- Hi, I'm Gareth Green and in this video, as part of our Inside
the Mind of Bach series, we're going to have a look
at one of his chorales. It's number 59 in the
Riemenschneider collection. Don't worry if you haven't got that because you can see the score. And the idea is just to
have a look at how Bach harmonises this melody, just to see what's his choice of chords, what's happening with keys, what's happening with notes of decoration, so we can learn something
more about the style of Bach, but also learn something more about writing good four-part harmony. So we're just going to look at the first two phrases of this, because you'll be amazed
how much is contained within those two phrases. So let me start by playing
the first two phrases. So obviously the chorales were sung by sopranos, altos, tenors,
and basses in the choir, part of the Lutheran service. Let's have a look at what he's doing here. First of all, let's just talk about keys. Obviously, this is a chorale that starts in the key of G minor. So the whole of the first
phrase is in G minor ending at that pause, that fermata sign, which doesn't really mean pause, it just means that's
the end of the phrase, and then the second phrase, which takes us to the end of this extract
is in B-flat major. That's no big surprise because B-flat major is the
relative major of G minor. So it's an obvious place to
which Bach might modulate. Now, there are a few little
interesting touches on the way, particularly in that second phrase, and we'll take those on
board any moment now. But the first challenge here, if you were trying to
harmonise this melody, is the fact that you've got three tonic notes at the
beginning, three G's. So it's kind of thinking well, if I had to harmonise
that, what would I do? Would I just have three G minor chords? It would be a bit boring, wouldn't it. You could maybe start on
a tonic chord of G minor, go to the first inversion,
come back, something like that. You might think well,
G belongs to chord I, it also belongs to chord VI, it also belongs to chord IV. So you might go I, VI, IV. You could even put some
passing notes in the bass. And that would be a perfectly reasonable way of harmonising it. So the point of making
that start to this video is not to say that the way
Bach has harmonised it is the only way to do it,
because just spending a moment there has explained that there are other
possibilities, aren't there? And actually other
possibilities like the one we've just demonstrated
going from I to VI to IV, that work as well as
what Bach actually done. So it's not that there's
any one way of doing it, but it's interesting to
consider what Bach actually did. Well, what does he do? He starts on a chord I on an anacrusis, a pickup note there, just starting on the
fourth beat of the bar. And quite often, when you
have these anacrusis starts, it's often the case that
you don't start on chord I. You quite often have chord V, and then you go to chord I. But if you're repeating a tonic over the anacrusis start,
well, you can't do that. So he's started on chord I, but he's moved to another chord. So he's started on chord I, and then perhaps he thought
about using chord IV next, but he thought, well we could make that a little bit more spicy by having chord I and then having chord IV7. So you see that B-flat in
the tenor is the seventh. And another good reason for
including that B-flat is that he had B-flat in the tenor on
the first chord, didn't he. So repeating a note as the chord changes is a good way of binding
chord movement together. So you've got the repeated
B-flat in the tenor. You've also got the
repeated G in the soprano. So, I, IV7, then notice what he does, he's got passing notes in
the alto and the bass part unaccented passing notes because they come between the beats, but they're going in contrary motion. Which is a nice way to write it. It makes for kind of nice
welding of the four parts. And if things are going
in contrary motion, you don't run into
trouble with consecutives and all that joy, so we've got IV7 lovely, rich chord. So you hear the impact of I to IV7. Lovely, isn't it? And it's also another
interesting point about this is that we often say
in Baroque music well, where do we expect to find seventh chords? We expect to find V7,
we expect to find II7 other sevenths sometimes happen, but they're not terribly common. Well, I think you'll find if you look at a lot of Bach chorales, you'll find IV7 comes up quite a bit, here it is. I, IV7, then these double unaccented passing notes in contrary motion. Now what happens next, because
when you look at this chord, you might think, oh, what
on earth is this chord? Well really, what's
happening in the tenor, is that the tenor has an
accented passing note. Do you feel that A is
a bit of a dissonance, now you could say, well,
surely the A's a harmony note and therefore this is II7,
in its second inversion. You could say it's II7 in second inversion with a lower auxiliary note
going onto the next chord. But really it feels more like
an accented passing note, going onto a harmony note, you feel there's a kind of tension, a slight dissonance, that resolves. So even though there are two
ways of looking at that beat, it kind of boils down to a
musical judgement, doesn't it? Bach often does this though, well you can look at it and say, well, yes, it's II7c on the beat, actually after the beat, when
the tenor moves to that G it's now a IVb chord, so which is it? In a way it's both, but you've got to make
a musical judgement. And what you feel musically is that the A feels like a dissonance, resolving onto the G, so
really it's a IVb chord. So he's gone from a IV7a chord, to a IVb chord. Okay, now where's he going next? Well, the third beat of this next bar, there's a chord V, and
now we've got a V7d, Bach absolutely loves his V7d's, the V7 in its last inversion. So you feel how you get V, followed by the V7d. Often he does this when he has a chord V, you have V first followed by a V7 or a V that becomes a V7, usually that way round, because if you start with a V7, and then you lose the
seventh so it becomes a V, you kind of weaken the chord, don't you? But if you start with a V
and then you add a seventh, you strengthen the chord, so
the progression is strong. So V, then a V7d, and of course, the way
we normally resolve a V7, is the seventh falls by a step,
the third rises by a step. Here's the third in the tenor
part rising into the next bar, the seventh and the bass
falling into the next bar. So on we go to a Ib. Now we have a passing note in the alto. Notice that the alto is using E-natural. Okay now, when we're writing harmony, we tend to use the harmonic minor scale, the clue is in the title,
when we write melody, we tend to use the melodic minor scale. So what happens when you're kind of trying to think melodically and harmonically at the same time? Well, here's a really good example. Why has he used that
E-natural in the alto? Well he could've used E-flat
as part of the harmonic minor, but when it goes onto that F-sharp, can you hear what happens there? D, E-flat, F-sharp, you end
up with an augmented second. Now this is a real danger when
you're working in minor keys, whether you're in the style
of Bach, or you're not, you end up with this augmented second between the sixth and
seventh degrees of the scale when you're in the harmonic minor. So this is where a bit of melodic minor comes in really handy
because by raising that sixth degree to E-natural, you end up ironing out that augmented second. So that's why that's there. Now what's this chord about? Well, this is chord VII, it's chord VIIb. Now many people will say to you, "Oh, chord VII, that's
a real pile of trouble. "Try and avoid it if you possibly can." Well, you don't need to
avoid chord VII actually, but chord VII will
nearly always work better in first inversion than
it does in root position. In root position, it's a little bit ugly, it emphasises the
tritone within the chord, put it in the first inversion, it always sounds better and in this case, it's part of a replacement
passing six-four, because a passing six-four will be when you have Ib, Vc, I. But you can replace that Vc with a VIIb. So here we've got Ib, VIIb, I. So that's what's going on there. Now the next move is the
simplest move really. He's saying I've got to
chord I on beat three, I'm just going to use chord I again, but instead of just using
exactly the same notes again, the bass leaps an octave, so at least there's some
movement in the bass. So you can either change the chord or you might be able to move to another inversion or something, but you could just let
the bass jump an octave. So you feel that movement. And then, we're coming to a cadence, he could have done something
fairly straightforward now like chord IV and then
I-V that he has written, but he's ready for a
little bit of spice here, so as we go into the next
bar, diminished seventh chord, isn't that a lovely
chord, diminished seventh in G minor going I, to V to
make an imperfect cadence in G minor, so that's
what's going on there. Second phrase begins by
repeating the same chord. You know we've finished one phrase, there's a sense of repose on that V, he uses the same chord then to propel us into the next phrase, so that repetition works quite well because the first chord V
is finishing something off, the next chord V is launching
us into the next phrase. So there's the chord V repeated, then we come to chord I in G minor, but remember we said we're
modulating to B-flat major, so we're looking for a pivot chord, a chord common to G minor
and to B-flat major, so we can affect this modulation. Well, this chord I in G minor, well, what's that in G minor, chord I? What is it in B-flat major? Chord VI, so this is our pivot chord. It's VI in the new key,
so then what does he do? For the second chord of this bar, we're now using chord
VIIb in B-flat major, so there's another VIIb So you see these VIIb's crop up a bit. So VIIb going to I in B-flat major, double unaccented passing notes, this time going in the same direction. And when they do go doubling
in the same direction, normally that's going to
work in thirds or sixths. So these work nicely in sixths. So we've got I in B-flat major, double unaccented passing
notes soprano and tenor, and you think yeah, he's going to go to a B-flat major chord,
actually, what does he do? B-flat major on beat three, then we have an A-flat in the bass. Now you're thinking well, what's A-flat got to do with B-flat major? Well, not a lot, but
something's happening here because from that A-flat
he goes into the next bar with a chord I in E-flat major. So it's going V-I in E-flat major. To be specific, it's going V7d, that's another V7d chord, that's V7d in E-flat major to Ib in E-flat major. Okay, well the I in E-flat major is also chord IV in B-flat major. So this is a secondary
dominant, we're going V-I, or better still V7-I in another key, but the I is a chord
in the prevailing key. So here it is, secondary
dominant in E-flat major. Okay, now you might notice
when we get to this moment, Bach has sort of technically
infringed a rule, this is a major chord that has
a double major third in it, G in the alto G in the bass and that's something that textbooks will advise us to try and avoid. Okay, well try and avoid them, but Bach does sometimes
double his major thirds. So he does it when it's
going to create a lovely, smooth line, usually scale movement. Well you see the alto is going up a scale, the bass is going down the
lovely chromatic scale. So he doesn't want to
kind of interrupt that. So he's happy to double that
major third in the interest of the kind of linear movement of the parts. So that's the I in E-flat major, but it's IV in B-flat major, unaccented passing note in the alto, then one of the most gorgeous
moments in this whole thing where you think, what is
G-flat doing in the bass there? Oh my goodness, well we've just had this chord IV in B-flat major, IVb. Now we've got IVb in B-flat minor. So this is an example of a borrowed chord. He's borrowing a chord
from the parallel minor. So we've got chord IV in B-flat major, with a passing note, in first inversion. And now we're borrowing the same chord from the parallel minor and it gives you a lovely change of colour
and that chromatic bassline. And a passing note in the tenor which makes it even more expressive there. Then he goes on to a Ic in B-flat major. So you see that previous
chord was just borrowed and then we're back in B-flat major. Okay, so there's a Ic,
now you might be thinking, oh, Ic, I thought we weren't supposed to use second inversions other
than in particular places. That's true, it's a sort
of passing six-four, not in the conventional sense, but the bass passes by step from the previous borrowed chord to the Ic to the next chord, so he gets
away with it if you like, because the bass line is moving by step, it sort of feels a little
bit like a modified passing six-four, but it's
a nifty little touch anyway, let's put it that way. So we've got a Ic there,
notice this tenor movement, having had a passing note
on the previous beat, now he just jumps to another harmony note. Coming towards the cadence,
another nice touch, because what's this
chord when we get there, it's another diminished seventh chord. So you can see E in the
bass, a pile of minor thirds, E, G, B-flat, D-flat, it's
a diminished seventh chord. But interestingly, it's not
a diminished seventh chord in the key of B-flat, it's
a diminished seventh chord in the key of F, because
diminished seventh chords tend to be built on chord VII. So in the key of F, E, G, B-flat, D-flat, it's the diminished seventh built on chord VII in the key of F. So why has he done it in the key of F? Well, we're about to
have an F major chord. And the F major chord is the
dominant chord in B-flat major. So he's used the diminished
seventh of the dominant chord, if that makes sense,
which is something else he does a fair bit of,
so it's a lovely touch. Diminished seventh,
anticipatory note in the soprano which also happens to convert
the diminished seventh to a V7b in the key of F. And now, we finally get a suspension, Bach loves his suspensions, but we have to wait till
the last bar in this one. Can you see in the alto, at
the end of the previous bar, we've got B-flat prepared,
then it's sounded at the beginning of the last bar, you can hear that dissonance,
then it's resolved. So it's a four-three suspension. Prepared here, sounded
here, resolved here. And so this chord is chord V. Then we have a passing note in the tenor that makes it V7, and then the final tonic
chord of B-flat major. So that's really kind of
combed through what's going on with the harmony, the use
of secondary dominant, the use of diminished sevenths, and the use of a borrowed
chord from the parallel minor. So there's such a lot to look at in just two phrases of that chorale. So you might want to live with that. And if you're a keyboard player, it's great just to play
through these things and play the individual lines as well. So you notice how smooth the movement is in the individual lines and just to get a feel for
how rich this harmony is. And I'll just conclude by playing the whole of these two phrases again. So you can hear this in action. And if you're interested
in doing some more study on writing good four-part harmony or writing in the Bach chorale style, have a look at the Music Matters website where you'll find a course that is dedicated to this very topic. And it's a very standard way for people to really polish their
four-part harmony skills. Enjoy.
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