About Bach
Publication Year: 2008
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
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pp. ix-x
Philipp Spitta, author of the monumental nineteenth-century biography Johann Sebastian Bach (Leipzig, 1873–1880), once explained his passion for his subject by pointing out that Bach was a composer “whose life and works have occupied a considerable portion of my own.” Certainly Christoph Wolff could...
Abbreviations
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pp. xi-
BEFORE BACH
A Master Teacher Revealed: Johann Pachelbel's Deutliche Anweisung
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pp. 3-13
For musicians of the Baroque Era, the ability to teach and attract students was essential to establishing their reputations, supplementing their incomes, and helping them to fulfill their myriad duties in church, city, or court positions. In Germany, the teaching tradition is well illustrated by Johann Pachelbel, whose...
From the House of Aaron to the House of Johann Sebastian: Old Testament Roots for the Bach Family Tree
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pp. 15-32
In 1735 Johann Sebastian Bach turned fifty. During the course of that year he drew up a family tree delineating six generations of male members of the Bach family and prepared an annotated family genealogy to accompany the family tree. In addition, at around the same time he began to assemble...
BACH'S VOCAL MUSIC
Combinatorial Modeling in the Chorus Movement of Cantata 24, Ein ungefarbt Gemute
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pp. 35-52
In recent decades, the pioneering work of Georg von Dadelsen and Alfred Dürr on the chronology of Bach’s Leipzig cantata performances has led to a better understanding of Bach’s compositional process, as well as the nature of his responsibilities as Cantor of St. Thomas. Bach began his regular duties on...
Choral Unison in J.S. Bach's Vocal Music
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pp. 53-60
One of the most striking textures in J.S. Bach’s ensemble vocal music is unison choral writing, in which four (or more) parts join in singing the same melodic line. Passages scored this way (Table 1) stand out from their musical surroundings, and we might well ask why Bach turned to this...
You Say Sabachthani and I Say Asabthani: A St. Matthew Passion Puzzle
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pp. 61-67
The answer to the question of what Bach wrote is simple: Both his autograph for the work and a copy, made around 1756 by Johann Christoph Farlau, probably from Bach’s composing score, clearly read asabthani. The librettist for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion was Picander, pseudonym of...
Sein Segen fliesst daher wie ein Strom, BWV Anh. I 14: A Source for Parodied Arias in the B-Minor Mass?
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pp. 69-77
Based on the latest diplomatic source studies, all but perhaps two of the twenty-seven movements in Bach’s B-Minor Mass can now be considered to be parodies, and virtually all of the nine arias fall into this category. So far, however, a concrete model has been pinpointed for only one of...
BACH CIRCLE
Johann Friedrich Schweinitz, "A Disciple of the Famous Herr Bach in Leipzig"
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pp. 81-88
Absent from Hans Löffler’s groundbreaking compilation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s students is the name of the Göttingen organist, university music director, and city cantor Johann Friedrich Schweinitz (1708–1780). Apparently Löffler had not encountered Georg Linnemann’s earlier research...
Johann Christian Bach and the Church Symphony
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pp. 89-108
Among the members of the Bach family, Johann Christian (1735–1782) enjoyed the widest renown during the eighteenth century. Far more traveled than his father and brothers, he became the principal figure of a “Bach tradition” outside of Germany before the nineteenth century. This can...
BACH'S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
Scribes, Engravers, and Notational Styles: The Final Disposition of Bach's Art of Fugue
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pp. 111-123
To my knowledge, the first detailed examination of the engraving in the original edition of J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue was carried out by a graduate seminar conducted by Christoph Wolff at Columbia University in 1971. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the engraving, a student...
Notes on J.S. Bach and Basso Continuo Realization
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pp. 125-134
In addition to these documents, there are short entries on continuo realization in the Clavierbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach: the “Einige höchstnöthige Regeln von General Basso” of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach and “Einige Reguln vom General Bass” in the hand of Anna Magdalena herself. Although...
Music for "Cavaliers et Dames": Bach and the Repertoire of His Collegium Musicum
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pp. 135-156
As it is well known, Bach led the University Collegium Musicum ensemble in Leipzig from 1729 to 1737, and then once again from 1739 to at least 1741. During his tenure, the group performed once per week for two hours throughout the year: in summer on Wednesdays, from...
A Print of Clavierubung I from J.S. Bach's Personal Library
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pp. 157-168
Over the course of his long career in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach saw seven editions of his works into print (Table 1). Each of these publications generated several hundred exemplars, most of which were sold to colleagues, friends, students, and the general public (often at the...
AFTER BACH
Carl Reinecke's Performance of Mozart's Larghetto and the Nineteenth-Century Practice of Quantitative Accentuation
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pp. 171-180
A performance-practice convention among classically trained musicians holds that metric accentuation in tonal and post-tonal Western music is qualitative rather than quantitative in nature. Accentuation of strong beats is clarified primarily by stress accents—dynamic inflection and articulation...
"Grand Miscellaneous Acts": Observations on Oratorio Performance in London after Haydn
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pp. 181-190
In the early weeks of Lent, 1814, the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, London, presented a concert featuring Part I of The Creation, “composed by Dr. Haydn.” It was followed by “Two Grand Miscellaneous Acts” consisting of arias and choruses by various composers. Although the choice of the word...
Back from B-A-C-H: Schumann's Symphony No. 2 in C Major
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pp. 191-206
For much of the year 1845, Robert Schumann was occupied with the composition of his Six Fugues on the Name B-A-C-H, op. 60. For some critics, this retrospective shift to a rigorous genre from the early eighteenth century seems symptomatic of a new pursuit of classicist control, one that marks...
Contributors
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pp. 207-209
Index
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pp. 211-216
E-ISBN-13: 9780252090691
Print-ISBN-13: 9780252033445
Page Count: 232
Publication Year: 2008
