Description
A hymn whose opening line means Ah, what shall I, a sinner, do, harmonised in E minor and 4/4 with the tune in the soprano over alto, tenor and bass. Catalogued as BWV 259, it is one of Bach's four-part chorales, mostly harmonisations of hymns he used in cantatas and other works; gathered and published after his death, they have long served as models of harmony.
The three lower voices support the hymn tune harmonically, with a cadence at the end of each phrase. At 228 notes in 52 seconds it is short, and its range, D2 to E5, fits on a 61-key keyboard.
Rated intermediate. There are no fast notes, but with four voices shared between two hands, you need fingerings that hold the inner voices while the melody comes forward. Lower the playback speed to hear each voice separately, and repeat one phrase with the A-B loop while practising a finger legato. The hand colours also show which hand is carrying which voice.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
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