Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope you and your family are well, that you’ve had the chance to spend time with people you love, and have had the chance to enjoyed some yummy food!
I was the Music Director at St Mary’s Cathedral in Winnipeg for eleven years. One of my favorite parts of the job was playing the opening hymn ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ on Christmas morning, with a opening fanfare with a brass ensemble, a full choir, and me music directing and playing organ.
One Christmas, as I was just learning about partimenti, I was getting ready to play and I noticed all of these partimenti patterns pop off the page! So my present to you this Christmas is:
A Partimenti Analysis of O Come, All Ye Faithfull
We start in G major, and like all great openings (think of the C major prelude from the WTC, Book 1) we open with tonic in the first bar, followed by a 6/4/2 bass suspension above ① (remember circled numbers are scale degrees in the bass), resolving to a 6/3 above ⑦, which in turn resolves to a 5/3 above ①. The end of the first phrase continues with the Rule of the Octave (RO) ① ⑦ ① ④, with a compound half cadence above ⑤.
The second phrase begins with a deceptive harmony above ⑥. Check out beat 2, this is cool! Through passing motion in the alto, a C sharp, that deceptive chord turns into a #6/3 chord. The E half note in the bass is now ② in D major! From beat 2 the whole phrase, even though the bass is leaping around, uses harmony from the RO. The phrase ends with a 6/4 compound cadence in D major.
The third phrase begins kind of ambiguously with just a 3rd above a B. We’ve just had a cadence in D major, but as we move through this first bar, we realize that we’ve got a ③ ② ① RO bass in G major. The phrase continues with RO, in the third bar we have a falling thirds bassline right before a half cadence.
The refrain is an elegant built-in crescendo—two bars of sopranos and tenors (that D in the alto is for the organ/piano), 2/4ths of the choir; two bars of sopranos, altos and tenors, 3/4ths of the choir; and four bars of all four voices, the whole choir!
These eight bars are the only instance I can think of (I’m sure there’s others I’m not aware of) with the whole RO presents itself. The first two bars start above ③ and circle around ③, the following two bars start on ① and again the bassline circles around ①. As the basses come in they start on ① go up to ② and work their way down ① ⑦ ⑥ ⑤ ④ ③!
At the begging of the refrain we start on ③ and right before the cadence we end up on ③ an octave lower having moved through the whole RO. The hymn ends with a 6/4 compound cadence, with an anticipated tonic chord.
Partimenti Workshop 2025
Just a reminder that the Jan to May 2025 Partimenti Workshop is open for registration.
What did my O Come, All Ye Faithful discovery yield?
Analysis is great, I had found a bunch of patterns in O Come, All Ye Faithful, but I’ve always thought if analysis doesn’t lead to anything more, it’s not of much use. Here’s what this discovery yielded:
- Rehearsing the choir became much more intuitive, my ears know the harmonic moves of the piece. As a conductor, I was able to improve the music more efficiently, and I think it was probably more fun for the choir
- Knowing these patterns helped as music director. Playing the organ with both hands and both feet, directing a brass ensemble and a choir with your forehead and eye-contact. Once I figured this out, I barely had to look at my music, and if I made a mistake, I knew how to make a mistake.
- I was able to improvise a constant stream of variations on O Come, All Ye Faithful that I was able to use for service music, preludes, and postludes.
Up Next: The Rule of the Octave
If you already know the RO pretty well, this analysis should be pretty easy to follow. If you don’t, it might be a little more tricky to follow. Over the next 6 or so Try This! emails, we will explore the RO so you are more familiar with possibly the most useful and common harmonic patterns. We will look at some examples from the repertoire and apply the RO to one of Feneroli’s partimenti.
Until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Best Wishes for 2025,
Ian