BBC - Sacred Music - Bach and the Lutheran Legacy - Part 2/6

Buy The Sixteen's Sacred Music DVD at: http://amzn.to/tQsT4Q

For further reading:

Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion: Genesis, Transmission, and Meaning by Alfred Dürr http://amzn.to/wAmd4v

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff
http://amzn.to/x0IVj4

Simon Russell Beale explores the flowering of Western sacred music. With music performed by The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, Beale explores how Martin Luther, himself a composer, had a profound effect on the development of sacred music, re-defining the role of congregational singing and the use of the organ in services. Ultimately, these reforms would shape the world of JS Bach and inspire him to write some of the greatest sacred music.

http://www.open2.net/sacredmusic/luther.html

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dAC1lLYJpg
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7-fUPwPHaE
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu1rfLUTzow
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gZKv19KEtA
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lecMZDofRw
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr6g9B4nCnI

UPDATE: Subtitles added.

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[uscgkid109]

Bach is my cousin. Very strange...

[frillydaffodilly]

Trev!!!! xxx

[alilapointe1]

luther doctrine ????????????

[wcbroccoli]

The music originally introduced into Lutheran services was in somewhat complex, polyphonic settings. It's very unlikely that the congregation sang these settings. Such settings were more likely performed by trained singers. The vocal chorale harmonizations Bach wrote for the Leipzig liturgy were not sung by the congregation, nor were they intended to be sung by the congregation, contrary to what is suggested in this video.

[wcbroccoli]

Luther acknowledged that he wasn't a composer and engaged professional musicians to provide church music. The isometric harmonization of Luther's tune heard here is by Bach,not Luther. The tune Luther composed (1527-29) is much more rhythmic. Isometric versions of Lutheran hymn tunes began to appear in the 17th c.

[CinnAlla]

@wcbroccoli It's just an accent. It's no big deal. We've got over it.

[wcbroccoli]

@CinnAlla Here, in the American colonies, we don't pretend not to know how continental European consonants and vowels are pronounced: Yay-Zoo. Not Gee-Zyou. lol

I suppose you Brits would say "Hurts oond Mund ('u' as in shun) oond Tat ('a' as in rat) oond Lee-bun".

[CinnAlla]

@wcbroccoli The 10th movement of Bach's cantata 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben' is commonly known in Britain (and in most other English-speaking countries) as 'Jesu joy of man's desiring', after the first line of the English version by Robert Bridges. 'Jesu' is usually sung or pronounced as 'jee-zyoo' rather than 'yay-soo' in this and in many other pieces of religious music in English. It's just how it is. We manage to live with it.

[wcbroccoli]

@CinnAlla Er... the narrator also speaks German, so he KNOWS that "Jesu" is NOT pronounced Gee-zoo!

[CinnAlla]

@wcbroccoli er... because he's English?