Author: Laurence Dreyfus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674060050
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
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, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to musical invention posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics.
Bach and the Patterns of Invention
Author: Laurence Dreyfus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674060050
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
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, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to musical invention posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674060050
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
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, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to musical invention posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics.
Bach and the Patterns of Invention
Author: Laurence Dreyfus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674013565
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674013565
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
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.
Bach's Continuo Group
Author: Laurence Dreyfus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
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.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
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.
Bach's Well-tempered Clavier
Author: David Ledbetter
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128983
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
Bach's Well-tempered Clavier (or the 48 Preludes and Fugues) stands at the core of baroque keyboard music and has been a model and inspiration for performers and composers ever since it was written. This invaluable guide to the 96 pieces explains Bach's various purposes in compiling the music, describes the rich traditions on which he drew, and provides commentaries for each prelude and fugue. In his text, David Ledbetter addresses the main focal points mentioned by Bach in his original 1722 title page. Drawing on Bach literature over the past three hundred years, he explores German traditions of composition types and Bach's novel expansion of them; explains Bach's instruments and innovations in keyboard technique in the general context of early eighteenth-century developments; reviews instructive and theoretical literature relating to keyboard temperaments from 1680 to 1750; and discusses Bach's pedagogical intent when composing the Well-tempered Clavier. Ledbetter's commentaries on individual preludes and fugues equip readers with the concepts necessary to make their own assessment and include information about the sources when details of notation, ornaments, and fingerings have a bearing on performance.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128983
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 430
Book Description
Bach's Well-tempered Clavier (or the 48 Preludes and Fugues) stands at the core of baroque keyboard music and has been a model and inspiration for performers and composers ever since it was written. This invaluable guide to the 96 pieces explains Bach's various purposes in compiling the music, describes the rich traditions on which he drew, and provides commentaries for each prelude and fugue. In his text, David Ledbetter addresses the main focal points mentioned by Bach in his original 1722 title page. Drawing on Bach literature over the past three hundred years, he explores German traditions of composition types and Bach's novel expansion of them; explains Bach's instruments and innovations in keyboard technique in the general context of early eighteenth-century developments; reviews instructive and theoretical literature relating to keyboard temperaments from 1680 to 1750; and discusses Bach's pedagogical intent when composing the Well-tempered Clavier. Ledbetter's commentaries on individual preludes and fugues equip readers with the concepts necessary to make their own assessment and include information about the sources when details of notation, ornaments, and fingerings have a bearing on performance.
Unaccompanied Bach - Performing the Solo Works
Author: David Ledbetter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300253863
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
This pioneering book by an acclaimed expert is the first to discuss all of Bach's unaccompanied pieces in one volume, including an examination of crucial issues of style and composition type and the options open to interpretation and performance. David Ledbetter, a leading expert on Bach, provides the historical background to Bach's instrumental works, as well as detailed commentaries on each work. Ledbetter argues that Bach's unaccompanied works--the six suites for solo cello, six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, seven works for lute, and the suite for solo flute--should be considered together to enable one piece to elucidate another. This illuminating and significant book is essential for professionals, performers, students, or anybody who wishes to learn more about Bach's music.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300253863
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
This pioneering book by an acclaimed expert is the first to discuss all of Bach's unaccompanied pieces in one volume, including an examination of crucial issues of style and composition type and the options open to interpretation and performance. David Ledbetter, a leading expert on Bach, provides the historical background to Bach's instrumental works, as well as detailed commentaries on each work. Ledbetter argues that Bach's unaccompanied works--the six suites for solo cello, six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, seven works for lute, and the suite for solo flute--should be considered together to enable one piece to elucidate another. This illuminating and significant book is essential for professionals, performers, students, or anybody who wishes to learn more about Bach's music.
Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint
Author: David Yearsley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521803465
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
In Bach's Germany musical counterpoint was an art involving much more than the sophisticated use of advanced compositional techniques. A range of theological, cultural, social and political meanings attached themselves to the use of complex procedures such as canon and double counterpoint. This book explores the significance of Bach's counterpoint in a range of interrelated contexts: its use as a means of reflecting on death; its parallels to alchemy; its vexed status in the galant music culture of the first half of the eighteenth century; its value as a representation of political power; and its central importance in the creation of Bach's image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching on a wide array of contemporary literary, philosophical, critical, and musical texts, the book includes new readings of many of Bach's late works in order to re-evaluate the status and meaning of counterpoint in Bach's work and legacy.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521803465
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
In Bach's Germany musical counterpoint was an art involving much more than the sophisticated use of advanced compositional techniques. A range of theological, cultural, social and political meanings attached themselves to the use of complex procedures such as canon and double counterpoint. This book explores the significance of Bach's counterpoint in a range of interrelated contexts: its use as a means of reflecting on death; its parallels to alchemy; its vexed status in the galant music culture of the first half of the eighteenth century; its value as a representation of political power; and its central importance in the creation of Bach's image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching on a wide array of contemporary literary, philosophical, critical, and musical texts, the book includes new readings of many of Bach's late works in order to re-evaluate the status and meaning of counterpoint in Bach's work and legacy.
Reinventing Bach
Author: Paul Elie
Publisher: Union Books
ISBN: 1908526416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 731
Book Description
Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.
Publisher: Union Books
ISBN: 1908526416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 731
Book Description
Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.
Resonant Witness
Author: Jeremy S. Begbie
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802862772
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
Resonant Witness gathers together a wide, harmonious chorus of voices from across the musical and theological spectrum to show that music and theology can each learn much from the other and that the majesty and power of both are profoundly amplified when they do. With essays touching on J. S. Bach, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Olivier Messiaen, jazz improvisation, South African freedom songs, and more, this volume encourages musicians and theologians to pursue a more fruitful and sustained engagement with one another. What can theology do for music? Resonant Witness helps answer this question with an essential resource in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of music and theology. Covering an impressively wide range of musical topics, from cosmos to culture and theology to worship, Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie explore and map new territory with incisive contributions from the very best musicians, theologians, and philosophers. Bennett Zon Durham University This volume represents a burst of cross-disciplinary energy and insight that can be celebrated by musicians and theologians, music-lovers and God-lovers alike. John D. Witvliet (from afterword)
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802862772
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Book Description
Resonant Witness gathers together a wide, harmonious chorus of voices from across the musical and theological spectrum to show that music and theology can each learn much from the other and that the majesty and power of both are profoundly amplified when they do. With essays touching on J. S. Bach, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Olivier Messiaen, jazz improvisation, South African freedom songs, and more, this volume encourages musicians and theologians to pursue a more fruitful and sustained engagement with one another. What can theology do for music? Resonant Witness helps answer this question with an essential resource in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of music and theology. Covering an impressively wide range of musical topics, from cosmos to culture and theology to worship, Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie explore and map new territory with incisive contributions from the very best musicians, theologians, and philosophers. Bennett Zon Durham University This volume represents a burst of cross-disciplinary energy and insight that can be celebrated by musicians and theologians, music-lovers and God-lovers alike. John D. Witvliet (from afterword)
Jazz Inventions for Keyboard
Author: Bill Cunliffe
Publisher: Alfred Music Publishing
ISBN: 9780739035382
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
Pianists all know the benefits of playing the "Two-Part Inventions" of J. S. Bach. Now, world-respected jazz pianist and composer Bill Cunliffe has written his own "inventions" that will benefit every player's understanding and performance of jazz. These great-sounding etudes explore the specific harmonic, melodic, and technical challenges faced by jazz keyboardists, including the ii-V and ii-V-I progressions, outlining changes, chord-tone ornamentation, playing in octaves, tonic patterns, block chords, polytonality, stride piano, and left-hand walking bass. Pieces feature chord symbols, explanatory notes, and preparatory exercises, and each invention is performed on the CD by Bill Cunliffe. 123 pages. " . . . perfect for daily warm-up, explores the harmonic and melodic intricacies of jazz, each etude targets a specific technical skill and includes performance notes, inventions gradually become more challenging and the harmonic progressions are varied and very musical . . . a musical feast." -International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE)
Publisher: Alfred Music Publishing
ISBN: 9780739035382
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
Pianists all know the benefits of playing the "Two-Part Inventions" of J. S. Bach. Now, world-respected jazz pianist and composer Bill Cunliffe has written his own "inventions" that will benefit every player's understanding and performance of jazz. These great-sounding etudes explore the specific harmonic, melodic, and technical challenges faced by jazz keyboardists, including the ii-V and ii-V-I progressions, outlining changes, chord-tone ornamentation, playing in octaves, tonic patterns, block chords, polytonality, stride piano, and left-hand walking bass. Pieces feature chord symbols, explanatory notes, and preparatory exercises, and each invention is performed on the CD by Bill Cunliffe. 123 pages. " . . . perfect for daily warm-up, explores the harmonic and melodic intricacies of jazz, each etude targets a specific technical skill and includes performance notes, inventions gradually become more challenging and the harmonic progressions are varied and very musical . . . a musical feast." -International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Author: Christoph Wolff
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199248841
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
Now available in paperback, this landmark biography was first published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death. Written by a leading Bach scholar, this book presents a new picture of the composer. Christoph Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between Bach's life and his music, showing how the composer's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199248841
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
Now available in paperback, this landmark biography was first published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death. Written by a leading Bach scholar, this book presents a new picture of the composer. Christoph Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between Bach's life and his music, showing how the composer's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher.