Er ist der Vater, wir sind die Bub'n:Essays In Honor of Christoph Wolff , and: "Ein förmlicher Sebastian und Philipp Emanuel Bach-Kultus". Sara Levy und ihr musikalisches Wirken, mit einer Doku mentensammlung zur musikalischen Familiengeschichte der Vorfahren von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (review)

Abstract

Er ist der Vater, wir sind die Bub'n: Essays In Honor of Christoph Wolff. Edited by Paul Corneilson and Peter Wollny. Ann Arbor, MI: Steglein, 2010. [xiv, 234 p. ISBN 9780981985015. $50.] Music examples, illustrations, index. Ein formlicher Sebastian und Philipp Emanuel Bach-Kultus. Sara Levy und ihr musikalisches Wirken, mit einer Doku mentensammlung zur musik - alischen Familiengeschichte der Vorfahren von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. By Peter Wollny. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Bach-Rezeption, Bd. 2.) Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 2010. [145 p. ISBN 9783765103902. i24.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. The volume Er ist der Vater, wir sind die Bub'n (He is the father, we are the boys) takes its title from a statement allegedly made in 1789 by Mozart to Johann Fried - rich Doles, cantor at Leipzig's St. Thomas church, in reference to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. However, the title clearly serves a dual purpose, as the present volume serves as a Festschrift for Christoph Wolff, the highly influential scholar of the music of Bach, his sons, and, others, on the occasion of Wolff's seventieth birthday. Though lacking what would have been a valuable bibliography of Wolff's extensive scholarship, the volume is adorned with other equally reverential set pieces: a dedicatory acrostic poem by Lisa DeSiro and a closing musical tribute by Robert D. Levin. The main body of the volume consists of ten separately authored chapters, of which five are in German and five in English, focusing primarily on aspects of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's compositional thinking. In the first chapter, Uwe Wolf presents specific details of the revisions made by C. P. E. Bach in the autograph manuscript of J. S. Bach's B-minor Mass, BWV 232. In clarifying the stages of the revisions, Wolf offers information useful to the understanding of the text that appears in that manuscript, which has appeared in several facsimile editions and is available in a high-resolution scan online (available at http://www.bach-digital.de/receive /BachDigitalSource_source_00001048, accessed 15 September 2011) as well as a means toward understanding the editorial decisions that one encounters in the numerous editions of the B-minor Mass. Darrell M. Berg's article treats the process of melodic variation in C. P. E. Bach's music, examining the utilization of this technique in his formal structures and considering the resulting pieces in the context of late eighteenth-century instrumental forms. Laura Buch discusses the closely allied notion of improvisation as manifest in Bach's trios. In this she addresses both simple embellishment and the effect on the trio genre of the increasing significance of the keyboard part. Ulrich Leisinger's contribution examines musical declamation as exhibited in Bach's text setting, which, as with the previous chapters, situates Bach within the transition between baroque and modern styles. Peter Wollny's chapter on the Easter cantata Gott hat den Herrn auferwecket examines the documents associated with that compostion, in a manner which Wollny has perfected, in elucidating biographical details of the composer's professional ambitions. Paul Corneilson reviews the music composed by Bach for Johann Heinrich Michel as a means of examining the parameters in which Bach worked in composing for his Hamburg soloists while also providing musical insight into the biography of Bach's primary Hamburg copyist. Jason B. Grant describes the depiction of the the city of Hamburg in four occassional works by C. P. E. Bach which reference the city and specific sites in the city, providing insight into its citizens' attitudes toward it. Wolfram Ensslin and Tobias Rimek examine his use of pastiche and arrangements of pre-existing music as demonstrated in the chorale settings in the composer's vocal works, providing among other copious details a 25-page index of chorales and their source attributions. Christine Blanken provides valuable details of the reception of C. …