of choral activities at the renowned Ithaca College School of Music said. “The challenge for me was how to teach it in 44 years or less.”
Not only has he prepped his students in six weeks to perform one of the most monumental works in music history, he and the college’s chorus, along with a 29-piece orchestra and soloists, are taking their act on the road, the first stop of which is the Music Center at Strathmore.
Touring is a major commitment Ithaca’s choral students must make if they wish to be included in the chorus. Each year, 300 singers are auditioned for only 48 spots. During its last three decades of touring, the Ithaca College Choir has performed in venues that include Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the University of Limerick’s Irish World Music Center.
“These students are the best and are dedicated to learning the music, then sharing that music so that [an] audience will be moved in a very profound and exciting way,” Doebler said.
Of that, Doebler is sure, especially with the voices singing in Latin each “movement” in Latin, as it was written.
As it turns out, Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” would become one of the composer’s last pieces wherein he literally “assembled” the Mass from components written at various earlier times to its final (and present) form in 1749. Bach died in 1750 having never heard his Mass performed in its entirety.
Carol McAmis, a member of the Ithaca College voice faculty since 1979, is one of seven faculty soloists performing the grandiose work along with her colleagues, sopranos Deborah Montgomery-Cove and Patrice Pastore, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Kay, tenor David Parks, and baritones Randie Blooding and Brad Hougham.
“The [Mass] is a real athletic achievement for our singers as well as an artistic achievement,” McAmis said. “It requires a tremendous amount of stamina to sing these big choruses, and we’re really proud [that] our kids … can tackle something like this and do it well.”
