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

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Reader's Guide to Music

Reader's Guide to Music

Author: Murray Steib

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 928

ISBN-13: 1135942625

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).


Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Author: Markus Rathey

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-08-04

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 019027526X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the last decades of the 17th century, the feast of Christmas in Lutheran Germany underwent a major transformation when theologians and local governments waged an early modern "war on Christmas," discouraging riotous pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety. Christmas rituals, such as the "Heilig Christ" plays and the rocking of the child (Kindelwiegen) were abolished, and Christian devotion focused increasingly on the metaphor of a birth of Christ in the human heart. John Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio, composed in 1734, both reflects this new piety and conveys the composer's experience living through this tumult during his own childhood and early career. Markus Rathey's book is the first thorough study of this popular masterpiece in English. While giving a comprehensive overview of the Christmas Oratorio as a whole, the book focuses on two themes in particular: the cultural and theological understanding of Christmas in Bach's time and the compositional process that led Bach from the earliest concepts to the completed piece. The cultural and religious context of the oratorio provides the backdrop for Rathey's detailed analysis of the composition, in which he explores Bach's compositional practices, for example, his reuse and parodies of movements that had originally been composed for secular cantatas. The book analyzes Bach's original score and sheds new light on the way Bach wrote the piece, how he shaped musical themes, and how he revised his initial ideas into the final composition.


Jews and Protestants

Jews and Protestants

Author: Irene Aue-Ben David

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-08-24

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 3110664860

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The book sheds light on various chapters in the long history of Protestant-Jewish relations, from the Reformation to the present. Going beyond questions of antisemitism and religious animosity, it aims to disentangle some of the intricate perceptions, interpretations, and emotions that have characterized contacts between Protestantism and Judaism, and between Jews and Protestants. While some papers in the book address Luther’s antisemitism and the NS-Zeit, most papers broaden the scope of the investigation: Protestant-Jewish theological encounters shaped not only antisemitism but also the Jewish Reform movement and Protestant philosemitic post-Holocaust theology; interactions between Jews and Protestants took place not only in the German lands but also in the wider Protestant universe; theology was crucial for the articulation of attitudes toward Jews, but music and philosophy were additional spheres of creativity that enabled the process of thinking through the relations between Judaism and Protestantism. By bringing together various contributions on these and other aspects, the book opens up directions for future research on this intricate topic, which bears both historical significance and evident relevance to our own time.


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

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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


Bach Among the Theologians

Bach Among the Theologians

Author: Jaroslav Pelikan

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2003-11-06

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1597522775

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This superb and enduring contribution to the Johann Sebastian Bach tricentennial focuses on Bach's vocation as a musician of the church and on his work as a theologian. Although Bach is most often remembered for his music, Jaroslav Pelikan here reminds us of the message of Bach's works and of his understanding and devotion to his vocation within the church. By relating Bach's work to the heritage of the Lutheran Reformation -- musical as well as theological -- Pelikan places Bach within the context of the theological currents of his time. Maintaining that the Reformation heritage provides the underlying thematic and religious inspiration for Bach's work, Pelikan delves into three main movements within Lutheran theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a framework for understanding Bach. He also demonstrates how Bach's sacred music complements and illustrates these theological trends. In the second portion of the book, Pelikan examines the theological motifs that are reflected in the texts Bach used and in the settings he provided for these texts. The author points to Bach's particular interest in the meaning of the cross, and to redemption and atonement through the death and resurrection of Christ. He notes the centrality of the 'Passions' in Bach's lifework and their importance for the history of the doctrine of atonement. 'Bach Among the Theologians' represents a unique inspirational complement to the many works that concentrate primarily on the composer's personal or secular life.


The Crucifixion in Music

The Crucifixion in Music

Author: Jasmin Melissa Cameron

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780810858725

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Crucifixion in Music studies the musical representation of words and the concepts and contexts to which words refer, examining the way the treatment of a literary text, namely the Crucifixus, coalesces into a recognizable musical tradition that individual composers follow, develop, modify, or ignore.


Choral Music

Choral Music

Author: Avery T. Sharp

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780824059446

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Choral Music Research and Information is a bibliographic research guide of work in the field. Sections include choral music for children and youth choirs, choral music for adult choirs, choral music with dance, choral settings, and multicultural music.