Music as a manifestation of spirituality – a few reflections on the correlation between a word and music in Bach’s Christmas chorale Lobt Gott, ihr Christen, allzugleich BWV 732
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/pms.3709Keywords:
Bach, chorale, Gregorian chorale, protestant chorale, song, evangelical song, Lutheran song, prosody, rendition, word, singing, translationAbstract
This paper is an attempt to find the specific word‑and‑music interrelations in Bach’s organ chorale Lobt Gott, ihr Christen, allzugleich BWV 732. The starting point is the quotation by the composer originated from his Bible in which he described the music as “pious.” Since the examined piece is an arrangement of the Lutheran song based on the melody of the introit Puer natus est nobis, the verses of the first stanza have been confronted with a Gregorian antiphon. In effect, a chiasm has been found, noticeable in the combination with Bach’s arrangement of the third and fourth verses. The applied method of analyzing the mutual interrelations between words and music allows to observe in further parts of the paper the astounding compatibility of compositional techniques with particular words and syllables to demonstrate at the same time a high degree of difficulty in translating lyrics into other languages.References
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