Sunday, February 26, 2017

Prelude and Harmonization: O Welt, ich muß dich lassen

Seeing as I'm presently preparing several of Brahms' Eleven Choral Preludes for recital, this tune came up: "O World, Now I Must Leave Thee." It seems to be fairly uncommon; the only work I could find using the tune is a Bach four-part setting and the two Brahms preludes, #s 3 and 11.

So, seeing as I needed to come up with a harmony for my choir to sing at the recital anyway, why not, I figured, pull in the tune for a choral prelude of my own?

And this then became the Ostinato on "O Welt..." in which I borrow a page or two from Rheinberger and put the theme in the upper voices (see Meditations, Op. 167, #10), as well as have the theme constantly shifting key (Character pieces, Op. 156, #11).









Creative Commons License
Ostinato on O Welt, ich muß dich lassen, and this harmonization by Mike Cutler are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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