Hearing Bach's Passions

Hearing Bach's Passions PDF

Author: Daniel R. Melamed

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0190490128

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Daniel Melamed offers a study of Bach's passion settings seeking to familiarise readers with some of the intriguing issues in the study & performance of older music. He explores what it means to listen to this music today.

Bach's Dialogue with Modernity

Bach's Dialogue with Modernity PDF

Author: John Butt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-01-14

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0521883563

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A detailed 2010 analysis of Bach's Passions which demonstrates how they reflect and constitute priorities and conditions of the western world.

Bach's Major Vocal Works

Bach's Major Vocal Works PDF

Author: Markus Rathey

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 030021720X

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"Every year, Johann Sebastian Bach's major vocal works are performed to mark liturgical milestones in the Christian calendar. Written by a renowned Bach scholar, this concise and accessible book provides an introduction to the music and cultural contexts of the composer's most beloved masterpieces, including the Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, and St. John Passion. In addition to providing historical information, each chapter highlights significant aspects--such as the theology of love--of a particular piece. This penetrating volume is the first to treat the vocal works as a whole, showing how the compositions were embedded in their original performative context within the liturgy as well as discussing Bach's musical style, from the detailed level of individual movements to the overarching aspects of each work. Published in the approach to Easter when many of these vocal works are performed, this outstanding volume will appeal to casual concertgoers and scholars alike." -- Publisher's description

Listening to Bach

Listening to Bach PDF

Author: Daniel R. Melamed

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0190881054

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This volume encourages eighteenth-century ways of listening to J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. It explores the concept of musical style, suggests ways to listen to works created by the re-use of music for new words, and shows how modern performances are stamped with audible consequences of our place in the twenty-first century

St. Matthew Passion

St. Matthew Passion PDF

Author: Hans Blumenberg

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 150175906X

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St. Matthew Passion is Hans Blumenberg's sustained and devastating meditation on Jesus's anguished cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why did this abandonment happen, what does it mean within the logic of the Gospels, how have believers and nonbelievers understood it, and how does it live on in art? With rare philological acuity and vast historical learning, Blumenberg unfolds context upon context in which this cry has reverberated, from early Christian apologetics and heretics to twentieth-century literature and philosophy. Blumenberg's guide through this unending story of divine abandonment is Johann Sebastian Bach's monumental Matthäuspassion, the parabolic mirror that bundled eighteen hundred years of reflection on the fate of the crucified and the only available medium that allows us post-Christian listeners to feel the anguish of those who witnessed the events of the Passion. With interspersed references to writers such as Goethe, Rilke, Kafka, Freud, and Benjamin, Blumenberg gathers evidence to raise the singular question that, in his view, Christian theology has not been able to answer: How can an omnipotent God be so offended by his creatures that he must sacrifice and abandon his own Son?

The Great Passion

The Great Passion PDF

Author: James Runcie

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1635570697

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From acclaimed bestselling author James Runcie, a meditation on grief and music, told through the story of Bach's writing of the St. Matthew Passion. In 1727, Stefan Silbermann is a grief-stricken thirteen-year-old, struggling with the death of his mother and his removal to a school in distant Leipzig. Despite his father's insistence that he try not to think of his mother too much, Stefan is haunted by her absence, and, to make matters worse, he's bullied by his new classmates. But when the school's cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, takes notice of his new pupil's beautiful singing voice and draws him from the choir to be a soloist, Stefan's life is permanently changed. Over the course of the next several months, and under Bach's careful tutelage, Stefan's musical skill progresses, and he is allowed to work as a copyist for Bach's many musical works. But mainly, drawn into Bach's family life and away from the cruelty in the dorms and the lonely hours of his mourning, Stefan begins to feel at home. When another tragedy strikes, this time in the Bach family, Stefan bears witness to the depths of grief, the horrors of death, the solace of religion, and the beauty that can spring from even the most profound losses. Joyous, revelatory, and deeply moving, The Great Passion is an imaginative tour de force that tells the story of what it was like to sing, play, and hear Bach's music for the very first time.

An Introduction to Bach Studies

An Introduction to Bach Studies PDF

Author: Daniel R. Melamed

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998-04-30

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0195122313

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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.