B-minor Mass Research Articles

Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture by Markus Rathey

Reviewed by: Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture by Markus Rathey Mark A. Peters (bio) Markus Rathey. Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 414 pages. Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio is among the best-known and best-loved works in the Western art music repertory and, like the composer's St. Matthew Passion and B-minor Mass, is regularly heard by concert audiences. Given the frequency with which it is performed and recorded, it is surprising to note how little research has been published on the Christmas Oratorio, particularly in English. The only English-language monograph dedicated to the work is Ignace Bossuyt's Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio. BWV 248, which was translated from Dutch and is more an introductory handbook than it is a work of new scholarship.1 One other significant recent monograph dedicated to the Christmas Oratorio is Meinrad Walter's Johann Sebastian Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium of 2006 (published only in German), which focuses primarily on theological perspectives on the work.2 Three recent publications in English provide valuable resources for encountering the Christmas Oratorio, but none attempts a comprehensive study of the work. Michael Marissen includes an annotated text of BWV 248 with a new English translation in his Bach's Oratorios of 2008.3 Christoph Wolff provides an excellent broad introduction to Bach's three oratorios (Christmas, Easter, and Ascension) in his "Under the Spell of Opera? Bach's Oratorio Triology" of 2011.4 And Markus Rathey offers a helpful introduction to the Christmas Oratorio for a general readership in his 2016 chapter "From Love Song to Lullaby: The Christmas Oratorio BWV 248."5 [End Page 126] Rathey's Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture thus addresses a significant gap in Bach research by offering the first comprehensive English-language monograph dedicated to the oratorio. And it does so by masterfully weaving together source study, music analysis, textual analysis, contextual study, and historical theology to present a comprehensive and compelling body of research into this well-known composition. In my introduction to current research on Bach's vocal music in The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, I presented six broad approaches to the study of Bach's vocal music: source study, musical analysis, performance practice, theology, text, and contextual studies.6 While Rathey does not focus on performance practice in this volume, he treats in detail all five of the other approaches in relation to the Christmas Oratorio. Rathey's varied approaches to understanding the Christmas Oratorio are not separated into distinct chapters, but are rather interwoven throughout each chapter. By way of example, I briefly trace here the primary themes and sources addressed in Chapter 3, "Layers of Time: The Theology of the Christmas Oratorio," as representative of Rathey's approach throughout the book. Chapter 3 focuses primarily on the libretto of the Christmas Oratorio, explicating it through the lens of historical theology around the concept of the "threefold coming of Christ, which represents the common view of the birth of Jesus at that time and connects the historical event to a chronological continuum with the present and with the end times" (52, italics in original). Following the chapter's introduction that presents historical theology as a framing approach for understanding the Christmas Oratorio and calls attention to the shifting perspectives and chronological layers of the libretto (50–52), a substantial section of the chapter explores theological sources from Bach's time that inform our understanding of Jesus's "threefold coming" (52–59). Rathey begins by discussing a didactic book for school children published in 1727 by Hamburg theologian Johann Joachim Neudorf and drawing on sources such as cantata librettos by Benjamin Schmolck [End Page 127] and Erdmann Neumeister, as well as the Leipziger Kirchenstaat. Rathey continues with what he identifies as "[t]he most influential exposition on the threefold advent in Lutheran Orthodoxy," Johann Gerhard's Postille of 1617. Within this context, Rathey explores how Advent hymns of the seventeenth century reflect the emphasis on Christ's threefold coming. In the next section of Chapter 3, Rathey shifts to explore how such a theological understanding is...

Observations on the Autograph of the B-Minor Mass

Observations on the Autograph of the B-Minor Mass

Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass ed. by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny (review)

Reviewed by: Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass ed. by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny Mark A. Peters Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass. Edited by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. [xxix, 314 p. ISBN 9781107007901 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781107453555 (e-book), $79.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, appendices, bibliographic references, indexes. In reflecting on the state of research on Johann Sebastian Bach’s B-Minor Mass in 1985, the tercentenary year of Bach’s birth, Hans-Joachim Schulze dubbed the work the “perpetual touchstone for Bach research” (in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 311–20). That Schulze’s characterization of the B-Minor Mass is no less true now than it was in 1985 is demonstrated by an impressive new collection of essays published as Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass and edited by Yo Tomita, Robin A. Leaver, and Jan Smaczny. The fourteen essays, by Bach scholars across Europe and the United States, engage the B-Minor Mass from the perspectives of historical and cultural contexts, analysis, source study, and reception, providing new insights into one of the best-known and best-loved of Bach’s works. As explained in the preface, the volume grew out of the symposium “Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass” held at Queens University Belfast in November 2007. The essays in Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass were selected from those presented at the symposium and were revised for publication in 2013. The essays engage past research on the B-Minor Mass while contributing significantly to the body of scholarship on the work. In addition, the volume is carefully edited both for content and readability, and is a valuable contribution for scholars and also for performers or audience members looking for insights into the Mass. Any volume that engages with Bach’s B-Minor Mass must do so within the vast body of research on the work. In addition to a wealth of articles and essays, recent monographs dedicated to the B-Minor Mass include John Butt, Bach: Mass in B Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); George B. Stauffer, Bach, The Mass in B Minor: The Great Catholic Mass (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); and Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: Messe in h-Moll (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2009). Exploring Bach’s B-Minor Mass not only engages such scholarship throughout its chapters, but also particularly frames our understanding of the Mass within its history of performance, scholarship, and reception in its two opening essays. Christoph Wolff’s “Past, present and future perspectives on Bach’s B-minor Mass” (chapter 1) provides a lucid and accessible introduction to the Mass, its history, and the research questions surrounding it, while Robin A. Leaver’s “Bach’s Mass: ‘Catholic’ or ‘Lutheran’?” (chapter 2) provides an excellent introduction to the Mass from the perspective of historical theology. Chapters 3 and 4 likewise complement each other, providing readers with a context for understanding Bach’s 1733 Missa (the Kyrie and Gloria of what would become the B-Minor Mass) within the wider framework of Mass settings in eighteenth-century Germany and particularly at the Dresden court. Janice B. Stockigt’s “Bach’s Missa BWV 232I in the context of Catholic Mass settings in Dresden, 1729–1733” (chapter 3) focuses on musical style, framing Bach’s compositional choices in relation to other Missa settings extant at the Dresden court. Szymon Paczkowski’s “The role and significance of the polonaise in the ‘Quoniam’ of the B-minor Mass” (chapter 4) complements Stockigt’s essay well by [End Page 173] exploring the cultural, political, and musical context for the Missa in Dresden. In fact, the chapter’s title is misleading and does not do it justice, for while Paczkowski does address the polonaise in the “Quoniam,” his goals for the chapter are much broader. As he states in his introduction, “this essay intends to show that the politics and culture of eighteenth-century Dresden provide a useful context for opening up to fresh enquiry some of Bach’s creative intentions in the B-minor Mass” (p. 54), and Paczkowski...

The Kyries of J. S. Bach's B-minor Mass and Gottlob Harrer's D-major Mass (Harwv 32): Between Late Baroque and the "Style Galant"

The Kyries of J. S. Bach's B-minor Mass and Gottlob Harrer's D-major Mass (Harwv 32): Between Late Baroque and the Style Galant Jordi Rifé i Santaló JrhichIcomposer'soneohannheoftheSebastiancomposedzenithsownwork.Bach'sinthetheKyrieItshistoryMassconception1andinofBmusictheminorGloriaisasdated(BWVwellfor1733,as232)perhapsthetherepresentsCourtyearintheofin oneofthezenithsinthehistoryofmusicaswellasperhapsinthe Icomposer'sownwork.Itsconception1isdated1733,theyearin hichhecomposedtheKyrieandtheGloriafortheCourtof Dresden,undertheruleofFrederickAugustusII,ElectorofSaxony (andKingofPolandasAugustIII).WhiletheSanctushadalready beencomposedin1724,therestoftheMass-Credo,2Sanctus, Benedictus,andAgnusDei-wascompletedbetween1748and1749.3 'ChristophWolff,JohannSebastianBach:HIMúsicosabio,vol.2(Barcelona:Robinbook, 2003),146.SeealsoChristophWolff,JohannSebastianBach.Messeinh-Moll(Kassel: Bärenreiter,2009),10-15.1wouldalsoliketothankProf.Dr.ChristophWolfffor thekindness,generosity,andadvicehehasgivenmeinmyresearch,andthankas wellthewholegroupofresearchersandlibrariansoftheBachArchiveinLeipzig. ChristophWolff,ť"Etincarnatus'and'Crucifixus':TheEarliestandtheLatest SettingsofBach'sB-MinorMass,"Eighteenth-CenturyMusicinTheoryandPractice:Essays inHonorofAlfredMann,ed.MaryAnnParker(Stuyvesant,NY:PendragonPress, 1994).TheCrucifixuswasbasedonthefirstvocalmovementinťťWeinen,Klagen, Sorgen,Zagen"BWV12,composedinWeimarin1714. ForallinformationaboutthecompositionoftheB-minorMass,seeWolff,(2003), op.cit.,221-25and(2009),op.cit.,13-20and134-35. BACH:JournaloftheRiemenschneiderBachInstituteofBaldwinWallaceUniversity Comparison of Bach and Harrer Kyries 69 Gottlob Harrer's4 Mass in D major (HarWV 32) was compos in December 1735 and was also created for the court in Dresden. Harrer wrote several works,5 but so far only two of his masses are known to have survived: the Mass in D major and the Mass in F major (HarWV 33). The two masses contrast in style and construction : the instrumental and vocal resources of the Mass in D major are clearly used in the style of a concert mass, whereas instruments play a lesser role in the Mass in F major, being absent in the Credo and Agnus Dei and appearing colla parte in the Kyrie, Gloria, and Sanctus. These aspects make the Mass in F closer in musical style to the masses of the early Baroque. Its Kyrie has therefore been discarded for the purposes of the present study. The reason for comparing the two Kyries (that of Bach's Mass in B minor and Harrer's Mass in D major) is based on seven common characteristics: 1) both works were intended for performance at a Catholic religious service, 2) both were written for the court in Dresden, 3) both were conceived as a Missa solemnis^ 4) the gap between the composition of the two Kyries is two years - 1733 and 1735 - close enough in time to make their distinctive features noteworthy; 5) Harrer was Bach's successor as Cantor at the Leipzig Thomaskirche (which in itself brings added interest that helps discern analogies and differences between the two works and, in the process, corroborates the aesthetic and stylistic changes already indicated by other scholars),6 6) they are similar in their timbrai and textural treatment, and 7) samples from the two Masses indicate that the Kyries present the generative material from which the other parts of the Masses are later developed (in a more or less recurrent manner). 4AI1 references to Harrer's music should be cross-referenced with Ulrike Kollmar, Gottlob Harrer (1703-1755), Kapellmeister des Grafen Heinrich von Brühl am sächschichpolnischen Hof und Thomaskantor in Leipzig (Beeskow and Berlin: Ortus Musikverlag, 2006). 5See Kollmar, 1 74-248, and Andreas Glöckner, "Handschriftliche Musikalien aus den Nachlässen von Carl Gotthelf Gerlach und Gottlob Harrer in den Verlagsangeboten des Hauses Breitkopf 1761 bis 1769," Bach-Jahrbuch (1984): 107-16. 6See, in this respect, Kollmar, op. cit., and Michael Maul, " Vero berühmbter Chor": Die Leipziger Thomasschule und ihre Kantoren ,121 2-1 804 (Leipzig: Lehmstedt Verlag, 201 2), 258-66. 70 Bach The objective of t compositions, with both the style and hypothesis that th music, which fluct My basic sources f editions of Johan 232) - and the Lateini musikJ Finally, the methodology used seeks to encompass the parameters of any musical analysis with regard to its timbrai or formal aspects, as well as those concerning the relationship between music and text. I believe that these parameters can give us indicators suitable for developing these objectives and this hypothesis. Comparative Analysis of the Kyries Table 1 below offers a detailed comparison between the Kyries of Bach's Mass in B minor and Harrer's Mass in D major, using various parameters that reveal the analogies and differences between the two composers: 7Both for study purposes and for the examples appearing in this work, I have based my references on Johann Sebastian Bach, Neue Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke , Frühfassungen...

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)

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. …

Messe in h-Moll, BWV 232, with Sanctus in D-Dur (1724), BWV 232 III , and: Messe h-Moll, BWV 232 , and: Messe h-Moll: für Singstimmen und Orchester, BWV 232 (review)

CRITICAL EDITIONS Johann Sebastian Bach. Messe h-Moll, BWV 232, with Sanctus DDur (1724), BWV 232III: Autograph: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin- Preusischer Kulturbesitz. Commentary by Christoph Wolff. Kassel: Barenreiter, c2007. (Barenreiter Faksimile.) (Faksimile-Reihe Bachscher Werke und Schriftstucke; Neue Folge, Bd. 2.) (Documenta musicologica. Zweite Reihe: Handschriften-Faksimiles, Bd. 35.) [Facsim. reprod.: Mass B Minor (color), 188 p.; facsim. reprod.: Sanctus D major (early version) (color), 20 p.; commentary Eng., Ger., Jap., p. ii-xxxiv; structure of manuscripts, p. xxxv-xxxvii; facsim. 1924 (bw ISBN 3-7618-1911-0, 978-3-7618-1911-1. [euro]398.] Johann Sebastian Bach. Messe h-Moll, BWV 232. Herausgegeben von Joshua Rifkin. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, c2006. (Breitkopf Urtext.) [Scoring, 1 p.; pref., models for the Mass B Minor Ger., Eng., p. v-xviii; full score, 253 p.; Krit. Bericht, p. 254-73. Partitur-Bibliothek Nr. 5363; ISMN M-004-21170-0. Duration: ca. 110 min. [euro]74.] Johann Sebastian Bach. Messe h-Moll: fur Singstimmen und Orchester, BWV 232. Herausgegeben von Joshua Rifkin; Klavierauszug von Alfred Durr. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, c2006. (Breitkopf Urtext.) [Scoring, 1 p.; pref. Ger., Eng., p. 5-8; vocal score, p. 9-228. ISMN M- 004-18251-2; Edition Breitkopf Nr. 8700. Duration: ca. 110 min. [euro]11.50.] Joseph Kerman, writing the early 1980s, mused there is something wrong with a discipline spends (or spent) so much more of its time establishing texts than thinking about the texts thus established (Contemplating Music [Cam - bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985], 48). This strongly stated critique comes the context of a broader assessment of Musicology and Positivism: The Postwar Years (pp. 31-59), which focuses attention on Bach studies general and on the work of Arthur Mendel particular. Reviewed here are yet two more new editions demonstrating continuing textual conundrum as addressed by two of the most accomplished Bach scholars active today. Kerman concedes that absolutely central texts were still unavailable those years [the 1940s and 1950s] (p. 48). In - deed, a page later he lauds the brilliant achievement of positivistic musicology accomplished in an astonishing revision of their chronology [of Bach's compositions]. But, concession serves as a preamble to an excursus on it [positivistic musicology] has chosen not to do (p. 49). To the dilemma Bach scholarship, Kerman observes all Bach scholars . . . seem obsessed, even oppressed by the enormous weight of paleographical and graphological apparatus left over from great positivistic enterprise. What they have not begun to tackle is a critique of the broadly accepted scheme of the evolution of Bach's musical style from his periods Weimar, Cothen, and Leipzig. This legacy of [Philipp] Spitta's has not proved so easy to shake as has his flawed chronology. If the chorale cantatas of 1724-5 come before, not after the Passion According to St. Matthew of 1727, what are the consequences of chronological information for our understanding of these works? And now we know parts of the Passion are from ten to twenty years older than the rest, how are we to experience the work as a 'unity'? Perhaps our concept of musical works needs revision; the Bach scholars should be a position to speak to this (pp. 53-54). Today one can easily point to interpretative scholarship on Bach's music. Yet, the editions reviewed here offer evidence Kerman's assessment of Bach scholarship and publishing remains astonishingly and persistently accurate. Furthermore, Kerman's point about unity highlights a key interpretative issue many editions (especially of the B-Minor Mass, including those reviewed here) attempt to address one manner or another. …

Letters

BOOKS Atlantic Yards is the largest project Frank Gehry, now seventy-eight, has ever undertaken. And if it proves to be his last large project, it will be a fitting capstone to a career utterly blind to the public function of architecture. For how better to assert your dedication to personal expression over context than to have your distinct visual style serve as the emblem for the death of two Brooklyn neighborhoods? Jacobs's legacy, on the other hand, is assured. Her influence continues to be present both where she is heeded and where she is ignored. I even know of one Manhattan bar where you can order a "Jane Jacobs" (Prosecco, elderflower liqueur, orange bitters, Hendrick's gin). I know of no establishment where you can order a "Frank Gehry." Certainly not in Brooklyn. • CHARLES TAYLOR is a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger and a contributor to the New York Times, the New York Observer, the Nation, and other publications. SINUMINED The Rest Is Noise Editors: Barry Gewen's review of Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise (Winter 2008) contains a factual error that illustrates the flaw in his argument. He describes the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" as having a "pentatonic melody"—a melody restricted to five notes—which he says gives it a "skeletal quality." But the song's uncanniness comes from its use of an eccentric scale called the mixolydian. The mixolydian scale is exactly like the major scale— the do-re-mi scale from The Sound of Music—except that the seventh note—ti—is lowered by a half-step. After its E mixolydian opening, "Norwegian Wood" modulates abruptly into the key of E minor, adding yet an eighth note to its melodic palette. Gewen emphasizes the pentatonic scale because he equates tonality with simplicity. But as the surprising sophistication of "Norwegian Wood" demonstrates, that's a dangerous mistake to make. And while Gewen is right that African music frequently uses the pentatonic scale, it just as frequently has a rhythmic complexity that's daunting to even the best-trained Western musicians. The twentieth-century's classical music was not all one atonal shriek. Its best composers and its best songwriters were largely mining the same vein. Alex Ross knows this, which is why he devotes whole chapters of his book to tonal composers like Sibelius, Copland, and Britten. Portraying Ross as a champion of atonality is as gross a distortion as portraying the Beatles as naïve rubes. Lennon and McCartney, like Shostakovich and Britten, were tonal composers constantly testing themselves against the limits of their inherited forms. LARRY HARDESTY Somerville, Mass. Barry Gewen Replies Larry Hardesty is correct about "Norwegian Wood," and I apologize for the error. But I believe my general argument still holds. Hardesty's analysis either parallels or is derived from Wilfrid Mellers's analysis of "Norwegian Wood" in his 1973 book, The Music of the Beatles: Twilight of the Gods. Mellers too noted that the song is in the mixolydian mode (hardly an "eccentric scale"). But he also offered many examples of Beatles songs that are Pentatonic either in whole or in part—"She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," "I Wanna Be Your Man," "I'm Happy to Dance with You," "Things We Said Today," "Help," "Michelle," "When I'm Sixty-Four," "A Day in the Life," and . . . but why go on? As Mellers observes, "the nature of the tunes (both of folk soloists and of rock groups) is conditioned by their origins. . .. The melodies tend to be pentatonic, or at most modally heptatonic." As for Hardesty's other points, I wasn't aware that I portrayed Ross as a "champion of atonality" but of modern music that grows out of the crisis of the European classical tradition. (If anything, I find Ross too eclectic.) And when Hardesty says I equate tonality with simplicity , I confess I don't recognize either myself or my argument . The B-minor Mass simple? Don Giovanni? My point, rather, was that tonality, both diatonic and pentatonic, grounds us in a universal humanity in a way that music written from within the modern classical tradition does not. CORRECTION: On page 73...

Intelligent Design: Hooke and The Lynxes

Intelligent Design: Hooke and The Lynxes

“Et incarnatus”: An Afterthought? Against the “Revisionist” View of Bach's B-Minor Mass

Although it is the current viewpoint among scholars that the separate choral “Et incarnatus” of Bach's B-Minor Mass was an afterthought, considerations of symmetry, tonal structure, and traditions of Roman Catholic mass composition suggest that Bach must have planned the independent “Et incarnatus” from the beginning. This conclusion is reinforced by a study of the autograph and by a musical analysis of the “Et in unum” duet and its parody. It would seem that Bach deliberately inserted the choral “Et incarnatus” in the autograph on an extractable leaf in order to provide his missa tota with alternative performing options, both Lutheran and Roman Catholic. A performance that avoids the structural and musical weaknesses of both these confessional alternatives is both possible and preferable, and would be fully in line with Bach's old-age universalist orientations. This calls for a change in the prevailing performance practice.

Witting and Unwitting Allusion in Certain Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach

Can one see apparent subtleties, seeming allusions, possible significances, in the music of such a composer as Bach and simply be unsure whether they are deliberate or accidental, or-to use better wordswitting or unwitting? I think the answer to that must be Yes. Perhaps, since some puzzles of this kind can be solved more confidently than others, it might be useful to categorize the different levels of certainty, to distinguish various steps between the plausible or likely and the far-fetched among the possible allusions in his music. Admirers of Bach could be more than usually anxious not to miss the significances -the symmetries, golden sections, symbolisms, references to number, and stylistic imitations-while being wary of seeing more than is really justified. It also seems to be true that one can find other speculations less convincing, other conclusions drawn from the more assertive or even more pedantic, than one's own. Bach scholarship today often gives the impression of being assertorial, using what it has collected as in order to assert such things as that the B-Minor Mass is a vocal quintet, or that the harpsichord toccatas are for organ, or that Bach used organ and harpsichord together in church for the basso continuo. At least such hypotheses draw on what seems to be evidence, rather than the free speculation offered by many a study of gender in Cantata 140 or social hierarchy in the Brandenburg Concertos or rhetoric in the Musical Offering. But what exactly is concrete evidence? The problem seems to me not so much that in a given topic contrary can usually (always?) be assembled, but that what is evidence-in any historical question whatever-is a question that can only ever be answered conditionally. We construct history from what we take to be facts and events, but can do so only according to our understanding: Michael Oakeshott is surely right to claim that evidence is not something, coming to us from the past, which has merely to be accepted, and that by definition, what

Concerning the Sciences, the Arts: And the Humanities

expressionist painting. Similarly, the syntax governing a motet by Machaut (1300-1377) is not the same as that controlling a quartet by Mozart-or the structure of South Indian music. It is beyond the scope of this essay to inquire why stylistic principles of 166 Leonard B. Meyer Sciences, Arts, and Humanities the arts have changed as they have. What is important here is that they have-while principles of nature have not. To prevent misunderstanding, it should be noted that style changes in the arts are not, save metaphorically, analogous to biological evolution, or even to the development of scientific theories. In biological evolution it is evidently the case that however much organisms change-however complex they become-their organization remains compatible with certain first principles which are invariant. But this is not so-or at least has not been shown to be so-in the arts. Different styles of, say, music seem to be founded upon quite different and incompatible syntactic principles: compare, for example, the music of Bach with that of Boulez. With regard to a possible analogy between stylistic change and the development of scientific theory, it appears (as we will consider shortly) that, because they are propositional and verifiable, scientific theories evolve in the sense that, generally speaking, they move toward a more accurate explanation of the natural world. Consequently, earlier theories in a given discipline are replaced or qualified by later ones. Once again, this is scarcely true of the arts. Rembrandt's representation of the Crucifixion does not supersede or invalidate one by Perugino, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis does not replace Bach's B-minor Mass, and a comedy by Shaw does not make those by Sheridan or Molibre obsolete. I used Hamlet as an example a bit earlier because, as he so often did, Shakespeare borrowed his plot from an existing source. Now if We are not really interested in the exact word sequence, but are concerned with the content (Stent 1972, p. 89), then it should not be important whether we read Shakespeare's play, the earlier one from which his plot was borrowed, or the tale which was the basis for the earlier play. Clearly, however, this is not the case. And Stent is certainly aware that there is a problem. But his discussion and solution of it seem to me fundamentally mistaken and misleading. Consequently, disputing individual points seriatim would be fruitless. Instead, I shall cut through his Gordian argument with a sharp, but simple, distinction: namely, there is a profound and basic difference between scientific theories, which are propositional, and works of art, which are presentational. Scientific theories consist of propositional statements or hypotheses expressing and explaining recurring and orderly relationships found in the world of natural events, social behavior, and human action. They are general in that they refer to classes or types; they are abstract in that they account for only some attributes of the natural world. The law of gravity, for instance, expresses the relationship between the mass of, and distance between, objects. But it asserts nothing about their shape, color, and texture, or their size and material-except as these may affect their