Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts PDF Download

Author: Melvin P. Unger
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 1461659051
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 796

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Book Description
The German church cantata of the eighteenth century was the culmination of a long tradition of Lutheran "sermon music" that used the proclamation, amplification, and interpretation of scripture to teach and persuade the listener. Bach's cantatas also served this didactic purpose and typically incorporate numerous allusions to scriptural passages or themes in their librettos. Unfortunately, many of these passages remain obscure to the twentieth-century musician because they demand a much closer familiarity with the Bible than is common today. The Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts identifies scriptural references for the wording, imagery, and themes that Bach's listeners would have known. In addition, the religious or literary theme of each text is summarized within the specific context of the cantata as a whole. With interlinear translations and a full complement of indexes.

Author: Melvin P. Unger
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810852983
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This book explores the dramatic thrust of each of Bach's four major works for choir and orchestra: Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, and Mass in B Minor. It guides the reader, movement by movement, through each work with an integrated presentation of commentary and text translation that pays particular attention to the interaction of text and music, suggesting reasons for Bach's musical choices.

Author: Christoph Wolff
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393041064
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach are among the best known and most frequently performed musical works of the Baroque period. In an illuminating discussion of the musical, literary, aesthetic, and theological aspects of the composers early cantatas, leading Bach scholars place the works in their historical and biographical context. 85 photos.

Author: Mark Ringer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538135574
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Bach’s Operas of the Soul is the first introduction to Bach’s sacred cantatas for the general music lover. In clear and accessible language, Mark Ringer examines this vast output of masterpieces as the great musical dramatic creations that they. Bach’s sacred cantatas represent an almost superhuman artistic and spiritual achievement, arguably the richest investment by a great composer within a single genre. But outside of a handful of pieces, they remain a closed book to a majority of serious listeners already familiar with Bach’s large-scale religious works. Nevertheless, the same musical-dramatic genius of Bach’s Passions is fully evident in virtually all of the composer's sacred cantatas. Ringer approaches the sacred cantatas as sermons in musical-dramatic form, un-staged operas, planned for each occasion of the church year. Bach’s era relished dramatic contrast, and his use of the human voice offers a constantly changing pallet of vocal colors. The singers play ‘roles’ throughout the cantatas from penitent sinner, to ardent believer, to Christ himself. This book is accompanied by online audio tracks of select Bach canatatas from the Naxos music library. It will be of use to readers interested in opera and vocal music who have already come to love Bach’s Passions and who want to familiarize themselves with this wide array of masterpieces.

Author: Alfred Dürr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198167075
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 984

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Book Description
This is the only English translation of this important book by the world's most distinguished Bach scholar.

Author: Murray Steib
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135942692
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 2624

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Book Description
The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

Author: Alfred Dürr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199297762
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 985

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Book Description
A work-by-work commentary on the Bach cantatas by the world's most famous Bach scholar, now available in English and in paperback for the first time. It includes all the cantata librettos in German-English parallel text. An indispensable reference book for anyone listening to, performing in, or studying any of the Bach cantatas.

Author: Daniel R. Melamed
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190284064
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
This volume is a guide to the resources and materials of Bach scholarship, both for the non specialist wondering where to begin 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. It describes the tools of Bach research and how to use them, and suggests how to get started in Bach research by describing the principal areas of research and citing the essential literature on each piece and topic. The authors emphasize the issues that have engaged Bach scholars for generations, focusing on particularly important writings; on recent literature; on overviews, collections of essays and handbooks; and on writings in English. Subjects covered include bibliographic tools of Bach research and sources of literature; Bach's family; Bach biographies; places Bach lived and worked; Bach's teaching; the liturgy; Bach source studies and the transmission of his music; repertory and editions; genres and individual vocal and instrumental works; performance practice; the reception and analysis of Bach's music; and many others. The book also offers explanations of important and potentially confusing topics in Bach research, such as the organization of the annual cantata cycles, pitch standards, the history of the Berlin libraries, the structure of the critical commentary volumes in the Neue Bach Ausgabe, and so on. This book opens up the rich world of Bach scholarship to students, teachers, performers, and listeners.

Author: Andre Pirro
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442232919
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
The Aesthetic of Johann Sebastian Bach (L’Esthéthique de Jean-Sébastien Bach), by the celebrated French musicologist André Pirro (1869‒1943), was originally published in 1907 and reissued in 1973. It is offered here for the first time in English, as translated by Joe Armstrong. Pirro’s work is based primarily on an examination of the close relationships between language and music in Bach’s vocal works and provides us with an extensive and well-researched “lexicon” of the expressive resources of Bach and his contemporaries. Pirro’s study thus serves as a still sound basis for understanding and interpreting Bach’s instrumental works. Pirro’s engaging analysis that has informed and even moved discerning readers for more than a century. This translation introduces his work to a new audience of performers, music teachers and their students, composers, musicologists, and all who wish to have a greater understanding of the expressive import of Bach’s music.

Author: Noelle M. Heber
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783275715
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
In Johann Sebastian Bach's Lutheran church setting, various biblical ideas were communicated through sermons and songs to encourage parishioners to emulate Christian doctrine in their own lives. Such narratives are based on an understanding that one's lifetime on earth is a temporal passageway to eternity after death, where souls are sent either to heaven or hell based on one's belief or unbelief. Throughout J. S. Bach's Material and Spiritual Treasures, Bach scholar Noelle M. Heber explores theological themes related to earthly and heavenly 'treasures' in Bach's sacred music through an examination of selected texts from Bach's personal theological library. The book's storyline is organised around biblical concepts that are accented in Lutheran thought and in Bach's church compositions, such as the poverty and treasure of Christ and parables that contrast material and spiritual riches. While focused primarily on the greater theological framework, Heber presents an updated survey of Bach's own financial situation and considers his apparent attentiveness to spiritual values related to money. This multifaceted study investigates intertwining biblical ideologies and practical everyday matters in a way that features both Bach's religious context and his humanity. This book will appeal to musicologists, theologians, musicians, students, and Bach enthusiasts.