In the Lutheran church in Bussum, five sopranos, four altos, five tenors and one bass have gathered to practice Bach’s masterpiece: the St Matthew Passion. Coral for coral. The conductor is satisfied. “But,” he adds, looking into one of the four cameras that record the whole thing and broadcast it live, “I don’t know how things are going at home, of course.”
His choir is in fact much larger than what has gathered on the pews. Spread throughout the country, from Bergen op Zoom to Boxmeer and from Groningen to Middelburg, about a hundred singers practice remotely in duos. Half of them have been diagnosed with dementia. “But that diagnosis does not mean that you can no longer do anything,” says artistic director Erik Zwiers (55). That is why he devised the emancipating Participation Choir, where people with dementia can continue to sing, with the help of a mantle singer.
“Before we start,” says conductor Piet Philipse (71) into the camera, “I want to give you a tip.” He is holding a highlighter in the air. “Buy a marker and mark your own games, that helps if you don’t remember.” They start each chorale in four voices, and then break it up into separate parts, including criticism and advice from Philipse: “Shoulder down and don’t breathe in a jerky way, don’t do it.”
First only the sopranos: “Give it up a bit.”
Then the altos: “Don’t slip.”
The tenors: “Oh, I don’t agree with that, we’ll take a look at that.”
And then – really only – the bass: “Perfect.”
At home, the duos sing along, unseen and unheard. “You can see us, we can’t see you of course,” says Philipse. “So it would be nice if you could send us a photo or video.” The home singers can ask pressing questions to Aukje at home, she is the moderator. “I represent you here in the benches,” she says into the microphone. The livestream was born out of pandemic emergency, but has also made the choir accessible to people from afar. “That’s a nice side effect of course,” says Zwiers.
He came up with the idea for this choir five years ago by Nico, whom he followed for two years for his book As long as I’m there† Nico had Alzheimer’s, but he didn’t want to walk the path of oblivion, says Zwiers. “The day his euthanasia took place, when everything was said, we toasted with a glass of wine. It was then that he began to sing the end of St Matthew’s.” Zwiers rubs his arm. “Goosebumps again.” If he had sung something else, maybe he wouldn’t have done anything with it, but that he sang this part specifically. “The St Matthew Passion is the agony of Christ, or the agony of man.”
Franc Janssen (69) has Alzheimer’s and is here with ‘his’ mantle singer Cees Stet (74). Janssen sees a gigantic challenge in Bach’s work. It teaches him a lot, about music, but also about himself. “Bach talks about thorns in the head, and about asking for help.” Because of his own head full of thorns, he had to learn to ask for help, he says. “I used to be an authoritarian man, it always had to go how I wanted it. I’ve learned to leave that to others now. And you know? I like that very much.”
The voices of the choir present in Bussum melt together. Stet looks at his sheet music, Janssen doesn’t read notes, he sings along by ear. Sometimes a voice goes an octave too high, low, fast or slow. But who cares, singing is fun. And as Stet says: “It doesn’t matter if something goes wrong sometimes. The choir is always singing.”
The Participation Choir will perform on 10 April, together with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Groot Omroepkoor and the Spaarne Youth Choir, in the Muziekcentrum van de Omroep in Hilversum.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 7, 2022