Product Description
The more than 400 fourpart chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach have enjoyed a status of great importance since they were first composed, collected and published in the 18th century. These concise musical gems have served and continue to serve to this day as superlative models for the study of harmony and counterpoint, demonstrating an unparalleled mastery of harmony in the way the vertical (harmony) and the horizontal (melody) in music are fused into a coherent and beautiful whole. While they may not receive the scholarly attention of the polyphonic instrumental works, the chorales represent in significant ways the pinnacle of contrapuntal mastery.
That the Lutheran chorale, the Lutheran congregational church service hymn, served a central role in the life of J.S. Bach, a thoroughly Lutheran composer, is evident in the hundreds of compositions both vocal and instrumental based on chorale melodies. Bachs great contribution to the Lutheran chorale tradition stems not from his own composing of chorale melodies (less than ten of the 400+ fourpart chorales feature melodies that are attributed to Bach himself), but to the great skill and care with which he treated this tradition. The Grove Music Online entry on "chorale," cowritten by Robert L. Marshall and Robin Leaver, puts it aptly:
J.S. Bachs significance for the chorale is not determined by the few original melodies he evidently contributed but rather by his appropriation of the chorale in an enormous variety of instrumental and vocal compositions. His fourpart chorale harmonizations in particular, which mark the culmination of the Cantionalsatz tradition, may be the most important event in the history of the chorale since the Reformation, for they conveyed a sense of the greatness of the chorale heritage to later generations and helped to inspire and influence the restoration movement in the 19th century.
Barely more than half of the 400+ fourpart chorales of Bach come from extant larger choral works the cantatas, passions, motets, and Christmas Oratorio. Nearly 200 chorales, on the other hand, have survived only by way of posthumously published chorale collections, most of which owe their survival to the Breitkopf Edition of 371 chorales edited primarily by C.P.E. Bach and first published in the 1780s. The 186 chorales in this collection that do not appear among the extant larger choral works were assigned individual Schmieder catalog numbers: BWV 253438. Unfortunately, the Breitkopf edition provided neither texts nor any contextual information. Thus, any texts provided for these settings were only added by a later editor. (The texts provided on this site for these chorales were suggested by the 19th c. Bach Gesellschaft Ausgabe (BGA) editors unless otherwise noted.) The lack of information regarding these individual chorales has led to much speculation regarding their origins, and much research remains to be done on this front.
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