Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag
I'm writing to share this week's project piece with you. It's a chorale to add to the 95 I've already sent out.
Johannes Zahn's magisterial chorale collection contains some 8000 melodies and variations thereupon, and even his smaller collection of harmonized chorales, 'Psalter und Harfe', contains 560 melodies. So there is no shortage of pieces from which to choose.
But even so it is getting a bit challenging. It's not just a matter of finding a new chorale, something melodically interesting, attractive and rewarding to sing. It's also a matter of finding a new chorale which our composers--the early music crowd--featured in their polyphonic works. Don't get me wrong--still plenty of them out there--but it's taking a bit more detective work.
Lately I've taken to tugging at threads, such as looking at the chorales of a given composer or poet whom I already know and like; or reviewing the various chorales for a specific event of the church year, such as Advent; or just paging idly through the list of chorale melodies on bachcantatas.com and zeroing in on the ones that look unfamiliar to me.
Today's chorale, 'Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag', was written by Nikolaus Herman, who also penned two of my favorite chorales: 'Lobt Gott ihr Christen alle gleich' and 'Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist'. So it was a bit like catnip to me when I came across it recently.
Like Herman's other chorales, the tune seems pretty straightforward. You can check it out in the attached Bach scores, as it appears in his Cantata 67 and in his Cantata 145. It is through-composed, which is to say there is no repetitive melodic structure. The phrases are brief, some quite so, as is the case with the closing phrase. And there are some nice rhythmic touches, especially the short-long motif which comes on the penultimate bar of each phrase. Very singable!
Here's a link to the joyful text of the chorale.
Here is the tune as it appears in Bach's 'Orgelbüchlein', a wonderful collection of tiny chorale preludes which Bach probably used to introduce the singing of chorales, or possibly as incidental music during the service. As you'll hear (and see on the attached score), Bach places the melody in canon at the octave in the outer voices--this requires remarkably few adjustments--and provides a moto perpetuo accompaniment in the inner voices.
And finally, check out this arrangement by Johann Herman Schein, Bach's predecessor in Leipzig by a century. The recording--slow but beautiful--is by the Ewald Brass Quartet, who have mined Schein's works to create the CD 'Johann Hermann Schein: Music for Brass'.
In closing, I have to give a shout-out to--gasp!--the internet. Lots of bad stuff going on out there, no doubt about it. But it has also ushered in a sort of golden era for people who love early music. There's so much out there, readily available and ripe for the plucking. Try it sometime: Just wade in: Do a search on YouTube for a composer you like and see what you find. Or go to cpdl.org or imslp.org and look for scores. You'll be amazed at how much our community is sharing!
I'm writing to share this week's project piece with you. It's a chorale to add to the 95 I've already sent out.
Johannes Zahn's magisterial chorale collection contains some 8000 melodies and variations thereupon, and even his smaller collection of harmonized chorales, 'Psalter und Harfe', contains 560 melodies. So there is no shortage of pieces from which to choose.
But even so it is getting a bit challenging. It's not just a matter of finding a new chorale, something melodically interesting, attractive and rewarding to sing. It's also a matter of finding a new chorale which our composers--the early music crowd--featured in their polyphonic works. Don't get me wrong--still plenty of them out there--but it's taking a bit more detective work.
Lately I've taken to tugging at threads, such as looking at the chorales of a given composer or poet whom I already know and like; or reviewing the various chorales for a specific event of the church year, such as Advent; or just paging idly through the list of chorale melodies on bachcantatas.com and zeroing in on the ones that look unfamiliar to me.
Today's chorale, 'Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag', was written by Nikolaus Herman, who also penned two of my favorite chorales: 'Lobt Gott ihr Christen alle gleich' and 'Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist'. So it was a bit like catnip to me when I came across it recently.
Like Herman's other chorales, the tune seems pretty straightforward. You can check it out in the attached Bach scores, as it appears in his Cantata 67 and in his Cantata 145. It is through-composed, which is to say there is no repetitive melodic structure. The phrases are brief, some quite so, as is the case with the closing phrase. And there are some nice rhythmic touches, especially the short-long motif which comes on the penultimate bar of each phrase. Very singable!
Here's a link to the joyful text of the chorale.
Here is the tune as it appears in Bach's 'Orgelbüchlein', a wonderful collection of tiny chorale preludes which Bach probably used to introduce the singing of chorales, or possibly as incidental music during the service. As you'll hear (and see on the attached score), Bach places the melody in canon at the octave in the outer voices--this requires remarkably few adjustments--and provides a moto perpetuo accompaniment in the inner voices.
And finally, check out this arrangement by Johann Herman Schein, Bach's predecessor in Leipzig by a century. The recording--slow but beautiful--is by the Ewald Brass Quartet, who have mined Schein's works to create the CD 'Johann Hermann Schein: Music for Brass'.
In closing, I have to give a shout-out to--gasp!--the internet. Lots of bad stuff going on out there, no doubt about it. But it has also ushered in a sort of golden era for people who love early music. There's so much out there, readily available and ripe for the plucking. Try it sometime: Just wade in: Do a search on YouTube for a composer you like and see what you find. Or go to cpdl.org or imslp.org and look for scores. You'll be amazed at how much our community is sharing!