Expressing the Concept of Words with Harmony Changes in Chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach

Introduction: Choral is a Christian hymn in German for choir that was formed after the Protestant Reformation in order to bring a clear and understandable connection with the religious word to the listeners. While the early chorales were monophonic, from the Baroque period onwards, various composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach composed chorales for four vocal lines. In his chorales, by using different rhythms of vocal lines, harmony could move towards the desired chords at any moment and create various types of musical moods. This is historically natural in writing chorales; The early chorales were generally made based on well-known melodies of the time or especially old hymns common in the Catholic Church. In setting these samples with the new German text, first, the melisma related to their Latin word was removed so that they could more easily match the syllables of the latest word in German. Then it was necessary to coordinate their peak and trough about the concept of the new word. Of course, these relatively simple musical measures had other aspects, which can even be considered as a reflection of the composing techniques of German Meistersinger; Therefore, the linking of words and musical elements has always been a subject of interest in chorales since its earliest samples.
Research Questions: The remarkable point in Bach's chorales is that they generally last less than a minute, but in most of them, the harmony changes both in terms of chord progression and modulation are relatively strange and high. That is, while it seems that according to the aesthetic principles of baroque music, the listener should generally face the monotony of musical mood or that, the flow of music does not undergo serious changes, the question is why are the harmony changes and as a result, the changes of musical mood relatively high in most of his chorales, and does it sometimes seem even without justification?
Research Hypothesis: Choral from the beginning to the end is generally without rest and accompanied by words, and while it was formed with the purpose of a clear and understandable connection with the religious word, then it is the concept of the words that changes the harmony and consequently causes significant changes in musical mood. On the other hand, baroque music theorists considered harmony changes as a kind of musical figure and used them for interpreting words in music; For example, the constant change of tonality was a perfect symbol of the instability of faith. Of course, in Bach's chorales, harmony changes become doubly important because the restriction of using various rhythms, which is related to the clarity of religious words, puts forward the chords and their progression as the main basis for expressing the concept of words in music. He uses them along with the curve or linear movement of the main melody in the soprano voice, which is generally taken from the old hymns. In this way, at the same time that he applies the historical memory of meaning hidden in them to interpret the words, uses his harmony to express the concept better.
Research Literature: Research resources about expressing the concept of words with harmony changes in chorales are very limited, and there are only a few materials about the topic. The closest subject is a musical figure, which is a term equivalent to sign in linguistics and has been discussed in some resources. This term is studied in connection with the doctrine of the affections in the Baroque period and expresses the relationship between music and words, especially literature. A musical figure is a sound sign in the context of music that implies a non-sound sign or the same meaning outside of music. The idea of baroque music theorists has been that music has a significant expressive quality, and a musical figure could lead to a relatively conscious understanding of it; For example, in Bach's Passions, slow and long chords, which were generally played after the singing of Christ, and also used in the Venetian operas of the time, as a musical figure expressed death, the other world, ghosts, or a disaster. Or in a piece about "The Ten Commandments of Prophet Moses", a melody was presented 10 times without the slightest change; This 10 times present as a figure expressed the piece's theme. There are many cases of using musical figures in his works. The symbolic connection of numbers in music is one of the important aspects of the musical figure, and it is not surprising that he was aware of Kabbalah numerology, which is related to the mysticism of Judaism (Old Testament), and used it to make his music an imitation of God's holy creation.
Research Method: By examining a specific collection of Bach's chorales, which are numbered from 250 to 438 in the collection of works, and extracting interesting points from the accompaniment of harmony with words, the result of the research could be achieved and determined. Accordingly, through an extensive and case-by-case search in the collection of aforementioned chorales, the author has found examples with a special use of harmony in expressing the concept of words in music, some of which, about the volume of the article are presented here to determine the results.
Research Results: The harmony changes in Bach's chorales are generally related to the concept of words. The conclusion is reached that in his chorales, he uses special and sometimes unpredictable harmony changes in a special way to express death, joy, worship, and other themes, and reveal even some ambiguities in the words. On the other hand, Bach's chorales are presented as a basis for learning advanced harmony practicing various chordal changes, and creating possible innovations in composition, and he has even taken advantage of choral writing as a method to teach composition to his students, which is still seen in some harmony teaching treatises.