The following article is from our October 2008 issue.

Going Dutch with Bach Around the Globe From Holland to Japan, rural France to New York, Ton Koopman spurs passion for the great Baroque composer - By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Dutch organist and conductor Ton Koopman is arguably the most energetic global missionary for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some even call him the grandfather of the enduring Bach boom in Japan.

If you want to know what Ton Koopman is all about, consider his private email address. It includes the name "Bach" and a significant date in the German composer's life. Watch Koopman conduct his own Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir from the keyboard of one of his eight harpsichords and you'll notice that this wiry Dutchman grooves like a jazzman. This is not surprising. "I play like my father, who was a jazz drummer," Koopman said. "The only difference is that instead of jazz, I play Bach but with just as much joyfulness."

And therein lies the secret why Koopman, 64, is able to boast - quite truthfully - "I only know full churches and concert halls." Since his childhood in Zwolle, this professor of musicology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands has been, by his own admission, possessed by an irrepressible enthusiasm for Baroque music. And he shares this zest with his students and audiences the world over.

In English jargon, "going Dutch" is a synonym for sharing, though usually in the sense of parsimony. But this Dutchman goes Dutch with Bach and other Baroque composers in a spendthrift manner - at his base in Amsterdam, in Germany (Bach's country), in the small Romanesque churches of southwestern France, in America, Australia - and, most remarkably, in Japan, where in a musical sense, Koopman produced a progeny.

One of his most celebrated pupils is Masaaki Suzuki, who in 1990 founded the "Bach Consortium Japan" and is generally credited with being the driving force behind his country's astonishing Bach boom. Suzuki shares his teacher's passion, which is linked to a shared Christian faith: Koopman is a practicing Roman Catholic and Suzuki a Calvinist.

"As his teacher, I am proud of what he has accomplished," said Koopman about his former student, whom he visits every year and whose ensemble has spawned hundreds of others all over Japan. "When this man gives an organ recital, he attracts audiences of more than 2,000 people," the Dutchman marveled.

During Advent or Holy Week, respectively, Suzuki's performances of the Christmas Oratorio or the St. Matthew Passion are always sold out despite hefty ticket prices. After each concert, the audience crowds around Suzuki on the podium, asking him about the Christian concept of hope and about death, a topic normally taboo in polite Japanese society. "I am spreading Bach's message, which is a biblical one," Suzuki once said.

"Passion is of the essence," Koopman explained. "In music, the same rule applies as in mathematics classes: If the teacher is passionate about his subject, his listeners will become just as fervent. Of course, it is easier for us chamber musicians to show our love for our art form than for members of a philharmonic orchestra, who cannot communicate their excitement as easily as we can."

From this Koopman concluded that irrespective of modernity's many challenges to classical music, "works of the Baroque era have a great future." This is one area where he disagrees with his illustrious harpsichord teacher Gustav Leonhardt, another Dutchman: "He taught that musicians should show reserve; I am saying the opposite."

One balmy summer evening, Koopman, his harpsichordist wife Tini and a journalist friend emptied a bottle of red wine on the terrace of his converted farmhouse near Cherval in the Dordogne, where the couple spends up to two months every year. Also present was Robert Huet, a psychiatrist and Koopman's co-president of "Itinéraire Baroque," an extraordinary concert series that for the past seven years has been enchanting tourists and locals in this French "département" also known as the Périgord, where, as Koopman likes to quip, there are "1,000 Romanesque churches but only three organs."

Some of those houses of worship have never been graced with the Queen of the Instruments, others had theirs ripped out in the crazed aftermath of the French Revolution. So what does Koopman do? He brings his own portable organ along.

Koopman and Huet had their agendas in front of them, trying to squeeze in meetings for the preparation of next year's "Itinéraire," which for next year might also combine Baroque music with the art form the Périgord knows best - culinary indulgence. So here's roughly how this conversation went:

Huet: (suggesting a date).

Koopman: "That's when I am in Cleveland."

Huet: (proposing another date).

Koopman: "Ah, no, I'll be in Hong Kong then and afterward in Seoul."

Huet: (proposing yet two more dates).

Koopman: "I'll be in Berlin, then in Paris."

In the end, the two agreed to meet in Berlin and Paris to discuss the program for 2009. It will start with a springtime "pedagogical concert" for children in a tiny village in France. Then the annual July "Itinéraire Baroque" invasion of spectacular artists from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, England, and the United States will follow.

Their performances will once again culminate in a mad musical marathon with audiences dashing back and forth between five or six different churches one Saturday for a Baroque menu ranging from the sacred to the profane, such as a 17th-century German drinking cantata whose lyrics were too bawdy to be translated into French in the program notes for this year.

So popular has this concert series become that its 5,000 visitors now include busloads of Koopman groupies coming specifically for these events from Amsterdam and Belgium. "I wouldn't be surprised if coaches filled with Japanese, Korean, German and American fans would join them soon," Huet mused.

"And to think that all this started only a few years ago with Koopman meeting with the Children's Choir of the Dordogne!" This is an extraordinary group of kids from the entire Périgord region set up by two teachers in the little town of Ribérac in order to combat the growing musical illiteracy in France, which is, as in other parts of the world, the consequence of inappropriate instruction in public schools. According to Huet, Koopman was at first distraught at the level of competence of these 60-odd children. "But after working with them for seven years, they are now quite professional."

Ironically, what Koopman is doing here and elsewhere in the world is a counter-cultural offensive to assure the survival of one of the most venerable forms of European culture. And he does so by passing on his passion for Bach and other Baroque masters to the young who have been deprived of a sense of music due to the indifference of parents and schools.

Sometimes his counter-cultural activities take odd turns. In the Netherlands, secularization has produced lots of spare organs in churches that had to be closed down for lack of worshipers. So what did Koopman do? He arranged for one such orphaned organ to be sold to Francis Vigne, a retired executive and organ enthusiast with a manor house in St. Sulpice-de-Roumagnac in the Dordogne.

Vigne had this beautiful little instrument installed in his Catholic village church, which on Sunday mornings is just as empty, primarily due to a dearth of clergy, as its Reformed counterparts in the Netherlands. But now, at least, he is there every summer day playing it, and Koopman comes over to practice, which in turn leads to people dropping by to listen. At one point, an organ professor from Lyon came through to improvise on a 3,000-year old Greek tune for a small but stunned audience. As one villager remarked, "It's one way to bring people back to church - and not the worst, either."

As Koopman said, "You must infect young people with your enthusiasm." Here's another example of how this can be done: Koopman's musicians come with valuable instruments, and these have to be stored overnight. But where? Correct - in a church. Alas, some of the finest old country churches in France have no locks and the crime rate is high.

One evening, a local count, Aymérie de Roquemaurel, amazed bystanders by driving his van right up to a sanctuary's main door. Then he curled up on his air mattress in the back of his car. The next morning he surfaced somewhat rumpled and not at all well rested but satisfied to have frustrated potential thieves.

To some this might seem a trifle eccentric but genuine music lovers thought it matched well the classy kind of passion Koopman is trying to impart on a modernity that has veered so far from its civilized origins.


Picture above: A musician from his fingertips to his toes: Ton Koopman rehearsing in Cologne.