In dich hab' ich gehoffet, Herr
For those who have been waiting breathlessly, breathlessly, here's this week's chorale. Our Friday Motet (and it's well worth hearing) will go out tomorrow or (more likely) Sunday.
Just pedaling and pedaling, trying to keep up!
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I want to introduce you to a chorale tune which I dearly love. It's called 'In dich hab' ich gehoffet, Herr'. It appears very dramatically in Bach's 'Christmas Oratorio', just after the three kings arrive in Bethlehem. There it is set most joyfully, with a verse from an alternate text about the brilliance from the cradle driving away the darkness of the night. Here's how that looks and sounds. (The Bärenreiter score to this arrangement and the others mentioned below is attached herewith.)
There's something so open and honest about the melody, with its opening fifth and its staunch phrases, each so clear in direction and purpose. The little 4-beat phrases near the end provide a metrical contrast, and the final phrase rounds out the tune in a such a thoroughly satisfying way.
Bach must have agreed, for he used the tune many times. Here it is as it appears in the closing chorale of Cantata 52, on the first verse, with two horns crowning the texture.
Here is its appearance in the St. Matthew Passion, on the fifth verse, just after Jesus has been brought before the high priest Kaiphas.
And perhaps most satisfying of all--certain most joyously and triumphantly!--here it is in its immortal appearance in the early Cantata 106, 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit', in which the choral phrases alternate with instrumental interludes until the last phrase prompts one of the coolest double-fugues in the entire repertoire, on 'Durch Jesum Christum: Amen!'
Well that oughta wake you out of any torpor which you may have been experiencing!
For those who have been waiting breathlessly, breathlessly, here's this week's chorale. Our Friday Motet (and it's well worth hearing) will go out tomorrow or (more likely) Sunday.
Just pedaling and pedaling, trying to keep up!
-----
I want to introduce you to a chorale tune which I dearly love. It's called 'In dich hab' ich gehoffet, Herr'. It appears very dramatically in Bach's 'Christmas Oratorio', just after the three kings arrive in Bethlehem. There it is set most joyfully, with a verse from an alternate text about the brilliance from the cradle driving away the darkness of the night. Here's how that looks and sounds. (The Bärenreiter score to this arrangement and the others mentioned below is attached herewith.)
There's something so open and honest about the melody, with its opening fifth and its staunch phrases, each so clear in direction and purpose. The little 4-beat phrases near the end provide a metrical contrast, and the final phrase rounds out the tune in a such a thoroughly satisfying way.
Bach must have agreed, for he used the tune many times. Here it is as it appears in the closing chorale of Cantata 52, on the first verse, with two horns crowning the texture.
Here is its appearance in the St. Matthew Passion, on the fifth verse, just after Jesus has been brought before the high priest Kaiphas.
And perhaps most satisfying of all--certain most joyously and triumphantly!--here it is in its immortal appearance in the early Cantata 106, 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit', in which the choral phrases alternate with instrumental interludes until the last phrase prompts one of the coolest double-fugues in the entire repertoire, on 'Durch Jesum Christum: Amen!'
Well that oughta wake you out of any torpor which you may have been experiencing!