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Bach Chorale Harmonization
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0:00
- Hi, welcome to this session, in which we are going to harmonise a chorale melody, in the style of Bach. Now, this is something you may want to know about because you're a university or college music student who's maybe facing this challenge on a course, or it may simply be that it's something you're interested in, or it may be that you're more interested in how to find chords that fit with a given melody. But it will suit any of those purposes. So, here we have on the board, a chorale melody.
0:35
Now I have to start by saying that this isn't a real chorale melody, I've just made one up, in the style of a chorale melody, for copyright reasons. But it's the kind of melody that composers like Bach would've worked with. Bach inherited these chorale melodies in the life of the Church, and he decided to re-harmonise them to make them rather more interesting. So, that's what we're going to set about this evening, to see how we get on with this. Where do we begin?
1:08
Well, first of all, let's talk about these pause marks. And you may already know, that the pause marks in Bach chorales don't actually mean pause marks at all, they're merely there to indicate the end of a phrase. But that's very critical stuff for us, because we need to know where each phrase is going to end. So we've got three phrases ending where the pause marks are indicated. One thing we'll want to do fairly early on, is to have a look through the given chorale melody,
1:42
and decide on the key structure. Well, the key signature tells us we've got two sharps to deal with, so that means we're either in the key D of major or in the key of B minor. And I'm assuming, for the purposes of this film, that people know about key signatures. If that's slightly hazy for you, you can find a free film on YouTube that we've done about the circle of fifths that will tell you all about that. Anyway, are we in D major or in B minor? Well, we've got three D's to start,
2:19
so D is maybe coming up front there. We've got D at the end, so it's maybe looking more like D major than B minor. If the chorale melody were to be in B minor, we might expect to see some A-sharps. Well, I can't see any A-sharps, I can see quite a few A-naturals around, but no A-sharps. There might just be a G-sharp in B minor, and there is a G-sharp there, so that's the only thing that might just make us think for a brief moment about B minor. But on balance, we're really in the key of D major.
2:56
And the G-sharp is something we need to come back to very shortly because it might be indicating a change of key, a modulation. So, let's have a look at the first phrase, and it looks as if it's going to sit quite comfortably in the key of D major. So, I wonder what this cadence is going to be at this point, because when you harmonise a chorale, it's often a good idea to begin with keys and cadences. If I look at this A, well, A could belong to chord I, or it could belong to chord V.
3:33
So we've the option here of more than one possible cadence, so we're going to have to think about that in a moment. When we get to the end, we're finishing on D, it's the last chord of what is, in this case, a fairly short chorale, so that's probably going to finish on a chord I. Let's just be sure about our chords before we go any further. So, just a reminder of how we locate the chords that we need for the key of D major.
4:05
So there's our key signature, and obviously, I'm going to write a scale of D major, here come the notes for that. I don't need D at the top because I've got D at the bottom, and to find the chords, I add a third and a fifth above each note of the scale. So here they come, and sometimes it's quite helpful to do this just so you can actually see quite readily what the options are for the chords. And we always label these of course in Roman Numerals, so I, II, III, IV V VI and VII.
4:52
So you can see, if we look at the last note first, there's a D, and D sits in chord I, and that's really the most logical place for our chorale to finish, so you might even want to begin with the very last chord. You see what I was talking about here though, we've got an A at this cadence, and if we're having a cadence here, well, it could be a perfect cadence, which is chord V followed by I. It could be a plagal cadence, chord IV followed by I. It could be an imperfect cadence,
5:21
which is technically anything followed by V, but it's normally I to V, II to V, or IV to V. It can't really be an interrupted cadence, so we can eliminate that one. But for the time being, let's go for a chord I, though we need to check it out with the chord before, because if we're going to finish on a chord I, this is going to have to be a perfect cadence, or a plagal cadence. So we've either got to go V here, or IV. Well, if we look at V, V is A, C-sharp, E, and B does not belong to chord V,
5:58
so it can't be a perfect cadence. chord IV however, G, B, D, that's got this B in it, so it could be a chord IV. So we might be looking at a plagal cadence there. Okay, but you could go IV to V, and call it an imperfect cadence, so that's another option. And of course, one thing about any kind of harmonisation, including harmonisation in the style of Bach, is that quite often, there's more than one option. Right at the end, we might just deal with this cadence,
6:32
I wonder what this chord could be, if this is a chord I, it's either got to be a perfect cadence, or a plagal cadence. So we need to look at this E and decide whether this E fits in chord V or in chord IV. Well V is A, C-sharp, E, so it fits there. IV is G, B, D, doesn't fit chord IV. So it looks as if this is going to be a V, I, so that's quite handy, we've got a plagal cadence here, which if we want to, we could turn into an imperfect cadence by going IV, V.
7:09
But we've got a perfect cadence at the end, V, I. Okay, what about this middle phrase? Because if we look at this middle phrase here, we can see that what's happened, is that a G-sharp has been introduced. And the last note of this phrase is A. Well, if I've got F-sharp and C-sharp, and I add G-sharp, that is in fact the next sharp in the circle of fifths. So that's suggesting that we might possibly have modulated to the key of A major. That would be perfectly logical
7:45
because A major is the dominant key of D major. So it's looking like A major, isn't it? If it's modulating to A major, and we can get a chord I in here, that will make it a nice, strong modulation, and a nice, strong cadence. So if I was to think about these chords in A major for a moment, it might just be helpful if we put these alongside. So, there we are. And the scale of A, I'm going to start it down here, will look like this.
8:28
And it would be helpful if I put three sharps into the key signature, there they go. And we do the same thing of course, we add a third and a fifth above each of these notes, to give us all the chords that we need for the key of A major. So there they are, I, II, III, IV V VI VII. So, if we're in A major at this point, does this A fit chord I in A major? Well, yes, A is at the bottom of that, so it's looking fairly safe as a I in A major. So we might be able to step back
9:18
from that I in A major now and say, if the cadence finishes on a I, then it will have to be preceded by a IV or a V. If it's a perfect cadence, it's going to go V to I, if it's a plagal cadence, it's going to go IV to I. So in the key of A major, does G-sharp fit with chord V or with chord IV? Well, chord IV, D, F-sharp, A, no G-sharp there, so that doesn't fit. Chord V, E, G-sharp, B, would fit very nicely, so maybe we're going to go for another perfect cadence. And don't worry about the fact
9:54
we've got a perfect cadence at the end, and we've got a perfect cadence here as well, because actually, we're in two different keys. So you see that in terms of the initial planning, this is quite a good way to begin the task, just thinking about keys and then thinking about cadences, so we know where each of these phrases is going. Now, let's go back to the beginning of the chorale and see if we can start plotting some chords. You've probably noticed that this chorale has an anacrusic start.
10:28
In other words, it doesn't begin on the first beat of the bar. In this case, it starts one beat before the first bar line, what's sometimes called an upbeat. And quite often, when you have an anacrusic start, the anacrusic beat here is a chord V, followed by a chord I. That's often an effective start, but it's not going to work in this case, because chord V, in the key of D of course, doesn't have a D in it, A, C-sharp, E, not going to fit the first chord.
10:59
So even though quite often you would use V as the anacrusis, onto I, if that fits, we're not going to do that here, so don't just assume that that will always fit, because it won't here. So if that's not going to work, we want to start on a chord I if we can, because we're keen to establish the key of D major, and thankfully, D fits with chord I. So let's commit to that.
11:29
Now I've purposely done something at the beginning of this chorale which sometimes comes up when you're working these harmonizations and it can be a bit of a pain. And the problem is this, we've got three D's. Now, it could be very easily the case that the chorale gets stuck right at the beginning, because we might just think, well, chord I, chord I, chord I. But if I start the chorale going I, I, I, it's actually going to get off to a pretty dull start. So I need to think of some options.
12:00
It could be that I could go from I to Ib, in other words, chord I in first inversion. Or it could be that I could look for another chord with D in it. Now here's something that's just worth thinking about, which will have occurred to many people before. Any note that we're trying to harmonise, will be the root of I chord, it will be the middle, the third, of another chord, and it will be the top, or the fifth, of another chord. So there will always be three chords at least,
12:31
that will fit that note. I say at least because you might also find that there are things like seventh chords, that give you additional options. But for now, let's start with the basics. We've already used chord I, so here's D, and we said that D is at the bottom of chord I. But D is also the middle of this chord, which is chord VI, B, D, F-sharp. And D is also the top of this chord, which is chord IV, G, B, D. So I, VI, and IV, all fit those D's. So we could mess around maybe,
13:13
with inversions of chord I, or we could utilise VI and, or IV. Well, for now, how about we do this, we start with chord I, and we go to chord VI. And then maybe move on to chord IV. That would give us three different chords, how would that actually sound? Here's I, here's VI, and here's IV. So you can hear those three different colours of those three different chords, which is much better than getting stuck on I, I, I. And if we go from I to Ib, well we've either got to repeat Ib,
13:57
or go back to I again, because we probably don't want to use Ic. Second inversions have to be used with great care, so if you come across a second inversion, what we call a "c" chord, we can only use that in particular places. Sometimes you can have a IVc followed by a I, that's one place in which it's used. Much more commonly, you have a Ic followed by a V, so you go Ic, V, or you go Ic, V, I. But otherwise, we don't just stick in second inversions
14:31
most of the time, so it's really root position chords, and first inversion chords. Anyway, for now, three notes, each has its own chord, I, VI, IV, Now, our chorale is finally on the move, and we have a C-sharp next. So again, we can think, okay well, C-sharp's got to be the root of I chord, here it is, it's the root of VII, isn't it? And C-sharp must be the middle of something, well, here it is, chord V. And C-sharp must be the top of something, here it is, chord III.
15:07
Well, VII is a chord we need to be a little bit careful about, because you might just be tricked into thinking that because we're in a major key, all these chords are major chords, but actually, they're not. In a major key, chords I, IV, and V, are the major chords in the key. But chords II, and III, and VI, are actually minor chords. And chord VII is something else again, chord VII is a diminished chord, and you can probably hear it's got a different feel to it.
15:49
And some textbooks advise you to avoid chord VII like the plague. VII can be used very effectively in some places, but it certainly needs to be used with care. VII is there for the least likely chord to be used, and III, after VII, is usually the next weakest chord. Again, it can be used very effectively, but doesn't tend to get used that often. So if we've got a choice of VII, V, or III, V is the most likely thing that we're going to go for here. So let's go for a chord V.
16:25
Then let's look onto the next beat, because there's something interesting going on here. You can see in the melody that we've now got two quavers. Now we could find a chord that fits the D, then we could look for a chord that fits the C-sharp, and then we could go on and find a chord that fits this B. But, if I have a chord on this quaver, and then on this quaver, and then on the next beat, the chords are going to move very quickly, and it can have quite a kind of unsettling effect on the music.
16:55
So say I went for three chords there, you can suddenly hear what's happening to the music, it's getting very agitated. And so far, we've had one chord for each beat. This is what we call the harmonic rhythm, so the harmonic rhythm is working in crotchets, every crotchet beat, we seem to be looking at a new chord. So we probably don't want to harmonise both of those quavers. Now we could harmonise the D, and then the C-sharp would just pass by on its way to the next chord.
17:33
Or, we could maybe harmonise the C-sharp, and experience this D as a kind of dissonance, a kind of appoggiatura note. But, maybe for now, the best thing we can do is to harmonise the D. This means that the C is called a passing note. The C-sharp here is the passing note. What constitutes a passing note? Well, the C-sharp is passing by step, between the D and the B. And to qualify as a passing note, it's important that it does just that, it passes by step, so you can't have a leap,
18:10
you couldn't have D, C-sharp, dropping to A, for example. But D, C-sharp, to B is all going by step. It could go the other way, B, C-sharp, D. Doesn't matter, as long as it's going by step, between two harmony notes, in other words, two notes that are going to attract a chord. And because this passing note comes between the beats, we'll have a chord on the fourth beat of this bar, then we'll have the passing note on that last quaver in between beats four and beat one of the next bar.
18:42
Because the passing note's between beats, we say it's an unaccented passing note. If the passing note comes on the beat, then we can say it's an accented passing note. Accented passing notes are stronger, here's an accented passing note. You can hear how strong that note is at the top. Here it comes now. That's an accented passing note. If I do it as an unaccented passing note, it goes like this, and you can hear the passing note's still there, but it's far gentler.
19:20
So, quite often you'll find that the passing notes in chorales are unaccented passing notes, not always, but quite often. So if we harmonise the D, find a chord for the D, we can allow that C-sharp to pass by without worrying about whether it belongs to the chord or not. Okay well, we're back dealing with D again, we had three D's to kick off and here we are, back with another D. So we know that D fits with chord I, chord VI, and chord IV. So, do we want to go back to IV?
19:51
Well, we just left that, we've got a IV coming up, so maybe that's not such a good idea. Do we want to go to a VI? Well, we could do, is there's something else we could do? Well, how about this, we go back for a chord I, but this time, we call it Ib. In other words, it's chord I in first inversion. Now what do I mean by that? Here's chord I, D, F-sharp, and A, and as long as I use the notes of that triad, I can arrange my chord in any way I want to. So here's a chord using those three notes,
20:29
D, F-sharp, and A, here's another chord that's just the same but with the notes differently organised, here's another one, here's another one, here's another one, So, as long as I've got those three notes, D, F-sharp, and A, I'm dealing with chord I. If it's I on its own, it's what we call Ia. If you see nothing at all, the nothing means "a". And all that means is it's the notes of chord I in root position with the bottom note at the bottom. So you see, I've always got D at the bottom
21:05
of my chord I. Wherever I'm arranging my notes, there's D at the bottom. Could be in a different octave, could be there, could be here, but as long as D is at the bottom, it's Ia, I in root position. If I put F-sharp at the bottom, but I'm still using these notes, D, F-sharp, and A, then we're using chord I in it's first inversion, and we label it Ib. So here's an example of a Ib chord, So do you see what I've got in this chord, I've got D's, F-sharp, and A,
21:38
but the F-sharp is in the bass this time. I could rearrange it in some other way, but if it's using these notes, D, F-sharp, A, it's chord I, but if F-sharp's at the bottom, it's Ib. And of course, logic tells us that if A were to go at the bottom of this same chord, it would be in second inversion, and we would call it Ic. So here's Ic, it's D, F-sharp, and A, but with A in the bass. And I can again arrange this chord in any way I want to, I can drop the A, say, another octave.
22:12
But that's I in its second inversion. And you'll remember earlier on I was saying, second inversions have to be handled with care. If you listen to this Ic, this I in second inversion, you can feel it's kind of pulling somewhere else. So a second inversion chord is a bit weaker than a root position or a first inversion, because it's always pulling to somewhere else. Okay, I've gone for a Ib here, why have I done that? I don't just want to go back to I, or VI, or IV,
22:44
because we've just had them fairly recently, and also, all of our chords so far, have been root position chords. And it's quite nice if you can, during the course of your chorale, to get a bit of a balance between root position and first inversion chords.
23:02
Okay, well we've got IV, I, going onto the cadence. There's another B there, isn't there? So, what else would fit with B? Well, there's a B in chord II, isn't there? We've already talked about the chord IV, there's a B in chord VI. So those are options, I'm going to suggest something else in due course, and we'll come back to that in just a moment. For now, let's just move on to the second phrase. Now we've already said that this phrase modulates to A major, the dominant key,
23:35
and remember, these are our A major chords, when we need them. When we modulate from one key to another, it's important that we use something called a pivot chord. What's a pivot chord? I like to think of it as a kind of musical door, you know, if you go from I room to the next room, you have to go through the door, you can't just walk through the wall. So the door is your point of access between two spaces, between two rooms. A pivot chord is a chord that belongs to both the key you're leaving,
24:09
and the key to which you're going. So let's have a look and see if we can find any pivot chords, because we're going to need one. If I look at chord I in D major, I can see that it's also chord IV in A major. So I is a pivot chord. If I look at chord II in D major, you might be thinking, oh great, there's another one look, because there's chord V in A major. No, that's not a pivot chord, because this is E, G-natural, B, that's chord II, isn't it, in D major, following the key signature.
24:41
But in A major, we've got E, G-sharp, B, because of the key signature, so II is not a pivot chord. What about chord III? Well, there's III in D, can we see that chord? Yes we can, it's VI in A. What about chord IV? Well, this is looking promising, it's looking a bit like VII in A. But no it's not, because IV in D has got a G-natural at the bottom, VII in A's got a G-sharp at the bottom, so you've got to be very careful about accidentals, that they don't catch you out with pivot chords.
25:14
Chord V in D, A C-sharp E well, here it is, it's chord I, A, C-sharp, E. Don't worry that I've got that in a different octave. Chord VI, in the key of D, is also chord II in the key of A. Chord VII, another one that could catch you out, looks as if it's going to be a chord III in A, but of course, chord III in A has a G-sharp in it, so some of these chords are pivot chords, others are not. But we, if we are going to modulate from the key of D to the key of A,
25:48
will need to find a pivot chord through which we can pass. Well, as luck would have it, this chord I in D, D, F-sharp, A, we've already said, is actually chord IV in A, so we have a pivot chord at this cadence that we can use. So when you're modulating, always look for a pivot chord that you can go through, particularly in this kind of style. By the 19th century, composers are starting to be a little bit looser about this, and sometimes they just use a pivot note to go from one key to another,
26:24
they're not so fussed about pivot chords. But most of the time, back in the Baroque period with Bach, you're going to find that you need a pivot chord there. So there's a pivot chord, having gone through a pivot chord, we can then carry on in A major. So now, we're wanting to find chords that fit this phrase from our A major selection. So, let's have a look at what we might do next. Well, a chord of A major might be sort of quite handy at this point, mightn't it?
26:55
Because we're wanting to go to A major, so there's A, A of course is going to fit with chord I in A major, so we could go for a chord I there. How about we go for a Ib? Don't have to, but a Ib gives us another first inversion chord. We've had quite a lot of root position chords, there's another first inversion chord. You can always change your mind about this of course, as you go, there may be things that happen later on, that make some of the chord choices a little bit awkward,
27:26
and you want to change your mind. But let's go for a Ib for the time being. F-sharp coming up, so where does F-sharp fit in this? We've got an F-sharp in chord II, and F-sharp in the middle there, of chord IV, haven't we? We've got an F-sharp up here in chord VI, so we've got quite a few possibilities there, haven't we? I'm going to go for a chord IV. One reason why I'm going to go for a chord IV, is it's actually going to make for quite a good bassline.
27:54
If I use Ib here, it's going to go C-sharp, and the root of a IVa chord is going to be D, so having the bass going by step might be quite a nice thing to do. Anyway, again, we could always change our mind about that if we want to. Then we've got a B, well B certainly fits with chord II, doesn't it? And where else do we find a B? We've got B in chord V, we've got a B over here in chord VII, remember, we're being a little bit cautious with chord VII
28:24
so that's going to limit the possibilities a little bit. How about we go for a chord II?
28:34
One note to find here, before we have our perfect cadence, our V, I cadence. One thing we could do here is to use a Ic. Now I can feel you all jumping up and down, saying, well didn't you just tell us not to use second inversion chords? Well, I did say use them with care, and I did say, that if you use a Ic, it's normally followed by a chord V. Well Ic, V, fits in very nicely here, and quite often, you have a cadence progression that goes Ic, V, I. So that might actually work quite nicely for us
29:13
at that point. Okay, we've now cadenced in the key of A. We now need to think about coming home, because we're finishing in A, and the last phrase is very firmly back in D major. We've got a G-natural here, so there's no point in staying in A major, or else we're going to have a clash with this G-natural, because A major of course, has a G-sharp in it, so we need to be moving back to D, pretty quickly. Well, as luck would have it, chord I in A major is also chord V in D major.
29:50
So in fact, this might be the I in A major at the cadence, but it's also a pivot chord to take us back home, so that makes life much easier, doesn't it? So from now on, we can think in the key of D again. So I perhaps should've made it clear back here, that all of this is in the key of A. And now we're going to go back into D. So, I wonder what chord is going to fit with this A. Back here we are with the D major chords. Well, A is in chord I, that's quite helpful,
30:29
A is in chord V, and we've also got an A in chord III. Remember, we said chord III is a slightly, kind of rare chord, isn't it? If I use chord V, well actually, that's the same as chord I in A, and we've just had that chord, so there's a slight danger of getting a little bit stuck if we use the same chord again. So, maybe the answer is to go for a I. So there's chord I. Let's go onto the next one, we're almost there with the chords, here's a G, where does G fit into the proceedings?
31:06
Well, there's a G in chord II, there's a G in chord IV, isn't there? There's also a G up here in chord VII. Well, we're sort of trying to avoid the VII's, aren't we? But we've had quite a few IV's along the way, haven't had a II, have we, really? So, we had a II back here, but maybe, there's an opportunity to use a chord II. As well as just thinking about a little bit of variation between root position and first inversion chords, you might also think about creating a bit of variety
31:39
between major chords and minor chords. So remember, in a major key, chords I, IV, and V are major, and the rest are minor, apart from chord VII, Chord VII being diminished. Interestingly, in a minor key, the major chords are chords V and VI, and the other chords are bit of a mixture of all sorts of things, chord I is minor, chord II is diminished, chord III is augmented, chord IV is minor, chord VII is diminished again, but of a mixture in minor keys. But, just thinking about the balance
32:12
of major and minor chords is something else to consider. So there's chord II, a minor chord, in the context of other chords here, which so far, are major chords. F-sharp is the next note, well, F-sharp is in chord I. I'm sort of loathed to use chord I, you know, I, I, I, I, we've had enough I's, haven't we, really? Chord III, well we could use chord III I suppose, but again, as we said before, it's a less frequent chord in the kind of harmonic language. Chord VI, now there's a possibility
32:47
to have that F-sharp as a part of a chord VI. So why don't we go for a chord VI there? And we haven't had a VI for awhile. And it's rather nice, two minor chords sitting next to each other there. Now, we're one note short of a chord here, just this E, well, we've got an E coming up, and we've already made a decision to harmonise that E with a chord V, so we probably don't want to use chord V again. There's also E in chord VII, well, yes chord VII, we're not too happy about.
33:19
That leaves us with a possibility of chord II, so okay, we've had II, but let's just go for II for a moment. And I'm going to suggest a little elaboration of that chord II. We could make this II7b, my goodness me, what's all this about? Well, one very, very common progression at cadences in Bach chorales is this one, II7b, V, I. Sometimes it's a V7 as well, but, II7b, V, I, what does that mean? Here's a chord II, E, G, B, I make it a seventh, by adding a D to it, so I've got a root,
34:01
a third, a fifth, and a seventh, and then I put it all in first inversion, so I've got that G at the bottom. And so that gives me II7b, followed by a V, followed by a I, and that's a very common Bach progression. So we used the Ic, V, I progression here, and now we're going to use the II7b, V, I progression at the end. Great, now it's taken quite a long time to get that far, but we've covered a lot of ground, time to start getting some notes into this chorale.
34:34
Having got all your chords, and you review that, and be fairly happy that you've got a reasonable balance of chords, we then want to get a bassline that fits with these chords. Now you might be surprised at this, but I'm going to start the bass quite high. You got to be careful that you don't end up with a bass part that's too high, otherwise, it's difficult to fit the other notes in, but there's reason for this, which I'll come to. But D is the root of I, let's see if we can now plot
35:03
the bassline in accordance with the chords, because B is the root of VI, G is the root of IV, and then A is the root of V, then F-sharp will be the bass note, because this is Ib, remember, so we need an F-sharp in the bass. What I'm going to do here at the moment, is I'm going to put a G in there, and rather than just repeat the G, I'm going to take it down an octave, because that gives us a bit of variety, before we come back to D. You'll find in Bach chorales, that quite often,
35:44
the bassline is reasonably stable, quite a bit of stepwise movement going on, but sometimes, you get these octave leaps, and they quite often happen at cadence points. Okay, let's just carry on for a moment with the bassline. Now we're going into A major, remember, and we're looking for a Ib, so there's C-sharp, remember, I was saying earlier, that by using a Ib, I've made the bassline go a bit smoother here. And here's chord IV, so we need D there. Chord II, we'll need a B in the bass.
36:19
Ic, A, C-sharp, E, but because it's Ic, second inversion, I'm going to need an E in the bass there. E again, for chord V, and then, maybe down to A for the root of chord I. Now this is chord I again, but don't forget, we've gone back to the key of D. So here we are again, the root of chord I is D.
36:47
The root of chord II is E. Then we're looking for a root of chord VI which is B. Now, what's at the bottom of II7b? Well, we need to find our II, there's E, G, B, here's our seventh, I'll just sort of put that in brackets so we can see it, but because it's a first inversion, this third, this G, is going to be in the bass. So there it goes. Chord V, the root is going to be A for that, and we're going to come back to D, as the root of our chord I. So you see, having got the chords sorted out,
37:28
and the keys, it's a relatively quick job to get the bassline going. Bassline's looking okay, I think we can spruce it up a bit further. You remember we talked about these passing notes earlier on, how they just connect by step between two harmony notes. Whenever you have the interval of a third in any one line, soprano, alto, tenor, or bass, you've always got the possibility of joining that up with a passing note. Now we have to be a little bit careful,
37:58
because if we go sticking passing notes all over the place, sometimes it gets a bit much, and sometimes, people have passing notes in all four parts, all going at the same time, it's not usually a great idea. You can have double passing notes going on in two parts at the same time, but handle with care, and quite often, single passing notes are the answer. But I'm looking at this bass, it starts D, B, G, well that's fine, isn't it? But hey, we could fill this in with some passing notes.
38:28
This is going to make life much more exciting. So how about I put a C-sharp in there, and I put an A in here? And so, instead of just going D, B, G, I've now got a bassline that does this, suddenly it's sounding a bit more interesting, especially when I put it with a soprano part, without the passing notes, put the passing notes in, bit of movement in the bass, which is nice, isn't it? Well, there's another opportunity here, isn't there? Between the A and the F-sharp.
39:08
And this is a particularly effective one, and I'll explain why, because this A is the root of a chord V, as we were explaining earlier. This G passing note happens to turn this V into a V7 chord. Here's chord V, and that G is the seventh. It so happens that the seventh is in the bass, so it becomes a V7, in its last inversion, what we call V7d, really, but it's not really a V7d chord, it's just a passing note. But it happens that this passing note strengthens the V by making it feel
39:46
as if it's some kind of V7d in passing, so that's a particularly good passing note to use there. So that's good, now anything else coming up in the bass, well, there's a third here, isn't there? And we could possibly think about slipping a passing note in there just to make it slightly more interesting. And then if I look a bit further on, here's another third that I might decide would be worthy of another passing note. Okay, well, this means that we had a top and a bottom part
40:20
that sounded like this, before the passing notes.
40:42
Doesn't sound too bad. One thing you'll notice about that, is that sometimes the top and the bottom go in similar motion, but some of the time, there's a bit of contrary motion between the top and the bottom, they're moving in opposite directions, the top part's coming down, the bass part's going up. So a little bit of that movement in the bass part, when there isn't movement in the upper part, and vice versa. I'm not doing anything here, because there's a passing note up here.
41:07
But with just that one passing note in the soprano, having some more passing notes in the bass, gives that passing note, little bit of a context. So, here we go with all the passing notes.
41:36
Okay, now there are details missing, because we haven't written the alto and tenor parts in yet, but you begin to kind of feel for the bass part beginning to have a kind of identity of its own. Okay, now having got that far, we now need to fill in these middle parts, and we need to fill them with the other notes of these chords. Okay, now what do we do? We're writing in four parts, we've got soprano, alto, tenor, bass, we've only got three notes in one of these chords, one of these triads,
42:06
so it means that a lot of the time, we're going to be doubling one of the notes. In fact, we started with that, because we've got a D in the soprano, and a D in the bass. So chances are, the F-sharp and the A, are going to be the notes we need for the alto and for the tenor. Now, you could do all of the alto part, then come back and do all of the tenor part, or you could think about them as a sort of combined effort, and maybe do something like that. So I've got D's for the top and the bottom,
42:36
and the A in the alto, and the F-sharp in the tenor. Now you might think, goodness, that's quite a high start. It is, you don't want your basses any higher, I've purposely done this to show you, about as high as the bassline wants to go. The tenor is quite often using ledger lines above the bass clef stave, so don't be frightened of taking the tenor up. Certainly you can take the tenor up to a G, after that, you're beginning to make life a little bit difficult for tenors,
43:05
and they won't thank you for being crucified too high in the range. But G would work very quite nicely. Okay, let's go on, chord VI, here's chord VI, B D F-sharp. So, how about we do something like this, I'm going to put a B in the alto part, and I'm going to have an F-sharp in the tenor part. Why have I done that? Why not have a B in the tenor, and the F-sharp in the alto? Well, the alto could've taken the F-sharp. If I put B in the tenor, it would've double up
43:41
with the bass note, so that's a slightly, kind of weak chord, if you like. Also, a repetition between one chord and another, this F-sharp is in chord I, and it's also in chord VI. A bit of repetition like that between the chords that are changing kind of stabilises the move from one chord to the next. So sometimes, that's really quite a useful thing to do. Okay, so we don't want alto and tenor parts jumping all over the landscape, so how about this? I'm going to use this top note in the tenor,
44:14
then we've kind of got it out of our system. But chord IV, G, B, and D, G, G, B, D, you see how that's working? And again, we have this repetition of F-sharp going between chord I and chord VI. Now in the alto, we're repeating this B between VI and IV, so it just binds the chord changes together. Okay, let's go onto the next one, which is chord V, and I'm looking of course, for A, C-sharp, and E. Why have I decided to do things like that? Well, the A is just next door to the B,
44:51
so that gives us a bit of stable movement there, doesn't it? And the E isn't too far away from that G either. And I wonder if you've spotted another possibility. Gets exciting as you go. G to E in the tenor means, this is a falling third. We could slip in a passing note in the tenor part, how about this? That works rather well, doesn't it? Passing notes in the bass, passing notes in the bass, passing notes in the tenor, passing notes in the bass,
45:23
passing notes in the treble part, the soprano part, so we're sharing around these passing notes. We've got this stability of repeated notes, we've got quite a bit of stepwise movement going on in these middle parts as well, which keeps life nice and stable, we don't want them leaping all over the landscape. Okay, chord Ib, well how about we do this? Because these are using the notes of chord I, we know about the first inversion. Nice repetition there in the alto, stepwise movement in the tenor,
45:58
that all works very nicely with the passing note in the bass, the passing note in the soprano to follow, so that's all great stuff. Okay, I'm going to come back to this chord, if you'll forgive me for a moment. We're looking for chord I, no we're not, we're looking for chord IV there. So there's chord IV, chord IV of course, is G, B, and D. G, G, B, D, so that all belongs to chord IV. And then we're looking for a I at the cadence, and again, I'm trying to choose notes
46:29
that belong to chord I that give me some stability. A repeated note in the tenor there, that D belonging to IV and to I. Stepwise movement in the alto part there. Okay, now let me just go back to why I've been trying to forget about talking about this chord for awhile. I'm going to do something here, and then I'll explain what I've done. And you might be alarmed to see me writing an A in the alto part, because you might've heard earlier, we were talking about using chord IV there, weren't we?
47:02
And you look at chord IV, G, B, D, and you think, well, what's A got to do with chord IV? Well, absolutely nothing at all. However, I'm using a device there, and this device is called a suspension. Now, you might well already know about suspensions, so forgive me if you've rehearsed this territory before. How does a suspension work? It's got three parts to it, you have to prepare for a suspension. You have to sound it, you have to resolve it. So this note is preparation,
47:42
this note is the suspension sounding, this note is the suspension resolving. PSR prepare sound resolve. Okay, P must belong to this chord, so it must be a note that belongs to that chord, in this case, this Ib chord. R, must be a note that belongs to this chord. But S is the note that's dissonant with this chord, so S will not belong to this chord. But, S must be the same note as P. So bit confusing, I know, three steps, PSR prepare sound resolve. Prepare, belongs to this chord.
48:29
Resolve, belongs to this chord. S, will clash with this chord, but it must be the same note as it was for P. So this is a suspension, it's a bit of a sort of scrunching moment in the music. Why have I put nine-eight under it? Because you label your suspension in terms of the interval above the bass. Now we've got a G in the bass, this A, is a ninth above it, so at the point of S, we label that nine. When we go to R, it steps down to eight above the bass, the fact that the bass leaps an octave,
49:09
is neither here nor there. It's going from nine above the bass note, to eight above the bass note. So this is a nine-eight suspension. You get nine-eight suspensions in Bach, you frequently have four-three suspensions. Here's an example of a four-three suspension.
49:30
Can you can see, I've got a note at the top there, that's my P, it sounds again for sound, and then it resolves onto this note. You can see that this note fits with this chord, it clashes with this chord, and then it resolves. But above the bass, it's going four to three. So you can have a nine-eight, you could have a four-three, you might well have a seven-six, those are the most common ones that you would meet in Bach chorales. S to R always resolves by step, nearly always downwards.
50:03
So nearly always downwards, but always by step. And it does sound rather nice, if I play from the last chord of this bar, you can see how it goes. Without the suspension, it sounds like this.
50:18
If I put the suspension in.
50:24
You could hear that lovely clash, can't you? Listen for it. And then it resolves. So it's another way of sprucing up the impact of the harmony. We've got some passing notes in, now we've used a nine-eight suspension on the approach to that first cadence. Great stuff, let's move on, get some harmony in here, don't forget, we're in A major, so we need to use these chords, not these chords. We're looking for a Ib now, aren't we? Now then, where should we go next? We could perhaps do that,
50:59
maybe a little bit of a leap in the tenor there won't do us any harm. And then I'm going to go on to do this, I think. You can see again, we've had a leap in the tenor, but then we don't want another big leap in the same direction, a repetition is quite a nice thing to do after a leap there. And again, we're finding a note that's common to Ib and to IV, just to stabilise things. And again, I'm just filling in notes that belong to these chords. And just to sort of speed things up a little bit,
51:32
I'll just carry on doing what we've done before, because I'm sure you've got the idea of this by now. Ic, we're looking for now. You see how I'm trying to get these middle parts to repeat or to move by step.
51:52
Okay, now this bar is starting to plod in crotchets a little bit, we had a passing note there, now we've got crotchet, crotchet, crotchet. So I'm just looking to see if there's something we can do here, and here's a little idea, that we do this. Now you might think, well hang on a minute, that's not a passing note, it doesn't go by step. No it doesn't, B up to D. Well, we're using chord V, here's chord V, E, G-sharp, B, D is the seventh. And what I'm doing there, is starting with a chord V,
52:23
by adding a D to it, I'm turning that V into V7. Now you never go V7, V, because that would be starting with a strong chord and weakening it. But if you could start with a V, and then you manage to tip a seventh into it, you strengthen the chord, so here's V, and we're just going to strengthen it with that seventh. So you can see the effect of that seventh. And it's giving us a bit of quaver movement, where we've just begun to get stuck in crotchets there.
52:52
Okay, now then, I'm going to go on like this, and you can see, we've got nice stability in the alto here, repeated E's, you might be starting to think, gosh, this alto part's a bit boring, isn't it? You know, we have B, B, A A A E E E. Actually, if you get some repetition and stability, particularly into the alto part, that's normally a sign of good harmony, it's bringing stability to things. But Bach is very keen on doing that as well, and you'll find whole chorales
53:24
where the alto part is just repeating the same note for quite a long time. One thing to think about with V7, because we've just tucked that D into the tenor there, which has made V into V7, is this. Once you have a chord V7, so here it is in the key of A, which we're in at the moment. When you resolve a V7, the seventh always wants to pull down, you can hear that note screaming to go there, so it wants to come down by a step. And also, in a V7, the third, normally wants to climb by a step.
54:00
So you can hear the seventh falls by a step, the third rise by a step. So you can see, here's the third, it's rising by a step, here's the seventh, it's falling by a step. So that's something you probably want to think about doing when you're dealing with a resolution of a V7 chord. Okay, let's motor on to the last phrase. We're back in the key of D, and we're now looking for notes that belong to chord I in the key of D, so here we go, that's all quite sort of stable movement
54:33
on from the previous notes there, isn't it? Now, we're going to have to do something else here.
54:48
A bit of a leap going on there, in both those middle parts, but I think we'll be alright with that for the moment.
55:00
So hopefully, you can see where these notes are coming from, they all belong to those chords. Now remember, this is a II7b chord, and we've already talked about the II7 there, but in its first inversion. So because there are four notes, I kind of really need to use them all, don't I? So I've got the E, the G, the B, and the D. Okay, getting back to a bit of more stepwise movement, that will do nicely there. And we want a chord I to finish, the alto needs to come down below that D,
55:40
and the alto's okay going down to an A, and perfectly okay really, going down to a G, you wouldn't want to go much further, lower than that G, but that would do there. Now, the last phrase looks as if it needs a little bit of sprucing up. I can see an opportunity for a passing note in the alto part there, so I think we might go for that I.
56:03
Yeah, so probably things we could do to spruce that corner up a bit, but anyway, and here, I could actually add a passing note in the tenor, which does what we did up here, it is a passing note this time, but that G turns our V into a V7. So again, V, I, we've got V, passing note that makes it a V7, it strengthens it onto a chord I there. Okay, there are other things that we could do, little tricks that we can add to that, but that's a pretty good working of our chorale.
56:41
Now, have a listen to what we've ended up with, this is how it goes.
57:11
You want to make sure that all the notes fit the harmony, you want to make sure that each of these lines has a kind of integrity of its own, may not be exciting, but it just kind of, has a sort of melodic integrity, in other words, we're not diving about all over the place. You might have the occasional leap here and there, but making sure it all hangs together. There are other little rules that you want to consider before you kind of complete the thing, like, have we got any consecutive fifths,
57:37
or consecutive octaves? That means, how do we have a perfect fifth between the first chord and the second chord, between the same pair of parts? In other words, if the soprano and the alto part have these notes for the first chord, then they went to these notes, this is a perfect fifth, this is a perfect fifth. If it did this, and repeated the same notes, that wouldn't be a consecutive fifth, but if it's got this, and it moves to another perfect fifth in the same pair of parts,
58:07
that's called a consecutive fifth. This, between the same pair of parts, would be a consecutive octave, and it's good practise to try and avoid writing consecutive fifths and consecutive octaves. So the way to do this, is a bit tedious, but you start with a soprano part, you check the soprano against the alto, then the soprano against the tenor, then the soprano against the bass, then go back to the alto, check the alto against the tenor, check the alto against the bass,
58:36
then go back to the tenor, check the tenor against the bass, just to make sure there are no consecutives, I don't think there are any consecutives here, I hope there aren't anyway. But if you find one, send me a postcard and tell me where it is. But that's just kind of dealing with that, there are other rules of harmony as well, that you can find on some of the films that we've made about advanced harmony. But I hope that at least gives us some flavour
59:01
of how to tackle a Bach chorale harmonisation.
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