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 Complete Church and Secular Cantatas

The Complete Church and Secular Cantatas

Author: Johann Sebastian Bach

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9780810839335

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This volume contains parallel texts and translations of all Bach's church and secular cantatas that have come down to us complete. The volume also includes a short glossary of geographical and mythological names, a list of dedicatees of the secular cantatas, a list of the poets with their dates, and an introduction to the cantatas by Martin Neary, formerly organist of Winchester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.


Rethinking Bach

Rethinking Bach

Author: Bettina Varwig

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0190943890

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This book a offers a multitude of provocative new perspectives on one of the most iconic composers in the Western classical tradition. Its collective rethinking of some of our most cherished narratives and deeply held beliefs about Johann Sebastian Bach will allow readers to see the man in a new light and to hear his music with new ears.


The Cantatas of J. S. Bach

The Cantatas of J. S. Bach

Author: Alfred Dürr

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 985

ISBN-13: 0199297762

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A work-by-work commentary on the Bach cantatas by the world's most famous Bach scholar, now available in English and in paperback for the first time. It includes all the cantata librettos in German-English parallel text. An indispensable reference book for anyone listening to, performing in, or studying any of the Bach cantatas.


Analyzing Bach Cantatas

Analyzing Bach Cantatas

Author: Eric Chafe

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-03-27

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0199882975

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Bach's cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art, yet studies of the individual cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few. In this book, noted Bach expert Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer readers and listeners alike the richest possible experience of these works. A respected theorist of seventeenth-century music, Chafe is sensitive to the composer's intentions and to the enduring and universal qualities of the music itself. Concentrating on a small number of representative cantatas, mostly from the Leipzig cycles of 1723-24 and 1724-25, and in particular on Cantata 77, Chafe shows how Bach strove to mirror both the dogma and the mystery of religious experience in musical allegory. Analyzing Bach Cantatas offers valuable information on the theological relevance of the structure of the liturgical year for the design and content of these works, as well as a survey of the theories of modality that inform Bach's compositional style. Chafe demonstrates that, while Bach certainly employed "pictorialism" and word-painting in his compositions, his method of writing music was a more complex amalgam of theological concepts and music theory. Regarding the cantatas as musical allegories that reflect the fundamental tenets of Lutheran theology as established during Bach's lifetime, Chafe synthesizes a number of key musical and theological ideas to illuminate the essential character of these great works. This unique and insightful book offers an essential methodology for understanding one of the central bodies of work in the Western musical canon. It will prove indispensable for all students and scholars of Bach's work, musicology, and theological studies.


The Rest Is Noise

The Rest Is Noise

Author: Alex Ross

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2007-10-16

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 1429932880

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Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.


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

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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.


Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach

Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach

Author: Mark A. Peters

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1498554962

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Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach collects seventeen essays by leading Bach scholars. The authors each address in some way such questions of meaning in J. S. Bach’s vocal compositions—including his Passions, Masses, Magnificat, and cantatas—with particular attention to how such meaning arises out of the intentionality of Bach’s own compositional choices or (in Part IV in particular) how meaning is discovered, and created, through the reception of Bach’s vocal works. And the authors do not consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss Bach’s artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural trends—social, historical, theological, musical, etc. Such questions of compositional choice and meaning frame the four primary approaches to Bach’s vocal music taken by the authors in this volume, as seen across the book’s four parts: Part I: How might the study of historical theology inform our understanding of Bach’s compositional choices in his music for the church (cantatas, Passions, masses)? Part II: How can we apply traditional analytical tools to understand better how Bach’s compositions were created and how they might have been heard by his contemporaries? Part III: What we can understand anew through the study of Bach’s self-borrowing (i.e., parody), which always changed the earlier meaning of a composition through changes in textual content, compositional characteristics, the work’s context within a larger composition, and often the performance context (from court to church, for example)? Part IV: What can the study of reception teach us about a work’s meaning(s) in Bach’s time, during the time of his immediate successors, and at various points since then (including our present)? The chapters in this volume thus reflect the breadth of current Bach research in its attention not only to source study and analysis, but also to meanings and contexts for understanding Bach’s compositions.