The magic of: "Prelude in C Minor BWV847" (J.S. Bach analysis)

Finally a new video! This one was a lot of fun to make and I figured out a few things which will help me on future videos. That being said, there are some points I wanted to address, if you are interested in reading them :)

1. Mixing approaches:
The more I’m experimenting on this channel, the more I realize why certain things are traditionally done the way they are. I have been mixing Jazz and classical analysis in my past videos, and also on this one. For Ravel and Chopin in particular that worked really well, as their harmonic language is already very closely related to Jazz harmony. For pieces like this one, that follow a much more traditional harmonic approach (duh!) it is - at the very least - redundant to spell out every exact degree as e.g. bIII as there is only one possible third degree in a classical minor context and that is of course the minor, not the major one. So for these pieces I may switch to "proper" classical analysis in the future, which is a nice challenge because I will have to (re-)learn a few technical things then.
But yeah, that's why I wrote e.g. #VIIo7 or II7 (exact position of the chords) as well as /I (Roman numeral) for bass pedals and /3 (Arabic numeral) for inversions.

2. Why Eb instead of C minor from bar 9?
As I already said in the video, there are valid arguments for both interpretations. Exaggerating a bit here to make a point, but for me who is coming more from a Jazz theory background, I wouldn’t even make a distinction between C minor and Eb Major as they are relative keys. What ultimately pointed me towards Eb Major were the Bb7 chords in bar 10 and 13 which, obviously, both resolve to Eb and thus confirm the key of Eb Major, and the absence of C minor chords in this section.

3. Audio nerd things ahead:
I used a little broom cabinet as a recording booth for this one. However, I didn’t put any kind of damping material in it, so after recording I noticed a slightly bathroomy sound. Do you even notice/care about any of that?! :D

4. Somehow I made quite a few little errors on this one when I wrote the script which I only noticed after I had recorded the voice-over, so I had to cut and re-arrange some of my phrases, which ended up working surprisingly well. If you feel like there are some sudden shifts in my narration, this is probably why. Again, does anyone even notice? I’m curious to get feedback!

5. Speaking of feedback, as I said in the video, it feels really nice to get so much positive and constructive feedback on my videos. If there is anything you notice, don’t hold back to write it in the comments - I really am eager to learn! :)

Prelude performance recorded on 26 Dec 2022 at Trio Musikhaus Schenefeld