Bach, In Dulci Jubilo, BWV 608

[bergk1mp]

Can one person play this by themself? If so, what does each hand do?

[smalin]

@bergk1mp The dark green part is played by the feet; the hands play everything else (with the dark violet part being played by whichever hand is closer to it, mostly).

[Nazisvergasen]

bach luscht voll echt opalahme nazischeise!

[babypuppy69]

The 1980s style computer graphic that goes with this reminds me of that movie, War Games, with Matthew Broderick!

[smalin]

@babypuppy69 btw, it looks like it's from the 1980s because I invented the software in the 1980s

[djfakt]

Now THIS man was genius.

[TrickyEmu]

Who else read BMW?

[godsloved3]

The last chord, i think it's an A flat in there. Or G sharp idk what key this is in lol

I like it though. it's like a twist. lol

[smalin]

@godsloved3 What you're probably hearing is a quint stop on the organ, playing a fifth above the major third in the final chord.

[MatchbookD70]

This music makes me think of rain pouring down straight from the throne of God from a cloudless sky, producing fields of flowers upon impact. And no wonder, with Bach's spiritual connection to God, it could almost be said that his music is dictated from the throne of God through a humble human vessel.

[filebarn]

Only a minute long, but a masterpiece of the art of the canon. Amazing music.

[gloriaphantasma]

what the hell :-))

[MrMesohappy]

Sounds like Heroes of Might and Magic 2 soundtrack

[GirlynTan]

I Heard this 37 Times From Now, But What Is That Lines? I Can't Understand

[BlitzBoyz9996]

pretty good

[unknowngirl777]

out of all the bach you don't have symphony 9!! or moonlight sonata??!?

[unknowngirl777]

okay i just realized those are both beethoven =p

[RICPOIRIER1]

Very beautiful!!

[BigDuckKetterer]

TenStarsplus !!!!! When I was going to a Lutheran school over55 years ago, we learned this song in German "Nun Singet und Seid Froh" English"Now Sing We Now Rejoice" !!! We sang it in German and you wouldn't believe how many old people started cryin in the church!!!! Some said they hadn't heard it like that in over 50 years!!! To this day this remains one of my favorite Christmas Songs!!! Thank You for posting this!!!!!!

[Enix5548]

What's the BWV number? I never even heard this piece.

[smalin]

BWV added to the title; thanks for the suggestion.

[dagorlad3]

The voices in my head told me that it needed more cowbell, but than I realized that was their solution to all pitch problems

[bryancti]

In dulci jubilo,

Nun singet und seid froh!

Unsers Herzens Wonne

Leit in praesepio,

Und leuchtet als die Sonne

Matris in gremio,

Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O!

[littleXsvede]

cantate domino canticum novoum om nistera! i sang tht in choir

[usenetposts]

Amen, frater.

[gsl4444]

The reason I will never learn music (see below). I'll just listen and enjoy. Not try and top trump with what chord blah blah. What voice yadda yadda. Sad.

[rkimmey]

Did you create this midi file by entering the score note-by-note into Finale or Sibelius? Because I think there are (a lot) of errors in here. The last three bars, particularly in the alto voice, is just totally wrong. And I'm pretty sure Bach would have never ended a piece with a suspended major 7th dissonance. It's kind of Stravinsky-esque!

[smalin]

I'm not hearing what you're hearing, apparently.

The score I used (see the FAQ) is from the Dover reprint.

I just played through the video while watching the score.

It all seems to match up to me.

Could you tell me a particular note you think is wrong?

[rkimmey]

@smalin Maybe my ears have gone, or maybe my video player is malfunctioning, but the final chord of this piece sounds extremely dissonant to me. Listen again to what should be parallel sixth motion in the alto and baritone in the penultimate measure as they resolve to the held A's of the bass and top pedal. This doesn't resolve to a major chord... Maybe the problem is that your "instruments" aren't both pitched at 440? Because to be honest, the alto voice sounds out of tune for most of it.

[rkimmey]

Well, the 440 thing wouldn't explain the alto line though... I don't know. I'm stumped. But listen to the final chord. There's definitely a clunker in there--I'm just having trouble picking it out of the block of samplings.

[smalin]

Oh, I bet I know what it is.

One of the stops on the alto voice is a quint.

So you're hearing the fifth above the played note.

Which in the case of the final chord is a fifth above the third, a major seventh.

I'm guessing you don't listen to much organ music (else you'd be used to this).

[rkimmey]

@smalin Ha, I think we realized what it was at the same time. Glad to know I'm not hearing things. . .

[SICKxCHARISMAxTURTLE]

@smalin

I was intrigued by these comments.

By curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "stops on the alto voice" being a "quint"?

I haven't heard those terms before.

[smalin]

@SICKxCHARISMAxTURTLE Parts in a 4-part piece are sometimes referred to as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. A stop is a sub-instrument of the organ (typically a set of pipes that sound the same that cover the range of a keyboard or pedalboard). A quint stop sounds at the interval of a fifth (or, more often, an octave plus a fifth) higher than the pitch of the key which plays it.

[smalin]

Sorry, I don't hear it. It sounds fine to me.

[rodstartube]

this is keyboard realtime played

[intuitiveexplorer]

I watched the entire playlist.

[PolskieSlowiki]

Knabenchor Poznan singt Offertorium VI "In festo Sanctorum Innocentium" von Mikołaj Zieleński und als zweite In dulci iubilo von Leonhard Schroter

[expatpeter]

I love these visualizations very much. The video here was fortunately not the first that I saw. Sorry, but the music is better, than in the video here.

[vallespir1962]

ja.molt maco

[Szwambrania]

Piękne :-).

[dareal92]

Wunderschön!

[jasomorr]

I like it.

Every Christmas I play from the Orgelbuchlein a few pieces, this one is never where I want it to be!! Tricky devil with the 3 against 2.

[gedeon541]

MOI J'AIME C'EST TOUT

[caioscattini]

awesome! me and may son (2 yrs) cant stop watching it!

[Askelairlines747]

i could actually whistle along with the music, i never heard it before, i can't read notes.... but yet i saw what tone was coming :-D

[DaRulerofDaSouF]

this all we listen to in my music appreciation class! i love music come to my channel and check out my music!

[Georgiaorganist]

This instrument sounds entirely too electronic.

[Frankadelphia]

Keep up the great videos.

[fer040691]

hola

estoy buscancdo una cancion de este BAch pero tocando el chelon oel violin muy muy grande XD si saben donde esta o pueden dejarme un link se los agradeceria =D

[Glacene]

good lord this sounds awful

[smalin]

Think I should take it down?

[fcouperin]

nah! the piece is fine... maybe try other instruments?

[Juantalope]

yes. yes i do

[Glacene]

no! it's great to see, it'd be even better if the instruments were, um, different :)

[urchin34]

You're right this does sound terrible. I think it is just the song though.

[bergk1mp]

are you deaf? this is a marriage of a beautiful folk tune with the most sophisticated musical mind the world has ever seen. thank you smalin for revealing the structure of it.

[giodel93]

I prefere the "Toccata e fuga in Re minore" because the ensemble of the 3 voices gives the right armony to the "Sonata"

[ilovemonke3]

it's been proven that listening to bach increases your creativity. i like this much more that tocatta and fugue in d minor. it just seems depressing (and yes i know that's the point because it's minor).

[smalin]

>it's been proven that listening to bach increases your creativity.

That sounds like an urban myth to me. Who proved it? Where can we read about the proof?

[5RetardedSquirrels]

Using a minor doesn't mean the music will be depressing. In fact there is a lot of music in minor keys that is very lively. The minor mode simply is more tense then the major mode, at least in my opinion. Take Bach's E minor Fugue from WTC 1 its very upbeat. However I have found the minor scale lends itself better to chromatic notes, which can create the depressing "sigh" effect most of us are familier with, look at Bach's B minor Fugue from WTC 1 to see what I mean.

[revolutionstrtr]

he's not a man he's a machine!!!

[XXLSexy2k7]

Turning bach into triumphant sonic the hedgehog music lol

It really does sound like Zelda has rescued the princess

[Zapalta]

Zelda IS the princess >.> Link is the hero. Common mistake.

But I agree with you, it does sound like that

[XXLSexy2k7]

lol

I totally knew that too.

I do that crap all the time,

like near my home town there are two cities:

Big Lake and Big Spring to add to the confusion one is East of here and one is West, thusly everyone gets really aggravated when my directions end up wrong lol

[AsSomedayItMayHappen]

To think that that is just my brain trying to attribute order to an unfamiliar sound is just incredible...

[AsSomedayItMayHappen]

The HUMAN BRAIN IS AMAZING!

[AsSomedayItMayHappen]

This is really neat Smalin. Just one question: Are the two organ parts tuned to Baroque pitch, or am I just hearing weird overtones in there that make the last chord sound almost as low as a Major-Seventh?

I thought it was my speakers at first but it sounds the same my friends' computer.

[smalin]

No, it's just a psychoacoustical effect.

[AsSomedayItMayHappen]

I've never even heard of that. You'll have to explain. Or were you just being cheeky? =D

[smalin]

You're right to be suspicious, but in this case, I'm not being cheeky.  I've added an item to the FAQ about the effect I'm referring to.

[KIMAEREE]

음악성인이신 바흐님께 바치는곡입니다

[watsonsammy]

That's pretty cool.

[HuggumsMcgehee]

Is this really organ? I'm not overly familiar with the instrument beyond the most popular conception of it.

[smalin]

see the FAQ

[HuggumsMcgehee]

Oh.  I completely missed that.

[smalin]

No you didn't; I added it in response to your question.

[airandfingers]

Sounds like synthesized organ to me, and maybe a trumpet and some other stuff.

[airandfingers]

Maybe synthesized organ, trumpet, flute, and cello (?)

[Feebzfashion]

awful sounds like screaming

[smalin]

Really?

[GuacamoleKun]

It is a little garish.

[SomeDumbYankee]

I'm not following this as an organ piece. Not an organist myself, but I've seen enough of 'em at work to have a basic idea.

You have two hands and your feet.  That's three to play, but there are four lines...

Can you play two sets of stops with the pedals?

[smalin]

The trick is that the pedals are not playing the lowest (fast) voice, but the lower of the two slow parts. The other three voices are done with the hands (you can play more than two lines; see, e.g. my Contrapunctus 9 video).

[smalin]

I've posted a PDF of the score (see the FAQ); you can see how the parts are distributed between two hands and feet.

[MildlyMentalTeen13]

-puts on a corset dress and takes Eric Lesters hand-

Shall we go dance?

[TheRealEricLester]

man, this makes me want to dance in a court with a beautiful maiden

[donottawaguitar]

sounds like mario brothers just kidding i made the king of pop a guitar tribute have a listen then

[Ruwach144]

Love it.

[neviander]

Bach wrote organ pieces, that it sounds like a midi is purely coincidental. Organs sounded like that 300 years before midis were even thought of.

[Mastercluster]

dont forgett all modern synth´s and midi´s are based to their nature counterpart. Thats the reason why they sounds so similar. But a generic sound can never reach the level of a natural sound!

[lekezenman]

Ah! KNOW BETTER! This is a shit version on a shit instrument by a tasteless someone or a computer!

At least listen to the guitar version of Mike Oldfield if you're immature enough not to listen to Johan Sebastian Bach!

Bernard

[Fersomling]

Lekezenman, if you must use guttersnipe language, kindly do so away from the classical music section.

[LastDayInSin]

Someone like sputting themselves on a pedestal, don't they?

[sushibub]

Like An NES Horn on wii music

like music on old games consoles

[mogschik]

oooh right^^

[robdun]

Not Nes more like midi on 16 bit like Genesis or Super Nintendo. Nes did chip tunes because it's 8 bit.

[thegodlessatheist]

... not one of his best efforts

[random1026]

this sounds like it should be on Zelda

[wenaolong]

Hehe, yeah. But you know what? Zelda stole this from Bach. Zelda should say "Thanks Bach, for letting us decorate our otherwise moronic video game with your pretty music, which is the only thing that is good about it."

[timothybigwangsmith]

zelda is THE SHIT

[JUKIO01]

i know, they should make a movie

[unitedcrab]

uh, zelda never stole anything from bach.

[greengrendel]

it does sound a little bit like midi music bit it's becaus of some instruments.

[carrotjuse]

R u kidding? Everybody steals from the master, unitedcrab, especially Zelda.

[Gaaraguy13]

Zelda is moronic...

but you aren't nearly intelligent enough to make a series of that caliber, even with the proper team.

So what does that make you I wonder?

[Rudy627]

FIGURED IT OUT!!! For those Christian-Lutherans who use the red hymnal, it sounds like "Now Sing We Now Rejoice" yeah it's a Christmas hymn but still i figured it out!

[smalin]

Yep, that's right, same tune.

[Sandman1278]

Bach wrote alot of Lutheran Music, and had alot based off of Lutheran Hymns, That was his job.

[Rudy627]

I feel like the light green is a church Easter hymn... well all of it together sounds like a church Easter hymn in my opinion

[guthrj]

The hemiola stands out for sure, but this was considered unmusical for that very reason. Strange how tastes change over time.

[alk222111000]

That doesn't matter it still is music!!!

[guthrj]

1) No one said it wasn't music. 2) Musical interpretation does matter to some people.

[smalin]

Listening to the Concerto Italiano's performance of the first movement of the first Brandenburg Concerto (on YouTube it's watch?v=0BZW8fdxOW4), I was reminded how the horn parts have triplets against the duplets in the other parts. Do you think these should be played as duplets to make them more "musical" ... or left as triplets ... or ... ?

JFTR, two-against-three isn't a technically a hemiola (at least, not when it's like it is in In Dulci Jubilo) --- it's a polyrhythm (or cross rhythm).

[smalin]

>Strange how tastes change over time.

Yes, every period has its own preferences and enthusiasms. Polyrhythms were popular before Bach (e.g. medieval French) and after (e.g. Brahms). And, of course, it's very late 20th century to want performances to be historically informed; this was of no concern to Mendelssohn when he revived Bach's music ... or to Bach ...

[guthrj]

Beginning in ms. 4, the score indicates a quarter-note repeated-note pattern against the prevailing quarter-eighth pattern, The result is a hemiola that is foreign to the baroque period. It is customary to interpret the offending quarter note pattern as a quarter-eighth pattern.

[smalin]

Yeah, I know; I just like it this way; I wasn't trying to be historically accurate --- just musical. It seemed to me that the repeated notes stood out better when they were given the notated polyrhythm.

[smartalek1]

Multithanks for this and all your other work.

On a related subject, can you think of any way to make our politics "jerk-free"?

[smalin]

Since one person's jerk is another person's hero, I don't think that's possible, even in theory.

[fluence51]

Hey! In Dulci Jubilo is not Bach's. It was written in 1265!

Well, good video although.

[smalin]

That may be true of the melody, but this double canon was composed by J. S. Bach, around 1715 (it's in his Orgelbüchlein).

[fluterific00]

how do you get mam to play without jerking? Is it primarily the quality of the computer?

[smalin]

>how do you get mam to play without jerking?

I wish there were a simple answer to that, but there isn't. The only version of the software that was 100% smooth was the version I wrote in 1988 which required special hardware that is no longer available. These days, I have custom frame-rendering software, but once the frames are turned into a movie, you're at the mercy of whatever software is playing back that movie, and I don't know of any that is completely jerk-free.

[Jonasanddemilover94]

cn yuo do bethoveen moonlilght senata 1st and 3 erd movment

[capekurtz]

A very poor interpretation as the ornamentation is totally dominated by the cantus firmus.

I suggest you listen to Helmut Walcha's recording on Archiv Produktion.

[JarusYarus]

'Poor interpretation'?! It's a gorram MIDI file!

[Meech430]

Fire the double Cannon! *Boom*!

[ihope127]

What does the title mean? "In candy, there is happiness"? :-)

[ihope127]

Oh, it's "In sweet rejoicing". How mundane--"In candy, there is happiness" would be an excellent title for a song such as this!

[STARness767]

dude this sounds like Disney's electrical parade

[wickerpony]

haha spasmosis!

[Paudogi]

If you just listen to this piece you can tell that it's a DOUBLE CANNON, you pompous ass...

[jfeucht82]

Actually, it's a double 'canon', but I guess I made that mistake too, so I won't hold it against you.

[IUseDisAcct2ViewVids]

Lulz! I don't feel like Googling or going to Wikipedia. What's a canon? And what's a double canon?

[smalin]

>I don't feel like Googling or going to Wikipedia. What's a canon? And what's a double canon?

Sorry, I can't tell you; it's a secret.

[wolffrankenstein]

It's a weapon. Mozart and Beethoven refused to use canons because they were hippies.

[TheMoi]

Canon makes printers, scanners and stuff like that.

[loolapaloosah]

hahahaa :-D

[sdm02]

It's a WMD of course! (Weapon of Musical Deployment)  Double canon, doubly so. (That's all you get until you feel like going to Wikipedia :-))

[smalin]

Tell it.

[jfeucht82]

It's interesting viewing Bach's works via illustrations like this. It makes you more capable of understanding the contrapuntal structure. For instance, if you watch this video and you don't realize this peice is a cannon, you must have a pretty low IQ.

[sp00n3d]

Er... Cannon or canon?

[bsl103158]

canon

[raven1234]

Wow isn't that be a bit offensive. All all of us are classical lovers. Now will you care to how many bones in a T-rex if you've no interest in the subject?

[raven1234]

Wow isn't that be a bit offensive? Not all of us are classical lovers. Now will you care to how many bones in a T-rex if you've no interest on the subject?

*sorry for not looking at what I was typing.

[jfeucht82]

There are roughly 200 bones in a T-Rex.

I didn't mean to be offensive in that comment, and I probably should have worded it differently. My only point is that this video makes it obvious that the piece is a 'canon' (not cannon), and I wasn't criticizing anybody.

[raven1234]

thanks for researching about how many bones in T-rex and all. I think it might kinda offensive to some people as they see the "low IQ" phase. Someone doesn't know about Classical Music doesn't mean he/she is stupid =]

[nesrobot]

excuse me for not being a musicologist. Jeez, some people. What if I said "people that don't understand T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ have a low IQ"?