Issue 2 - So, what exactly is a Chorale Prelude?

This week's postlude, the Prelude in A Minor by Brahms, is actually a repeat. I played it on February 25th as a postlude. However, that was the weekend of our big snow. I think only a total of 60 people attended services that weekend. So, I've decided to play it again so more of you could hear it. When I was practicing this piece on the piano, my husband stopped me and said, "Bach?" To which I was pleased to respond, "No. Brahms!" We'll talk more in a couple weeks about why you might mistake some of Brahms' organ works for those of Bach. It's an interesting topic.

As we continue our Lenten journey with Brahms, I thought it might be useful to talk a little bit about the Chorale Prelude. It is a term that is used often in talking about organ music. This week's organ prelude is another chorale prelude from Brahms' 11 Eleven Chorale Preludes that were published posthumously (after his death). The chorale that the piece is based upon is O wie selig seid ihr doch, ihr Frommen (O how blessed, faith souls, are ye). Its meter is a slow 12/8 which gives it a pastoral feel.

So, what exactly is a Chorale Prelude? Well, it's exactly what it says it is... a chorale is a hymn and a prelude is a piece of music that precedes something else. In this case - it precedes a chorale. In its most literal sense, a chorale prelude is a prelude to a chorale --- in other words... an introduction to a hymn! Certainly, some of the earliest chorale preludes that we know from composers a generation or two earlier than Bach used their chorale preludes as a way to introduce a hymn. Back then, chorale preludes were an obvious "arrangement" of the hymn. So obvious, that it was a perfect introduction to the chorale... maybe it just had a trill here or there, or a running bass line that "dressed up" the hymn.

By the time we get to J.S. Bach (1685-1750) and most certainly by the time we get to Brahms (1833-1897), these pieces have evolved into something else - a work that can stand alone; it was not necessarily meant to be an introduction to a hymn but as a meditation on the hymn tune upon which it based. In this week's chorale prelude, the melody is very simply and slowly stated in the top voice, with the gentle-movement of the 12/8 meter underneath it. While this hymn is no longer in our current Lutheran worship hymnals, future chorale preludes I will play will be in our hymn books and I will let you know the hymnal number so you can follow along and challenge yourself to pick out the hymn melody!

(Image: Brahms' manuscript "O wüsst ich doch den Weg zurück" op. 63, no. 8 (1874))