Bach's Chorale Harmonisations

Reports of various issues on work pages.

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pierre.chepelov
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Bach's Chorale Harmonisations

Post by pierre.chepelov »

Compilations of Bach's chorale harmonisations began in the 18th cent.; three (main) numberings are in use today:
* The "371" originating in C.P.E. Bach's publication;
* The "389" from the 1912 Richter edition;
* The BWV numbering, which may seem more logical when refering to the original cantatas, but is not the more practical when working on the entire chorale corpus.
There are other numberings, refering to other editions, which may have historical or pedagogical interest (e.g. the Gounod edition, or the Terry (1929) edition).

As usual we have on IMSLP
* scans of the historic collections
* new typesets (some good, some bad...)

Most of the files are on Chorale_Harmonisations,_BWV_1-438
but the numberings on these editions may not be all the same ; I'm still working on a sortable table which may help everyone to translate from one numberging to the other.

But there are also files on 389 Choralgesänge. Note that apart from the scan of the Richter edition that just came here a few days ago, the edition (and MIDI files) by Jürgen Knuth doesn't follow the "389" numbering, but the BWV one... Logically, it should have been on the other work page.

There is also the Gounod collection elsewhere.


I would like to reorganize this, but there are several options.
Should we:

1. Merge all of these into the Chorale_Harmonisations,_BWV_1-438 page?

2. Split the files according to the numbering each edition use (one for the 389, one for the 371, one for the BWV, Gounod on its own, etc.) ?

Minor questions:
* in case 2. should we ''harmonize'' the work page names (e.g. using only English ''or'' German words)? For example:
**Chorale Harmonisations, BWV 1-438
**371 Chorale Harmonisations, BWV 1-438
**389 Chorale Harmonisations, BWV 1-438
(Note that "Chorale harmonisations" is not the correct translation of "Choralgesänge".)

* Is it allowed to merge the files of the horrible Almendariz "alta calidad" edition into one "complete score" (in order not to let this edition use most of the work page space)? What about the Knuth edition?
(Seriously, WIMA historic contributors tends to upload that kind of huge collections only piece by piece − IMO this is *not* practical!)

* Should the table be moved in an other place, rather than be an old-fashioned talk page?
Davydov
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Re: Bach's Chorale Harmonisations

Post by Davydov »

Yes, the page for "Chorale_Harmonisations,_BWV_1-438" is a bit of a 'fudge', required mainly to accommodate the Armendáriz editions, and it would definitely benefit from a reorganisation.

My first thoughts are:
  • We keep separate 'collections' pages for the 389, the 371 and Gounod's compilation, retaining their original titles
  • There should be a separate new collections page for the Armendáriz editions
  • Scores for individual chorales should be moved to their own pages, which should be set up if they don't already exist. BWV 250-252 might be better treated as a single work
  • After all the scores have been moved from the existing page, your very helpful sortable table should be moved to the main body
How does that sound?
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