Virtual BachTalks
Once a month, we invite you to join us for a virtual BachTalk! The topics will be all over the map and you can choose to login to ZOOM to take part of the live event, or check here afterwards for resources and the recording.
Once a month, we invite you to join us for a virtual BachTalk! The topics will be all over the map and you can choose to login to ZOOM to take part of the live event, or check here afterwards for resources and the recording.
The World of Luther’s Chorales
Monday, September 14, 7pm
Singing during this session is encouraged but not obligatory!
If you're not a singer, please do join us--you'll enjoy listening to the music
and hearing about the chorales and the array of musical settings.
Monday, September 14, 7pm
Singing during this session is encouraged but not obligatory!
If you're not a singer, please do join us--you'll enjoy listening to the music
and hearing about the chorales and the array of musical settings.
Join Bob Worth for an exploration of chorales written or adapted by Martin Luther. A skilled and sensitive musician, Luther loved music, and worked to encourage music-making in church services and in daily life. He had a special passion for part-singing; among his many writings on music, he gives a thrilling description of what we choral people do, which may now have special resonance for us in these strange times when we so long to sing together:
“How strange and wonderful it is that one voice sings a simple unpretentious tune while three, four, or five other voices are also sung. These voices play and sway in joyful exuberance around the tune and with ever-varying art and tuneful sound wondrously adorn and beautify it, and in a celestial roundelay meet in friendly caress and lovely embrace; so that anyone, having a little understanding, must be moved and greatly wonder, and come to the conclusion that there is nothing rarer in the whole world than a song adorned by so many voices.” (trans. Carl Schalk)
Luther wrote or adapted some 35 chorales of diverse type and effect. Some are chant-based; some are derived from popular song; some are newly written. There are staunch, four-square chorales ('Gelobet seist du Jesu Christ'); simple ditties (‘Vom Himmel hoch’); more extended, flexible songs (‘Komm heiliger Geist’); and even long-phrased lyrical songs, filled with surprising twists and syncopations (‘Sie ist mir lieb’). Working with collaborators such as Johann Walter, Luther produced and published these chorales in a burst of musical activity beginning in 1524, laying the foundation for a superb, centuries-long tradition of settings both large and small.
In our session, we’ll explore this rich legacy of song. We’ll learn and sing the melodies; we’ll look at Luther’s sources; we’ll listen to wonderful recordings; and, of course, we’ll sing an array of pieces based upon these chorales, from Walter to Bruck to Michael Praetorius to Schein and right up to our beloved J.S. Bach.
“How strange and wonderful it is that one voice sings a simple unpretentious tune while three, four, or five other voices are also sung. These voices play and sway in joyful exuberance around the tune and with ever-varying art and tuneful sound wondrously adorn and beautify it, and in a celestial roundelay meet in friendly caress and lovely embrace; so that anyone, having a little understanding, must be moved and greatly wonder, and come to the conclusion that there is nothing rarer in the whole world than a song adorned by so many voices.” (trans. Carl Schalk)
Luther wrote or adapted some 35 chorales of diverse type and effect. Some are chant-based; some are derived from popular song; some are newly written. There are staunch, four-square chorales ('Gelobet seist du Jesu Christ'); simple ditties (‘Vom Himmel hoch’); more extended, flexible songs (‘Komm heiliger Geist’); and even long-phrased lyrical songs, filled with surprising twists and syncopations (‘Sie ist mir lieb’). Working with collaborators such as Johann Walter, Luther produced and published these chorales in a burst of musical activity beginning in 1524, laying the foundation for a superb, centuries-long tradition of settings both large and small.
In our session, we’ll explore this rich legacy of song. We’ll learn and sing the melodies; we’ll look at Luther’s sources; we’ll listen to wonderful recordings; and, of course, we’ll sing an array of pieces based upon these chorales, from Walter to Bruck to Michael Praetorius to Schein and right up to our beloved J.S. Bach.
Archive