The Essential Bach Choir
by Andrew Parrott
It’s detective work in some ways, dealing with the hugely contentious issue of how many people Bach wanted to sing in his great choral works: the Passions and the B Minor Mass. He goes through various written sources, iconographical sources, scientific analyses of acoustics and various other things to argue that Bach did not want a large choir. He most likely wanted the four soloists to sing throughout the St Matthew Passion, which is a huge task: it’s three hours long.
