True! I just hate when I have to interrupt in the middle of great moments.

@@Richard.Atkinson I think it's under-appreciated that you always let phrases play out before interrupting

The man knows his contrapunctus!

Yes to both!

@@Richard.Atkinson Awesome!

@@Richard.Atkinson Danke! (Thanks - a lot)

@@Richard.Atkinson Thanks! English suites, harpsichord partitas?

@@Richard.Atkinson Still hoping to see that Missa Solemnis (Beethoven) video some day…

It's because this one was so easy to create.

@@Richard.Atkinson I honestly wouldn't mind having some of these shorter ones in between the longer videos (but if it was one or the other, I would absolutely vote for the longer videos even though they likely would do worse with the algorithm). It's kinda nice to have an opportunity to quickly just hear a simple example that's easy to follow. I think it probably helps make it easier to hear the things discussed in your longer videos as well. I appreciate everything you do! Your videos are extremely educational and super helpful trying to learn more about how composers use counterpoint in practice.

I'm also an amateur organist who can't play with pedals (unless it's a long pedal point!).

@@Richard.Atkinson Don't tell anyone, but yes, those long PPs I can do too. :) And it's nice to know that we have something in common musicwise.

gould recorded a good deal of the aof sans pedal i believe.

Honestly, I think we need more long pedal cantus-firmus parts as well as more manuals-only and minimal pedal pieces even though this requires more thoroughly developed pedal specifications.

hahahaha

Yes!

I love the Magnificat! But I love Bach’s Magnificat more!

@@Richard.Atkinson I didn't know you listened to Zelenka. Maybe you should try some other composers like Hasse, Telleman, and C.P.E Bach. I'll be glad to give you a list of works you can listen to from them to get into their music (if you want of course).

@@DanielFahimi Chances are he probably has already listened to those composers! I wouldn’t be surprised, considering the fact that he has an abundance of musical knowledge.

@@Richard.Atkinson Will you consider also an analysis of Hammerklavier's Fugue and/or the fugue from Bartók's Music for strings, percussion and celesta?

@@amerrylittlemonarch I'm making a video of all Mozart klavier fugues. I'll post it tonight. You probably don't know a lot of these. They're wonderful!

I'd venture to guess that it most likely involved trying out a lot of possibilities, and basically brute-forcing it, whether at the keyboard, on paper or in his head.

I am likely going to do each symphony as a smaller video. I'm hoping to start these this year sometime, maybe at the same time as I'm finishing the Brahms symphonies.

That will be coming up!

Scroll down the comments! Someone else already requested Zelenka on this video! I’ll probably talk about him at some point.

@OrganicOrganist Me? I don't have friends, but I would be happy to let you know the progress of my urtext scores if you are interested, as I work on them (the 2nd movement of above mentioned Missa setting, the Gloria, nearly done), but as for my other projects - I have not made enough progress to be worth sharing yet, apart from Johann Kuhnau's Magnificat in C Major, which is almost complete, and I uploaded a excerpt of the 8th movement here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f6hnqJuIuM64l3k.html

@OrganicOrganist Ah well, I am a one man project - there are several scores of Zelenka available on the internet if you are willing to shell out money - but I will never charge any for my scores, so that performers are free to use them at will with no restrictions, and composers / theorists to study them as much as they like.

My favorite is his Miserere Mei in C Minor. Goosebumps.

@@sameash3153 Funny enough I recently uploaded a score video of that little gem with the original manuscript: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ftqSeLGixLXck2Q.html

Bach actually ends a lot of chorales on the dominant. I've never found an explanation why, but I assume it must have been in style at the time, since as far as I know nobody ever seemed to mind or even take note of it. I'm not sure if your modal explanation is applicable to all of them though. I'd be interested to hear if anyone with more scholarly knowledge in baroque styles knows if this was "a thing" or if it was just Bach, and in either case, what the reason for it might be.

@@SpaghettiToaster What we call the half cadence today was originally a plagal cadence, in either the Mixolydian mode (in pieces we perceive as major) or Phrygian mode (in pieces we perceive as minor). Eventually these modes all coalesced into the major-minor tonality system we know today, but we still observe their relics in cadences, after all, there is a subtype of half cadence called the "phrygian cadence" (ii6-V). I know it sounds like I'm just pulling that out of my butt, though I promise I have read research on this, and this is much more common in earlier periods where the modes were still alive. In the case of Telemann, who I mentioned in my OP, he explicitly had a period where he was experimenting with the modes, that coincided with the publication of Gradus ad Parnassum which helped revitalize interest in them (Telemann at one point prepared a German version of the text, though it is lost today.) In the case of Bach, he sometimes rendered chorale melodies in their original modes. This chorale tune is originally in Mixolydian. Other melodies he treated in their original modes off the top of my head are Christus der uns selig macht (phrygian) and O wir armen Sünder (mixolydian). However, he did not always do this. Sometimes, he arranged phrygian melodies in modern major, like one of his settings of Herrzlich tut mich verlangen, where he treats the melody beginning on mi as a major third of a tonic chord. He also has set that in minor as well. In major settings, the mi is the major third of a tonic chord in the final cadence, a perfect cadence , in minor settings the mi is the root of a V chord, which corresponds to a plagal cadence in the phrygian mode. When you approach half cadences from a modal perspective, they make much more sense, they sound less incomplete when you have the plagal motion in your ear. And they often serve tonal purposes as well, like helping the following movement sound more firm when it begins on the tonic chord, as is the case here. But because this melody is originally a mixolydian melody, I firmly believe it is a modal treatment. His fugue on the same melody (BWV 679) is even more explicitly modal, where it includes a flat seventh as part of its subject, and when it modulates to the fifth above, where you would expect a C# in the key of D, he consistently uses a C natural.

I use a cheap drawing app called "artboard" (Mac).

I talk about that one (and 678) in my linked video from last year!

@@Richard.Atkinson Ah, yes, I see it tucked in the middle of that video. Bach did love his numerical symbolism, didn't he?

I haven't done a Mahler video in such a long time, but hopefully soon. I'll certainly talk about #10 someday!

Someday! I've included a few excerpts in my past videos already.

Ha, true!

Yes actually. The little organ book was passed around teachers and taught to young organists. It was also used as a study on composing chorale preludes for organists.

What Jakob said!

Eh, not really. Bach intended it as an "introduction" to the art of organ choral preludes, as well as a series of studies for pedal beginners, so if we're talking difficulty level the Orgelbüchlein could be compared to, say, the English Suites for a pianist. WTC "counterpart" in Bach's organ music could be e.g. the third part of the Clavier-Übung, or the Eighteen Chorales, or the late preludes and fugues

Personally, I believe Bach had some extraordinary expectations of his beginner organ students... holy hell. Been playing organ for a year and I've tried looking at the orgelbuchlein only to go back to Telemann's organ beginner works instead lol.

@@sameash3153 lol I agree. I didn't touch the book until my 3rd year of playing, even then I still only play some of the pieces. They are difficult

Kind of. Just the scale portion.

Whatever I find on IMSLP.

I agree with the second sentence. Fortunately, these masterpieces can still be fully enjoyed without buying into the mythologies that inspired them!

@@Richard.Atkinson I learned in the Bach Museum here in Eisenach, Germany that Bach and his contemporaries always had a frivoluos use for their works. They sold their pieces and musical ideas to secular musicians in pubs as they did with the clergy that payed their bills.

@@pcuimac The simple fact that he repurposed so many of his Lutheran cantata choruses to create his Latin mass (Catholic) in B minor shows that Bach must not have cared very much about the silly doctrinal quibbles that caused so many wars in his time. And it shows that the music is great independent of its text or religious meaning.

@richardatkinson2108 You can still enjoy the music without buying into the mythology is that inspires it? You mean like the operas of Wagner? Christianity is not based on mythology. Bach didn't waste his gifts setting myths and fables to this glorious counterpoint. Bach believed in the message behind his music. The evidence of the resurrection of Jesus stands as the testimony not of a religion but of living God who can be known personally.