Anonymus (Kirchhoff?), Ciaconna “Jesus Christus unser Heiland, der von uns” (2)

by admin · January 21, 2020

Manuscript Mus ms 40037, owned by the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, contains 5 chorale preludes to “Jesus Christus, under Heiland, der von uns”. Three of them were composed by Zachow, two remain anonymous. Though there is no indication of a composer for both of these preludes, I think it is safe to say that both were composed by the same anonymous composer. This anonymous composer saw that each of the four phrases of the melody of this choral can have the same harmonisation. He used this characteristic of the chorale melody to write two Ciaconsas.

The second of these two is for manuals only. The bass voice is almost identical to the bass voice in the other Ciaconna. Only one bars serves as an introduction, so the bass part is repeated four times and not five times as in the first Ciaconna. In the first Ciaconna the left hand had a part with sixteenth notes, so the main motion came from that left hand part. In this Ciaconna the main motion comes from the bass voice, It’s intruiging that now is the main motion instead of the underpinning, these same notes feel almost dance like. The composer was right to use the same part twice, to different effect.

The recording was done on the sampleset, made by Voxus, of the Matthijs van Deventer-orgel in the Grote Kerk, Nijkerk.

Score
Anonymus, Ciaconna Jesus Christus unser Heiland der von uns