"Wer durch Liebe" di BSG (1989), performed by Emmanuel Music (1994), dir. Craig Smith.
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- Опубликовано: 2 дек 2024
- I wrote this chorus while improvising at the organ in 1989, whereupon I devised a text which expressed a meaningful thought rhetorically and syllabically fitting the subjects I had improvised, and composed it out over the course of several days, premiering it with an amateur madrigal group the next week. In 1994, the late Craig Smith heard me play this at the former organ at Boston’s renowned Emmanuel Church, and led this performance there, in service, on 1 May 1994, with some of Boston’s then most renowned Bach singers among the chorus. The work subsequently won praise from renowned composer John Harbison and others.
I have just for the first time requested and received permission from Emmanuel Music to publish this performance, for which I am deeply grateful, to Ryan Turner and Pat Krol in particular. I treasure the performance and recording as the greatest honor I have received in my life. Emmanuel Music, founded by Craig Smith, is the Boston area's preeminent Bach performance ensemble, who for 50 years have been performing his sacred cantatas in service at Emmanuel Church. See emmanuelmusic.org.
The original text in Bach-Luther language actually expresses a Christologically subversive thought, that sacrifice and giving earn a path to Grace and Redemption. The underlying sentiment, “Salvation by works” differs from the “Salvation by faith” and Universal Grace of Lutheran theology, yet it underlies, for example, the Beatitudes (compare the “law of karma”). The initial subject of the first line is fugued upon, the subject starting on the third being unusual but less so in an accompanied fugue. The second subject, “shall through Grace...” enjoys a counterexposition in tenths at m. 43. The idea of “sein Reich erlangen” (achieve His Kingdom) is painted by rising scales in the bass that drive the climax of the work at the half-diminished 9-7-5 “crunch” chord (BDFAC) at the downbeat of m. 66, after the two subjects have been counterposed. The image of Christ carrying the Cross is by an unknown artist from the school of Giovanni Bellini (?1430-1516), and resides in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here in Boston.
A downloadable score of a later-orchestrated version is at bernardgreenbe..., with more commentary.
Of performers whom I recorded later in that day, there were Pam Murray, Marilyn Bulli, Margaret Johnson, Gail Abbey, soprano, Gloria Raymond, Mary Westbrook-Geha, K. Kamala Soprankar, alto, William Hite, Rockland Osgood, tenor, Don Wilkinson, Herman Hildebrand, Paul Guttry, Ed Candidus bass. Michael Beattie played continuo organ. The chorus was about 25 strong. Don and Ed are deceased.
This is the best I’ve managed to do to date (by everyone's assessment, including mine). I have not yet managed to do better, but my attempts are right here. If you’d like to perform this work with a real chorus, I’d be delighted: please let me know. This seems to be the only time that the Thomaskantor really riß den Himmel auf and guided my hands and feet. All glory and honor to Johann Sebastian Bach, from whom my blessings flow.
Stunningly beautiful and moving to the core. This is what music is all about. Best piece I ever heard, outside Bach. Period. A true masterpiece indeed. A great work of art.
This is like listening to a Bach composition that I have never heard before. A Bach discovery in other words.
Thank you so much!
Beautiful music
Thank you, again!
There are so many exquisite contrapuntal and rhetorical details in this work that it would make no sense for me to praise them separately. Instead, I'll just say that this might very well be the most gorgeous original composition I've ever heard from someone in the Musescore community. Immensely effective and heart-wrenchingly beautiful - Baroque art at its best!
Thanks so much, Niilo (of course, I wrote it 20 years before MuseScore was born) Yours is the kind of comment that makes it all worthwhile. As you know, I admire your work tremendously.
Beautiful, this remain your masterpiece!
Thank you!
Love it all your character composition spiritual i love very much
Thank you very much. You being someone who spent 3 years transcribing _Kommt, ihr Töchter_ , this means an awful lot to me.
@@BernardGreenberg ha ha ha 3 years
@@BernardGreenberg I've transcribed 'Herr unser Herscher' before (the old video one). In this old video, I didn't include the violin section for the opening, but the
revision transcription (next video) I added the violin section for the opening part. I've transcribed this Johanes Passion also for 3 years, ha ha ha
ruclips.net/video/KW5VtjcQg7Q/видео.html
Great!
This BSG algorithm is the most sophisticated JSB generator I have ever heard! All jokes aside, thanks for sharing this beautiful piece that stands on its own.
I explain it fully in the lecture -- study Bach, Christianity, Baroque music, organ playing etc for a few decades and it "falls right out". As Dan Dennett put it, "all you need is the context of Western Culture up to that point." Thanks, Jae!
That is really incredible music and performance ! The quality of the counterpoint is out of this world ! I love it so much ! 😍
Thank you so much!
This is truly a work of art, a masterpiece. Thanks for its creation and for making it available.
I've already praised this piece on other platforms, but listening to it live elevates the experience to a whole new level. The performers are excellent!
One could sell this piece as a "newly discovered J.S. Bach score", and have it assigned a new BWV Anh. number. The "bold moves" JSB takes that make his music "his" are all there. It's really tragic and upifting at the same time.
What many people don't realize are those nuances that are really important in his style (e.g. accented passing tones that are "out of the chord") and the fact that one can hardly find a clear consonance until the very final chord in this kind of movements; so the constant tension dragging the listener from dissonance to dissonance drives the piece forward from the beinning to the end as one continous arch - just like in this piece.
Everyone who is aiming to learn composition in the high baroque contrapuntal style should study this score thoroughly.
Thank you so much for these kind comments and your support all along in the last few years!
@@BernardGreenberg I and the community you built on "that" site have a lot to thank YOU.
I agree! What would be the most effective way of analyzing a piece like this?
@@Aaron-e6f9b For a start, thematically. There are a handful of heavily used riffs/motifs/gestures, and their rhetorical combination is a major feature of the movement. The supplied figured bass is a start for harmonic analysis.
What can I say about this piece that's more poetic than what I just heard? Beautiful, Bernie!
astoundingly beautiful, BSG!!! That's some Bach's quality level music, I would say, really!! You went way beyond just "technical" quality there.
Thank you very much! Technique is only a toolset in the pursuit of beauty!
A brilliant performance of a brilliant composition! I have already heard this in the video recording of your lecture and now I have listened to it again with pleasure.
Sergei, thank you so much!
This is so beautiful. I am literally in tears! I've been longing to hear a live performance of this motet ever since I discovered this piece on your Musescore page.
And here we are! Thanks to the kind folks at Emmanuel Music! My pleasure to present it to you!
Hello Bernie!! I has been a great pleasure to listen to this motet! That beatiful and full of emotion. Please could explain the figured bass in m 82 beat 3. 3:21
Hi Michael! My rewrite of your Alto aria is still something I treasure. M 82 beat 3 is a B major chord in first inversion, no?
@@BernardGreenberg I am kind of confused because of the A in tenor.
@@popouinmichael7593 The A in the soprano is an APT, but not the A in the tenor. The A in the tenor is targeted at the D in the bass, but arrives too late! ("simultaneous, contrastive dissonant motion") because the D progresses through the chromatic passing tone D# to E, and the tenor is "out of there" at a rest instead of resolving the tritone, which a 6-5 figure would have demanded. Yes, it is a bit "cheeky". Thank you for calling attention to it.
@@BernardGreenberg B Dom7 1st inversion, no? Still, the figuring is correct, as its goal is not "harmonic analysis", but to give the continuo player a guide what to play (i.e., leaving out the 7th from this chord in the continuo is justifiable as that note is already played by other voices and not necessarily to be "doubled" in the continuo part - might be considered an "instrumentation" decision).
@@gaborszekely3114 i.e., what I call the tension between the "prescriptive" and "descriptive" aspects of figuring.