Some thoughts on my Bach chorale work

I noted in my last post that doing the Master’s at Surrey revealed a whole bunch of gaps in my basic music-theoretical knowledge, and that I needed remedial work. With that in mind, I’ve been taking harmony lessons from the Brighton-based composer and teacher Peter Copley. And, well, it’s back to basics time.

In time-honoured fashion I'm back to harmonising chorales in the style of Bach. Working from Albert Riemenschneider's 1941's seminal collection 371 Chorales and 69 Chorale Melodies with Figured Bass, I'm taking chorale melodies and trying my damndest to come up with at least reasonably convincing harmonisations. Of course, then comparing them with JS's own harmonisations is pretty disheartening, but what you gonna do?!

An obvious question would be "why"? I clearly have no intention of spending whatever creative time I have writing fake baroque choral music, after all. But, but... I am finding that working at this on a (mostly) daily basis, and trying to "stick to the rules" as closely as possible (watch out for those hidden consecutives!) is having a whole set of effects. It's giving me generally more harmonic facility; it's definitely developing my inner ear; and if nothing else, it's working my Sibelius chops on a regular basis. It may also help ward of dementia; here's hoping.

Here are a couple of recent examples. In the spirit of self-humiliation, I'm presenting them side-by-side with Bach's own harmonisations.

Simon Hopkins · Christus, der ist mein Leben (reharmonisation)

Simon Hopkins · Mach's mit mir, Gott, nach diener Gut

More widely than that, the chorales are a pretty good basis for getting used to a range of instruments, getting comfortable with their ranges, clefs, transpositions and so on. Here's a chorale I transcribed for string quartet while preparing for my Master's, what feels like a lifetime ago in the summer of 2021.

Simon Hopkins · Bach: "Alle Menschen Müssen Sterben"

Finally, I'm hoping to be able to use them as starting points for experiments in more contemporary approaches to harmonisation, as I work my way through Vincent Persichetti's Twentieth Century Harmony. Case in point: here's a brief re-working of one of the chorales above employing quartal harmony. It's very crude, and the harmony is very blocky and somewhat "parallel", but I think it's a pretty good indication of where this practice might lead me.

Simon Hopkins · Christus, der ist mein Leben (Quartal harmonisation)

More soon!