Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze

November 22, 2015

The first of Bach's organ works that captured my imagination when I first discovered them as a teenager was the prelude and fugue in B Minor, BWV 544. In the late 90's, after some training at the organ in college and graduate school, I learned to play the prelude, and enjoyed playing it often. The fugue however seemed just a bit beyond my ability at the time, so I never learned to play it. Now I feel more capable, so it's about time I learned to play the fugue, as well as many of the other pieces that have inspired me for so long. Hence, four hours of practice today were spent mostly reading through the great preludes and fugues, several of which I'm planning to learn in earnest in 2016.

Now for a bit of fun. Last week I mentioned that I had transcribed the simple two-voice aria "Öffne dich" (bass line and soprano) from Bach's Cantata BWV 61 Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland. To hear the aria, follow the link and click on 'Öffne dich' menu item at the bottom of the video.

It goes without saying that Bach was a clever composer. In the case of this aria, Bach makes very clever use of meter. Not having seen the score for this work, I simply had to guess at what the meter might be. I listened to the work several times, noting the phrasing as best I could. Some places suggested a triple meter, while others suggested duple meter. The contrasting section before the Da Capo seemed to be clearly in duple meter. Based on those observations, I decided to transcribe the entire work in 2/4, because it seemed the best match for the whole work. This decision was also partly based on knowledge of Bach's keyboard works, which occasionally include phrases of 3 beat groups in 2/4 meter. Here is my transcription, in which I simplified some of the vocal ornamentation.

While the notes are correct, the meter is (not surprisingly) not at all what Bach wrote. Take a look at the actual score below.

What should follow at this point is a comparative analysis of the two versions of this music, showing how one (the original) demonstrates phrasing in 2 over 3, while the other (my transcription) demonstrates phrasing in 3 over 2.

To do this analysis right would take a very long time to prepare all the necessary drawings for this blog, so I'll just give these hints and leave the rest to the interested reader. You may also notice that I omitted a couple of weak-beat 8th notes in the bass line which were played quietly in the recording. The full score can be found at IMSLP.

P.S. I should say something about the section Bach notated in common time (4/4). Normally, when one looks at music of this period and sees 16th notes, the imagined tempo is probably a good clip somewhere between 96 and 120 bpm. In this case, Bach writes in the tempo marking Adagio, which was a bit unusual for him to do. This tempo marking Adagio had a special meaning in the Baroque: that the normal tempo is to be done twice as slow (this is according to Kirnberger and others — Anthony Newman's book Bach and the Baroque is a great reference for tempo issues in Bach's music). So Bach wanted these 16th notes to be played with the same durations as the 8ths notes are played in the rest of the piece! Of course, this is something that would be nearly impossible to know was happening by someone transcribing by ear (e.g. me); hence, Bach's Adagio 16th notes are written as 8th notes in my version.