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a cappella boys choir In just intonation
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) inherited a tuning that was “well-tempered,” noted for ease of modulation and for minute but recognizable variations between interval sizes throughout 12 major and 12 minor keys keys. Werckmeister III tuning was the primary embossment on the Baroque, which was to evade the claustrophobic prescriptions of either meantone or other spiraling irregular tunings. The tuning was first published by Andreas Werckmeister in his Orgel-Probe (1681). A MUSICAL OFFERING offers some tantalizing contradictions. Frederick the Great instigated the setting following a desire by the composer to see his newest grandchild. The court under Frederick the Great used utilized an extended sixth comma meantone, and therefore could not play Bach’s music because it required circular well temperament. Bach had only intended it for local consumption, making only100 copies of the work, and distributing them about. These canons were famously solved and published by Bach’s prominent student, Johann Philipp Kirnberger. This music contains rare examples of Bach writing in three parts without a continuo. The particular key of C minor in Werckmeister III tuning offers a sentiment that places each note lower in pitch in comparison to its equal temperament counterparts. In Werckmeister III tuning there are 39 different melodic intervals produced at six cents apart (1200 cents to the octave). The tuning is given below in cents. For more detail see “Bach and Tuning” by Johnny Reinhard available from the AFMM on its website, www.afmm.org
Werckmeister Preferred Chromatic (Werckmeister III tuning)
C C# D Eb E F F# G G# A Bb B
0 90 192 294 390 498 588 696 792 888 996 1092
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Larghetto
Allegro energico
Grave
Allegro assai
Grave
Allegro assai
Grave
Allegro assai
Cadenza
Adagio
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Johannes Brahms composed the HORN TRIO in the spring of 1865. An elegiac mood pervades much of the work. The opening movement is marked Andante. Furthermore, the third movement uses the term mesto, and includes a quotation from “Wer nur den lieben gott lasst walten,” an old German funeral chorale (also used by Bach in his funerary cantata of the same title, BWV 93). It may be that Brahms intended this Trio to serve as a requiem for his mother, as he composed it shortly after her death. There are other aspects to the work as well; the hunt scenes in the finale, and the vigor of the scherzo. The elegiac mood reasserts itself in the trio section of the scherzo. Brahms wrote the horn part for the natural valve-less horn (by then already obsolete). This horn is very difficult to play, since those notes that do not fall into the basic overtone series have to be stopped by hand. That Brahms wrote a virtuosic horn part, on par with the violin, does not make it any easier. The horn used for this trio is usually the modern valve horn, but here it is played on the intended natural horn. The Horn Trio is unique among Brahms’s works, apart from the unusual instrumentation, as it is the only one of his instrumental works which does not employ sonata-allegro form. The form chosen by Brahms instead is comprised of motivic interrelation among the movements, as well as simpler forms.
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released October 8, 2018
