Johann Sebastian Bach - booksnow.scholarsportal.info

;132 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.inalienable wealth of genuine religious feeling. This heneither could nor would dispense with in forming his ownchurch style. The system of church modes appears inBach not as one ingeniously employed for certain subjectsit came to a new birth in his genius, and finds its place notmerely in this or that chorale, but in all his music. Whenit seemed suitable he would arrange a chorale strictly inaccordance with the rules of its mode ; for example, in theMixolydian melody " Komm, Gott Schöpfer, heiliger Geist. "^°^Generally, however, he used what his pupil Kittel calls the" mixed " style of harmonising,^^ giving now more and nowlessprominence to the characteristic modulations of a particularmode. Instances of this are the Dorian chorales" Das alte Jahr vergangen ist," " Erschienen ist der herrlichTag"; 210 the Mixolydian "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ,"*'Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet," "Nun preiset alle GottesBarmherzigkeit "; ^^^ the Phrygian "Christum wir sollenloben schon," "Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott."^^^ Italso occurs that melodies belonging to one of the ecclesiasticalmodes appear quite in modern harmonising ; and, on theother hand, Mixolydian modulations (it may be) areintroduced into chorales that do not naturally belong to thismode. The chorales "Jesu nun sei gepreiset," " Es ist dasHeil uns kommen her," and " Vom Himmel hoch da kommich her," in the cantatas of the same name, and especiallythe chorale in the middle of the second part of the Christmasoratorio, are examples of this treatment. For all three are,strictly speaking, Ionian, even the second ; it serves, at anyrate, to prove that Bach thought that the closing chorale ofthat cantata was already more than a century old. Fromall this it is evident that Bach had evolved from the churchmodes a means of expression which he used freely whereverthe poetic meaning and the musical sequence seemed to him208 In the chorales published 1785, No. 187; in Erk's edition, No. 255.Compare Kirnberger, loc. cit., IL, 63.^oäDer angehende praktische Organist. Section III., p. 37 ft".*!''Nos. 180, 29, and 30 in Erk.*iiNos 41 and 213 in Erk, and No. 222 in the chorales of 17S6.212 No. 175 in Erk, and No. 33 in the chorales of 1784.