About this work
The so-called Leipzig Chorales are not a method arranged from easy to difficult. During the last years of his life, Bach revisited, corrected and brought together pieces written much earlier. The collection contains eighteen chorale settings, now numbered BWV 651 to 668: beneath the unity of the autograph, we hear several periods in the composer’s life and several ways of making the organ sing.
The chorale melody remains the thread running through the collection. It may appear in long notes in the pedal, slip into an inner voice or drive a highly mobile trio. Before working on the fingering, find and sing it: the melody establishes the hierarchy between the sound layers. The other voices are not filler, but a contrapuntal commentary whose articulation must remain clear.
Choose registrations according to the position of the cantus firmus and the building’s acoustic, not from a single recipe for all eighteen pieces. Practise each voice separately, then two at a time, before bringing hands and pedal together. The detour may seem slow; it mainly prevents an hour spent perfecting a very learned fog.
What the document contains
a 68-page volume devoted to the Leipzig Chorales;
complete organ notation;
a single PDF, with no separate MIDI file.
The historical title of this entry stops at BWV 665, while the collection of eighteen chorales is normally identified as BWV 651–668.