This 1995 volume brings together essays on J. S. Bach and members of his family by a distinguished group of scholars. The essays address Bach's compositions, his knowledge of the musical past, his study of contemporaries, and the cultivation of his own music by later generations. The studies draw on source criticism, musical analysis, religious and social context, performance practice and reception history - a broad range of techniques and issues in Bach scholarship. The international contributors include both established scholars and newer voices in Bach studies. This volume will be indispensable for any future work on the Musical Offering, St Matthew Passion, Italian Concerto, on Bach's musical connections with his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann and on many other topics in Bach research.

The motets of J. S. Bach are probably the most sophisticated works ever composed in the genre. Nevertheless, Daniel Melamed maintains, the view that they constitute a body of work quite separate from the German motet tradition is mistaken. He starts by considering the eighteenth-century understanding of the term itself and finds that Bach's own use does indeed agree with his contemporaries and that his motets are rooted in the conventions of the time, particularly in matters of musical construction, performing forces, and type of text. A fresh look at the repertory shows that Bach composed motets all through his career and an appreciation of the contemporary conception of the motet sheds light on questions of how and why Bach himself used the form. Professor Melamed also finds plenty of evidence that motets and motet style played an important role in Bach's exploration of the musical past.

This 1995 volume brings together essays on J. S. Bach and members of his family by a distinguished group of scholars. The essays address Bach's compositions, his knowledge of the musical past, his study of contemporaries, and the cultivation of his own music by later generations. The studies draw on source criticism, musical analysis, religious and social context, performance practice and reception history - a broad range of techniques and issues in Bach scholarship. The international contributors include both established scholars and newer voices in Bach studies. This volume will be indispensable for any future work on the Musical Offering, St Matthew Passion, Italian Concerto, on Bach's musical connections with his sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann and on many other topics in Bach research.

Applies the notion of musical "voice" to diverse repertoires, ranging from the operas and cantatas of Handel to the autograph albums of nineteenth-century collector Charlotte de Rothschild. The concept of musical voice has been a subject of controversy in recent decades, as the primacy of the composer's place in the creation of the work has been called into question. The essays in Word, Image, and Song: Essays onMusical Voices take the notion of musical voice as a starting point, and apply it in varying ways to diverse repertoires and music-historical circumstances, ranging from the operas and cantatas of Handel to the autograph albums of nineteenth-century collector Charlotte de Rothschild. Rather than attributing interpretive control to the composer, performer, or audience alone, these essays present a range of interpretive strategies with respect to the various voices that one might hear and understand as emerging from a musical work: the composer's voice, the performer's voice, the patron's voice, the collector's voice, and the social or receptive voice. Contributors: Bathia Churgin, Rebecca Cypess, Roger Freitas, Philip Gossett, Ellen T. Harris, Joseph Kerman, Nathan Link, Daniel R. Melamed, Giovanni Morelli, Kristina Muxfeldt, Ruth Smith, Ruth A. Solie. Rebecca Cypess is Assistant Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Beth L. Glixon is instructor in musicology at the University of Kentucky School of Music. Nathan Link is NEH Associate Professor of Music at Centre College.

Of all the things we can know about J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio, the most profound come from things we can hear. Listening to Bach explores musical style as it was understood in the early eighteenth century. It encourages ways of listening that that take eighteenth-century musical sensibilities into account and that recognize our place as inheritors of a long tradition of performance and interpretation. Daniel R. Melamed shows how to recognize old and new styles in sacred music of Bach's time, and how movements in these styles are constructed. This opens the possibility of listening to the Mass in B Minor as Bach's demonstration of the possibilities of contrasting, combining, and reconciling old and new styles. It also shows how to listen for elements that would have been heard as most significant in the early eighteenth century, including markers of sleep arias, love duets, secular choral arias, and other movement types. This offers a musical starting point for listening for the ways Bach put these types to use in the Mass in B Minor and the Christmas Oratorio. The book also offers ways to listen to and think about works created by parody, the re-use of music for new words and a new purpose, like almost all of the Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. And it shows that modern performances of these works are stamped with audible consequences of our place in the twenty-first century. The ideological choices we make in performing the Mass and Oratorio, part of the legacy of their performance and interpretation, affect the way the work is understood and heard today. All these topics are illustrated with copious audio examples on a companion Web site, offering new ways of listening to some of Bach's greatest music.

Johann Sebastian Bach's two surviving passions-St. John and St. Matthew-are an essential part of the modern repertory, performed regularly both by professional ensembles and amateur groups. These large, complex pieces are well loved, but due to our distance from the original context in which they were performed, questions and problems emerge. Bach scholar Daniel Melamed examines the issues we encounter when we hear the passions performed today, and offers unique insight into Bach's passion settings. Rather than providing a movement-by-movement analysis, Melamed uses the Bach repertory to introduce readers to some of the intriguing issues in the study and performance of older music, and explores what it means to listen to this music today. For instance, Bach wrote the passions for a particular liturgical event at a specific time and place; we hear them hundreds of years later, often a world away and usually in concert performances. They were performed with vocal and instrumental forces deployed according to early 18th-century conceptions; we usually hear them now as the pinnacle of the choral/orchestral repertory, adapted to modern forces and conventions. In Bach's time, passion settings were revised, altered, and tampered with both by their composers and by other musicians who used them; today we tend to regard them as having fixed texts to be treated mith respect. Their music was sometimes recycled from other compositions or reused itself for other purposes; we have trouble imagining the familiar material of Bach's passion settings in any other guise. Melamed takes on these issues, exploring everything from the sources that transmit Bach's passion settings today to the issues surrounding performance practice (including the question of the size of Bach's ensemble). He delves into the passions as dramatic music, examines the problem of multiple versions of a work and the reconstruction of lost pieces, explores the other passions in Bach's performing repertory, and sifts through the puzzle of authorship. Highly accessible to the non-specialist, the book assumes no technical musical knowledge and does not rely on printed musical examples. Based on the most recent scholarship and using lucid prose, the book opens up the debates surrounding this repertory to music lovers, choral singers, church musicians, and students of Bach's music.

An Introduction to Bach Studies is a comprehensive guide to the resources and materials of Bach scholarship, both for students beginning work in the enormous literature on J. S. Bach, and for the Bach specialist looking for a convenient and up-to-date survey of the field. Covering a broad range of both primary and secondary sources, well-known Bach scholars Daniel R. Melamed and Michael Marissen draw on their extensive research experience to describe the principal tools of Bach research and how to use them. With clear descriptions and explanations, the multiple bibliographies and tables help students and instructors quickly find the most appropriate sources on Bach's life, his repertory, approaches to his music, and many other topics. Additionally, this volume provides insights into potentially confusing sources and detailed information on the technical topics important to all Bach scholars.
Concise and comprehensive, this user-friendly guide brings together useful bibliographic resources in one place, and is an indispensable resource for all who conduct research on Bach.

This annotated bibliography of J.S. Bach studies bring together in one place the most important and useful resources, describes the tools available for Bach research, and provides starting points for reading on many works and topics. Keeping the needs of the beginning Bach scholar firmly in mind, the authors provide concise explanations and summaries of important and potentially confusing topics in Bach research. Topics include bibliographic tools and sources; Bach's world; repertory and editions; vocal and instrumental music; performance; and approaches to Bach's music. The book concludes with detailed indexes of all topics, authors, and titles cited.

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. Volume 8 of Bach Perspectives emphasizes the place of Bach's oratorios in their repertorial context. These essays consider Bach's oratorios from a variety of perspectives: in relation to models, antecedents, and contemporary trends; from the point of view of musical and textual types; and from analytical vantage points including links with instrumental music and theology. Christoph Wolff suggests the possibility that Bach's three festive works for Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Day form a coherent group linked by liturgy, chronology, and genre. Daniel R. Melamed considers the many ways in which Bach's passion music was influenced by the famous poetic passion of Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Markus Rathey examines the construction and role of oratorio movements that combine chorales and poetic texts (chorale tropes). Kerala Snyder shows the connections between Bach's Christmas Oratorio and one of its models, Buxtehude's Abendmusiken spread over many evenings. Laurence Dreyfus argues that Bach thought instrumentally in the composition of his passions at the expense of certain aspects of the text. And Eric Chafe demonstrates the contemporary theological background of Bach's Ascension Oratorio and its musical realization

That Johann Sebastian Bach is a pivotal figure in the history of Western music is hardly news, and the magnitude of his achievement is so immense that it can be difficult to grasp. In "About Bach," fifteen scholars show that Bach's importance extends from choral to orchestral music, from sacred music to musical parodies, and also to his scribes and students, his predecessors and successors. Further, the contributors demonstrate a diversity of musicological approaches, ranging from close studies of Bach's choices of musical form and libretto to wider analyses of the historical and cultural backgrounds that impinged upon his creations and their lasting influence. This volume makes significant contributions to Bach biography, interpretation, pedagogy, and performance.

Contributors are Gregory G. Butler, Jen-Yen Chen, Alexander J. Fisher, Mary Dalton Greer, Robert Hill, Ton Koopman, Daniel R. Melamed, Michael Ochs, Mark Risinger, William H. Scheide, Hans-Joachim Schulze, Douglass Seaton, George B. Stauffer, Andrew Talle, and Kathryn Welter.