Auke Jongbloed, Wer nur den lieben Gott (for right hand, right foot and one finger)

by admin · March 8, 2021

Tomorrow I’m going to the hospital and they will (probably) remove the cast around my wrist. And then I can start playing with my left hand again. The hand has been immobile for over three weeks, so it’ll probably take some practise to get rid of the inevitable stiffnes. As it is less then 24hoursaway that I can use the full handfororgan playing again, I felt was probably safe enough to try and play today with one finger.

And when it comes to organ playing, there is one genre that is ideally suited to play one of the parts with only one finger: the chorale prelude. In a chorale prelude the chorale melody is often played in long notes and that should be perfectly doable with just one finger. Most of the time however, when the chorale melody is not sounding, both hands are required to play the music in between phrases of the chorale melody. And I need something where the accompaniment can be played with one hand and one foot. So I set myself the challenge: write something for one hand, one foot and one finger.

I choose the melody of “Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten” ((He who allows dear God to rule him), a melody that dates back to 1641. I like the way in which this melody is written in a more or less minor tonality, yet with very prominent deviations from the augemented seventh.

The accompaniment is written in a very chromatic way, creating, in my opinion a nice contrast with the modal feel of the ancient melody.

The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sampleset, made by Sonus Paradisi, of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in the St. Omer church in the city of St. Omer.

Score
Wer nur den Lieben Gott