Dear List:
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the difficulty Bach had with his
parishoners over his arrangements of chorale preludes. From Christoph
Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, p. 85:
"First, they reproved Bach "for having hitherto made many curious variations
in the chorale, and mingled many strange tones in it, and for the fact that
the Congregation has been confused by it." This charge represented an attack
on Bach's manner of preluding for the congregational hymns and not, as the
broader context of the exchange demonstrates (first he was playing "too
long," then `too short"), on his accompaniment of congregational singing.
Typical chorale intonations of the time followed the models established by
Johann Christoph and Johann Michael Bach and Johann Pachelbel, in which the
hymn tune was introduced line by line for longer pieces and the initial line
only for shorter ones, without modifying the chorale's melodic contours or
harmonic implications. Bach departed significantly from this pattern in his
large-scale chorale preludes, which are often modeled on the fantasia-like
north German chorale elaborations, here dissolving a plain chorale melody
into complex embellishments, the modifying its intervallic structure, here
leaving behind the chorale's home key, and there introducing other features
that the consistory members perceived as "curious variations" and "strange
tones." Yet the temporal reference "hitherto" can hardly refer ro an abrupt
change in Bach's playing style after his prolonged absence, for only two or
three Sundays had passed since his rerurn from Lubeck. The accusation rather
expresses an irritation that had preceded the trip, suggesting that Bach was
playing large-scale chorale preludes in the mold of his early setting of
"Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern," B WV 739."
Alexei
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