What is life without a little mystery? Mine was that I had a soprano line stuck in my head, from some piece that I sang with the Lutheran choir. I thought it was from "O Sacrum Convivium" by Byrd, so I found the video on YouTube, and indeed it was there. However, I thought it was also in a piece by Bach's second cousin, and I thought his name was Johann Michael Bach, but none of the pieces by that composer seemed familiar. Finally I looked him up on Wikipedia, and he had an older brother named Johann Christoph Bach, and he had written a piece called "Furchte Dich Nicht." That was it! And it had the same figure in the soprano line! What??
So I emailed my OTHER choir director, who said, "We never did anything by Byrd by that name. We did a piece by Tallis by that name." He also said the JC Bach soprano line was based on a chorale. So I looked at the YouTube video, and it was from a CD of pieces by Tallis and Byrd. Obviously YouTube is so smart that if you are looking for a piece by Byrd that doesn't exist, but one by the same name does by Tallis, it knows what you mean. I asked the name of the chorale the JC Bach piece was based on, and he said "O Traurigkeit." So I was able to find the sheet music for both pieces online, and the figure is very similar, but probably just a coincidence. It goes up the scale four notes, then back down five, and then it repeats. So really not that strange that two composers would come up with that figure separately, but I'm glad to know I wasn't losing my mind - they really are the same. And so the mystery is solved, all thanks to my OTHER choir director and the internet. What did we do before we had all this knowledge available at our fingertips?
Famous Hat
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