Christ lag in Todesbanden

Manuscript Mus ms 40037, owned by the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, contains over 40 choral preludes composed by Zachow or his pupil Kirchhof. Transcribing these preludes is a nice new project for the new year.

I'll start with the two preludes to "Christ lag in Todesbanden". In the manuscript only the first one is ascribed to Zachow. The second does not have an indication of a composer. It is therefore not certain whether this second piece was composed by Zachow, or indeed if it is a seperate composition and not a continuation of the preceding one. For now I'll treat both as seperate compositions.

The first prelude to "Christ lag in Todesbanden" is a beautiful flowing three part composition in triple meter. The choral melody is played in the soprano voice, whil the other two voices play an effective accompaniment.

Score available here: http://partitura.org/index.php/friedrich-wilhelm-zachow-christ-lag-in-todebanden-lv-47a