Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts
Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts

Author: Melvin P. Unger

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 1996-04-16

Total Pages: 796

ISBN-13: 1461659051

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The German church cantata of the eighteenth century was the culmination of a long tradition of Lutheran "sermon music" that used the proclamation, amplification, and interpretation of scripture to teach and persuade the listener. Bach's cantatas also served this didactic purpose and typically incorporate numerous allusions to scriptural passages or themes in their librettos. Unfortunately, many of these passages remain obscure to the twentieth-century musician because they demand a much closer familiarity with the Bible than is common today. The Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts identifies scriptural references for the wording, imagery, and themes that Bach's listeners would have known. In addition, the religious or literary theme of each text is summarized within the specific context of the cantata as a whole. With interlinear translations and a full complement of indexes.

An Introduction to Bach Studies
An Introduction to Bach Studies

Author: Daniel R. Melamed

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998-04-30

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0190284064

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This volume is a guide to the resources and materials of Bach scholarship, both for the non specialist wondering where to begin in the enormous literature on J. S. Bach, and for the Bach specialist looking for a convenient and up to date survey of the field. It describes the tools of Bach research and how to use them, and suggests how to get started in Bach research by describing the principal areas of research and citing the essential literature on each piece and topic. The authors emphasize the issues that have engaged Bach scholars for generations, focusing on particularly important writings; on recent literature; on overviews, collections of essays and handbooks; and on writings in English. Subjects covered include bibliographic tools of Bach research and sources of literature; Bach's family; Bach biographies; places Bach lived and worked; Bach's teaching; the liturgy; Bach source studies and the transmission of his music; repertory and editions; genres and individual vocal and instrumental works; performance practice; the reception and analysis of Bach's music; and many others. The book also offers explanations of important and potentially confusing topics in Bach research, such as the organization of the annual cantata cycles, pitch standards, the history of the Berlin libraries, the structure of the critical commentary volumes in the Neue Bach Ausgabe, and so on. This book opens up the rich world of Bach scholarship to students, teachers, performers, and listeners.

Bach against Modernity
Bach against Modernity

Author: Michael Marissen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-04-07

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0197669514

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Many scholars and music lovers hold that J.S. Bach is a modern figure, as his music seems to speak directly to the aesthetic, spiritual, or emotional concerns of today's listeners. But, by eighteenth-century standards, Bach and his music in fact reflected and forcefully promoted a premodern world and life view. In Bach against Modernity, author Michael Marissen offers a new look at Bach that considers problems of inattentiveness to historical considerations in academic and popular writing about Bach's relation to the present. He also puts forward interpretive reassessments of key individual works by Bach and examines problems in modern comprehension of the partly archaic German texts that Bach set to music. Lastly, he explores Bach's music in relation to premodern versus enlightened attitudes toward Jews and Judaism and enquires into the theological character of Bach's secular instrumental music. Throughout, the book provides overlooked or misunderstood evidence of Bach's private engagement with religious and social issues that he also addressed in his public vocal compositions. Marissen ultimately argues that, while we are free to make use of Bach and his music in whatever ways we find fitting, we ought also to guard against miscasting Bach in our own ideological image and proclaiming the authenticity of that image, and hence its prestige value, in support of our own agendas.

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.

Choral Music
Choral Music

Author: James Michael Floyd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-07-26

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1135848203

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This is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites on choral music. This book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared since publication of the previous edition.