abc Analysis of Bach Chorales
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Four-part chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach with functional harmonic analysis!
In the following 186 four-part chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach are submitted for download . The purpose is to provide connoisseurs and notably students in musical education at universities, conservatories, music colleges and other educational institutions with challenging musical material that can be used inter alia to rehearse functional harmonic analyses. And above all: no exercise without a workable solution! Therefore ONE functional harmonic analysis solution is proposed for each chorale (alternative analysis readings are basically possible).
Please note: The chorales offered here for download in the main have the function of exercises for the elaboration of functional harmonic analyses, well knowing that one does not approach the heart and soul of this music with a functional harmonic analysis alone; the spirit of the thorough bass and the counterpoint is essentially inherent in them.
The chorales used are BWV 253 to BWV 438. The New Bach Edition (Series III, Volume 2, Part 2) forms the basis of the musical texts as well as the choral titles (including the arranger’s additions) of the chorales provided. The New Bach Edition is essentially based on the printed edition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s four-part chorale chants published between 1784 and 1787 by Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf in Leipzig. This, in turn, is mainly to be traced back to a collection by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the manuscript of which was acquired by Johann Philipp Kirnberger in 1771.
The collected chorales were already regarded at that time as didactic works and as patterns of the four-part harmony. Even Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons, emphasized the use of chorales as objects of study for the “eager to study the art of setting”.
In a certain and limited sense the chorales can also be seen as objects of study for the “eager to learn the tonal functions of the chords”. With the disappearance of the thorough bass from musical practice towards the end of the 18th century, the possibility of chordal terminology is lost with the thorough-bass figuring. Since 1872 Hugo Riemann (1849-1919) developed a new way of chordal terminology, which received its final formulation in 1893 in his Theory of the tonal functions of chords (functional theory). Riemann’s chordal terminology are ciphers of the harmonies in the functional context of a musically logical cadenza event, independent of the respective key; complicated dissonant chords and chord progressions are then to be understood as more or less modified forms of the three only essential functional harmonies: tonic triad (as tonal centre), subdominant and dominant triad (in fifth relation to the tonal centre). Overall, Riemann’s functional theory is superior to the degree theory, which has long been regarded as classical harmony theory, in that many harmonies cannot be explained by the degree theory.
And now have fun and gain knowledge with the functional harmonic analysis of the small Bach masterpieces of art!