Many thanks to Bernard Greenberg (his website / his YouTube channel), who helped me (Gertim Alberda) tremendously with this site, and by whose programming tools, which he made especially for me, this website is automatically produced now. I also owe many thanks to Willem (Wim) Vree, a retired Dutch professor, who did the main programming for the score-player that this website is using. I'm very grateful for their terrific work, by which I was able to realize this site. I'm a Dutch man, married, and we have 3 grown up children. I do have a title (drs.), but in a different field of expertise than music. I do consider myself a singer (bass) and I love to sing classical and modern as well (and I play a bit of guitar and organ as well). Everything non-professionally though (although I would have liked to become a professional singer, but my life went differently, yet it still is my greatest passion). Here is an overview of my musical activities (including some of my singing, under no.6; with accompaniment-recordings made from automatic playback by the score).

Also a page is available here with excerpted comments by Bernard Greenberg (BSG). These comments mainly address interesting compositional details of many of these settings, of interest to students of counterpoint and other aspects of composition, with links back to the chorales. The comments pertaining to each chorale are also accessible from the "Commentary" button at the upper right of the pages for those chorales having them.

How the scores were rendered?
I made all the scores by entering all the notes (with the help of a Midi keyboard) and lyrics in Musescore and I also applied many hidden extras to make the scores and its phrasing sound as realisticly as possible; hidden fermatas, tempo changes, breath pauses, phrasing, etc. (a lot of extra work). This was all done to 'humanize' the playback. It was a lot of extra work however; all small tempo changes have to be tried out and had to match not only on a micro level, but also on the overall, macro level). Those hidden additions can only be seen when the score is downloaded and opened in Musescore (they are shown in grey; except for some note cutbacks, which are not visible at all).

Why did I consider these (hidden) additions important? I did it, because I wanted to do Bach right, as much as is technically possible and whithout violating any copyrights; using existing recordings would do just that (which made me very limited, by deliberately chosing not to use them). Yet, I still wanted it to sound the way a chorale should sound, with its characteristic phrasing, and therefore I had to make it sound like how a real choir would sing it; without all that it would sound really robotic/computer like. Now it sounds much more like a choir would really sing it (except for the sung words, of course); which I do however consider very essential and therefore I did enter all of them; not all stanzas, just the ones shown in the book that I used, also checked against the BGA score (I did discover some minor mistakes in the book, which I have corrected here online). Because of all the extra work, it took me 2 years to enter and finish all the scores. It took me 2 hours on average per score, just to make it sound right (for example: every single tempo change has to be tried out and adjusted till one is satisfied with the result, which takes a lot of time (a lot of trial and error testing); and all together it should still match). Because of all the effort it took me to enter all the extras to make it sound right, the scores have basically almost become like performances, which would in theory make them copyrighted. Update: In july 2021 I started adding real recordings to scores. My intention is to adjust more scores for this, so that they will have real performances to it, just because I received many remarks that it was a shame it sounded not yet good enough, and without words; nothing like the real thing. To give the best impression of how the chorale should sound, nothing beats a real performance. So, for this purpose alone, out of the fair use to be as instructive as possible for students, to best learn the chorale and to show how it best should be sung (according to my taste), I decided to add real performances. They are not intended for download, and under the 'mp3' download button only the mp3 of the MS-score itself is offered. If you want it, look it up and buy it!

Yet, I offer these scores, including its recordings/mp3's, entirely for free to use and also to share freely by anyone for non-commercial use (Under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND. See here). Please do credit me, G.T. Alberda, and my website, when using a score from this website, knowing all the effort it took me to render this and to have it online the way I have it now (it also costs me time and money to keep it up like this). Please do respect therefore the very small/lightweight terms. You do have to indicate if changes were made to the score and why and make clear what you added/changed to the score as I have it, but one cannot make derivate works or change it entirely; it should basically remain intact (this required a very careful and precise process and one cannot just change a single note, without ruining something else!) You cannot use my freely offered scores, offered on this website, to make a profit from it. I won't allow that and would consider it abuse of all my effort and hard work. If you only want to use the notes from a score from this website, that is very easy; download the score, open it in MuseScore, and select all the grey additions and hit delete (but keep mentioning me; that I entered the notes!). You can delete the lyrics that way as well, but you should realize that it is a chorale and it is really meant to have lyrics; the music and meaning often and deliberately mutually reinforce each other with Bach and so they need to be there. Therefore, I would strongly prefer you to let them stay (but that is not a hard demand). If you don't want to apply to my terms, please enter the notes and everything yourself and don't use anything of this website at all. There are probably enough other sources that can support with that. That is all I ask. Thanks in advance and for respecting that.