The Afterlife of Bach's Organ Works

The Afterlife of Bach's Organ Works PDF

Author: Russell Stinson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-10-22

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0197680437

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The music of J. S. Bach continues to be revered and celebrated centuries after his death. Its timelessness can be attributed to masterful musical engineering combined with profound expressivity. In other words, Bach's unique art may represent the pinnacle of contrapuntal technique, but it is just as amazing for its depth of emotion. Bach's compositions remain an indispensable part of the classical-music canon today. The Afterlife of Bach's Organ Works explores the critical impact made on posterity by Bach's organ music. It concerns a diverse group of musicians and non-musicians alike--some famous, some forgotten--who in one way or another became champions of these compositions. These individuals performed the music; edited it for publication; promoted it by means of books, articles, and reviews; transcribed it for other media; taught it to their pupils; shared it with their family and friends; and incorporated it into the soundtracks of their motion pictures. They ensured its "afterlife." In five chapters, organist and Bach expert Russell Stinson traces the historical afterlife of Bach's organ music from the early nineteenth century--the era of the so-called Bach revival--to the present day. Engagingly written and containing a wealth of information previously unavailable in English, the book is a history of performance practice, an aesthetic history of musical taste, and a social history. Each chapter tells the story of how and why Bach's organ works have stood the test of time.

J. S. Bach

J. S. Bach PDF

Author: George B. Stauffer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 649

ISBN-13: 0197661203

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In the obituary that appeared soon after his death, Johann Sebastian Bach was described as "the world-famous organist" and "the greatest organist...we have ever had." In Hamburg, Dresden, and other big cities, Bach dazzled audiences with his organ playing, performing passages with his feet that many thought impossible for the hands. One eyewitness declared that he had never seen anything like it. His extant organ works--more than 250 chorale settings and free pieces--are filled with bold, dramatic passages and fully independent pedal parts. They represent the most important body of music in the organ repertoire and the only genre that Bach turned to continuously throughout his life, from his earliest efforts as a teenager in Ohrdruf to his final deathbed revisions as a cantor in Leipzig. In this new survey, leading musicologist George B. Stauffer traces the evolution of Bach's organ works within the broad spectrum of his development as a composer. With detailed discussions of the individual pieces, the book shows how Bach initially drew on contemporary models from Germany and France before evolving a personal idiom based on the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi. In Leipzig, he went still further, synthesizing national and historical styles to produce cosmopolitan masterpieces that exude sophistication and elegance. Serving as a backdrop to this growth was the emergence of the Central German pre-Romantic organ, which inspired Bach to write pieces with unique chamber-music, choral, and orchestral qualities. Stauffer follows these developments step-by-step, showing how Bach's unending quest for novelty, innovation, and refinement resulted in organ works that continue to reward and awe listeners today.

The Organ Works of Bach

The Organ Works of Bach PDF

Author: Harvey Grace

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-26

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 9781331128786

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Excerpt from The Organ Works of Bach This is, I think, the first systematic and comprehensive English book on the organ works of Bach. It comes from one who is both organist and musician. I hasten to explain. By "both" organist and musician" I do not mean what some rude scribes mean when they say of a singer, by way of the highest praise they can give him, that he is not only a singer but a musician. I would never dream of suggesting that there are organists who are not musicians. But it goes without saying that there are musicians who are not organists. I know the tribe exists, because I am a humble member of it myself. My own practical acquaintance with the organ has been limited to the rare occasions when I have sat by an organist friend who has allowed me to let my fingers wander idly over the noisy keys, as somebody's did in the song, and with the same futility. But though I cannot play the organ, I have studied a good deal of organ music: my own knowledge of Bach's organ works, indeed, is derived in the first place from study of them either at the pianoforte or with the score on my knees. There must be many others who have learned them in the same way. But what we learn of them in this way is obviously not all that is to be learned about them. They were written for a particular instrument, and cannot fully come to life except on that instrument. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Bach's Legacy

Bach's Legacy PDF

Author: Russell Stinson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-04-27

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0190091231

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Johann Sebastian Bach's legacy is undeniably one of the richest in the history of music, with a vast influence on posterity that has only grown since his rediscovery in the early nineteenth century. In this latest addition to his long list of Bach studies, renowned Bach scholar Russell Stinson examines how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Edward Elgar - engaged with Bach's legacy, not only as composers per se, but also as performers, conductors, scholars, critics, and all-around musical ambassadors. Detailed analyses of both musical and epistolary sources shed light on how these later masters heard and received Bach's music within their musical circles, while colorful anecdotes about their Bach reception help humanize them, reconstructing the intimate social circumstances in which they performed and discussed Bach's music. Stinson focuses on 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 as a vocal composer. Engagingly written, copiously annotated, and thoroughly up to date, Bach's Legacy traces the historical afterlife of Bach's music and offers fascinating insights into how these later masters defined it for their audiences and beyond.

The Organ Music of J. S. Bach

The Organ Music of J. S. Bach PDF

Author: Peter Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-12-11

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 9780521814164

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This is a completely revised 2003 edition of volumes I and II of The Organ Music of J. S. Bach (1980), a bestselling title, which has subsequently become a classic text. This edition takes account of Bach scholarship of the 25 years prior to publication. Peter Williams's piece-by-piece commentary puts the musical sources of the organ works in context, describing the form and content of each work and relating them to other music, German and non-German. He summarises the questions about the history, authenticity, chronology, function and performance of each piece, and points out important details of style and musical quality. The study follows the order of the Bach catalogue (BWV), beginning with the sonatas, then the 'free works', followed by chorales and ending with the doubtful works, including the 'newly discovered chorales' of 1985.

The Organ Music of J. S. Bach: Volume 2

The Organ Music of J. S. Bach: Volume 2 PDF

Author: Peter Williams

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780521317009

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Bach's organ works--the best-known of all music ever written for the instrument--have been the subject of a great variety of interpretations, all too often based on subjective opinion and conjecture. What the author does in this piece-by-piece commentary is to combine a performer's insight and experience with the fruits of scholarly research. He is concerned throughout to reconstruct for the modern performer and listener the original context of the work: its sources and history; its place in the composer's development; the implications of contemporary instruments and performing practice, and of the musical and aesthetic theories of the time; and the background which shaped Bach's view of the original chorale melodies. Each of the collections of organ chorales is examined as an entity in a preliminary essay. Then for each piece the author discusses the important sources and their relationship; quotes the underlying chorale melody and one or more verses of the text (with a literal translation) and describes its importance in the life of Bach's church; and analyses the form and style of the organ setting, with many musical examples and frequent allusions to the views of other commentators.

J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument

J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument PDF

Author: Russell Stinson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 019991723X

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In J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument, author Russell Stinson delves into various unexplored aspects of the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Drawing on previous research and new archival sources, he sheds light on many of the most mysterious aspects of these masterpieces, and their reception, and shows how they have remained a fixture of Western culture for nearly three hundred years.