Download or read book Foretastes of Heaven in Lutheran Church Music Tradition written by and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the two centuries after Martin Luther’s affirmation that music stood second only to theology, Lutheran theologians and musicians formulated a theological defense of music that validated this exalted status. Against Calvinist rivals and Pietist critics, the orthodox Lutheran position further claimed that both instrumental and vocal music were commanded by God. Joyce Irwin’s earlier work, Neither Voice nor Heart Alone: German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Age of the Baroque, traced this development in Lutheran theological thought. In this current work, Foretastes of Heavenly Music: Johann Mattheson and Christoph Raupach on Music in Time and Eternity, Irwin provides translations and commentary for two eighteenth-century texts that illuminate the musico-theological foundation underlying the work of Lutheran composers such as Bach and Telemann. A Truth Lover’s Clear Reasonings on Which the Correct Use of Music Rests (1717) by Christoph Raupach, with an introduction by Johann Mattheson, serves as a cumulative statement of Lutheran advocacy of music. Mattheson’s Affirmation of Heavenly Music (1747) goes a step further in defending the reality of music in heaven and even the ultimate superiority of music over theology and sermons. Irwin’s introduction traces the centrality of Mattheson’s belief in heavenly music throughout the course of his life, even while he was writing works of music theory that earned him a reputation as an Enlightenment thinker. Though influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, specifically British empiricism, he rejected the rationalist philosophies of his German contemporaries and expressed no sympathy for the emerging school of biblical criticism. This work is ideal for music historians, Bach scholars, theologians, and researchers in the field of sacred music.

Download or read book Lutheran Music Culture written by Mattias Lundberg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a novel and distinct contribution to previous research on the rich Lutheran heritage of music. It builds upon a current surge of interest in the field, which resonates with a wider interest in connections between music and religion, as well as with cultural and aesthetic dimensions of faith at large. The book situates the topic in relation to recent developments within historical and cultural studies that have developed a more nuanced and positive view of the interplay between theologians and other cultural agents in the evolution of Western modernity during post Reformation processes of ‘confessionalization’. It combines conceptual discussions of key terms relevant to the study of the development and significance of an Early Modern Lutheran Music Culture with theological readings of central texts on music, analytic approaches to historical repertoires and material perspectives on its dissemination.

Download or read book Bach Perspectives Volume 12 written by Robin A. Leaver and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Johann Sebastian Bach s Christmas Oratorio written by Markus Rathey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Bach s Numbers written by Ruth Tatlow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighteenth century the universal harmony of God's creation and the perfection of the unity (1:1) were philosophically, morally and devotionally significant. Ruth Tatlow employs theoretical evidence and practical demonstrations to explain how and why Bach used numbers in his published compositions.

Download or read book Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach written by Szymon Paczkowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now appearing in an English translation, this book by Szymon Paczkowski is the first in-depth exploration of the Polish style in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach spent almost thirty years living and working in Leipzig in Saxony, a country ruled by Friedrich August I and his son Friedrich August II, who were also kings of Poland (as August II and August III). This period of close Polish-Saxon relations left a significant imprint on Bach’s music. Paczkowski’s meticulous account of this complex political and cultural dynamic sheds new light on many of Bach’s familiar pieces. The book explores the semantic and rhetorical functions that undergird the symbolism of the Polish style in Baroque music. It demonstrates how the notion of a Polish style in music was developed in German music theory, and conjectures that Bach’s successful application for the title of Court Composer at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland would induce the composer to deliberately use elements of the Polish style. This comprehensive study of the way Bach used the Polish style in his music moves beyond technical analysis to place the pieces within the context of Baroque customs and discourse. This ambitious and inspiring study is an original contribution to the scholarly conversation concerning Bach’s music, focusing on the symbolism of the polonaise, the most popular and recognizable Polish dance in 18th-century Saxony. In Saxony at this time the polonaise was associated with the ceremonies of the royal-electoral court in Dresden, and Saxon musicians regarded it as a musical symbol of royalty. Paczkowski explores this symbolism of the Polish royal dance in Bach’s instrumental music and, which is also to be found to an even greater extent, in his vocal works. The Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach provides wide-ranging interpretations based on a careful analysis of the sources explored within historical and theological context. The book is a valuable source for both teaching and further research, and will find readers not only among musicologists, but also historians, art historians, and readers in cultural studies. All lovers of Bach’s music will appreciate this lucid and intriguing study.

Download or read book Andreas Werckmeister s Musicalische Paradoxal Discourse written by and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andreas Werckmeister (1645 – 1706), a late seventeenth-century German Lutheran organist, composer, and music theorist, is the last great advocate and defender of the Great Tradition in music, with its assumptions that music is a divine gift to humanity, spiritually charged yet rationally accessible, the key being a complex of mathematical proportions which govern and are at the root of the entire universe and all which that embraces. Thus understood, music is the audible manifestation of the order of the universe, allowing glimpses, sound-bites of the very Creator of a well-tempered universe, and of our relationship to each other, our environment, and the divine powers which placed us here. This is the subject matter of the conversation which Werckmeister wishes to have with us, his readers, particularly in his last treatise, the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse. But he does not make it easy for today’s readers. He assumes certain proficiencies from his readers, including detailed biblical knowledge, a fluency in Latin, and a familiarity with treatises and publications concerning music, theology, and a number of related disciplines. He writes in a rather archaic German, riddled with obscure references which require a thorough explanation. With its extensive commentary and translation of the treatise, this book seeks to bridge Werckmeister’s world with that of the twenty-first century. Werckmeister wrote for novice and professional musicians alike, an author who wanted to consider with his readers the basic and existential questions and issues regarding the wondrous art of music, questions as relevant then as they are now.

Download or read book Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J S Bach written by Mark A. Peters and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Extravagance of Music written by David Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-13 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ways in which music can engender religious experience, by virtue of its ability to evoke the ineffable and affect how the world is open to us. Arguing against approaches that limit the religious significance of music to an illustrative function, The Extravagance of Music sets out a more expansive and optimistic vision, which suggests that there is an ‘excess’ or ‘extravagance’ in both music and the divine that can open up revelatory and transformative possibilities. In Part I, David Brown argues that even in the absence of words, classical instrumental music can disclose something of the divine nature that allows us to speak of an experience analogous to contemplative prayer. In Part II, Gavin Hopps contends that, far from being a wasteland of mind-closing triviality, popular music frequently aspires to elicit the imaginative engagement of the listener and is capable of evoking intimations of transcendence. Filled with fresh and accessible discussions of diverse examples and forms of music, this ground-breaking book affirms the disclosive and affective capacities of music, and shows how it can help to awaken, vivify, and sustain a sense of the divine in everyday life.

Download or read book Bach Studies written by Robin A. Leaver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws together a collection of Robin A. Leaver’s essays on Bach’s sacred music, exploring the religious aspects of this repertoire through consideration of three core themes: liturgy, hymnology, and theology. Rooted in a rich understanding of the historical sources, the book illuminates the varied ways in which Bach’s sacred music was informed and shaped by the religious, ritual, and intellectual contexts of his time, placing these works in the wider history of Protestant church music during the Baroque era. Including research from across a span of forty years, the chapters in this volume have been significantly revised and expanded for this publication, with several pieces appearing in English for the first time. Together, they offer an essential compendium of the work of a leading scholar of theological Bach studies.

Download or read book The Pathetick Musician written by Bruce Haynes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is rhetorical music? In The Pathetick Musician, Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through engaging explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the authors explode the conventional notion of historical authenticity in music, proposing adventurous new directions to reinvigorate the performance of early music in the modern setting. Along the way, Haynes and Burgess investigate intersections between music and oratory, dance, gesture, poetry, painting and sculpture, and offer insights into figural elaboration, articulation, nuance and temporality. Aimed primarily at performers of Baroque music, the book situates the study of performance practice in a broader cultural context, and as much as an invaluable resource for advanced study, it contains a wealth of information that pertains directly to anyone working in the field of early music. Based on a draft sketched by celebrated Baroque oboist and early music scholar Bruce Haynes before his death in 2011, The Pathetick Musician is the fruit of the combined wisdom of two musicians renowned equally for their contributions as performers and scholars. Drawing on an impressive array of Classical treatises on oratory, musical autographs and performance accounts, it is an essential companion to Haynes' controversial The End of Early Music. Geoffrey Burgess has taken up the broader claims of Haynes' philosophy to create a practical, accessible text that will be stimulating for all musicians interested in the rediscovery of early music. With copious musical examples, contemporaneous works of art, and a companion website with supplementary audio recordings, The Pathetick Musician is an invaluable resource for all interested in exploring new expressive possibilities in the performance and study of Baroque music.

Download or read book Let s Calculate Bach written by Alan Shepherd and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how information theory, probability, statistics, mathematics and personal computers can be applied to the exploration of numbers and proportions in music. It brings the methods of scientific and quantitative thinking to questions like: What are the ways of encoding a message in music and how can we be sure of the correct decoding? How do claims of names hidden in the notes of a score stand up to scientific analysis? How many ways are there of obtaining proportions and are they due to chance? After thoroughly exploring the ways of encoding information in music, the ambiguities of numerical alphabets and the words to be found “hidden” in a score, the book presents a novel way of exploring the proportions in a composition with a purpose-built computer program and gives example results from the application of the techniques. These include information theory, combinatorics, probability, hypothesis testing, Monte Carlo simulation and Bayesian networks, presented in an easily understandable form including their development from ancient history through the life and times of J. S. Bach, making connections between science, philosophy, art, architecture, particle physics, calculating machines and artificial intelligence. For the practitioner the book points out the pitfalls of various psychological fallacies and biases and includes succinct points of guidance for anyone involved in this type of research. This book will be useful to anyone who intends to use a scientific approach to the humanities, particularly music, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intersection between the arts and science. With a foreword by Ruth Tatlow (Uppsala University), award winning author of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance and Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet. “With this study Alan Shepherd opens a much-needed examination of the wide range of mathematical claims that have been made about J. S. Bach's music, offering both tools and methodological cautions with the potential to help clarify old problems.” Daniel R. Melamed, Professor of Music in Musicology, Indiana University

Download or read book Brahms s A German Requiem written by R. Allen Lott and published by Eastman Studies in Music. This book was released on 2020 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines in detail the contexts of Brahms's masterpiece and demonstrates that, contrary to recent consensus, it was performed and received as an inherently Christian work during the composer's life.

Download or read book Tracing the Jerusalem Code written by Eivor Andersen Oftestad and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the aim to write the history of Christianity in Scandinavia with Jerusalem as a lens, this book investigates the image – or rather the imagination – of Jerusalem in the religious, political, and artistic cultures of Scandinavia through most of the second millennium. Jerusalem is conceived as a code, in this volume focussing on Jerusalem's impact on Protestantism and Christianity in Early Modern Scandinavia. Tracing the Jerusalem Code in three volumes Volume 1: The Holy City Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1100–1536) Volume 2: The Chosen People Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536–ca. 1750) Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750–ca. 1920)

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Baroque Music written by Joseph P. Swain and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Library Journal Best Reference of 2023 - "Bravo! An invaluable source for scholars and concertgoers.” - Library Journal In the history of the Western musical tradition, the Baroque period traditionally dates from the turn of the 17th century to 1750. The beginning of the period is marked by Italian experiments in composition that attempted to create a new kind of secular musical art based upon principles of Greek drama, quickly leading to the invention of opera. The ending is marked by the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750 and the completion of George Frideric Handel’s last English oratorio, Jephtha, the following year. The Historical Dictionary of Baroque Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on composers, instruments, cities, and technical terms. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about baroque music.

Download or read book The Diversity of History written by John Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of the essays in this volume, originally published in 1970, touches upon a historical theme which Herbert Butterfield illuminated. It covers a wide range of topics from music and relgion in modern European history to the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Bach written by John Butt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Bach, first published in 1997, goes beyond a basic life-and-works study to provide a late twentieth-century perspective on J. S. Bach the man and composer. The book is divided into three parts. Part One is concerned with the historical context, the society, beliefs and the world-view of Bach's age. The second part discusses the music and Bach's compositional style, while Part Three considers Bach's influence and the performance and reception of his music through the succeeding generations. This Companion benefits from the insights and research of some of the most distinguished Bach scholars, and from it the reader will gain a notion of the diversity of current thought on this great composer.