Wolle's Week

If John Frederick Wolle 50 years ago had decided to go to college instead of becoming a drugstore clerk in his home town of Bethlehem, Pa., there probably never would have been founded the famed Bach Festival which was repeated for the 25th time in Bethlehem last week. Fred Wolle chose the drugstore job because he thought it would leave him more time for music. He had learned the rudiments of the organ by himself in the old Moravian Church. It was mostly on his drugstore earnings that he began formal lessons with blind David Duffield Wood of Philadelphia, at 21 went to Munich where he became absorbed in the music of pious Kapellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach.

In spirit the Bach Festival in Bethlehem has stayed surprisingly the same as when Fred Wolle started it in 1900. Steel now possesses Bethlehem but Steelman Charles Michael Schwab helps support the Choir. Lehigh's Packer Memorial Church houses the performance because the Moravian church will no longer accommodate the crowds. But the Moravian Trombone Choir plays from the tower before each session, as it did in 1900 from the Moravian Church Tower, as its forerunners did when George Washington passed through the village. Last week's program did not differ materially from those of the past: cantatas were sung the first day, the great B Minor Mass the second. The capable soloists were the same as last year's. Players from the Philadelphia Orchestra again assisted the chorus, nearly all amateurs from Bethlehem and environs who, since October, have rehearsed, imitating Director Wolle's simple devotion to the music of Bach.

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