Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach

Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach

Author: Hans-Joachim Schulze

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2024-05-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0252056701

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Internationally recognized Bach authority Hans-Joachim Schulze authored a 225-part series on the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. In this collection, James A. Brokaw II translates a selection of the essays, illuminating a wide range of biographical and cultural features of Bach’s life and creative milieu. Schulze’s lively and engaging discussions provide a wealth of rewarding insights and perspectives focusing on individual cantatas, their texts, and the questions of chronology and context that attend them. The University of Illinois Press has paired the volume with a special web-based companion overseen by the translator and hosted by the Illinois Open Publishing Network. This online resource includes Brokaw’s translations of all 225 of Schulze’s essays alongside digital tools for searching, sorting, and bundling the commentaries according to date of composition, position within the liturgical church year sequence, and librettist.


Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245): A Theological Commentary

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245): A Theological Commentary

Author: Andreas Loewe

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-04-03

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 9004272364

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This Theological Commentary is the first full-length work in English to consider Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion in its entirety, both the words and the music. Bach’s oratorio is a globally popular musical work, and a significant expression of Lutheran theology. The commentary explains the Biblical and poetic text, and its musical setting, line by line. Bach’s Passion is shown to be the work of a master craftsman and trained theologian, in the collaborative and cultural milieu of eighteenth-century, Lutheran Leipzig. For the first time, this work makes much German scholarship available in English, including archival sources, and includes a new scholarly translation of the libretto. The musical and theological terms are explained, to enable an interdisciplinary understanding of the Passion’s meaning and continued significance.


The Cantatas of J.S. Bach

The Cantatas of J.S. Bach

Author: Alfred Dürr

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 984

ISBN-13: 0198167075

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This is the only English translation of this important book by the world's most distinguished Bach scholar.


The Cantatas of J. S. Bach

The Cantatas of J. S. Bach

Author: Alfred Dürr

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2005-06-09

Total Pages: 984

ISBN-13: 0191058130

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This is the only English translation of this important book by the world's most distinguished Bach scholar. This work is widely regarded as the most authoritative and comprehensive treatment of the Bach cantatas. It begins with a historical survey of the seventeenth-century background to the cantatas, and performance practice issues. The core of the book is a work-by-work study in which each cantata in turn is represented by its libretto, a synopsis of its movements, and a detailed analytical commentary. This format makes it extremely useful as a reference work for anyone listening to, performing in, or studying any of the Bach cantatas. All the cantata librettos are given in German-English parallel text. For the English edition the text has been carefully revised to bring it up to date, taking account of recent Bach scholarship.


Bach Perspectives, Volume 12

Bach Perspectives, Volume 12

Author: Robin A. Leaver

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0252050711

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Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran and much of his music was for Lutheran liturgical worship. As these insightful essays in the twelfth volume of Bach Perspectives demonstrate, he was also influenced by--and in turn influenced--different expressions of religious belief. The vocal music, especially the Christmas Oratorio, owes much to medieval Catholic mysticism, and the evolution of the B minor Mass has strong Catholic connections. In Leipzig, Catholic and Lutheran congregations sang many of the same vernacular hymns. Internal squabbles were rarely missing within Lutheranism, for example Pietists' dislike of concerted church music, especially if it employed specific dance forms. Also investigated here are broader issues such as the close affinity between Bach's cantata libretti and the hymns of Charles Wesley; and Bach's music in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment as shaped by Protestant Rationalism in Berlin. Contributors: Rebecca Cypess, Joyce L. Irwin, Robin A. Leaver, Mark Noll, Markus Rathey, Derek Stauff, and Janice B. Stockigt.


Bach & God

Bach & God

Author: Michael Marissen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-20

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190606967

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Bach & God explores the religious character of Bach's vocal and instrumental music in seven interrelated essays. Noted musicologist Michael Marissen offers wide-ranging interpretive insights from careful biblical and theological scrutiny of the librettos. Yet he also shows how Bach's pitches, rhythms, and tone colors can make contributions to a work's plausible meanings that go beyond setting texts in an aesthetically satisfying manner. In some of Bach's vocal repertory, the music puts a "spin" on the words in a way that turns out to be explainable as orthodox Lutheran in its orientation. In a few of Bach's vocal works, his otherwise puzzlingly fierce musical settings serve to underscore now unrecognized or unacknowledged verbal polemics, most unsettlingly so in the case of his church cantatas that express contempt for Jews and Judaism. Finally, even Bach's secular instrumental music, particularly the late collections of "abstract" learned counterpoint, can powerfully project certain elements of traditional Lutheran theology. Bach's music is inexhaustible, and Bach & God suggests that through close contextual study there is always more to discover and learn.


The World of the Bach Cantatas: Johann Sebastian Bach's early sacred cantatas

The World of the Bach Cantatas: Johann Sebastian Bach's early sacred cantatas

Author: Christoph Wolff

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780393041064

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The cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach are among the best known and most frequently performed musical works of the Baroque period. In an illuminating discussion of the musical, literary, aesthetic, and theological aspects of the composers early cantatas, leading Bach scholars place the works in their historical and biographical context. 85 photos.


J.S. Bach: the Vocal Texts in English Translation with Commentary

J.S. Bach: the Vocal Texts in English Translation with Commentary

Author: Z. Philip Ambrose

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 1024

ISBN-13: 1664119841

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Prof. Ambrose has revised and enlarged into one volume his 2006 two-volume English translations of virtually all the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. By preserving the meter and key-word placement of the original, J.S. Bach: The Vocal Texts in English Translation with Commentary is a good guide to the poetics of Bach's music and will help listeners and interpreters perceive more clearly Bach's own "translation" of text into music.