The Bach Chorale Exercise
Studying the chorales of Bach will develop your harmonic creativity.
A chorale is a musical form that dates back to the mid 1500s. In its basic principle, a chorale is a harmonization of a hymn-tune. The harmonization itself can be done in a number of different ways. The chorale as a musical form continued well into the 20th and 21st centuries, and is going strong today, composers still use them. They are timeless. Chorales appear in symphonies and contemporary albums, and in both vocal and instrumental music.
The Bach Chorale
The chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach are short pieces originally meant to be sung, and written out for four voices. The chorales are pieces where the hymn-tune is sung in the highest voice, the soprano. The harmonization is articulated by the three lower voices, each of which forms horizontal voices that are built in function of the main melody.
On the whole, the Bach chorales are typically in bar form (AA'B) where the first big phrase is repeated, and then the second phrase expands harmonically, and concludes the piece. The structure of the hymn-tune or the chorale melody gives structure to the chorale itself, so there are plenty of chorales by Bach that don't follow the AAB schema, but it's pretty common. Harmonically, in each chorale Bach remains in one key, and progresses to a single point that is the "furthest away" from the central key before concluding and bringing us back home. There exist longer and more complex chorales, which I'll link to at the end, but the general principle of a chorale as a harmonization of a melody always holds true.
In the middle of his life, in the 1720s, Bach worked at a Lutheran church in Leipzig, and part of his duty was to produce music for the Sunday service. Every week, Bach wrote and produced a new cantata—a large musical form consisting of music for instrumentalists, choirs, and soloists, that typically articulated sacred texts. The chorale is just one movement in the cantata. As part of the greater whole, chorales were not too musically "complicated" because they were meant to be sight-read by the congregation as well as performed by the musicians. To write the chorale, Bach would take a melody from the old Lutheran hymn books and harmonize them.
The reason that we study his efforts over 300 years later is because they still remain one of the best collections of real and masterful music that we can study as students of harmony. Bach's craftsmanship makes it easy for us to use his Chorales for our purposes without sacrificing any of the musical directness.
Often in theory we grow familiar with chord progressions that remain in isolation. (How many variations of I-ii-vi-V-I in the different keys have we studied in harmony?) The chorales of Bach make it possible for us to breathe so much life into the diatonic chord progressions between the cadences.
When heard slowly and without the text, the chorale harmonies are beautiful. The beauty of the chorale comes from their perfect construction, respecting the limitations of the human voice, allowing each note its own room to resonate while being part of a cohesive whole. Each one offers us a complete masterclass on cadences, chord progressions, and melodic harmonization.
Download the worksheet for this article here.
The "source code" of Western musical harmony.
Analysis: What do I look for in a Bach chorale?
First of all, you can find the chorales in this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3fznfxi
You can just head to IMSLP.
Or you can download the free Bach chorale worksheet and work alongside this article now.
When I open any one of them up, there are generally two phases that I work in, and this is a broad simplification. I walk you through my full thought process later in this article. Basically it's a theory phase where I work with paper, pencil, and my voice, and then a practice phrase where I try to integrate everything and play it on the piano.
The goal of the theory phase is a harmonic analysis. Since most Bach chorales are tonal, I use Roman numerals to label each chord in the chorale as I hear it. Throughout, I'm guided by the melodic phrase and the cadences. If there's a chord that I don't know how to label, I skip it and find the stable harmony and then work backward. The main point to take away here is compositionally, the progression of harmony is always guided by the melody. The purpose of labeling it is to show how I hear it.
The goal of the practice phase is to find the point of maximum expansion for the whole piece. In better words, the climax. Where does Bach finally make the turn to come home? To answer this I have to be open enough to turn off the logic that I used in the harmonic analysis and just go based on what I feel and hear on intuition. No one can tell you what you hear, but chances are that we can live at the high point in exactly the same place because of the reality that music is structured sound relations. Practice it this way and you'll hear music differently.
Seek Timeless Truths
Like all intellectual endeavors, music theory can be fashionable. Everybody today is interested in negative harmony and figured bass. In the 1900s people were interested in dodecaphony. My recommendation: don't seek what's hot or what you think you should know based on others. Instead, seek timeless truths.
The dimensions that the intervals open to us are timeless. Knowledge of the overtones is timeless. We've seen that even the structure of musical cadences is timeless from the historical view. A quote I found on Twitter: "Things that we understand create Silence. The things we don't understand create Emotion."
Our goal is to set up foundations. Setting yourself up this way will allow you to view the more complicated musical structures as variations of those fundamental musical truths that are so apparent in the music of the masters.
In undergrad I studied theory and harmony with Reza Vali and took his graduate level course called Repertoire and Analysis for composers and conductors. In the course, he taught me this technique for learning the chorales that I'm sharing with you. He said the chorales of Bach are like looking at the "source code" of Western harmony.
I should preface by saying that I don't recommend listening to recordings of the chorales that you haven't made yourself. The recordings that are available don't capture the sound that we are looking for, and very often go for the "sound" of the Baroque church and that is not why we study them. This technique allows you to take the music out of the context that they were originally conceived and repurpose them for our contemporary ears/understanding.
The Technique for Practicing Bach Chorales
First, sing them, each of the voices, one at a time. Or even better work with a partner or three. Then, analyze the harmony: all you need is knowledge of cadences and diatonic chords. Finally, play or listen to them s l o w l y. Listen closely to the progression of harmony and don't lose ‘sight’ of the melodic voice.
The complete practice is to play the four-voice chorale at the piano, and sing each voice in Solfege while playing through. Don't worry if you're not a pianist, I'm not one either. That's the conservatory version—it involves score reading, sight singing, transposition—I highly recommend it, but you don't need to have practiced music at this level to benefit from the Chorale study.
Do a chorale a week or a month and continue exploring them.
This article will simplify what I learned how to do in that course so that anyone—especially new students of harmony—can access the musical treasures that are the harmonized chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach. It's a very easily understood form. Once you know how to learn one, you know how to approach them all. If you're enjoying them, email me and let me know what you find.
Bach Chorale Analysis: 8. Du Friedefurst, Herr Jesu Christ
I recommend working through this one and then comparing your answers with mine if you never analyzed a chorale before. In the PDF worksheet that goes with this exercise, I've typed up a second chorale that you can work on your own after doing this one. You can download the PDF worksheet here. Email me what you hear at jordan@jordanali.com.
This method could be done on any of the chorales in the entire book.
1. Look at the key signature. Three sharps tells us we are either in A major or F# minor (or a different mode all together). Sing or play the bass line to help out what key we're in. The line clearly hints A major. Get a sense of the phrases. They are often clearly marked with fermatas.
2. Take a look at the melody, sing it a couple of times, and ask yourself how would I harmonize this? Remember the hymn melody is in the soprano. It's clear now we're in A major.
3. Work one phrase at a time. Sing each voice one at a time and ask, how do each of the notes contribute to the melody? Any note that doesn't fit into the chord just circle it and leave it out of your analysis. For example, the D in the bass is moving down from the root of the IV chord to the third in the viiº chord by passing through C#. This is an example of something that Bach often uses: non-chord tones.
4. Find the end of the phrases, and work backwards writing down the names of the chords. If it's a chord that is outside of the key then find the nearest chord that is in the key and work backwards from there. Analysis tip: always work backward from stability, and find how does a composer actually set up this complicated sound. We'll talk much more about analysis in a future lesson but this is just getting started with the chorales and setting up an excellent practice. All you need to know to start analyzing Bach chorales is knowledge of diatonic harmony. I wrote in the example below the logic that we learned about tonic, predominant, and dominant chords.
5. Write the names of the chords and cadences. Look at the major III chord in measure 6. The E# is not in the key of A, so how do you hear it? The E# is part of a C# major chord, which resolves up a half step to the root of F# minor, the vi of our home key. So the chord with the E# is the V of vi (C# major is dominant of F# minor, the submediant in A major).
6. (Bonus) Perform the chorales at the piano. Or, type it in a notation software. Make the tempo quarter = 40-50.
7. (Bonus) Sing each voice while playing the chords at the piano.
8. Write down the point of maximum musical tension. Where is the climax of the chorale? Label it with "h.p." for high point. Where would you hear it?
9. Set a goal. For example, do 1 chorale a month. You could further your study by asking how would you conduct this? How can you guide the other 4 voices to contribute to the piece as a unity as Bach imagined it, and not as 4 separate voices.
Each chorale is a wealth, open up any one and you're in touch with how to use harmony to create beautiful sounding music.
Takeaways: Why you should incorporate study of the Bach Chorales in with your musical life.
Songwriters, classical musicians, and electronic musicians studying the Bach chorales will develop their harmonic creativity. By developing this practice, you'll enter the track for mastering:
1. The progression of chords. It's all about the music in between the cadences, guided by the melody.
2. The harmonization of melody. The same melody harmonized 30 different ways. That's what you'll find in the Bach.
3. Voice leading, how to write interesting middle voices. Even though it's all about the soprano voice, my favorite musical lines are often carried by the altos and tenors, it's amazing where they lead you.
4. Chord combinations. When you play through them you'll find chords that will take your breath away.
5. The beginnings of modulation. The harmonic expanse that Bach typically employs usually tonicizes a relative key, like the relative major or minor. Studying them will show exactly how he does it.
The progression of harmony in a Bach chorale is guided by the melody. So, if you're ever stuck in one of your compositions, unsure where to go, sing the ‘melody,’ whatever that may mean for your piece, and see where it goes. If you're performing ensembles and you have a middle voice, ask how does it concretely aid and support the melody? You'll find your musical practice will be much richer this way.
Download the worksheet for this article here!
Other Chorales
I don't recommend looking at this as 'church music.' Its musical significance goes beyond that. Look at the notes. It's just a great teacher of how harmony works. And now you have the fundamentals to understand how and why the tones are arranged in that way. Although Bach was very religious, he was guided by the ear, and so are we today.
O Jesulein Suss: Recommended just for its sheer beauty. This one is a good recording.
Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. Here is a new way to present the chorale tune. The chorale melody breaks in and interrupts the perpetual flow of the countermelody.
Sei Lob Und Preis Mit Ehren. Listen to this one, the complexity! Here the soprano voice only sings the chorale melody. Yet, the other voices introduce the chorale tune each time and build with it musically. It is a joy and wonder to hear.