What are you listening to now?

[Chris]

Very nice. That C-major descending scale finishing on the low C in the basso profundo at the end, phew !!

(I can also sing that low C because my voice category is Basso profundo per fumatori).

Being able to hit that low C is the only thing I enjoy about being sick. When I'm not sick, even the G above that does not usually happen!

[Enrique]

Lowest note written by Bach in a chorale (if somebody cares):

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmu...sic/?rdt=49414

As a matter of fact there's not a single note below F2 in the whole of the (lengthy) B minor mass, either for the choir or the soloists. The C in Rachmaninof's piece is a fourth below F2. It is the lowest note in the cello.

[Quijote]

Lowest note written by Bach in a chorale (if somebody cares)

Hello Enrique, hope you are well !

I do care, as I teach 2nd-year harmony students how to harmonize chorales in the style of Bach !!

Please see the image below which shows the low C in Bach's chorale Ich dank' dir, Gott, fur all' Wohltat.

In the Riemenschneider edition of the "371 Chorales" it's No. 223.

Now, about this low C: if we accept that the local tuning system in Bach's day was roughly a semitone lower, this would make it in today's terms a B !!

What we tend to forget is that the chorales were often accompanied, so that low C was probably covered by the cello or double bass, and the real vocal bass would have jumped up a 4th to the C an octave above what is written in the score.

[Quijote]

[Enrique]

Hello Quijote, I'm well, and you? Thanks for your instructive example. So, the poster in my link was right!