A Musical Offering

A lyrical celebration of storytelling, of childhood, and of the transformative power of music. Tracing a circular course that echoes Bach’s Goldberg Variations , Luis Sagasti’s second book to appear in English takes the guise of a musical scheherazade, recounting story after story, vibrating to celestial harmonies. From the music born of the sun to the music sent into space on the Voyager mission, from Rothko to rock music, from the composers of the concentration camps to a weeping room for Argentinian conscripts in the Falklands, A Musical Offering traverses the shifting sands of fiction and history.

In the great tradition of the German Festschrift, this book brings together articles by Professor Bernstein's colleagues, friends and students to honor him on his 70th birthday. Ranging in subject from the trouv e song through esoteric aspects of Renaissance studies and authenticity in 18th-century musical sources to a lively and irreverent attack on performance practices today, the twenty essays by many of America's most distinguished scholars reflect the breadth and variety of Martin Bernstein's far-reaching interests and demonstrates the vitality and relevance of what is best in musicology today.

A companion volume to Gloria: Letters From Hymnwriters, providing brief commentary for each church season, creative letters from the writers of traditional hymns, suggested hymns for singing by the choir and congregation, and original descants for several hymns.

This book explores the interaction between music and mathematics including harmony, symmetry, digital music and perception of sound.

Johann Sebastian Bach created what may be the most celestial and profound body of music in history; Frederick the Great built the colossus we now know as Germany, and along with it a template for modern warfare. Their fleeting encounter in 1757 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and modern world, Evening in the Palace of Reason captures the tumult of the eighteenth century, the legacy of the Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment in this extraordinary tale of two men.

Among Bach's last instrumental compositions are two splendid works that reflect his genius for working complex contrapuntal figures into an expressive, apparently seamless musical texture. The Art of the Fugue, composed ca. 1745–50, consists of nineteen canons and fugues that progressively illustrate the rich variety and complexity of fugal writing. This edition, reproduced directly from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel score, includes a keyboard reproduction printed directly beneath the score. A Musical Offering (1747), composed for King Frederick the Great of Prussia, comprises a three-part ricercar and a six-part ricercar for keyboard, a famous sonata for flute and violin, and a set of canons, all based on a theme devised by the King himself. Solutions of the canons and a realization of the keyboard part are included in an appendix.

Bach & God explores the religious character of Bach's vocal and instrumental music in seven interrelated essays. Noted musicologist Michael Marissen offers wide-ranging interpretive insights from careful biblical and theological scrutiny of the librettos. Yet he also shows how Bach's pitches, rhythms, and tone colors can make contributions to a work's plausible meanings that go beyond setting texts in an aesthetically satisfying manner. In some of Bach's vocal repertory, the music puts a "spin" on the words in a way that turns out to be explainable as orthodox Lutheran in its orientation. In a few of Bach's vocal works, his otherwise puzzlingly fierce musical settings serve to underscore now unrecognized or unacknowledged verbal polemics, most unsettlingly so in the case of his church cantatas that express contempt for Jews and Judaism. Finally, even Bach's secular instrumental music, particularly the late collections of "abstract" learned counterpoint, can powerfully project certain elements of traditional Lutheran theology. Bach's music is inexhaustible, and Bach & God suggests that through close contextual study there is always more to discover and learn.