The Virtuoso of Submissiveness

This chapter turns to Fux’s engagement with the imperial liturgy and his vigilant custodianship of its received musical traditions. It argues that the principal reception history of Fux as a composer, vested in the ongoing Complete Edition of his works (Gesamtausgabe) inadequately comprehends his actual significance because it privileges his compositions as self-standing musical works. By deconstructing this reception history we can distinguish between Fux’s habitual obedience to the dynastic style (which resulted in a large but blandly-achieved corpus of liturgical music) and two agents of musical refuge which satisfied (by contrast) the composer’s longing for musical form. The first of these is Palestrina and the “stile antico,” through which Fux achieved a much finer corpus of sacred works. The second is the Da capo aria as a model of tonal discourse through which Fux discovered an alternative to the restless changes of texture and technique demanded by the imperial liturgy. Both agents draw Fux into the orbit of Bach. This chapter closes with a comparative analysis of three Da capo arias by each composer. This analysis affirms that the intimacy between musical servitude and imaginative autonomy is of no less significance than the difference between them.

Steps to Parnassus

In this final chapter, the progression from servitude to autonomy in the European musical imagination is traced through the agency of Fux’s Mass settings for the imperial court to the singular achievement of Bach’s Mass in B Minor (BWV 232). Between these extremes lie the Mass settings of Fux’s deputy, Antonio Caldara, three of which establish a mid-way point between Fux’s dutiful (and unsatisfactory) adherence to the dynastic style (an adherence nevertheless redeemed by the composure and thematic integrity of his far fewer stile antico settings) and the exceptional autonomy of BWV 232, in which the emancipation of the musical subject is fully realized. Two of the Caldara settings, the Missa Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani and the Missa Matris Dolorosae, moreover, share compelling structural and expressive affinities with BWV 232 which (for the first time) contextualize the autonomy of Bach’s setting. The “either/or” understanding of compositional servitude in relation to imaginative autonomy is thus moderated in favor of both concepts. Likewise the relations between the authority concept and the work-concept in Fux and Bach are fortified.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Gottfried Walther und die Musik von Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina

Anhand möglicher und erwiesener personeller Verbindungen, aufgrund von quellenkritischen Überlegungen ebenso wie mittels musikalischer Analysen wird erörtert, inwiefern die Kenntnis von Werken Palestrinas Bachs eigene Kompositionen beeinflusste. Daran anknüpfend wird besprochen, inwieweit das Vorbild von Palestrinas stile antico für mitteldeutsche Komponisten der Bach-Generation überhaupt bedeutend war. Besonders findet Johann G. Walther Erwähnung. Ausgehend von neu aufgefundenen Palestrina-Manuskripten aus Bachs Notenbibliothek, die nachweislich mit Walther in Verbindung stehen, wird die Frage aufgeworfen, inwiefern der Austausch des Weimarer mit dem Weißenfelser Hof mit seiner belegbaren Palestrina-Pflege Anstoß für die Auseinandersetzung beider Komponisten mit dem Italiener war. Erwähnte Artikel: Karl Gustav Fellerer: J. S. Bachs Bearbeitung der Missa sine nomine von Palestrina. BJ 1927, S. 123-132 Barbara Wiermann: Bach und Palestrina. Neue Quellen aus Johann Sebastian Bachs Notenbibliothek. BJ 2002, S. 9-28 Daniel R. Melamed: Bach und Palestrina - Einige praktische Probleme I. BJ 2003, S. 221-224 Barbara Wiermann: Bach und Palestrina - Einige praktische Probleme II. BJ 2003, S. 225-228

Die Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts als musikgeschichtliche Zäsur

Als hermeneutische Hilfskonstruktion zum Verstehen musikgeschichtlicher Zusammenhänge braucht eine Epoche nicht an ein bestimmtes Epochenwerk gebunden zu sein, sondern kann auch durch ein Menschheitsereignis wie Ausbruch und Ende eines Krieges bezeichnet werden. Neben dem Streben nach Wiederherstellung alter Organisationsformen und nach Vergewisserung bewährter satztechnischer Grundlagen zeigt sich das Neue um 1650 erst ansatzweise, so das Kantatenhafte, das Theatrische und als gewollter Gegensatz dazu das Konstrukt des stile antico. Den qualitativen Umschlag und damit den Beginn einer abermals neuen Epoche bringt die Zeit um 1680. (Autor, Quelle: Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums online)

Johann Sebastian Bach – B Minor Mass

Historical discussion focuses on the lineage of the Bach family, compositions determined by circumstances of employment, the composition of Lutheran Masses, the possible rationale for composing a Catholic Mass, and the history of the B Minor Mass in terms of manuscripts, performances, and editions. Musical discussion focuses on parody technique, the assemblage of four disparate units of composition into the B Minor Mass, comparisons of stile antico and stile moderno characteristics of the Mass, and formal and musical structures of the Mass, with special attention to structural balance and mirror dispositions. Performance practices include singers and instrumentalists and their arrangements in performance, meter as it affects tempo, rhythmic alteration, and ornamentation.

Learned Style and Learned Styles

Eighteenth-century writers on music recognized a spectrum of learned styles. These included not only the imitative counterpoint characteristic of the fugue and the species counterpoint associated witha cappellapolyphony, but also a broad range of other styles, such as strict style, church style, orstile antico, transmitted from specialist to specialist over many decades and even centuries. The topic of the learned style, however, was a special formation or intensification of texture that occurred within the norms of late eighteenth-century phrasing, harmony, and texture. The tension between learned styles (each grounded in certain genre traditions) and learned style (the versatile and itinerant topic) informs not only the various manifestations of the learned style, which can be used for various formal purposes, but also its signification, which springs from the concerns of order and tradition that accompanied the transmission of learned styles from generation to generation.

TWO MORE NEW VIVALDI FINDS IN DRESDEN

Two further unknown sacred vocal compositions by Vivaldi, a Dixit Dominus and a Lauda Jerusalem, have turned up in a collection that has already witnessed two similar discoveries in recent decades: that of the former Saxon Hofkapelle, today in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek / Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden. Like their predecessors, the newly discovered works were acquired between the mid-1750s and early 1760s from the copying shop of Iseppo Baldan in Venice, who falsified the attribution on the title page to make the composer Galuppi instead of Vivaldi. Whereas the Lauda Jerusalem is an arrangement by Vivaldi of an anonymous stile antico setting of the same psalm in his own collection (and in turn the model for his own Credidi propter quod, rv605), the Dixit Dominus, scored for choir, soloists and orchestra, is an entirely original composition of outstanding musical quality that dates from the composer’s late period. This article explores the background to the Hofkapelle’s purchases from Baldan and provides a description of the new compositions, together with several arguments (based on musical concordances, general stylistic features and notational characteristics) for their attribution to Vivaldi.