Beauty in Simplicity (Bach Chorale Music Analysis) - Inside the Mind of Bach 

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Bach is the fountain from which all western music flows

Brilliant analysis. I love this chorale. Bach smiles on you from heaven, surely!

Gareth helped me the most at undersanding music better.

Bach = Genius!

Love the Bach analysis. This guy was a genius. Thanks for unlocking some of his secrets! I like best his „Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten“ (BWV 93), where the minor third suddenly changes into a major third!

So glad you chose this chorale, I've been listening to it like a madman these past couple of weeks!

Also, I always love the sound in the final cadence of the tritone in V7 being delayed until just an eighth note before the final chord. With the alto voice moving very neatly by step. Much more pleasing to my ear than a V7 block chord.

thank youuuuuuuuu i love these videos

thank you so much! love the Bach videos

That VII modulation is beautiful - I imagine it's the combination of the strength of the diminished chord and the sudden modulation which gives it such power

Thank you again Gareth, and good health. This is an excellent example of how Bach could use a very few notes (about 60) to create an immense feeling. I was at Falmer Bar in Sussex once when my friends said, "Bach, he's so mathematical, no emotion". Amazing that I had friends with an opinion on Bach, I suppose (scientists), and one stood with me slack-jawed at how they could say that. This is two phrases that between them convey incredible pathos, with minimal materials. In the second phrase, the rising bass line really gives a strong sense of optimism - rising is good, falling is sad, and the stepwise ascent shows inexorability - hope that we can depend on. The A# in the tenor drives strongly, yearningly, to the B at the start of that phrase. Its like someone leaping for a branch that could save his life. The dissonances you point out add poignancy. I first got the impact of this at a friend's funeral - he died around age 20, a doctor at the start of his career, just after his finals, when he had all his ducks lined up, and then, *poof*. Drowned on a canal holiday. They played this at the funeral, and it really hit me in a way I never forgot, and to be honest, hearing it in this context really explained the emotion. I'd heard this before, and found it peaceful, but hearing it in the context of the death of someone I knew, albeit briefly, totally explained the emotional content to me. Decades later, I bore my mother's coffin into the Cathedral to this piece played on the organ above. I had chosen the music too well, and nearly broke down when I heard it. I should say that my mother used to tell me that she sang Bach chorales in school, so thats another reason I chose this particular piece. Entering, knowing that she would have loved hearing this played at her funeral, well, it was a perfect send-off gift. It's one of the most bittersweet emotional moments of my life. And that's what makes Bach so incredible. He understood, half rationally, half intuitively, how to create music with a specific emotional impact. In the context of his working life, I'm pretty sure he just dashed this piece off in 5 minutes, adding a dissonance here, a suspension there, in a certain key - but despite his professional cookie-cutter formulas (which he must have had to e.g., write the Matthew Passion in a few weeks), they worked - and still work today. I would love to have a weekend with the man to sit down and just discuss how he set about designing pieces like this. I'm sure he considered his work "craft" not "art" - so learning his go-to box of tricks would be incredible. There are some pieces that lay his technique open, if we can see; the chaconne, some of the cello works, a lot of the passions. And this is aside from the intellectual stuff I love, the fugues, canons, etc. When it all comes together, like the opening chorus of the Matthew Passions - its mindblowing. But the simplicity of this chorale you present here - once the listener has the context in which to place it - is the core of Bach. TO hear this at a concert is one thing - to hear it at a funeral is another.

I am not sure how you could make it concise, but I am finding that comparing Bach's multiple harmonizations of the same chorale can unlock alot of new doors.

Great topic. Thank you!

It is very helpful to not only look at the harmonic functions but also the melodic sense of each voice separately. First the soprano, then the bass, then the alto and finally the tenor. As with all of Bach's music you'll find that each voice presents a legitimate melody in its own right, even if sometimes only very modest melodies in the inner voices.

Thank you kindly. I hope you have a very blessed & Merry Christmas❣️

Wonderful teacher!

Best analysis ever.... thanks.

Thank you for this video and analysis, it was very interesting :)

Wonderful. Many thanks.

Great explanation, thanks

Nice 👍🏽

Thanks

The Passion Hymn.

Nice video sir. With chord symbols, I think it is easier to understand the patterns that are used in any composition, no matter if it is classical or pop or any other kind of music in any mode. Without patterns that our brain can recognize and have heard before, a composition will sound rather weird.

This is my favorite one! It's my favorite one to play too. The version in my book of hymms is credited to Bach but is in C major instead of D. Where did this transcription come from?

Hi Gareth I couldn't work out the V7b as there was no 7th, and then I saw that you held the G from the IV and veolia! I've been watching this for about 3 hours, taking it all in hopefully. The time just flew by. When you say 9 8 above bass, isn't it really above the root note. Thanks great as usual.

Thank you Gareth! These are true gems. I enjoy these videos immensely. I was thinking, if repeated this phrase, taking the tenor from a# to f# would create parallels between tenor and bass going to th anacrusis (b-f# -> d-a) or is this irrelevant? Or could this be the reason for going with triple roots?

I think the dissonance of the penultimate chord in bar 3 is aided by the fact that it is a mixture of a cadential six four and a V chord, which happens alot, not unlike the retardation of the final tonic chord with notes suspended with or without preparation from the V chord against notes from the tonic.

Nice. I believe this one chorale has been used by Liszt in his Via Crucis.

When you are doing analyses such as these, what level would you expect the students to have attained? I think I have to play another year or two to even think of taking a Beginner level piano course, so any progress I can make before then is just preparation. And thanks for your very clear explanations.

it's look so easy. but it's not only “easy”

13:20 - Perchance to modulate! ;)

Thanks Gareth. Is there a place you can recommend where I can get some more scores of these chorales to to look at?

IMO the reason why the second phrase ends in a chord that lacks a third has to do with the lyrics. The "empty" cord conveys the emptiness of "Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn" -- in English, "full of pain and full of scorn" (via Google Translate). You see a lot of this in Bach, where the music conveys the meaning of the words in ways that we in the 21st century are not always attuned to.

Just a question. The chord that opens the second phrase, that you're calling an inverted vii, I would definitely interpret that as a second inversion F# dominant. would that be considered incorrect? I know fully diminished sevenths and inverted dominants are kind of interchangeable, but is there any reason to use one over the other in this case?

G'day, Mr. Greene! I have managed to print out the 1st 4 bars of "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" as you have elaborated on here in this video. I am by no means a pianist but I practice those few measures on my piano and wonder if there is a way to get the rest of that chorale in the same key as is presented in this video. I would very much like to learn the entire chorale. It is so beautiful and moving as I think about its subject, the Passion of our Lord. Thank you for your videos. They are very interesting and informative. I especially enjoy "Name the Composer" quizzes also.

As to why he tripled the root on that last chord (and indeed why he did almost the same on the second note of the phrase (BBDD)), I think its because of the hollow, empty sound that it creates.. a sense of emptiness, loss (the hollow feeling in your stomach). This feeling is pretty much throughout phrase 2; because of the rising bass, beat 2 (which has a full chord) sounds kinda like a passing note to beat three, which once again moves to FBFB, another hollow chord (although there is an accented passing note on the C in the soprano. So which is the non-chord tone here, the C as a passing note or the following B as a lower neighbor? Not really important, but we have again that hollow sounding empty, forlorn sound. So that's 3 times in that phrase we have a 2-note chord with the 5th omitted, giving a clear "affekt" - or at least, that's how I hear it.

@Gareth can you expand on Bach? Ie what makes him so superior, if you were to conjecture? I am a pianist (amateur such) and his note choices generally sticks out to me as.. Unexpectedly excellent. How this?

That B7 change is a thing of beauty. So is this going from the 1 to the 6?

Don't you think the chord at the third beat of the third bar could be a V sus 4 chord? The b in the soprano part seems to be a lower turning note of C# to me. Nice explaination

Hi thanks for your video, I'm confused though as to why the A# note makes it the key of B minor? B minor and D major being relative to each other, wouldn't they have the exact same notes in the scale?

Hello! Why not consider the harmony in the third beat of the penultimate bar - as a dominant with suspention in a tenor ? Maybe it would be more logical. And the appearance of a passing note of B in the right hand later - could be explained by the softening of the dissonance.

If he went to the B in the tenor part and did double the major third, wouldn't there be a secondary issue of the consecutive 8ves with the soprano as he moved down to the A in the second beat of the first complete bar? Also you said that he couldn't go down to the G because of the huge leap up to F# but couldn't he of gone down F# below the bass clef stave or am I missing something?

In 2 phrase he's desending d , c#, b. As like first ( b , a , g , f , e ). And tenor part , 2 bar and 3rd bar is similar , thats why he might moved a# to b( how ever leading note has to move to tonic.) and piece mostly moved by step before, so . is that like that ?

Bach was like : “ok kids im going to show how music will be for the next 400 hundred years.. sit down listen and write down”

Compound thirds ? does that mean an octave combined with a third ? , Mozart used running tenths in a little night music passing notes.

When you say "chord I B" is B referring to 1st inversion? I've never heard this naming convention.

I have been trying to figure out if there are any principles from chorale writing that can be applied to chord writing with five or more voices

So this is where Paul Simon stole the harmony for American Tune.

I don't like the music of J. S. Bach, never have. I say Bach humbug!

lol. "What's going on with keys". Bach bored by diatonic doldrums. Tension. It's a thing.