When Paul Steinitz founded the London Bach Society he wanted them to perform Bach’s music. Most musicians in those days played Bach in an exaggerated, romantic style, using large choirs and orchestras, playing with lots of vibrato, and with lots of changes of speed which Bach would not have done. Steinitz wanted to show people how Bach’s works should sound. From 1950 he performed them in German. When more musicians started to learn how to play period instruments he started to use these. In 1952 he conducted the first performance in Britain of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in its complete and original German form. It was all part of a movement which was known as “Back to Bach in its original form”.
In 1958 he started to perform all the 208 Bach cantatas that are known (it is thought 100 have been lost). He finished this project in 1987, shortly before he died. He got together a group of players which he called the Steinitz Bach Players. They were professional musicians who agreed with what Steinitz was trying to do. Every Lent they performed one of the two great Bach passions: the St Matthew Passion, or sometimes the St John Passion. He took the choir and his orchestra on tour to the USA, Israel, German Democratic Republic (twice, including performances at Bach’s own church, the St. Thomas' Church Leipzig) and Bulgaria.
Steinitz did not just perform Bach’s music. He conducted music by many Baroque composers as well as modern composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Stanley Glasser (sung in Zulu) and his own pupil Nicholas Maw.
Steinitz wrote a lot about music. He wrote a chapter on 18th century German church music in "The New Oxford History of Music", he wrote several books to show students how to write harmony, and books on how to perform Bach’s music called "Bach’s Passions", "Bach for Choirs", and "Performing Bach’s Vocal Music".
Paul Steinitz had many honours. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Organists. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1985, the year in which Bach’s 300th birthday was celebrated.
At the end of his concerts, when the audience applauded, he would often hold up a picture of Bach, so that the audience was thanking Bach for his music.
Dr. Steinitz died in April 1988 at home in his lovely 18th century cottage in Old Oxted, just south of London. He was a Quaker who believed strongly that music could help to bring peace in the world.
There is a public memorial to him in the Cloister of St Bartholomew-the-Great, West Smithfield, London.
Today Steinitz’ wife Margaret continues her husband's work with the London Bach Society, of which Steinitz Bach Players is an integral part. To reflect modern Bach scholarship and continue Dr. Steinitz's work along the lines he had planned, the original choir was disbanded to make way for smaller professional choirs - more Bach in its original form. She also founded an annual Bachfest in 1990, which is presented each autumn.
London Bach Society
The London Bach Society is a society devoted to performing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The London Bach Society was started in 1946 by Paul Steinitz because he wanted to perform Bach in a style which was like the way it sounded in Bach's time. Bach lived from 1685 to 1750. By the 20th century a lot of things had changed in music. Choirs and orchestras were much bigger and instruments were made differently. Steinitz wanted to get back to the sort of sound that Bach would have known. He started a choir called the London Bach Society so that they could give concerts of Bach's music, making it sound much clearer than it did with huge, romantic choirs.
The choir was formed in 1947. The singers were good amateur singers. Steinitz rehearsed them a lot until they were very good. The London Bach Society (LBS) gave many concerts of Bach's music, as well as singing music by other Baroque composers such as Handel, Telemann and Heinrich Schütz. They also sang works by modern composers such as Stravinsky, John Tavener and Nicholas Maw. Between 1958 and 1987 the LBS choir performed all the cantatas by Bach which survive. 208 of them are known. Many others have been lost. The choir performed one of Bach's passions every Lent, usually the "St Matthew Passion". They also went on tour, travelling to the USA, Israel, Bulgaria and twice to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) where they sang at St Thomas Church, Leipzig, where Bach had been Director of Music.
In 1968 Steinitz got a group of players together, calling them the Steinitz Bach Players. They were professional musicians who understood how to play Baroque music. Gradually he was able to add more and more historical instruments to his concerts, such as the natural/clarino trumpet, oboe da caccia, baroque flute and sackbuts. By 1985 there were enough professional players of Baroque instruments in England for the LBS choir to be able to perform the St Matthew Passion with a complete orchestra of period instruments in Wells Cathedral and later in 1987 at Westminster Abbey
After Steinitz's death in 1989 there was no more choir, but the society still continues. Today they organize a festival of Bach's music every year, called "Bachfest" (German for "Bach Festival").
Rodgau
Rodgau is a city in the Offenbach Rural District in the state of Hesse, Germany. It is the largest city of the district by area and by population as well.
Rodgau is in the "Rhine Main area" 30 km southeast of Frankfurt am Main. The whole area of the town is 65.04 km large and it is 130 m above sea level. It is a plain area with no hills.
About 35 to 20 million years ago in the age of tertiary the whole region was lying under sea level. At that time it was covered by an ocean which was warm and not very deep. Lots of sediments sank to its bottom. Then the region rose again and the water left, leaving soil which is mostly sandy and poor.
The town consists out of 5 former independent villages. On 1 January 1977 they were united and became the "municipality of Rodgau". On 15 September 1979 city rights were given to the municipality.
The former villages, now urban districts, are from north to south: Weiskirchen, Hainhausen, Jügesheim, Dudenhofen and Nieder-Roden. They all lie by a small creek, the "Rodau", flowing through the city from south to north. Rodgau got its name from this creek. The ending "-gau" means "area" or "district". "Rod-" is a hint to the former landscape. The German verb "roden" means "cutting down trees to cultivate land". "Rod-" is also part of the name of Nieder-"Rod"en.
The neighbours of Rodgau are:
Rodgau has 43,047 inhabitants (2008). Nearly 10% of the people living here are from foreign countries. They come from 52 different nations. 39% of the people are of catholic religion, 25.5% are of protestant religion and 35.5% have another or no religion.
The climate of the town is mild with an average temperature of 10.5 °C. There is less rain than in other parts of Germany.
Some local people are speaking a regional type (dialect) of the German language with a certain tone and special words. It is a Hessian dialect (German: "Hessisch"). This language type is related to other dialects in the south of Germany. In former times mostly every village had its own special dialect, sometimes hard to understand for people of other parts of Germany. Today the dialect speakers are a minority and the majority of them does not speak the real dialect. They rather speak a kind of regular German with a certain pronunciation.