Sheep May Safely Graze (Bach; arranged by Rick Foster)

"Sheep May Safely Graze" ("Schafe können sicher weiden") Music by Johann Sebastian Bach From Cantata 208 popularly known as the "Hunt Cantata" the full real title of which is "Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd" (The lively hunt is all my heart's desire). One of the so-called secular cantatas, which surprised me when i found it out recently. I'd always thought that the context was very Christian, y'know the sheep and the shepherd and all that. Turns out the words that are sung while all this is going on make a much more political point, I think: Sheep may safely graze where a good shepherd watches. Where rulers govern well we may feel peace and rest and what makes countries happy With one piece of music, Bach invented the "pastoral" style. You close your eyes and you see a bright and sunny day, the fields, the sheep. You smell the hay. What is it about a bunch of notes that can do that? The first time I heard the piece was on organist Virgil Fox's greatest hits, an LP record I owned back in the day. I never thought I'd ever get through Rick Foster's notoriously difficult arrangement made for Christopher Parkening but with a few emendations that I've made here it's really possible for those of us with merely ordinary size hands. Any arrangement of such a complex piece will necessarily involve compromises. Here and there I shorten a half note where trying to hold it would make for an extraordinarily difficult fingering and transition. In several places I've also filled in eighth note chords. I took as my inspiration for this the beautiful recording of Leon Fleisher on his album "Two Hands" where he plays the piano arrangement of Egon Petri which does just that. I think it makes it sound less, shall we say, "Lutheran". :D It certainly does when Leon plays it any how. If you don't have that record, go get it. You should be able to find this arrangement in the book "Parkening Plays Bach" which I believe is still in print. TUNING is CGDGBE Taylor NS54-ce, hybrid classical D'addario Pro Arte normal tension nylon strings