The ABS Guides Series – serie

The initial volume in a series of American Bach Society Guides, Bach's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering is a comprehensive study of two closely related masterworks of the late Baroque fugal style. This compact guide, intended for practitioners, music scholars, and a general readership, summarizes a considerable body of knowledge about these famously cerebral collections in an engaging and accessible style. Bach specialist and keyboard player Matthew Dirst explains the Art of Fugue and Musical Offering's idiosyncratic musical language while reviewing how both projects took shape during Bach's final decade. They reflect Bach's lifelong fascination with learned counterpoint, as demonstrated in elaborate series of fugues and canons in both and in an unusually intricate trio sonata in the latter. Dirst provides commentary on individual movements and groups of pieces and on the historical reception of this music, including its impact on other disciplines. Recurring themes include Bach's diligent exploration of contrapuntal types and techniques, his embrace of musical games, and his creative assimilation of diverse musical styles.

The initial volume in a series of American Bach Society Guides, Bach's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering is a comprehensive study of two closely related masterworks of the late Baroque fugal style. This compact guide, intended for practitioners, music scholars, and a general readership, summarizes a considerable body of knowledge about these famously cerebral collections in an engaging and accessible style. Bach specialist and keyboard player Matthew Dirst explains the Art of Fugue and Musical Offering's idiosyncratic musical language while reviewing how both projects took shape during Bach's final decade. They reflect Bach's lifelong fascination with learned counterpoint, as demonstrated in elaborate series of fugues and canons in both and in an unusually intricate trio sonata in the latter. Dirst provides commentary on individual movements and groups of pieces and on the historical reception of this music, including its impact on other disciplines. Recurring themes include Bach's diligent exploration of contrapuntal types and techniques, his embrace of musical games, and his creative assimilation of diverse musical styles.

What is a cantata? How and why did Bach compose his cantatas? What did cantatas mean to Bach and what do they mean today? In Bach's Church Cantatas Ruth Tatlow addresses these questions through discussion of five of Bach's most beloved works enriched by newly researched insights that will intrigue both first-time and experienced listeners. With the overarching theme of Glory from the Gallery, this guide starts by introducing Bach's aims for his church cantatas. It examines the devotional content, the theology, and the poetic form of the cantata texts to help the reader appreciate Bach's musical responses. By analysing his choice of voices and instruments, compositional construction, structural symmetries, and other features in the music, Tatlow asks what significance these held for Bach, and how understanding this can help the listener of his music today. The text is illustrated by numerous rarely seen images from seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century sources. The book ends by reimagining the cantatas and their glories from galleries for all creeds and cultures.Written in an accessible style for both non-specialists and those already familiar with Bach, Bach's Church Cantatas uses new research and ways of listening to help us better understand and appreciate the variety of cantata styles and their relevance in the modern world beyond their original liturgical setting.

What is a cantata? How and why did Bach compose his cantatas? What did cantatas mean to Bach and what do they mean today? In Bach's Church Cantatas Ruth Tatlow addresses these questions through discussion of five of Bach's most beloved works enriched by newly researched insights that will intrigue both first-time and experienced listeners. With the overarching theme of Glory from the Gallery, this guide starts by introducing Bach's aims for his church cantatas. It examines the devotional content, the theology, and the poetic form of the cantata texts to help the reader appreciate Bach's musical responses. By analysing his choice of voices and instruments, compositional construction, structural symmetries, and other features in the music, Tatlow asks what significance these held for Bach, and how understanding this can help the listener of his music today. The text is illustrated by numerous rarely seen images from seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century sources. The book ends by reimagining the cantatas and their glories from galleries for all creeds and cultures.Written in an accessible style for both non-specialists and those already familiar with Bach, Bach's Church Cantatas uses new research and ways of listening to help us better understand and appreciate the variety of cantata styles and their relevance in the modern world beyond their original liturgical setting.

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier forms part of the series American Bach Society Guides for the introduction of Johann Sebastian Bach's most important works and collections to a wider audience. Although the topic of this book is some of the most compostionally sophisticated music ever written, it avoids musical notation, explains necessary technical terminology, and assumes only basic knowledge of music history. This book presents the context, history, and music of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier based on the latest musicological research. It appeals to those who desire an introduction to the collectionor a refresher on its salient characteristics. The main topics include: definitions, descriptions, and history of Prelude, Fugue, Temperament, and Tonal Harmony; Bach's motivation for writing the collection and his compositional process; the work's reception history; and the philosophies and issues of performance practice.

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier forms part of the series American Bach Society Guides for the introduction of Johann Sebastian Bach's most important works and collections to a wider audience. Although the topic of this book is some of the most compostionally sophisticated music ever written, it avoids musical notation, explains necessary technical terminology, and assumes only basic knowledge of music history. This book presents the context, history, and music of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier based on the latest musicological research. It appeals to those who desire an introduction to the collectionor a refresher on its salient characteristics. The main topics include: definitions, descriptions, and history of Prelude, Fugue, Temperament, and Tonal Harmony; Bach's motivation for writing the collection and his compositional process; the work's reception history; and the philosophies and issues of performance practice.

The six concertos that Johann Sebastian Bach presented to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1721 are among his most beloved works. First termed the "Brandenburg Concertos" by Philipp Spitta in his monumental nineteenth-century Bach biography, they have become household names. To many, they are the essence of Bach's music: irrepressibly upbeat, animatedly vibrant, and astonishingly contrapuntal. Together with Handel's Messiah and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, they represent the very heart of the Baroque repertory.In this new and lively account, leading musicologist George B. Stauffer takes the reader into the world of the Brandenburg Concertos. He begins by tracing the emergence of the instrumental concerto in Italy toward the end of the seventeenth century before describing Bach's compositional epiphany upon discovering the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi around 1713, an encounter that resulted in the Brandenburg project eight years later. Stauffer then delves into the music itself, looking at the diverse ensembles and sometimes unusual instruments (such as the piccolo violin and echo flute) of each work. He analyzes the individual movements in detail, using diagrams and audio examples to supplement the discussion. He concludes by exploring Bach's recycling of Brandenburg music in his cantatas and instrumental works and the slow posthumous rise of the collection, which languished in obscurity for almost a century before achieving global prominence in our time.Written in an accessible style for general readers as well as specialists, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos opens the door to understanding and appreciating these extraordinary pieces and the magical effect they have on performers and listeners.