Overhead, in contrast to the terrestrial stillness, the sky flowed steadily away, like one man's floating fragile life blows across the constant of life itself, to vanish into the unknown. - Ellis Peters
Chorales
2008, April 22
Cross relation
A 'true' cross relation in measure 3 in a chorale from BWV 114.
In BWV 114.7, measure 3 and measure 7, beat 1 to 2 in the tenor and bass have an E flat in the tenor and an E natural in the bass. The NBA edition and the Barenreiter edition of the chorales show a courtesy accidental on the E flat which does not appear in Kalmus or the Budapest edition. I surmise this is to reinforce the unexpected notation of this true cross relation.
So, why might Bach have done this? The phrase is in g minor; the bass starts on the tonic, leaps up to the dominant, climbs by the ascending minor scale to the tonic, then descends by the descending minor scale to the fourth, steps up to the dominant, then falls back down to the tonic where it started. The tenor starts on the tonic, steps down to the leading tone (the raised seventh of the scale), leaps up to the lowered sixth degree of the g minor scale, then steps downward to the tonic, then down to the leading tone, and back up to the tonic. Two very elegant melodic lines.
Listen to the bass line
Listen to the tenor line
When these two melodic lines are played against one another a harmonic progression results, which I speculate might be read as shown in the above analysis.
Listen to bass and tenor together
Listen to the complete phrase
Here is an excellent site for a discussion of harmonic progressions.
Home page for Robert Frank's Theory on the Web.
Wikipedia definition of a cross relation
2008, April 11
New mp3 files
Thank you, John W. McCoy, now there can be MP3 files of the four part chorales played on an organ.
I have become very tired of the synthesized instrument sounds in QuickTime available for the sound files of my chorales. I long for a great baroque church organ sound, like that used by James Pressler on the Virtual Baroque website. Of course, his files are created with Hauptwerk and it would cost $430 for the most minimal hardware and software to run this on my computer. Add to that, I am not an organist and do not understand the program, and the learning curve would be about a year just to set up some four part chorales.
So I looked around for another program. Windows users have a SourceForge program called MyOrgan, but no Mac version, or even a Linux version. Then I stumbled on Soundfonts.
Thanks to John W. McCoy there is a free organ soundfont, JEUX, available on the web.
As instructed, I loaded the JEUX organ soundfont into the ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks in my Mac, then chose the Advanced tab in QuickTime preferences and chose Jeux as the default synthesizer. Voila, a new set of sounds. I selected a set of voices I liked, saved the .mov file, then converted it to an MP3 in iTunes.
The soundfont with QuickTime is free, and it will give me room to experiment with different stops. The list of organ stops for the Jeux soundfont is here.
Listen to the mp3: BWV 264 Als der gütige Gott vollenden wollt sein Wort
2008, March 31
Twelve years on the Web
Today marks the twelfth anniversary of the chorales on the web.
Twelve years ago today, the four part harmonized chorales were made available on the web for download. There have been years of revisions and corrections, thanks to many readers. At that time there were a few other people involved in Bach websites, Dave Grossman, and Jan Koster and Jan Hanford at JSBach.org. Since then many, many people have contributed to websites with music files, biographical information, discussions of Bach's works and their recordings. There is also much literature pertaining to the theory of the music: fugue, counterpoint, and the practices of harmony.
The web has truly become a great resource, thanks to all the people involved in these seriously important sites.
2008, March 16
For Palm Sunday
Cantata BWV 182, Himmelskönig sei willkommen
An early work by Bach, March 25, 1714, his first cantata as concertmaster in the Weimar court.
Alfred Dürr in The Cantatas of J.S. Bach. says "...we are offered a youthful, tender shaping of even the smallest motive, an instrumental scoring chosen with careful cosideration, and an inexhaustible abundance of inspiration".
BWV 182 notes on Emmanuel Music
BWV 182 notes on Bach Cantatas Website
This performance of BWV 182 is by Pieter Jan Leusink, conductor for Brilliant Classics, available in the Bach Edition. The sample has been prepared for educational purposes only, any other use is strictly forbidden.
BWV 182The "chorale prelude" BWV 182.7 is a wonderful canonic chorus.
2008, January 06
Bach for Epiphany
Rene Jacobs and part five of the Christmas Oratorio for the Sunday after New Years, and part six for Epiphany.
Due to a quirk of the calendar this year, Epiphany, celebrated on January 6th, falls on the Sunday after New Years.
Part 5 for the Sunday after New Years.
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Part 6 for Epiphany
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2008, January 01
BWV 248 Part Four
For New Year's Day from Bach
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