Bach’s Choral-Buch?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin A. Leaver
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
School Of Music ◽  
Test Pieces ◽  
Eastman School Of Music ◽  
Figured Bass

This chapter examines a collection of Bach chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden sometime during the 1730s, with the goal of clarifying both its likely provenance and purpose. “Sebastian Bach’s Choral-Buch” is a collection of chorales—melodies with figured bass, intended to accompany singing—given in a sequence similar to that found in many hymnals. The mid-eighteenth-century manuscript was purchased from Hans P. Kraus, Vienna, in September 1936 by the Sibley Library at the Eastman School of Music. This chapter first describes the Sibley Choralbuch before reviewing its provenance and content. It then considers the manuscript’s significance as a possible source of evidence for the practices of the circle of organists who studied with Johann Sebastian Bach in the 1730s and 1740s. It argues that Choralbuch served as a workbook for learning how to create four-part settings but had a double usefulness: Bach could assign particular chorale melodies for the pupil to work on as test pieces, while the anthology could serve to accompany chorale singing at services.

scholarly journals Towards a Galant Pedagogy

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilad Rabinovitch ◽  
Johnandrew Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
School Of Music ◽  
Eastman School Of Music ◽  
Teaching Music

This article presents a pedagogical approach for teaching modern-day students how to improvise in eighteenth-century style based on Gjerdingen’s schemata and the tradition of partimenti. We present results from a pedagogical experiment conducted at the Eastman School of Music, in which students’ improvisations were recorded. We offer a qualitative assessment of selected student improvisations in order to demonstrate the merits of this approach for teaching music theory and historical improvisation. We also address the challenges associated with implementing such a pedagogical approach in modern-day theory curricula. We conclude by reflecting on sonata-form improvisations by the authors and discuss the theoretical implications of attempting to construct complete movements based on Gjerdingen’s schemata and formal considerations.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Bettina Varwig
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Island Territory

As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them. —Heraclitus Watery metaphors prove irresistible as I reflect on the central subject matter of this volume—Bach. The streams of prose about Johann Sebastian Bach that have emanated from the pens of myriad writers since the eighteenth century have to date coalesced in a sea of Bach scholarship that appears to be ever rising (over 73,000 titles are available in the online “Bach-Bibliographie” maintained by the Bach-Archiv Leipzig), but whose shorelines as yet remain quite firmly delineated. Or, to turn the metaphor around, Bach scholarship on the whole can still seem like a well-fortified island in an ocean of musicological and wider humanities/social sciences discourse that laps up against its shores without any serious risk of getting its inhabitants’ feet too wet. For this island territory, thankfully, existential threats in the form of floods or tsunamis remain a fairly distant prospect. A number of prestigious publication series with those iconic four letters in the title, from the ...

On the Origins of the Sonate auf Concertenart

1993 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne R. Swack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Property ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach

This article traces the development of the Sonate auf Concertenart-a type of sonata that imitates the Vivaldian concerto in at least one of its movements-in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century. While such sonatas had been considered to be the special property of Johann Sebastian Bach, the article shows that such works of Vivaldi were performed at the Dresden court; that composers from Dresden and its environs especially cultivated the genre at the time that Bach wrote his sonatas; and that such works, as well as Vivaldi's concertos, probably served as Bach's models.

PARTIMENTO FUGUE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY: A BRIDGE BETWEEN THOROUGHBASS LESSONS AND FUGAL COMPOSITION

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRUNO GINGRAS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
Harmonic Progression ◽  
Figured Bass ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTThe pervasiveness of thoroughbass in eighteenth-century German musical pedagogy is illustrated by the way that it extends from continuo realization exercises and chorale harmonizations to complete fugues. This article seeks to demonstrate how partimento fugue can be construed as the missing link between thoroughbass exercises and fully fledged keyboard fugues, by expanding on ideas first advanced by William Renwick. Through an examination of partimento fugues from J. S. Bach’s Precepts and Principles, Handel’s Lessons for Princess Anne, the Langloz manuscript and Heinichen’s Der General-Bass in der Composition, this study outlines a progression from basic realization exercises, in which the emphasis lies on the recognition and execution of continuo figures, to advanced recomposition assignments in which the performer is expected to project a rich contrapuntal texture from a simple figured-bass line, a task which is crucially dependent on the ability to memorize and reuse thematic material. The pedagogical value of partimento fugues also hinges on the acquisition of commonplace patterns such as the scalar descent and the harmonization of a chromatic line in alternating thirds and sixths. Although these patterns are often merely implied, they are found repeatedly in specific musical contexts, suggesting that they may function as generative melodic lines from which the composer derived both the harmonic progression and the underlying bass line, in a striking reversal of the standard compositional paradigm proposed by eighteenth-century theorists such as Niedt. Finally, the occurrence of these formulas in thoroughbass exercises, as well as in masterpieces such as J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, points to their ubiquitous character and demonstrates that they were part of a common language shared by many German composers of the period, thus emphasizing the need for an increased familiarity with the German partimento repertory and its conventions.

Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Varwig
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Time History ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

Narratives of music and modernity have been prominent in musicological writings of the past decade, and the place of Johann Sebastian Bach within these narratives has formed the subject of stimulating debates. Recent studies by Karol Berger and John Butt have aimed to integrate Bach's Passion compositions into broadly conceived philosophical frameworks, in Berger's case focusing specifically on changing perceptions of time from a premodern sense of circular stasis to a modern linear idea of progress. This article proposes an alternative model of historical inquiry into these issues by presenting a detailed look at attitudes to time in early eighteenth-century Protestant Leipzig. My approach reveals a complex constellation of conflicting ideas and metaphors that encompass notions of time as both circular and linear and evince a particular concern for the question of how to fill the time of one's earthly existence productively. In this light, pieces like Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Georg Philipp Telemann's Brockes Passion can be understood to have offered a range of different temporal experiences, which depended on individual listening attitudes, performance decisions, and surrounding social conventions. I argue that only through paying close attention to these fluid and often incongruous discourses can we gain a sufficiently nuanced picture of how music may have reflected and shaped early eighteenth-century conceptions of time, history, and eternity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document