It’s hard to know where to start in cataloguing Craig Smith’s musical accomplishments. The most famous is that, as music director of Emmanuel Church, Craig decided to recreate J.S. Bach’s practice of performing a cantata — a 20-or-so-minute piece for chorus, soloists, and orchestra — as part of the weekly liturgy. No one in the United States had ever done that before, and I’m not sure anyone in the world had done it since Bach’s time. It seemed crazy, like many of Craig’s ideas — especially since at that time the cantatas were a largely forgotten part of Bach’s output (that has since changed, in significant part because of Craig). And yet, seven years later, the cycle of over 200 cantatas was finished. It’s been repeated a couple of times since then, and to this day a Bach cantata is part of the regular service at Emmanuel Church. It’s a remarkable fusion of the musical and the spiritual, and there is quite simply nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
You can read about other aspects of Craig’s accomplishments in the articles linked above, or by Googling him to bring up additional articles (of which there are many). I want to reflect on a couple of things that I found most inspiring about working with Craig week in and week out.
First, Craig was the truly rare combination of brilliant scholar and gifted performer. Lots of people can do one or the other; very few can do both. Craig had a seemingly limitless depth of knowledge of the music he performed, and because he was a performer he could integrate his knowledge into actually doing the music. I was Leporello (Don Giovanni’s servant) in a production of Mozart’s great opera Don Giovanni that Craig conducted a few years ago. What I remember most clearly about the rehearsal process is that, every so often, Craig would stop the rehearsal to launch into a discourse on some arcane but fascinating aspect of the part of the score that we were rehearsing at that moment. Then, after we picked our jaws up off the floor, we’d continue rehearsing. And this happened all the time with Craig — practically every week at church, Craig would find some remarkable thing about that week’s cantata to point out to us. The goal was never to show off how smart he was — Craig had no need to do that. It was rather to allow us to share in his insight into the works we were performing, thereby enriching our own understanding and performance of them.
Second, Craig was a visionary. I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s surely appropriate for Craig. The idea of performing a Bach cantata not just occasionally but every week, as part of a church service, was (and remains) truly audacious. That didn’t stop Craig. Neither did the improbability of doing a nearly decade-long series of concerts featuring every song (hundreds and hundreds) and piece of chamber music by Franz Schubert. Or the entire chamber music output of Robert Schumann. Or a year-long series of concerts devoted to the music of the contemporary composer and long-time colleague and friend of Craig’s, John Harbison. Or presenting three full-scale operas by Handel in one year — the three based on Ariosto’s 16th-century epic romance “Orlando furioso” (the operas are Alcina, Ariodante, and Orlando). The list goes on and on. Craig, as the saying goes, dreamed of things that never were, and said, “why not?” Those are the people whose accomplishments change the people and the world around them. And that’s what Craig did.
Third, and maybe most importantly, Craig believed to the very depth of his soul that music matters. That’s why he devoted his life to it; that’s why he took on the projects he did; that’s why he was able to inspire the legions of musicians with whom he worked over the years. He believed that music, in its mysterious way, changes everyone it touches, performers and listeners alike. To Craig, there was no distinction between music and the “real world” — he saw them as utterly inseparable. Russell Sherman, Craig’s piano teacher and long-time friend, put it well:
In him, there was the perfect confluence of pure musician and fighter for justice. Emmanuel Music, through its music and charity, became the conscience of our community.
Craig’s loss leaves a big, big hole in Boston’s musical community. His like will not be seen again. He will be profoundly missed.
Craig had an amazing collection of stories, many of which were very funny. Here’s one:
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A passionate and revealing tribute, thank you, David, for giving us a window into this legacy and this loss….We need more visionaries in every aspect of living. How sad this one has left us too early.