Thank you so much on these excellent videos on Bach's music. I'm an adult beginner pianist and new student of Bach. I'm learning his 1st Invention in C Major currently. The St. Matthew Passion has always been to me at the apex of "human" musical achievement and excellence. Your squeaky pedal is a blessing, as I will be learning this choral as you have played it here, and have little experience with pedal. Those are my marks to follow! Thank you.

A brilliant analysis. Many thanks. Your remarks concerning the text being understood is well-taken. Bach's mastery is incredible for setting a text. Danke shoen!

I'm just starting my musical journey and taking baby steps to learn Bach Chorales. I'll catch up.

we are very lucky you have you in this community. your work keeps this profound music alive. thank you for presenting this in such an educational and emotional way! love the series

Great Analysis, thank you. "Was hast du verbrochen?" means "what have you done?", "what crime did you commit?". Your german pronounciation is excellent!

Beautiful presentation, as usual! Particularly interesting is the discussion around the musical treatment of textual meaning and key choice and harmonic colouring. Lovely study as visual background to the presentation. Thanks, and looking forward the Jesu, meine freude!

Excellent and very thorough analysis!

Extremely well presented. Educational. Thank you.

Great analysis. One of the most remarkable chorales is "Es ist genug" BWV 60,5 with regard to the harmonization and the three whole steps in the melody at the beginning

What a gift! My absolute favorite Bach choral analyzed by you. I've listened and performed the Passion (bassoon) so many times, and every time this choral makes me cry. Thank you, Samuel!

Very fascinating, I will watch more.

His videos are amazing. You know what is better? This kind of content getting 7.8k in 4 days!

Thank you, despite my age and experience as a musician and my interest in Bach I never really know much about the chorales so I am slowly getting into them. I love this kind of musical construction and your break downs are really helpful. Let us know when you plan to interview Bach in person.

Great content!

Très intéressant. Merci beaucoup !

Very interesting. Thanks.

Thank you, he was really pushing what is instrumental and what was vocal to it's limits, a truly experimental/searching composer with much purpose, one assumes, from his creative output. All the symmetries and Fibonacci sequence/Golden Mean was accident or purpose? Bach is a musical 'Alice in Wonderland' the older I become. Any way, beautiful analysis much appreciated.

Melody by Crüger 1640 … at 5:30 it is standard German practice to cadence Phrygian melodies (mi mode) with bass 7-1 or 7-4 (E-F# or E-B, both using Picardy third), so that was a pretty radical choice. But just so folks realize the concept still goes back to Old flemish polyphony.

My favorite is BWV 178, ever since I read Richard Taruskin's "Facing Up, Finally, To Bach's Dark Vision" review of Harnoncourt's CMW music as speech interpretation. I think my second favorite is BWV 105, with a really flowing pulse in the Suzuki Bach Collegium Japan interpretation.

great video ! thought at first the squeaking pedal was a bug or animal in my room haha

It's always bugged me that the published chorales (at least the edition I have) don't come with the words, not even in the original German. Like, nobody would ever use that book to perform them, they're reduced to only harmonic exercises. They make excellent harmonic exercises of course, but their nature is obscured. Same goes for the lack of instrumentation, which in a church setting could be flexible sure, but we know these were orchestrated, at least the ones from bigger works like this one. My favorite is probably Jesu, Meine Freude, mostly because I like the whole motet so much.

Im impressed by your German!

From where does such music come? The masterful simplicity is a miracle. Astonishing.

Please do an analysis of the Wer hat dich so geschlagen! It's one of those joyous chorales that just sing to your soul.

McHose's book, The Harmonic-Contrapuntal Technique of the Eighteenth Century was my piano teacher's text with which he attempted to teach me composition. Those familiar with work may recall that McHose analyzes the chorales of Bach to determine the principles of voice-leading, and, astonishingly, it is a statistical analysis of instances at the intervals of the 5th and smaller, systematically tabulated and giving rise to rules of voice-leading that were to memorized before implemented. Needless to say, my progress in composition at age 10 under such pedagogy from my piano teacher, a genius in a state of decrepitude, was sterile, but, it resuited in my early acquaintance with the Bach Chorales and an intuitive ability to harmonize on the basis of bass motion that my ear had become attuned to that stood me in good stead my music theory. courses in college, including harmonic dictation, sight singing, and sight reading, as well as interval identification. Therefore, I can personally attest to the efficacy of advancement in all modes of muisc-making stemming from a study of Bach's Chorales.

_O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden_ from the St Matthew Passion.

That pedal needs some oil. lol

The chorale from BWV 103 is one of my favorites - to my knowledge it’s the only chorale I know of where the text is the direct words of Christ to his people.

Dir, dir Jehovah, which is like a short motet. I understand Bach wrote the meloday as well as the harmonization.

Christus, der ist mein Leben. One of my favourites and especially interesting from a composers perspective I think.

❤

Terrific video. Where is the translation from?

Amazing content. But in my opinion you left out the best version of this melody "O große Lieb, o Lieb ohn alle Maße" from St. John's Passion. I think this chorale is not only the best version for this melody, but really the pinnacle of Bach's chorale writing.

The choral prelude “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” BWV639 Not really a choral itself, but there you go The young Bach was criticized for perplexing the parishioners with too challenging harmonies. Nos: [Wir] halten ihm vor daß er bißher in dem Chorale viele wunderliche variationes gemachet, viele frembde Thone (harmoniefremde Töne) mit eingemischet, daß die Gemeinde drüber confundiret (verwirrt) worden.

Hey Samuel can you hear sheet music in your head when you read it?

❤and I thank the wonderful John McCain for sending me here!!!

A Piano Lesson and a History lesson too

Wonderful! It's rare to see such high-quality discussion and production all in one video; bravo! Since you asked for our requests: how about „Es ist genug“, from BWV 60, No. 5?

Wow, and I thought that I had a well-tempered Samsung. Time to retune?

"In Andreyev's Canata... 'Ich brauche WD40'..." I jest but I love your videos. Thank you.

"Herzlich tut mich r Verlangen"

This series is fantastic! It's not a chorale, but a chorale prelude - I'd go all giddy if you did an analysis of BWV 639 (Ich Ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ).

Pretty good video! But not entirely correct. While G is a high note, there are many examples in the chorales, so it is not really 'rare'. There certainly are myriad examples of F and F#, those are practically every-day for the high trebles. A technical note, Bach did not compose in the treble clef for the upper voice. He used soprano clef, which would routinely take the trebles above the confines of the staff. While this is a technicality, it is important to note that Bach *did* write above the lines and only in modern clefs do those notes appear on the staff. Otherwise good video!

ty first,,, what about : " Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten...."

O Sacred Head Surrounded by Thorns. Here is my version kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g5maZbd3r6jZeYk.html

Samuel, it's time to oil your piano pedal. It's extremely easy to do, I had the same problem. Even olive oil works fine. You will thank me later.

I’m not open to learn about back from someone without a german accent

fr1st?