Concerns unaccompanied works BWV 995-1013, including six suites for solo cello, six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, seven works for lute, and the suite for solo flute. Examines issues of style and composition type and the options open to interpretation and performance.
J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-18th century. This engaging introduction to these works is the first comprehensive exploration of their place within Bach's music, focusing on their structural and stylistic features as they have been perceived since their creation. Combining an analytical study, a historical guide, and an insightful introduction to Bach's style, this book will help violinists, scholars, and other listeners develop a deeper personal involvement with many aspects of these wonderful pieces.
Known around the world for his advocacy of early historical performance and as a skilled violin performer and pedagogue, Stanley Ritchie has developed a technical guide to the interpretation and performance of J. S. Bach's enigmatic sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Unlike typical Baroque compositions, Bach's six solos are uniquely free of accompaniment. To add depth and texture to the pieces, Bach incorporated various techniques to bring out a multitude of voices from four strings and one bow, including arpeggios across strings, multiple stopping, opposing tonal ranges, and deft bowing. Published in 1802, over 80 years after its completion in 1720, Bach's manuscript is without expression marks, leaving the performer to freely interpret the dynamics, fingering, bowings, and articulations. Marshaling a lifetime of experience, Stanley Ritchie provides violinists with deep insights into the interpretation and technicalities at the heart of these challenging pieces.
This book examines the nature of musical performance. In it, Dorottya Fabian explores the contributions and limitations of some of these approaches to performance, be they theoretical, cultural, historical, perceptual, or analytical. Through a detailed investigation of recent recordings of J. S. Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, she demonstrates that music performance functions as a complex dynamical system. Only by crossing disciplinary boundaries, therefore, can we put the aural experience into words. A Musicology of Performance provides a model for such a method by adopting Deleuzian concepts and various empirical and interdisciplinary procedures. Fabian provides a case study in the repertoire, while presenting new insights into the state of baroque performance practice at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through its wealth of audio examples, tables, and graphs, the book offers both a sensory and a scholarly account of musical performance. These interactive elements map the connections between historically informed and mainstream performance styles, considering them in relation to broader cultural trends, violin schools, and individual artistic trajectories. A Musicology of Performance is a must read for academics and post-graduate students and an essential reference point for the study of music performance, the early music movement, and Bach’s opus.
Long admired for his interpretation of Bach's six 'Sonatas and Partitas' for unaccompanied violin, Jaap Schroder provides a detailed but informal guide to their performance."
This edition of the Bach Cello Suites is appealing to both the scholar and the performer. The genesis of this edition was the alignment of the relevant manuscripts for easy comparison and study using a line-by-line layout. It has resulted in the ultimate scholarly approach to the study of these manuscripts and has led to many discoveries concerning notes, trills, dots, dynamics, and rhythm. In the scordatura version of "Suite No. 5," pitch names are given above the notes for the re-tuned top string, clarifying confusing elements in the notation. Fingerings and bowings in this edition reflect those used on the DVD set of Starkweather's performance of the suites (item number 730150). Reference to the manuscript edition makes it possible to visually assess the ambiguity of many of the slurs and to reach one's own conclusions.
These arrangements of many pieces by J.S. Bach make a great composer's works accessible to the mandolinist. Since the bulk of the music has been adapted from various suites, sonatas, and partitas, the authors provides an explanation of each dance form and other similar pieces. Includes: 'Bauree Angloise' from Partita in A Minor for solo flute; 'Marche' from Anna Magdalena Back Book; 'Fantasie' from Partita No. 3 in A Minor; and more. In notation and tablature. Includes a CD which contains 13 of the 26 solos.
For nearly two centuries Johann Sebastian Bach has been regarded as a cornerstone of Western musical culture. His music inspired subsequent generations of composers and philosophers alike, and continues to capture our imaginations in many ways. Bach studies is part of this picture, often seen as providing excellent examples of musicological scholarship. The volume editor has chosen thirty-one published articles which, in his view, not only represent a broad spectrum of the scholarly discussions on Bach's life and works, but will also facilitate the on-going study of Bach's creative genius. The articles have been selected to ensure that this volume will be considered useful for not only those students who are currently engaging in Bach studies at universities but also for more seasoned Bach scholars as they consider the future direction of Bach studies.
This is the second of a two-volume study of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Taking into account the vast increase in our knowledge of the composer due to the Bach scholarship of the last sixty years, Richard Jones presents a vivid and in some respects radically new picture of his creative development during the Cöthen (1717-23) and Leipzig years (1723-50). The approach is, as far as possible, chronological and analytical, but the author has also tried to make the book readable so that it may be accessible to music lovers and amateur performers as well as to students, scholars, and professional musicians. There are many good biographies of Bach, but this is the first, fully-comprehensive, in-depth study of his music making it indispensable for those who want to study specific pieces or learn how he developed as a composer.