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Wär Gott nicht mit uns unsre Zeit
In 1524, Johann Walter published a setting of Martin Luther's chorale paraphrase of Psalm 124. As you can see and hear from the attached melody sheet, it's a strange and rather crabbed tune, a bit jagged and discursive, lacking the crystal-clear structure of many of Luther's tunes. But it has a peculiar power of its own, some special juice which no doubt was inspired by the psalm itself, which tells a chaotic story of dangers transcended and troubles averted. You can check out Luther's poetic retelling of the story via the text-translation sheet also attached..

I was put on to this chorale in an unusual manner: By listening to a jazz trio rendition of it. The version is by the bravura group Continuum, and it's on their album 'Terra Mofino', a collection of arrangements of ten Martin Luther tunes. (Terra Mofino is an anagram of Reformation.) I've shared some of these arrangements with you before, but I have just focused upon this particular one for the first time. You can check it out here. The recording is also attached herewith.

The performance begins with a ruminative bass solo. At ca. 0:30, a strange and wonderful iteration of the tune begins, played in unison by all three instruments. It's sort of the tune. It extracts some of the key gestures of the tune, twisting them a bit to test your recognition skills. At 1:02, we finally hear the tune in the sax, clearly recognizable, with slight aberrations from its original form. 

Then succeeds a series of solos--saxophone, bass and guitar. These take place over a harmonic structure which the group has derived from the melody itself--a kind of reverse engineering by means of which a chordal sequence is derived from a melody. The solos are wonderful--imaginative and architectural.

Finally, after a sequence in which the bass somehow transforms into a percussion instrument undergirding the guitar solo, the tune returns at 4:40, this time carried by the bass.

It's an amazingly creative rendition/transformation of a little-known tune.

Feeling like something more Baroque? I've got you covered. Check out Bach's cantata based upon today's chorale. Here's a good live recording; here's a text-translation; and attached you'll find a full score. (Sorry about the C-clefs for the vocal lines--a more modern score is not readily available.)

In the first movement, each phrase is elaborated in free fugal form by the voices, until corno da caccia and oboes enter with the unadorned phrase; then the process is repeated. The final movement is a classic Bach harmonization, with an extraordinary amount of ornamentation in the melody and plenty of movement in the lower parts.
Click here to download learning materials
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