An Introduction To The Frescobaldi Bach Chorale Project

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

Over the course of the next few months, maybe even over a year, I plan on uploading Bach chorales. This seems like an odd thing to blog, but I have reason behind it. I am using Frescobaldi with Lilypond, free and open-source alternatives to Finale and Sibelius. This project is to show that Frescobaldi is capable of creating professional-looking scores for absolutely no cost to your freedom or your wallet. 

I am an Arch Linux user. Whenever I switched to Linux from Windows, I had a hard time coming up with an alternative to Finale, my primary music notation editor. However, after a year or so of hard looking, I have found a tremendous alternative: Frescobaldi. This project is two-fold: to show to the world that Frescobaldi is ready to be used as an alternative to Finale and Sibelius, and to finally show myself that I can delete Finale from my machine (Thanks to Wine for running it for me!).

Each post will be a link to a PDF of the finished chorale. Each chorale will be in SATB style. The actual music and original German comes from IMSLP. The English translations to each of the chorales comes from Mr. Philip Ambrose, Professor Emeritus from the University of Vermont. He has given me permission to use his translations for this project. Mr. Ambrose's website can be found here.

For those who use Lilypond and Frescobaldi, I will also upload the .ly file to each post. However, due to the fact that the English translations are copyrighted material, these files will NOT contain the text. These files will simply allow you to view the original music and edit it as you see fit. The music and files themselves will be available under Creative Commons licenses, but the copyrighted texts will not be available other than in the final PDF form. These English texts are Mr. Ambrose's property, and you should contact him to use them yourself.

Check this blog often for the next chorale that will be available!

-Ryan McClure