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I have received some feedback from people who were trying to play chorale prelude "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier", BWV 731 by Bach with the correct articulation. The biggest frustration they seem to have is that no matter how hard they try, their pedal part in this piece sounds legato.
I can understand this perfectly well. You see, a lot of people who are new to the Baroque articulation of organ music (not necessarily new to the organ playing in general, but just new to this style of articulation) spend their all energy focusing on the articulating the hand parts. What often happens is that they forget about their feet. It's difficult to think about several things at once and since on the organ we are constantly multi-tasking, some tasks might be left unchecked. If you found yourself in this situation, my strongest recommendation is to practice the pedal line separately until you can make small spaces between each and every note. Mentally think "note-rest-note-rest-note-rest" and so on. Then practice soprano and bass, later - alto and bass, and finally - tenor with the bass together. The next step would be to play soprano, alto, and bass, later - soprano, tenor, and bass, and alto, tenor, bass. If you do all the previous combinations, then playing all four parts together with the right articulation in the pedals will be very easy. By doing so, your ears will become gradually accustomed to listening if the pedals have the perfect articulation - articulate legato. Note that we are not talking about learning this piece from scratch. Instead, we are trying to find a solution to fix the articulation problem in the pedal line. If you are new to this piece, there are of course other learning methods to follow. By the way, if you were planning to get my brand new BWV 731 Home Study Course, do it now before the price rises tomorrow: BWV 731 Home Study Course To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius This week has been a fun one with lots of questions from my students about playing BWV 731. Some of the people even sent me their recordings of this piece which are always very exciting to listen to.
Since this chorale prelude needs to be performed in a very slow tempo, one of the most commons mistakes I see people make is the lost feeling of the pulse. In such a slow tempo, the danger of playing without a steady pulse is great. The thing is that the highly ornamented melody in the right hand part create many rhythmical problems for some people. In order to avoid the rhythmical confusion, they try counting every eighth note. But no matter how hard are they concentrating on playing the rhythms right, they have to be aware of the entire metrical structure of each measure. In other words, they have to constantly know which part of the measure they are in. One easy way to achieve this is of course count out loud the beats (one, two, three, and four). Moreover, you have to make the beats two and four shorter which will make them sound softer. In this manner you will achieve the alternation of strong and weak beats, and consequently – the feeling of the flowing pulse. Another common mistake is in performing ornaments. Some people still play the mordents and the trills starting before the beat which is not correct. No matter how many notes the ornament has (3, 4, 6 or even more) the first note of the ornament in this style has to start with the beat. Since the left hand involves playing two parts (alto and tenor), it is difficult for many people to articulate them properly. What happens is that in the right hand they try to play using articulate touch but in the left hand very often the notes sound legato. This is partly because their left hand technique is weaker than that of the right hand and partly because their fingering might not be stylistically correct. The ideal fingering for such piece should help to achieve the correct articulation naturally almost without thinking. By the way, check out my brand new BWV 731 Home Study Course in which I teach this chorale prelude with live sound examples and even provide a practice score with complete fingering and pedaling written in for the most efficient and stylistically correct performance: BWV 731 Home Study Course To your success in Bach organ playing, Vidas Pinkevicius Welcome to Day 6 of BWV 731 Mini Course! If you haven't seen the material from Days 1-5, access the previous lessons and a score here.
Hopefully, if you have been following my directions in the last 5 days, your playing of this chorale prelude is already getting better and better every day. Up until now you have learned all individual fragments and even combined fragments 1-2 and 3-4. Now it is a time to expand it even further and attempt to play the entire piece without stopping. As always, take a slow tempo and make sure your fingering, pedaling, articulation, notes, rhythms, and hand position are correct. In order to achieve the best results, I recommend you play this chorale prelude at least 3 times in a row correctly. If for some reasons some places in this piece are still difficult for you to play without mistakes, you can go back a few steps and play that particular fragment in solo voices and combinations of 2 and 3 voices. Some people have been asking me questions about the difficulty in playing ornaments with the fingers of 3 and 4 which is often (but not always) the correct way to play the trills and mordents. The thing is that finger 4 is a very weak one. The only way to improve the performance of ornaments in this case is to build up your finger technique. Some of the best ways to do that I found are through the regular studies of scales in double thirds and double sixths and Hanon exercises. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Welcome to Day 5 of BWV 731 Mini Course! Yesterday I taught you how to play the last fragment in the chorale prelude Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier by Bach. If you haven't seen the material from Days 1-4, access the previous lessons and a score here.
Before learning how to take this piece to the next level, let’s review what you have accomplished in this course so far. Hopefully you can play this prelude now by stopping at the beginning of each chorale phrase. Although you are certainly beginning to enjoy it and some earlier fragments are starting to sound really nice, you are not ready for public performance yet. You see, in order to play this piece in public (for your friends or family, during church service, or even during a recital), you have to be able to perform it from the beginning until the end fluently without mistakes. And until now you only were able to play each of the separate fragments without stopping. Now let’s take this piece to the next level and begin to build up your stamina, focus, and fluency. Today I recommend you play two fragments in a row and stop at the beginning of the third chorale phrase. That’s a halfway through the piece. Then practice the second half of the chorale. Your target here should be a minimum of 3 correct repetitions in a row. As you play, if you notice making too many mistakes, then you have to go back one step and practice each of the fragment separately. Now, let’s talk about the registration which is important to discuss as your fluency improves. Since this is a piece for two manuals, I recommend playing the right hand with the separate solo registration. It could be a Cornet 8’ (very common), a gentle reed, such as Oboe 8’, even a nice Principal 8’. Sometimes a slow-beating Tremulant adds to the quality of this part. Basically any combination of mutation registration sounds good here – Sesquialtera, various Quint stops (2 2/3’ or even 1 1/3’), with or without Flute 4’. Feel free to experiment with the stops on your organ. Remember, you don’t have to have just one perfect registration for this chorale prelude. It’s perfectly fine to play this piece with different registrations according to your mood. The left hand part is the accompaniment and could be played on a single 8’ flute. It’s possible to add something extra for more character, like Quintadena 8’ but you will have to use your ears for that. The pedal part sounds often the best with a gentle 16’ and 8’ flute registration. You can have a lot of variety here in terms of which stops to choose from your pedal division. You can even have just a 16’ Subbass but add a manual coupler. So get busy combining fragments 1 and 2, 3 and 4 and enjoy your practice. Just one last thing – always aim for the flowing pulse. Since this is a slow piece, it’s really easy to forget the beats in each measure. Therefore, you still have to count out loud the beats and subdivide them. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Welcome to Day 4 of learning to playing chorale prelude by Bach Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731 on the organ! I hope your previously mastered fragments from Days 1-3 are getting stronger as you are continuing to improve them. You can access the previous lessons and a score here.
In fact, before practicing Day 4 material, let’s play the earlier fragments at least 3 times correctly in a row. Try to achieve the fluency in playing the correct notes, rhythms, fingering, pedaling, articulation, ornaments, and hand and feet position. Feel free to stop at the beginning of each fragment. This is not the time to play this chorale prelude from the beginning until the end without stopping. You will have the chance to do so. In fact, the longer you wait and insist on playing shorter fragments first, the faster your progress will be. I know it may sound as counterintuitive but I can tell you from experience from my practice that this method works really well. After a few days, when you are ready to play the entire piece without stopping, you will feel this enormous amount of accomplishment and you will have the right to do so. So after you have repeated 3 times correctly the fragments from Days 1-3, now it is a time to look at fragment for today (measures 8-11). This is the last phrase of the chorale melody and today we are going to master it. The first thing you have to do before practicing it is to pencil in fingering and pedaling. As with previous fragments, here too, try to avoid finger substitutions and mostly use longer fingers (2, 3 and 4). In the left hand, fingers 1 and 5 will often be necessary because there you have to play two voices with one hand. For example, in the second half of measure 8 you can see wider intervals of sixths and octave. They are generally played using fingers 1 and 5. In measure 9, the left hand part has an ornament called appoggiatura. This is usually a smaller note tied with the larger note. In this specific measure, appoggiatura is from G to F sharp. It should be performed in rhythm. In other words, make both notes of sixteenth note value. Follow these simple steps when practicing this fragment: Step 1: Practice solo voices separately (S, A, T, B). Step 2: Practice 6 combinations of two voices (SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB). Step 3: Practice 4 combinations of three voices (SAT, SAB, STB, ATB). Step 4: Practice all four parts together (SATB). Make sure you do not rush to the next step or combination because each of them is like a baby step to success. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Welcome to Day 3 of BWV 731 Mini Course! If you haven’t completed learning the fragment of Day 2, in order to reap the best results from this mini course, make sure you do that before practicing today's material. You can access the previous lessons and a score here.
In Day 3, we will learn measures 6-7 of the chorale prelude "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier", BWV 731 by Bach on the organ. But before you do that, I strongly advice to repeat previously learned material from Day 1 and Day 2. If you can do this without making too many mistakes in a slow tempo, then it is OK to play all four parts combined right away. If not, go back one or more steps in your practice and play combinations of 3 voices, 2 voices, or even solo voices - S, A, T, and B. Whatever the case is, always practice until you can play each fragment correctly at least 3 times in a row correctly. NOTE: if you make a mistake in the second repetition, you will have to start counting from the beginning again. In measures 6-7, the pedal line moves in constant eighth notes and if you can play it with the alternating toe pedaling (using the toes of the same foot only in places where the melody changes direction), you will begin to notice a gentle alternation of strong and weak beats. Remember that in this meter (4/4), there are 2 stronger beats (1 and 3) and beats 2 and 4 are weak. It is especially difficult to feel this pulse and alternation while playing in a slow tempo. Therefore I recommend to count out loud the beats and their subdivisions. Then you will be conscious of the pulse and your playing will be stylistically correct. This brings me to another important aspect - articulation. Aim to achieve small spaces between each and every note in this fragment. Try to do this even when you will play two voices (alto and tenor) with the left hand. This touch should not sound choppy or too detached. Instead aim for a singing manner of playing (Cantabile). The mordent in the left hand part (measure 7) should be played on the beat starting from the upper note (E D# E D#). Before you start practicing various voice combinations, figure out the fingering of this fragment without using finger substitution. Play with 3 longer fingers (2, 3, and 4) as much as possible, and use shorter fingers (1 and 5) only when necessary. Apply the following steps when practicing this fragment for Day 3: Step 1: Practice solo voices separately (S, A, T, B). Step 2: Practice 6 combinations of two voices (SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB). Step 3: Practice 4 combinations of three voices (SAT, SAB, STB, ATB). Step 4: Practice all four parts together (SATB). Enjoy your practice and insist on at least 3 correct repetitions in a row of each combination. This way your progress while playing this fantastic piece on the organ will be the fastest. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Welcome to Day 2 of BWV 731 Mini Course! If you haven’t completed learning Day 1 fragment, make sure you do that before going to Day 2. You can access the previous lessons here. So yesterday hopefully you mastered the first fragment of Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731. The first thing I recommend for your today’s practice is to repeat previously learned material. If you did all the steps from the previous day precisely, then I believe you can play all four parts of Fragment 1 in a slow tempo.
As you do that, always aim for precision in notes, rhythm, articulation, fingering, pedaling, ornaments, and hand and feet position. Remember to keep your fingers and feet in contact with the keys and pedals at all times. In other words, do not lift them off the keyboards and pedalboard. This will help you to achieve precision, clarity, and control your releases of inner voices to a much higher degree. So as you play Fragment 1, if you notice that you still make many mistakes, then I recommend going back to practice in 3 or 2 voice combinations or even in solo voices when necessary. This will ensure that this fragment will be learned in the most efficient manner. After you have repeated previously learned material (measures 1 and 2) at least 3 times correctly in a row, now it is a time for you to take up the next fragment (measures 3-5). Similarly to what you did yesterday, write in fingering and pedaling for those measures first. Don’t worry if are not sure about something at first. It is best not to spend hours and hours trying to figure out the best fingering. Just write what seems obvious to you and then start practicing. As you practice, many things will become clearer and usually you can make revisions and additions for fingering and pedaling. Follow the same procedure when learning this fragment as you did yesterday: Step 1: Practice solo voices separately (S, A, T, B). Step 2: Practice 6 combinations of two voices (SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB). Step 3: Practice 4 combinations of three voices (SAT, SAB, STB, ATB). Step 4: Practice all four parts together (SATB). The ornaments in the right hand part are mostly mordents (performed G, F sharp G) and a trill in measure 5. This trill should be played starting from the upper note (B) on the beat. In measure 3, you can also see a mordent in the left hand part. Again, here too start it from the upper note (D). In measure 5, the left hand part has 2 lower note mordents which are more difficult to perform because of the added one extra voice. As always, be extra sure about the articulation (articulate legato) here. The pedaling in measure 3 is a classic example of the descending scale which I recommend playing using alternate toe technique: right-left-right-left and so on. This will help you to achieve the natural feeling of alternation of strong and weak beats which are so crucial for the performance of Baroque music. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. Since my recent BWV 556 Mini Course was so popular among my subscribers, I decided to create one more mini course, this time on playing one of my favorite chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach - Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731 (Blessed Jesus, We Are Here). I know organists who call this composition the Good Luck Chorale. It‘s true – whenever I choose to include it in my recital, everything goes super well. This mini course will be a text-based course as was the Prelude Improvisation Mini Course. So let‘s get busy and start learning this fantastic piece. If you follow my directions each day precisely, in just 7 days you will have this composition ready to play in public. Here is the free score of this piece which you can download now. This is how this piece should sound: Introduction Before we attempt to practice this piece, let‘s take a look at how this piece is put together. In other words, you have to analyze the structure of this chorale prelude. If you do this right before practicing, the entire learning process will be so much faster and you will know this piece on a very deep level. The form of this choral prelude is the notorious BAR form. This structure is dictated by the melody of the Lutheran chorale. In general, the BAR form follows this principle: Stollen (section A which is later repeated with a different text) and Abgesang (section B). So the general scheme would be A A B. DAY 1 After having looked at the form of this piece, now let’s practice the first fragment of this piece – measures 1 and 2. The first thing you have to do before actually playing the chorale prelude is to think about the fingering and pedaling. There are several rules for fingering and pedaling of such music: 1. Avoid finger substitutions. 2. Whenever possible avoid putting the thumb on the sharp keys. 3. Avoid using heels in the pedals. 4. Use alternate toe pedaling in ascending and descending lines. 5. Use the same foot when the melody changes direction and in larger note values. Now let’s take a look at Fragment 1 - measures 1 and 2 (ending on the downbeat of measure 3). I recommend practicing in a very slow tempo by subdividing the beats in this 4/4 meter. A very powerful way to get the rhythm straight is to count out loud the beats and actually subdivide them by saying “one and two and three and four and”. Also keep in mind that articulation should not be legato but the so-called Ordinary Touch – articulate legato. This means you should create small spaces between each of the notes – even in the middle voices which are the most difficult to notice and achieve. So keeping all the above in mind take the following steps when practicing this fragment: Step 1: Practice solo voices separately (soprano - S, alto - A, tenor - T, bass - B). Step 2: Practice 6 combinations of two voices (SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB). Step 3: Practice 4 combinations of three voices (SAT, SAB, STB, ATB). Step 4: Practice all four parts together (SATB). The three ornaments in this fragment are mordents and should be performed starting on the beat from the main note by playing three pitches – main note, lower neighbor, and the main note. As you practice each step, aim for at least 3 correct repetitions in a row. For the best results, try not to skip any combination because each of them takes you closer to the mastery of this beautiful chorale prelude one step at a time. By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my free video Organ Practice Guide. Or if you want to learn to improvise in the style of Bach? If so, I suggest you check out my free 9 day mini course in Keyboard Prelude Improvisation. |
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. 
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