Bach's BWV 611 - and a question
My best Christmas wishes to you all!
Two items below: Bach's BWV 611 - and: "what happened to David Lamb (Agnus_Dei)???"
(I hope all hyperlinks below work as they should!)
1. Bach's “Christum, wir sollen loben schon” (BWV 611)
I spent most of the Christmas season being intrigued by Johann Sebastian Bach's “Christum, wir sollen loben schon” (BWV 611) for four voices, where the melody braids itself through the composition in the Alto voice, the only time in his Orgelbüchlein. Listening to the entire soundscape of the composition, it seems this marvellous chorale could come straight from one of his Cantatas or from his Oratorio like the St Matthew Passion.
Listening to the various recordings present on YouTube and the Contrebombarde submissions, I found only one or two rare recordings where the Alto voice is represented as a Cantus Firmus on a separate keyboard. The best and most striking interpretation is from 2021 by our French colleague Jean-Pierre Silvestre:
https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/47986
Executing BWV 611 with an outspoken C.F. can only be achieved using a technique called "thumbing down" or "thumbing up", where the melody is played on a seperate keyboard by mainly using the thumb which strays from the main keyboard to a second keyboard - a feat I cannot accomplish with my current self-built set-up - my keyboards are too far apart from each other.
The technique is extensively discussed and demonstrated here:
https://bachorgelbuchlein.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/day-13-christum-wir-sollen-loben-schon-bwv-611/
Here's a second discussion of the ins and outs of BWV 611:
http://en.instr.scorser.com/CC/All/Johann+Sebastian+Bach/Orgelb%C3%BCchlein.html
2. What happened to David Lamb (Agnus_Dei)???
There has been a surprisingly long "radio silence" from Contrebombarde's most frequent contributor Agnus_Dei, or David Lamb. I hope he's allright. Does anyone know whether he is OK???
best wishes for 2024!
Jack