John Frederick Wolle was an American organist, composer and conductor of the Bach Choir. He was a pioneer in presenting the choral works of J. S. Bach in America and a proponent of Richard Wagner's work.
Background
John Frederick Wolle was born on April 4, 1863, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. His father, the Reverend Francis Wolle, was a clergyman, educator and naturalist, who served for twenty years as principal of the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, one of the earliest boarding schools for girls in the United States. John's mother was Elizabeth (Weiss) Wolle.
John's ancestors included numerous musicians.
Education
In his early years, Wolle was educated in the Moravian Parochial School (present-day Moravian Academy). Besides, as a boy, without any special instruction, he learned to play the organ. His first formal lessons were taken, when he was twenty, under David Duffield Wood. Going to Germany in 1884, John also studied for a year under the celebrated Josef Rheinberger in Munich.
Early, in his career, in 1879-1880, John taught Mathematics at the Moravian Parochial School (present-day Moravian Academy), where he had previously studied.
John's career as an organist included twenty years, from 1885 to 1905, as organist of the Moravian Church, Bethlehem, and eighteen years, from 1887 till 1905, as organist of Lehigh University. John gave recitals at the Chicago world's fair in 1893, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 and later in many churches throughout the East. Besides, he was one of the founders of the American Guild of Organists.
Moreover, in his earlier years, John wrote hymn tunes, songs, pieces for piano and organ, chorus and orchestral selections, and he also made transcriptions for organ of Wagner and of Bach compositions. The work, that brought Wolle fame, was his founding and conducting of the Bethlehem Bach Choir, which Henry T. Finck termed "the best choir in the United States".
Wolle inspiration for the Bethlehem Bach Choir came, as he used to relate, one spring day in 1885, when, in Munich, he heard a large chorus sing the St. John Passion. Returning to Bethlehem, Wolle won over the 115 singers of the Choral Union so that they followed him in rendering the St. John Passion for the first time in the United States. His singers did not follow him in his project of producing Bach's Mass in B-minor. It was not until 1898, that, upon the initiative of Ruth Porter Doster, a body of singers presented themselves for Wolle's direction and the Bach Choir was organized. They gave the first complete American rendition of the B-minor mass on March 27, 1900. It was so successful, that a more ambitious festival was planned for 1901. Of this second festival, H. E. Krehbiel wrote, that Wolle's singers "accomplished miracles", and W. J. Henderson reported, that the performance was one, in which "the sublimity of the music was perfectly disclosed".
It's worth mentioning, that Six Bach festivals were held in the Moravian Church in the years 1900, 1901, 1903 and 1905. Then, Wolle was appointed head professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, and served there for six years from 1905 to 1911. At Berkeley, he also conducted a chorus of citizens and students, who, in 1909 and 1910, sang the B-minor mass and the St. Matthew Passion.
After the reorganization of the Bach Choir in Bethlehem in 1911, Wolle conducted Bach festivals at Lehigh University, namely from 1912 to 1932. The choir of from 250 to 300 voices sang occasionally in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and other Eastern cities, but there were no extended concert tours. Instead, music lovers from all parts of the United States and from foreign countries made pilgrimages to Bethlehem each May for the two-day program of Bach's music, in which the B-minor mass was the second-day fixture and magnet. In the ivy-clad stone church on the university campus, they heard the singing of Bach's oratorios and cantatas not as a concert, but as a religious service with no applause, the congregation joining in the chorales. The accompaniment was given by players of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and by T. Edger Shields, an organist.
Achievements
Views
To John, singing was a summons to devote his life to interpreting the music of Bach.
Personality
Wolle was reputed to have a jovial, outgoing personality.
Connections
John married Jennie C. (Stryker) Wolle on July 21, 1886. They had a daughter, named Gretchen.