The Prophet Jeremiah

This chapter considers the legends about the prophet Jeremiah, describing their literary character, and it situates them within the compositional history of the book. It identifies three distinct editorial impulses at work within this corpus: idealization, schematization, and historization. Only a few of the texts concerning the prophet can be called proper narratives, and those grew separately from the prophecies. A possible key to understanding the history of the legends lies in the double cycle of stories about Jeremiah in the last days of Jerusalem (Jer 37:11–40:6). These chapters preserve two interdependent accounts, one reworking the other and transforming the prophet from human being to hero. Another important factor in the shaping of the legends was their use of narratives of earlier encounters between kings and prophets (Jeremiah 26 and 36; Jer 37:3–10; 21:1–10; Jeremiah 28). The so-called “Biography of Jeremiah” (Jer 37–44), for its part, is an artificial composition assembled a long time after the period of Jeremiah. This sequence was composed by a late Deuteronomistic redactor, who combined narratives about the prophet and a chronicle concerning the last days of the kingdom of Judah in order to set forth his view of the prophet’s role in history. This redactor also integrated Jeremiah 42 and 44, reinforcing the notion that the preservation of the Israelite’s covenant with YHWH depends on the returnees from Babylon. Finally, this essay examines the creation of quasi-narratives out of materials that have almost no biographical basis (Jeremiah 18–20).

The Core of the Sacrificial Calendar in Num 28–29 and Its Compositional History

To date, scholarly examination of the developed legal section in Numbers 28–29 has taken place in the context of its relationship to the Lev 23 festival calendar and other pentateuchal calendars (Exod 23:14–19; 34:18–26; Deut 16:1–17) and its place in the formation of the Pentateuch. Independent analysis of this unit has the ability to illuminate this unit’s formation, probably the product of a long editorial process, enables isolation of the stage at which it was integrated in its current context, and reveals the purpose underlying its integration.

Positions on Redaction

This essay examines the nature of pentateuchal redaction, the various positions that scholars have taken on it across the history of modern biblical studies, and the ways that these theories contribute to larger theories of compositional history. It highlights the manner in which redactional theories have been especially productive among continental European scholars over the past half-century. The essay concludes with a consideration of external, empirical evidence for redaction, especially among the Persian and Hellenistic period witnesses to the Pentateuch.

The Pentateuch: Five Books, One Canon

This essay investigates the division of the Pentateuch into five scrolls of unequal length. It considers the dating of this division and the structuring that it creates, especially in relation to the Pentateuch’s narrative cycles; it also considers the ways that the combined text reflects its earlier compositional history. Finally, the essay considers the evidence for understanding each pentateuchal scroll/book as well as the Pentateuch overall as a literary unit. In the latter discussion, it gives special attention to the book of numbers.

Haggai

This essay offers an overview of the content and major critical issues related to the book of Haggai. In a series of dated oracles, the book reveals an ongoing internal dispute within the Yahwistic community in Judah concerning divine permission to rebuild the Jerusalem temple under Zerubbabel in the early Persian period. The prophetic oracles suggest that the basis for the dispute lay in differing interpretations of the poor socioeconomic circumstances the community faced at the time. Major themes of the book include the difficulty of determining the divine will, the role of the temple as mediator of divine presence, and the effects of divine presence on the community. A major area of critical interest in the book is its compositional history, particularly as it relates to the development of the “Book of the Twelve.”

Brahms, Beethoven, and a Reassessment of the Famous Footsteps

To speak of Brahms and Beethoven in the same breath is almost a cliché: Brahms was intimately conscious of Beethoven's music from early youth. This article describes the details of his youthful involvement, the compositions he had in his repertoire as well as those other works which had a powerful effect on his development. By age 20, Brahms was frequently compared to Beethoven by people who met him or heard him play. My interest is in the way he was influenced by Beethoven and the manner in which he eventually found his own voice. The compositional history of his First Symphony provides the primary focus: its long gestation, and the alleged quote by Brahms given in Max Kalbeck's massive biography: ‘I'll never write a symphony, you have no idea what it feels like … to hear the footsteps of a giant behind one’. The reference is presumably to Beethoven, but there exists no corroborating evidence that Brahms ever said those words. They gained credence as one writer after another simply accepted Kalbeck's word. Yet substantial evidence exists that in writing his biography, Kalbeck distorted and even invented ‘facts’ when it suited his purposes, including a specific instance dealing with writing a symphony. An alternative view of the symphony's long gestation is based on a view of Brahms's compositional history. He wrote for musical forces he knew at first hand, and only from 1872 to 1875 did he have command of an orchestra. Intriguingly, while fulfilling the contemporary accepted demands of a symphony after Beethoven, Brahms devised an unusual strategy for the final movement, the basis of its great success.

Handel’s Transformative Compositional Practices

In recent decades singers of Handel’s music have made great strides in recapturing the art of embellishing his music, thus breathing new life into forms such as the da capo aria. Yet Handel’s own “variations”—his development and transformation of musical material in his vocal music, important for understanding his compositional practice with borrowed as well as (presumably) original music—are not yet fully explored or appreciated. Admittedly, scholars have discussed musical procedures such as inserting, deleting, and reordering musical materials, as well as other Baroque combinatorial practices in Handel’s arias, but the musical transformations I discuss here are closer to a specifically Handelian brand of developing variation. To my knowledge, the concept of developing variation has never before been applied to early eighteenth-century music. I explore the relation of developing variation to drama (also rarely done) in two of Handel’s arias, providing a close examination of “Ombre, piante” from the opera Rodelinda and new thoughts about “Lament not thus,” originally intended for the oratorio Belshazzar. Although these arias belong to different genres and different stages of Handel’s career, they both exhibit material that undergoes a kind of progressive variation process that has tangible musical and dramatic ramifications, of interest to opera specialists and performers. Furthermore, both arias have a complicated compositional history; I offer fresh insights into the aesthetic qualities of each version, thereby throwing light on Handel’s possible compositional intentions. This article also discloses for the first time some recurring musical passages shared between “Lament not thus” and other pieces that could influence the listener’s interpretation of certain musico-dramatic gestures.