Analyzing Bach Cantatas

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Oxford University Press, 27 mar 2003 - 304 pagine
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.
 

Sommario

THE HERMENEUTIC MATRIX
3
THE LUTHERAN METAPHYSICAL TRADITION IN MUSIC AND MUSIC THEORY
23
CANTATA 21 ICH HATTE VIEL BEKÜMMERNIS
42
MODAL QUESTIONS
72
BACHS REFLECTION ON THE PAST MODAL CHORALES IN CANTATA DESIGNS
101
TWO CHORALE CANTATAS
139
CANTATA 77 THE THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
161
DU SOLLT GOTT DEINEN HERREN LIEBEN AN ANALYSIS OF CANTATA 77
183
CANTATA 60 O EWIGKEIT DU DONNERWORT
220
NOTES
241
BIBLIOGRAPHY
271
INDEX
277
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (2003)

Eric Chafe is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Musicology at Brandeis University. His previous books include Monteverdi's Tonal Language (1992), which won both the American Musicological Society's Kinkeldey Award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (1991).

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