The fifth section of Bach's ideal service is occupied by two settings of the Confessional hymn "
Aus tiefer Not schrei' ich zu dir" ("
In deep need I cry out to you"). The first of these -
B.W.V. 686 - is the piece which Sydney Grew the Elder tells us was in 1946 regarded as "impracticable, because of its
double pedal part." That does not seem to have much deterred Simon, who played it in public just the other day. The work is written in
six-part harmony, and is as Sydney Grew explains:
"Cast in the form of fugal preparations - each line is preluded, or 'prepared,' by a short fugal working of a subject created from the melody of the line. It is composition in which the poetical subject changes as well as the musical. The poetical course, which is from the gravity of a sense of sin to the radiant joy of a sense of redemption, is the course of thought in the hymn itself, and it gives the piece in brief the total form and character of a Cantata or Passion. Buxtehude among the northerners wrote well in this manner, a fact illustrated by his arrangements of 'Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam' and 'Durch Adams Fall.'"Here (
rapid-share /
send-space) is a memorably misguided interpretation by an anonymous crackpot - one pedal is much louder than the other! - and
here is Helmut's much grander attempt.
Here too as second comparison is
Simon having a go - and very good he is is he not in the main, despite his being too fagged to honour Bach's repeat marking!
In moving here from yesterday's sacrament of Baptism to today's sacrament of Penitence, we thank Mr Grew for providing three attempts at BWV 686. We must first say how much we actually
enjoyed Mr Grew's own "crackpot" effort! Although it was nothing like the actual
sound the composer had in mind, we must at once say that - of all versions available publicly - this one will repay careful listening since it (more than the composer could ever have envisaged we believe!) provides the clearest exposition of the work's structure.
Alone of all performances we have ever heard, this essay demonstrates in the clearest audible way the manner in which the
cantus firmus is employed, and we must therefore congratulate Mr Grew for giving us this learning experience. We do not agree with the Member that his conception was "misguided" at all - in fact we feel that his effort reveals a
complete understanding of the composer's creation.
The chorale melody, together with a "poetic" translation (not our own incidentally!) of verse 1 is here...
In deep distress I cry to thee,
Lord God, hear thou my calling;
Thy gracious ear bend low to me
And open to my crying!
For if thou wilt observance make
Of sin and deed unjustly done,
Who can, Lord, stand before thee?N.B. It should be noted that in the second stave, before the penultimate note, the orphaned stem should be joined to the "missing" note G which the modern engraver omitted!
We were unable to hear any problems with Helmut's repeat, and enjoyed his rendition very much. Simon's too was (despite a "fluff" in the pedals once) also enjoyable, although we were very annoyed that he denied us (and the composer) the specified repeat of the first section.
This piece is, unusually, written for 6 voices. Using (in this case) a double pedal part (requiring throughout the use of both feet) the
cantus firmus is placed strategically in the
right foot throughout (though we should not infer from this that Bach was necessarily right-handed). Double-pedal writing is rare, but not unknown (and we find it again in Bach's early Weimar setting of
An Wasserflussen Babylon BWV 653b).
If Sydney Grew Senior regarded it as "impractical, because of its double pedal part" we can see that he was wrong through the performances Mr Grew (Junior) has adduced. But one thing is we feel sure: no player ever struggled with the 6 parts of this piece anywhere near as much as did the engraver! As the following will demonstrate, Bach eventually
gave up correcting engraving mistakes, and evidently decided that if the publication was ever to happen some of the remaining errors would have to stand for performers to resolve for themselves!
Thus we notice the following remaining
errors:
bar 28 - the second note in the lower pedal part was incorrectly engraved as E, but then altered to C (with the E still left there!)
bar 43 - the last note of the RH appears as a crotchet instead of a minim
bar 46 - the last note of the lower LH voice was omitted, and then subsequently half-inserted without stem
bar 52 - the fourth note in the lower pedal part was originally incorrectly written as C, but this note was then erased and the corrected note D was
not inserted instead as it should have been
bar 53 - the second note of the lower pedal part still lacks the # sign
Fortunately Bach must have judged - in proof-reading this piece for the n-th time (!) - that the expense and time-delay involved in further correction was unmerited, especially since even the dumbest musician would be able to see at a stroke a) what the correct reading should have been, and b) that the remaining mistakes must lie at the door of the crackpot engraver (and not the composer).
Baz
[14.43 - just found the error in bar 43! Others may turn up, and I'll edit as necessary][15.38 - note made of the error in the above chorale melody before the penultimate note]
