The melody of the Chorale Prelude ‘Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist’, BuxWV208 (‘Now let us beg true faith of the Holy Spirit’) is ornamented and given to the right hand, the left hand and feet providing a three-voice accompaniment. Although other chorale preludes appear to have been crafted on paper, there are suggestions here of origins in improvisation, and it is not hard, here and in the subsequent chorale preludes of a similar type, e.g. ‘Ein feste Burg’, to imagine a player in an improvisatory frame of mind embellishing the melody and providing a relatively simple accompaniment of the kind found here.
from notes by Relf Clark © 2008
