Clavier-Übung III by Johann SebastIan Bach – "German organ mass"

Clavier-Übung III is the third of four movements in the Clavier-Übung cycle by Johann Sebastian Bach. As a result of publishing confusion in the 19th century, the pieces included in the collection were published separately along with the composer’s other organ works. It was not until deeper musicological research and the discovery of the first printed edition of Clavier-Übung III that the composition was shown in a new light. In this article, the author presents Clavier-Übung III from the perspective of a religious message taking into account the formal plan and the symbolism that the composer included in the work by using musical means. The text attempts to explain the term “German Organ Mass” as it has been commonly called. This is done based on the origins of the work, a description of its internal construction, and an analysis of the score material of individual pieces. The main goal of the work is to present Clavier-Übung III as a complementary work that constitutes a certain closed whole as a collection of pieces to be performed in the order proposed by the composer.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Reception of Bach’s Organ Works

This chapter investigates how Felix Mendelssohn responded to Bach’s organ music on the basis of new evidence garnered from a recently published edition of Mendelssohn’s letters. According to these documents, Mendelssohn “received” Bach’s organ works in a variety of musical and social contexts across Europe. Of particular importance is Mendelssohn’s response to a set of four-hand piano transcriptions of Bach’s organ chorales prepared by his friend J. N. Schelble.

Introduction

This book deals with J. S. Bach’s posthumous role in music history. Combining the disciplines of history, biography, and musical analysis, it considers how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries engaged with Bach’s legacy. Special emphasis is given to Felix Mendelssohn’s and Robert Schumann’s reception of Bach’s organ works, Schumann’s encounter with the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Richard Wagner’s musings on the Well-Tempered Clavier, and Edward Elgar’s (resoundingly negative) thoughts on Bach’s vocal works.

Bach's Legacy

This book examines how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Edward Elgar—engaged with the legacy of the music of J. S. Bach. It investigates the various ways in which these individuals responded to Bach’s oeuvre, not as composers per se, but as performers, conductors, scholars, critics, and all-around ambassadors. In its detailed analyses of both musical and epistolary sources, the book sheds light on how Bach’s works were received within the musical circles of these composers. The book’s narrative also helps humanize these individuals as it reconstructs, with touching immediacy, and often by recounting colorful anecdotes, the intimate social circumstances in which Bach’s music was performed and discussed. Special emphasis is given to Mendelssohn’s and Schumann’s reception of Bach’s organ works, Schumann’s encounter with the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Wagner’s musings on the Well-Tempered Clavier, and Elgar’s (resoundingly negative) thoughts on Bach’s vocal works.

Busoni, Ferruccio (1866--1924)

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, transcriber, editor, and writer on music who spent most of his career in Germany. A child prodigy who started composing at the age of seven and completed his formal music studies at fifteen, he became of one the most important pianists of his time, well known for his transcriptions of organ works by Bach, and a highly respected, if rather rarely played, composer. His writings on music, in some of which he longed for an extension of compositional means and resources, positioned him as a progressive thinker and a model for a young generation of composers, including Edgard Varèse and Kurt Weill.