The Lost Art of Harmonic Variation in Eighteenth-Century Hymn Accompaniment in the German Lutheran Church

The discovery in 2007 of a previously unknown Choralbuch manuscript has prompted reassessment of eighteenth-century hymn accompaniment in the German Lutheran Church. The manuscript—attributed to Johann Christian Kittel (1732–1809), the only pupil of J. S. Bach to see the nineteenth century—bears witness to a significant tradition of improvisatory practice within European church music and one that is recorded in only a small number of other sources, namely harmonic variation in hymn accompaniment. This practice has not only been overlooked in scholarship but has been only partially understood, for previous awareness of it has been based solely on textual descriptions rather than on musical sources. After identifying the extant multiple-bass Choralbücher, this article considers what these rare written artifacts reveal of this improvisatory practice and how they further our understanding of the role of the eighteenth-century organist. It is concluded that hymn accompaniment was more complex than the extant single-bass Choralbücher imply, that harmonic variation in hymn accompaniment was popular in Thuringia and surrounding areas, and that Bach himself may have been a practitioner of this tradition.