Bach Perspectives Volume 9

This provocative addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counternarrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. Contributors contextualize Bach by examining the output, reputation, and compositional practices of his contemporaries in Germany whose work was widely played and enjoyed in his time, including Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Gottlieb Muffat, and Johann Adolf Scheibe. Essays place Bach and his work in relation to his peers, examining avenues of composition they took while he did not and showing how differing treatments of the same subjects or texts resulted in markedly different compositional results and legacies. By looking closely at how Bach's contemporaries addressed the tasks and challenges of their time, this project provides a more nuanced view of the musical world of Bach's time while revealing in more specific terms than ever how and why Bach's own music remains fresh and compelling. In this volume, Wolfgang Hirschmann proposes an ethnographic approach that contextualizes Bach's works, addressing the aesthetic paths he took as well as those he did not pursue. Steven Zohn's essay considers Telemann's contribution to the orchestral Ouverture genre, observering how Telemann's approach to integrating the national styles of his time was quite different from, but no less rich than, Bach's. Andrew Talle compares settings and strategies of Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust by Bach and Graupner. Alison Dunlop presents valuable primary research on Muffat, the most commonly cited keyboard music composer in Vienna during Bach's lifetime. Finally, Michael Maul sheds new light on the Scheibe-Birnbaum controversy, contextualizing the most famous critique of J. S. Bach's compositional style by discussing the other composers that Scheibe critiqued.

Scholars and performers have long noted J.S. Bach's abundant use of parody procedures: that is, the recycling and reworking of pre-existing material from his own compositions or from other sources. Laura Buch edits essays exploring how the composer parodied the work of others and how other composers did the same with him. The contributors delve into the works of Baroque-era composers from Bach himself to C. P. E. Bach, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, and Ferruccio Busoni. But they also cast a wider net, investigating the ways Bach's music cross-pollinates with contemporary composer-performers John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, and keyboardist Bernie Worrell and Parliament-Funkadelic. The diverse contexts illuminate a broad range of parody techniques, from structural scaffolding and contrapuntal elaboration to integration with stylistic languages far removed from the Baroque. An insightful look at how composers build on each other's work, Bach Reworked reveals how nuanced understandings of parody procedures can fuel both musical innovation and historically informed performance. Contributors: Stephen A. Crist, Ellen Exner, Moira Leanne Hill, Erinn E. Knyt, and Markus Zepf

In Bach in America, volume 5 of Bach Perspectives, nine scholars track Johann Sebastian Bach's reputation in America from an artist of relative obscurity to a cultural mainstay whose music has spread to all parts of the population, inspired a wealth of scholarship, captivated listeners, and inspired musicians. More than a hundred years passed after Bach's death in 1750 before his music began to be known and appreciated in the United States. Barbara Owen surveys Bach's early reception in America and Matthew Dirst focuses on John Sullivan Dwight's role in advocating Bach's work. Michael Broyles considers the ways Bach's music came to be known in Boston and Mary J. Greer offers a counterpoint in her study of Bach's reception in New York. The volume continues with Hans-Joachim Schulze's essay linking the American descendants of August Reinhold Bach to J. S. Bach through a common sixteenth-century ancestor. Christoph Wolff focuses on Bach's descendants in America, particularly Friederica Sophia Bach, the daughter of Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Peter Wollny evaluates several manuscripts not included in Gerhard Herz's study of Bach Sources in America. Bach in America concludes with examinations of Bach's considerable influence on American composers. Carol K. Baron compares the music of Bach and Charles Ives and Stephen A. Crist measures Bach's influence on the jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck.

The official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. In Volume 10 of the series, Matthew Dirst edits a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring various aspects of Bach's organ-related activities. Lynn Edwards Butler reconsiders Bach's report on Johann Scheibe's organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig. Robin Leaver clarifies the likely provenance and purpose of a collection of chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden. George Stauffer investigates the ways various independent trio movements served Bach as an artist and teacher. In separate contributions, Christoph Wolff and Gregory Butler seek the origins of concerted Bach cantata movements spotlighting the organ and propose family trees of both parent works and offspring. Finally, Matthew Cron provides a broad cultural frame for such pieces and notes how their components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ's intimation of heaven.

As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. In a series long known for its major essays by leading Bach scholars and performers, Bach Perspectives, Volume 6 is no exception. This volume opens with Joshua Rifkin's seminal study of the early source history of the B-minor orchestral suite. It not only elaborates on Rifkin's discovery that the work in its present form for solo flute goes back to an earlier version in A minor, ostensibly for solo violin, but also takes this discovery as the point of departure for a wide-ranging discussion of the origins and extent of Bach's output in the area of concerted ensemble music. Jeanne Swack presents an enlightening comparison of Georg Phillip Telemann's and Bach's approach to the French overture as concerted movements in their church cantatas, and Steven Zohn views the B-minor orchestral suite from the standpoint of the "concert en ouverture," responding to Rifkin by suggesting that the early version of the B-minor orchestral suite may also have been scored for flute.

Today, the names Bach and Mozart are mostly associated with Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But this volume of Bach Perspectives offers essays on the lesser-known musical figures who share those illustrious names alongside new research on the legendary composers themselves. Topics include the keyboard transcriptions of J. S. Bach and Johann Gottfried Walther; J. S. Bach and W. A. Mozart's freelance work; the sonatas of C. P. E. Bach and Leopold Mozart; the early musical training given J. C. Bach by his father and half-brother; the surprising musical similarities between J. C. Bach and W. A. Mozart; and the latest documentary research on Mozart’s 1789 visit to the Thomasschule in Leipzig. An official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives, Volume 14 draws on a variety of approaches and a broad range of subject matter in presenting a new wave of innovative classical musical scholarship. Contributors: Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Yoel Greenberg, Noelle M. Heber, Michael Maul, Stephen Roe, and David Schulenberg

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.

J. S. Bach's creativity is so overwhelming his compositions in some genres eclipse his work in others. His glorious choral works, profound organ compositions, and exquisite solo compositions for violin and cello attract the most attention. Volume Seven of Bach Perspectives restores Bach's concertos to their rightful place of honor. Gregory Butler focuses on Bach's Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings in E Major (BWV 1053) as a pastiche created by a process of assemblage of three earlier heterogeneous movements. Pieter Dirksen delves into the source history of the Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings in F Minor (BWV 1056) and concludes it represents a transcription of an earlier violin concerto in G minor. David Schulenberg investigates the generic ambiguity of the concerto in the early eighteenth century and how it diverged from the sonata to become a distinct genre. Completing the volume is Christoph Wolff's examination of the ""Siciliano"" as a slow movement in Bach's concertos and its implications for the source history of his Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings in E Major (BWV 1053).

"Bach is an entirely new volume in the "Master Musicians" series, replacing the old entry by Malcolm Boyd with updated coverage of the composer's life and works. Tracing the composer's biography from origins in Thuringia to mastery as cantor and music director at Leipzig, the book sets Bach in the cultural context of early modern Europe. Family life, social structure, and court culture are among the topics examined from the perspective of contemporary approaches to history. Bach's work as student, organist, music director, and teacher is considered alongside his compositions, with discussions of representative examples from all the major categories, including concertos, cantatas, chamber music, and pieces for harpsichord and for organ. In addition to a handy list of works and other useful reference matter included in every volume of the series, this book is also accompanied by an online supplement that offers a glossary, a guide to further reading, and audio versions of the numerous music examples"--