With the new year comes a new edition of the opening chorus of the St Matthew Passion. I finally had the time over this winter break to compare Bagge's transcription with Bach's manuscript, and type out my own version. There are slight modifications in voicing throughout, which should make little to no difference for the casual listener, but details are added at times to make use of idle fingers. Hopefully the improvement in technique and sound quality should be noticeable compared to my first edition from three years ago.

*Transcription and performance notes*
- I used Bagge's transcription as the basis. For readability, voices are combined whenever possible.
- Bagge's dynamics and phrasing are replaced with the original. There are only two levels of dynamics, mf and f, for instrumental parts during choral and instrument-only passages, respectively, except in b.75 as the finale approaches. The pianist, on the other hand, should not follow this literally but adopt a wider range.
- One wrong note was corrected.
- The cantus firmus in the ripieno is colored in red.
- Some text is included to indicate vocal entries and to differentiate between the two choruses. (Also different stem directions are used in the latter case.)

The inverted BACH motif is in the bass in b.76.
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*St Matthew Passion, BWV 244 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)*
*1. Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen*
Arr.: Selmar Bagge (1823-1896), Ruoshi Sun (2024)
Piano: Ruoshi Sun (2025) on CLP-785
Temperament: Werckmeister
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*Links*
St Matthew Passion playlist [ Ссылка ]

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