Download or read book Bach s Continuo Group written by Laurence Dreyfus and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Bach's cantatas, masses, passions, and chorales were originally performed under the composer's direction, which instruments played the basso continuo, the line that establishes the harmonic framework? This book answers this and other fundamental questions and probes the rationale behind Baroque performance conventions.
Download or read book CONSIDERATIONS FOR CHOOSING AND COMBINING INSTRUMENTS IN BASSO CONTINUO GROUP AND OBBLIGATO INSTRUMENTAL FORCES FOR PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED SACRED CANTATAS OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH written by Chungwon Park and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the core of virtually all vocal and instrumental composition in the Baroque music, the basso continuo group had an extremely important role in the sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). During the Baroque period, the choice of instruments was sometimes indicated by the composer, but frequently the performers had to determine which instruments were most appropriate for the particular environment and context of the music. When performing the sacred cantatas of J.S. Bach, the conductor must identify and make decisions regarding the choices and combinations of instruments for both figured and sustained continuo part. In some cases the conductor may even consider changing continuo instrument(s), movement by movement, in a cantata in which a significant shift occurs in the texture, orchestration, or dramatic function of singer's line. Since Bach's cantatas are an encyclopedia of Baroque musical style, and models of compositional techniques of the time, understanding the cantatas is a practical and effective way to gain understanding regarding his other compositions. These cantatas also present musical challenges and rewards to choirs and orchestras. In an attempt to achieve a greater understanding and establish guidelines, I will examine and propose six principles and parameters regarding choices and combinations of basso continuo instruments and obbligato instruments, examining a variety of movement types from six different sacred cantatas of J.S. Bach ; Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4; Ich hatte viel bekümmernis, BWV 21; Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ, BWV 67; Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericct mit deinem Knecht, BWV 105; Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, and Erschallet, ihr Lieder, BWV 172. This study will include:1) A critical review of performance practice and historical evidence regarding the basso continuo part in Bach's sacred cantatas2) Using "4 TAV System: Six Parameters" performance considerations and suggestions for instrument choices in basso continuo group for chorus, solo, recitative, and chorale movements in the selected cantatas3) Examinations and suggestions of several possible choices and combinations of basso continuo instruments.
Download or read book Bach Studies 2 written by Don O. Franklin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-11-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1995 volume presents twelve essays by internationally distinguished Bach scholars, covering a broad range of issues in this field.
Download or read book An Introduction to Bach Studies written by Daniel R. Melamed and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-30 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Bach and the Patterns of Invention written by Laurence Dreyfus and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major new interpretation of the music of J. S. Bach, we gain a striking picture of the composer as a unique critic of his age. By reading Bach’s music “against the grain” of contemporaries such as Vivaldi and Telemann, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to musical invention in a variety of genres posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics. “Invention”—the word Bach and his contemporaries used for the musical idea that is behind or that generates a composition—emerges as an invaluable key in Dreyfus’s analysis. Looking at important pieces in a range of genres, including concertos, sonatas, fugues, and vocal works, he focuses on the fascinating construction of the invention, the core musical subject, and then shows how Bach disposes, elaborates, and decorates it in structuring his composition. Bach and the Patterns of Invention brings us fresh understanding of Bach’s working methods, and how they differed from those of the other leading composers of his day. We also learn here about Bach’s unusual appropriations of French and Italian styles—and about the elevation of various genres far above their conventional status. Challenging the restrictive lenses commonly encountered in both historical musicology and theoretical analysis, Dreyfus provocatively suggests an approach to Bach that understands him as an eighteenth-century thinker and at the same time as a composer whose music continues to speak to us today.
Download or read book Analyzing Bach Cantatas written by Eric Chafe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord written by Mark Kroll and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers every aspect of the harpsichord and its music, including composers, genres, national styles, tuning, and the art of harpsichord building.
Download or read book The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach written by Robin Leaver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ashgate Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach provides an indispensable introduction to the Bach research of the past thirty-fifty years. It is not a lexicon providing information on all the major aspects of Bach's life and work, such as the Oxford Composer Companion: J. S. Bach. Nor is it an entry-level research tool aimed at those making a beginning of such studies. The valuable essays presented here are designed for the next level of Bach research and are aimed at masters and doctoral students, as well as others interested in coming to terms with the current state of Bach research. Each author covers three aspects within their specific subject area; firstly, to describe the results of research over the past thirty-fifty years, concentrating on the most significant and controversial, such as: the debate over Smend's NBA edition of the B minor Mass; Blume's conclusions with regard to Bach's religion in the wake of the 'new' chronology; Rifkin's one-to-a-vocal-part interpretation; the rediscovery of the Berlin Singakademie manuscripts in Kiev; the discovery of hitherto unknown manuscripts and documents and the re-evaluation of previously known sources. Secondly, each author provides a critical analysis of current research being undertaken that is exploring new aspects, reinterpreting earlier assumptions, and/or opening-up new methodologies. For example, Martin W. B. Jarvis has suggested that Anna Magdalena Bach composed the cello suites and contributed to other works of her husband - another controversial hypothesis, whose newly proposed forensic methodology requires investigation. On the other hand, research into Bach's knowledge of the Lutheran chorale tradition is currently underway, which is likely to shed more light on the composer's choices and usage of this tradition. Thirdly, each author identifies areas that are still in need of investigation and research.
Download or read book Bach The Brandenburg Concertos written by Malcolm Boyd and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-09-24 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brandenburg Concertos represent a pinnacle in the history of the Baroque concerto. This analysis places the concertos in their historical context, investigates their sources, traces their origins and discusses the changing traditions of performance.
Download or read book Bach written by Christoph Wolff and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than two centuries after his lifetime, J. S. Bach's work continues to set musical standards. Noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers new perspectives on the composer's life and remarkable career.
Download or read book The Social and Religious Designs of J S Bach s Brandenburg Concertos written by Michael Marissen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1999-07-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new investigation of the Brandenburg Concertos explores musical, social, and religious implications of Bach's treatment of eighteenth-century musical hierarchies. By reference to contemporary music theory, to alternate notions of the meaning of "concerto," and to various eighteenth-century conventions of form and instrumentation, the book argues that the Brandenburg Concertos are better understood not as an arbitrary collection of unrelated examples of "pure" instrumental music, but rather as a carefully compiled and meaningfully organized set. It shows how Bach's concertos challenge (as opposed to reflect) existing musical and social hierarchies. Careful consideration of Lutheran theology and Bach's documented understanding of it reveals, however, that his music should not be understood to call for progressive political action. One important message of Lutheranism, and, in this interpretation, of Bach's concertos, is that in the next world, the heavenly one, the hierarchies of the present world will no longer be necessary. Bach's music more likely instructs its listeners how to think about and spiritually cope with contemporary hierarchies than how to act upon them. In this sense, contrary to currently accepted views, Bach's concertos share with his extensive output of vocal music for the Lutheran liturgy an essentially religious character.
Download or read book Bach Performance Practice 1945 1975 written by Dorottya Fabian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysing over 100 recordings from 1945-1975, this book examines twentieth-century baroque performance practice as evinced in all the commercially available recordings of J.S. Bach's Passions, Brandenburg Concertos and Goldberg Variations. Dorottya Fabian presents a qualitative, style-orientated history of the early music movement in its formative years through a comparison of the performance style heard in these recordings with the scholarly literature on Bach performance practice. Issues explored in the book include the availability of resources, balance, tempo, dynamics, ornamentation, rhythm and articulation. During the decades following the Second World War, the early music movement was more concerned with the revival of repertoire than with the revival of performance style which meant that its characteristics and achievements differed essentially from those of the later 1970s and 1980s. Period practice techniques were not practised even by ensembles using eighteenth-century instruments. Yet, as this survey reveals, several recordings of the period provide unexpectedly stylish interpretations using metre and pulse to punctuate the music. Such metric performance and appropriate articulation helped to clarify structure and texture and assisted in the creation of a musical discourse - the pre-eminent goal of baroque compositions.
Download or read book Critica Musica written by J. Knowles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume 18 of eighteen in a book series on Musicology. Originally published in 1996, this is a collection of essays in honor or Paul Brainard. Critica Musica-thinking critically about music-is at the heart of Paul Brainard's long career, and of his legacy to his students, colleagues, and friends. As a scholar, performer, and teacher, Professor Brainard has embodied a thorough, meticulous, and reasoned approach to music and scholarship that has set a high standard for all who have come in contact with him.
Download or read book Baroque Music written by Peter Walls and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research in the 20th and 21st centuries into historical performance practice has changed not just the way performers approach music of the 17th and 18th centuries but, eventually, the way audiences listen to it. This volume, beginning with a 1915 Saint-Sa? lecture on the performance of old music, sets out to capture musicological discussion that has actually changed the way Baroque music can sound. The articles deal with historical instruments, pitch, tuning, temperament, the nexus between technique and style, vibrato, the performance implications of musical scores, and some of the vexed questions relating to rhythmic alteration. It closes with a section on the musicological challenges to the ideology of the early music movement mounted (principally) in the 1990s. Leading writers on historical performance practice are represented. Recognizing that significant developments in historically-inspired performance have been led by instrument makers and performers, the volume also contains representative essays by key practitioners.
Download or read book The Harpsichord and Clavichord written by Igor Kipnis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 1323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Harpsichord and Clavichord, An Encyclopedia includes articles on this family of instruments, including famous players, composers, instruments builders, the construction of the instruments, and related terminology. It is the first complete reference on this important family of keyboard instruments. The contributors include major scholars of music and musical instrument history from around the world. It completes the three-volume Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments.
Download or read book Reader s Guide to Music written by Murray Steib and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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).
