Cantata BWV 60O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort

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Translation

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Analysis

The harmonies in the opening of the fifth movement (the closing chorale) are really rather extraordinary and clearly appealed to Alban Berg some two hundred years later as he used that chorale tune (and its strange harmonisation) as inspiration for the last movement of his violin concerto:

You may perhaps, like me, have thought Alban Berg's weird harmonies were a product of serialism and the twentieth century! It is, however, clear that Berg got much of his harmonic approach to that piece directly from Bach, which is fairly extraordinary, I think.

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