Christopher Mabley
Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale settings have been vital to the teaching of music ever since they were composed. His four-voiced harmonisations represent a Baroque composer’s approach to melodies that are often centuries older. As musical styles continued to evolve, each succeeding generation of teachers and students brought their own viewpoint to bear on this small corpus of music. Consequently, during the three centuries since their composition and a quarter of a millennium since their first publication, a range of contrasting ideas and approaches has tended to obscure the fundamental nature of these short yet complex musical works. This volume of Resources presents a comprehensive selection of individual phrases and whole chorales in Bach’s harmonisations, together with some alternative settings for comparison. They have been sorted into five principal types and arranged in an increasing order of complexity. Every phrase has been meticulously checked for accuracy against its original version in the cantatas and Passions. This collection complements any course on chorale harmonisation – in particular, it provides authentic solutions to the exercises set in the accompanying Workbook.
