Keyboard Works Research Articles

Aesthetic expression an das Clavier: performing character in the keyboard music of C. P. E. Bach

Abstract The expression and interpretation of music in the North German Enlightenment was a primary concern of amateur musicians. Around the mid 18th century, influenced by the nascent discipline of aesthetics, literature on the arts and music exhibited a shift towards a psychological approach to expression rather than a rhetorical one. This article examines the notion of ‘character’ as used in aesthetics, music theory and compositions of the period, showing how it was closely linked to the moral function of art. Moving away from a rhetorical or semiotic approach that identifies a fixed character in specific genres or musical features, I argue that musical performance involved an interaction between the music’s implied character and the moral character of the musician. Case studies of two representative keyboard works by C. P. E. Bach, the Rondo I in C major (Wq.56.1/h.260) and the Fantasia in F♯ minor (Wq.67/h.300), explore ways to recover the psychological experience of character as delineated in these compositions, and discuss how an approach to expressing character could be employed by present-day performers.

Not Just Wallpaper: An Interview with Michael Kieran Harvey

The career of pianist and composer Michael Kieran Harvey is notable for its diversity and wide repertoire. In addition to his more than fifty solo CDs recorded on various labels, Harvey is particularly known for his promotion of contemporary music; he has premiered many new Australian and international concertos, and more than three hundred solo Australian keyboard works, many of which are dedicated to him. […]

Mozart's Operatic Embellishments

AbstractAlongside the model embellishments Mozart composed for various keyboard works, he also wrote embellishments for contemporary arias including ‘Ah, se a morir mi chiama’ from Lucio Silla, the concert aria ‘Non sò d'onde viene’ K.294 and ‘Cara, la dolce fiamma’ from J.C. Bach's Adriano in Siria. Although these have been overlooked in the critical literature, they shed light on many aspects of Mozart's art of melodic decoration. In this article, I begin by examining these notated operatic embellishments: their textual histories, the styles of elaboration they evince, the pacing with which they unfold, and their motivic construction, as well as their relation to broader trends in Mozart's style. I then explore the embellishments Mozart composed into the texts of his other operas, arguing that these served not only a musical but also an aesthetic purpose, furthering elements of characterisation and drama, particularly in Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. I end with brief remarks on the challenges facing modern-day interpreters who wish to embellish Mozart's operas.

J.S. Bach’s keyboard works: From performance to research

Practiceled research in classical music has tended to deal with specific and limited case studies, examining in detail the ways in which one musician?s individual responses to a work or genre can lead to a new understanding of that object, and assessing the different forms of knowledge generated. This project discussion however deals with a complete corpus created over one composer?s lifetime, Bach?s works for clavier, and looks at the very many different aspects of musical understanding - including pedagogy, technique, compositional practice, performance practice, attribution studies and organology - that can be enriched by hands-on engagement with a substantial and high-quality repertoire.

Keyboard works by Georg Bohm

Keyboard works by Georg Bohm

Organization of <em>Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works</em>

Organization of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works Cliff Eisen (bio) I. Keyboard Music (18 vols.) 1. “Prussian” and “Württemberg” Sonatas 2. Sonatas with Varied Reprises 3. “Probestücke,” “Leichte” and “Damen” Sonatas 4. “Kenner und Liebhaber” Collections (2 parts) 5. Miscellaneous Sonatas from Prints (2 parts) 6. Sonatas from Manuscript Sources (5 parts) 7. Variations 8. Miscellaneous Keyboard Works (2 parts) 9. Organ Works 10. Arrangements of Orchestral Works (2 parts) II. Chamber Music (7 vols.) 1. Solo Sonatas 2. Trio Sonatas (2 parts) 3. Keyboard Trios (2 parts) 4. Accompanied Sonatas 5. Quartets and Miscellaneous Chamber Music III. Orchestral Music (29 vols.) 1. Berlin Symphonies 2. Six Symphonies for Baron van Swieten 3. Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen 4. Flute Concertos (2 parts) 5. Oboe Concertos 6. Violoncello Concertos 7. Keyboard Concertos from Prints 8. Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato 9. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources (15 parts) 10. Concertos for Two Keyboards 11. Keyboard Sonatinas from Prints 12. Keyboard Sonatinas from Manuscript Sources (2 parts) 13. Sonatinas for Two Keyboards [End Page 80] IV. Oratorios and Passions (24 vols.) 1. Die Israeliten in der Wüste 2. Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu 3. Passions-Cantate 4. Passions according to St. Matthew (6 parts) 5. Passions according to St. Mark (5 parts) 6. Passions according to St. Luke (5 parts) 7. Passions according to St. John (5 parts) V. Choral Music (20 vols.) 1. Magnificat (2 parts) 2. Quartalstücke (6 parts) 3. Einführungsmusiken (5 parts) 4. Bürgercapitainsmusiken 5. Works for Special Occasions (2 parts) 6. Miscellaneous Sacred Works (4 parts) VI. Songs and Vocal Chamber Music (4 vols.) 1. Gellert Songs 2. Cramer and Sturm Songs 3. Miscellaneous Songs 4. Arias and Chamber Cantatas VII. Theoretical Works (3 vols.) 1. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen I 2. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen II 3. Commentary to the Versuch VIII. Supplement (10 vols.) 1. Miscellanea Musica 2. The Polyhymnia Portfolio 3. Librettos (3 parts) 4. Portrait Collection (2 parts) 5. Historical Catalogues 6. Sources and Scribes 7. Indices Total estimated volumes: 115 Detailed contents of individual volumes, plus the introductions of published volumes and librettos for vocal works, can be found at www.cpebach.org. [End Page 81] Reviews Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works (Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute, 2005–). If any collected works edition of a composer deserves the description “monumental,” it is surely Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, a joint undertaking of Harvard University, the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, and the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, sponsored by the Packard Humanities Institute. Begun in 1998, the edition includes not only Bach’s music, but also facsimiles; free downloads of parts and ancillary material not always included in complete editions, such as a fascinating catalogue of Bach’s portrait collection, reconstructed by Annette Richards; and an excellent new edition of Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, edited and with commentary by Tobias Plebuch. To be sure, the C. P. E. Bach edition stands on the shoulders of other eighteenth-century monumental editions, including the Joseph Haydn Werke and the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. But it surpasses these in its rigorous view of the sources, its thoughtful editorial philosophy and policies, the quality of the editing and the volumes’ forewords, and its broad view of Bach as a composer working within the context of particular locales at particular times or for particular—and sometimes diverse—audiences. It has the advantage, too, of having been undertaken only after many of the philological basics for dealing with eighteenth-century music have been more or less settled through the work of scholars like Wolfgang Plath, Alan Tyson, and Georg Feder, and after some vigorous debates concerning performance practice as well as the importance of the cultural context to a composer’s life and works. Finally, unlike the Mozart edition in particular, it has benefited from the recent recovery of sources previously thought to have been lost, especially, in 1999, the archives of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which includes some unique copies of Bach’s...

Dissonance in the Expressive System and Performing Practice of Baroque Keyboard Music

The research focused on the important aesthetic category of Baroque music — a dissonance, and methods of its interpretation in keyboard music of the era. The author has identified the key problem of stylus phantasticus in keyboard pieces’ interpretation. For the first time in Ukrainian historically informed performance it was noticed the ways to solve the sketchy notation of Johann Caspar Kerll’s keyboard works, whose style was influenced by Neapolitan style durezze e ligature, the manner of J. Frescobaldi. Music theory and performing practice of the 17th — 18th centuries recognizes the dissonance as a moving concept, creating an effect of both movement and tension, so the performing tradition required that dissonance should be manifested in every possible way so the performer should subordinate performance primarily to harmony, rhythm and emphasis, overcoming from time to time the regularity of metric pulsation. Kerll’s manner of composing his Toccata at first glance is regulated. However, in the case of a literal reading of the piece schematic notation, sound and rhythmic monotony occurs. Relying on the methods of contemporary researches and recommendations of Baroque authors it was proposed the methods for deciphering musical notes of Toccata: chords, dissonances, ornamentation, articulation techniques and agogics, which individualize and make expressive every next performance of stylus phantasticus keyboard piece. Systematizing experience of interpretation methods for early Baroque keyboard music gives reason to compile a base for theoretical background for future research by young generation of Ukrainian musicians, being just at the beginning of their carrier. This investigation significantly expands the perception of listeners and professional musicians about aesthetic conventions of Baroque keyboard performing art.

Keyboard works by the unfamiliar and the very familiar

Keyboard works by the unfamiliar and the very familiar

Terminal Bach: Technology, Media, and the Goldberg Variations in Postwar American Culture

The curious link between Bach’s music and psychopaths in English-language film can be traced back to at least Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Black Cat (1934), but this cinematic trope regained horror credibility in the late twentieth century with Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Lecter’s creator, author Thomas Harris, gave his cannibalistic serial killer preternatural intelligence and a taste for fine culture, including the keyboard works of Bach, most notably the Goldberg Variations. Scholars and fans alike have investigated almost every aspect of Lecter’s persona, including his musical preferences, yet a broader question arises: how exactly did we get to Lecter’s Bach? What cultural factors—musical and otherwise—might have influenced Harris to fix on Bach, Gould, and the Goldberg Variations specifically for his supervillain?

Municipal music

I can still recall first hearing—and subsequently enjoying again on multiple occasions—The Parley of Instruments’s album German consort music, 1660–1710. Directed by Peter Holman and Roy Goodman, the sparkling performances on this classic 1983 Hyperion LP (reissued as a CD in 1990) featured a series of engaging works by Johann Rosenmüller, Georg Böhm, J. C. F. Fischer, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and Telemann that came as something of a revelation to a university student living far from Europe, on the other side of the world. Now, at last, listeners, performers and scholars interested in discovering more about this rich body of repertory have at their disposal a full-length, detailed and insightful study in the form of Michael Robertson’s latest monograph, Consort suites and dance music by town musicians in German-speaking Europe, 1648–1700. This new volume is a welcome companion to Robertson’s first book, The courtly consort suite in German-speaking Europe, 1650–1706 (Ashgate, 2009; reviewed in Early Music, xxxviii (2010), pp.285–7), transporting the reader from the context of German courts to the equally important setting of German towns during roughly the same time period. With his focus again on consort suites and dance music, Robertson’s definition of the term ‘consort’ is a reasonably broad one, comprising ensembles of two or more instruments together with continuo. It should be noted, however, that the contemporary keyboard suite is also considered in some depth (see chapter 8), not in the form of a comprehensive survey but, rather, in light of its ‘often-symbiotic relationship’ (p.172) with the town-music suite tradition, lingering evidence of which was still present in the keyboard works of Mattheson and Handel.

The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach ed. by Robin A. Leaver

Reviewed by: The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach ed. by Robin A. Leaver Bettina Varwig (bio) The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, ed. Robin A. Leaver (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). xxv, 566 pp. According to Manuel Bärwald, one of the contributors to the Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, in fall 2015 the number of entries in the online Bach Bibliography stood at 60,000 (479). The website of the Leipzig Bach Archive (consulted on 6 March 2018), which hosts the database, claims an even higher number of 71,500 titles by November 2015. Only a meticulous reconstruction of the historical facts would allow us to ascertain which of these two figures more accurately reflected the state of play, but both certainly point toward the need for a helping hand (or two) in navigating the nearly impenetrable thicket of over 250 years of accumulated thought and writings about J. S. Bach. This magisterial volume, edited by Robin A. Leaver and comprising twenty chapters over a total of more than 500 pages, sets out to offer such help, both to the “uninitiated” and the “better prepared” of aspiring Bach researchers (Foreword). The chapters are organized into five thematic sections, covering sources and documents (Part I), institutional contexts from schools to churches and courts (Part II), stylistic influences (Part III), compositional genres from vocal to keyboard and instrumental ensemble music (Part IV), and aspects of later reception and dissemination (Part V). A reading from cover to cover (which few readers, presumably, would undertake in practice) reveals, first and foremost, the staggering amount of human time, effort, and diligence expended by generations of scholars on this man and his music. In many ways, we learn at least as much here about the peculiar dynamics of knowledge production in one of the most prolific subfields of musicology as we do about the particular research results generated by this collective labor. Taken together, the body of scholarly writings documented here easily matches the complex, intricate, sometimes esoteric, and occasionally obsessive nature of the musical oeuvre with which they are concerned. So where to start with the initiation process? Several of the chapters offer highly effective introductions to particular areas of study for the more or less novice researcher, synthesizing (and demystifying) information and sources in a way that makes them more easily tractable. Tanya Kevorkian’s chapter on “Households” (chapter 5) usefully places [End Page 151] Bach’s living and working conditions within the wider social realities of the time and summarizes some of the past social-historical work on Bach and his circle. Markus Rathey (chapter 6) presents a lucid overview of the schooling that Bach received as a child, explaining the standard curricula and the impact of contemporary educational reforms. His essay helpfully points out the most relevant literature, from old to most recent, and finds the right balance of being informative without getting lost in excessive detail. Andrew Talle (chapter 8) expertly charts the associations Bach had with different court establishments throughout his career. Stephen Rose (chapter 9) provides a cogent introduction to the Alt-Bachisches Archiv, setting out the main trends in past research, which have ranged from source studies to questions of style and influence, and subjecting some of them to critical scrutiny (e.g., asking what “verifiable influence” [228] might look like). David Yearsley’s chapter on keyboard music (chapter 12) is particularly compelling in its historical nuance and critical elegance; alongside offering a survey of some of the major contributions to the study of Bach’s keyboard works, his essay complicates familiar assumptions about instrument types and their respective status, and emphasizes the dynamic nature of performance, text, and Bach’s creative process as a counterbalance to the pursuit of textual finality. Stephen Roe (chapter 17) gives an exemplary account of Bach’s activities as a teacher and Matthew Dirst (chapter 18) presents a handy summary of early posthumous printed editions and their associated literatures. In their different ways, these chapters all succeed in providing a firm knowledge base for an apprentice Bach researcher, as well as raising signposts for where and how to explore further. Meanwhile, some of the...

Ercole Pasquini Toccate, canzoni, ricercari. ed. by Paul Kenyon

Reviewed by: Ercole Pasquini Toccate, canzoni, ricercari. ed. by Paul Kenyon David Schulenberg Ercole Pasquini. Toccate, canzoni, ricercari. Edizione critica a cura di Paul Kenyon. (Monumenti musicali italiani, 30.) (Ercole Pasquini Opere complete, 1.) Milan: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, 2015. [2 bound parts within slipcase: Part 1: Intavolature / Tablatures: Score, p. 1–64. Part 2: Testi e apparato / Texts and apparatus, p. i–xxx (Italian), p. xxxi–lix (English). ISMN 9790215617193. Pl. no. S. 14907 Z. €92.60.] This is the first of two publications that will comprise the collected keyboard works of Ercole Pasquini. Born in Ferrara in the mid-sixteenth century and active in Rome until at least 1608, Ercole is not to be confused with Bernardo Pasquini, who lived a century later. Although a prolific composer of keyboard and other music, Bernardo appears to have been less innovative than was Ercole in his thirty or so extant works. Ercole was one of the very first composers of keyboard music that can be described as “baroque,” and he seems to have provided models without which Frescobaldi, his successor as organist at Rome’s Cappella Giulia, might not have written what he did. Unlike Frescobaldi, whose toccatas, canzonas, and other compositions appeared in sumptuous engraved editions, Ercole published none of his keyboard music, which remains obscure even though nearly the complete corpus has already appeared in two previous editions. On the one hand, the pioneering transcription into modern notation by W. Richard Shindle no longer reflects current understanding of the sources or the repertory (Ercole Pasquini: Collected Keyboard Works, Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, 12 [Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1966]), while on the other hand, a facsimile edition of the principal manuscripts by Alexander Silbiger is impractical for everyday use (Ravenna, Biblioteca comunale Classense, MS Classense 545, 17th Century Keyboard Music: Sources Central to the Keyboard Art of the Baroque, 12 [New York: Garland, 1987]; Rome, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia, MS A/400, 17th Century Keyboard Music, 13 [New York: Garland, 1987]; and Trent, Museo provinciale d’arte, Biblioteca musicale L. Feininger, n.s., 17th Century Keyboard Music, 16 [New York: Garland, 1987]). Anyone attempting to play from or study these previous editions is likely to be baffled by seemingly faulty if not incomprehensible musical texts. A reliable modern edition with up-to-date textual commentary would therefore be welcome. But although the present publication makes the music accessible to nonspecialists, it falls short of what is expected in a modern critical edition, and it does not always succeed in finding satisfactory readings for scores that the composer, or at least the copyists, often seem to have left not quite finished. Moreover, a serious production error makes it desirable that the edition be withdrawn and reprinted. Collections that seek comprehensive holdings of keyboard music will need to acquire this edition, but others may wish to wait to see whether the publisher will rectify the problem described below. Although the series title describes it as containing Ercole’s “complete works,” it is unclear whether the new edition will extend [End Page 591] beyond the keyboard music (a handful of vocal works are also known). The present volume 1 contains twenty-five short prelu-dial and contrapuntal compositions (toccatas, canzonas, and ricercars). A few brief dances and several lengthy variation sets (partite) will presumably follow in a second volume. This first volume actually comprises two separate items in distinct formats, held in a paper slipcase: a bilingual Italian-English textual apparatus in upright format, and a score volume in organ (landscape) orientation. Pages in the “apparatus” volume bear roman numeration; arabic pagination is used for the scores. I have not read Fabiana Ciampi’s Italian translation of the verbal matter word-for-word, but spot-checking revealed no inaccuracies. Editing this music is not for the faint-hearted. Titles and attributions in the sources are often absent or heavily abbreviated, the notation written hastily and inaccurately. An editor must make decisions about not only what pieces to include (and what to call them), but how to deal with wrong or missing notes, irregularly placed barlines, inconsistently beamed groups of small note values, and omitted rests, accidentals, and...

How to Talk about Music?

In a 1960 issue of the Saturday Review, Glenn Gould reviewed a book by Professor Erwin Brodky, The Interpretation of Bach’s Keyboard Works. Brodky devoted part of his book to “seriously discussing the supposed intrinsic relations between the fourteen note subject of the Fugue in C Major of the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier and the fact that the alphabetic arrangement of the letters in Bach’s name add up to a total of 14 and that if we add the initials J.-S., we obtain the inverse ...

C. P. E. Bach reissues

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s anniversary last year brought forth quite a number of interesting and appealing new recordings (see Early Music, xlii/4 (2014), pp.664–7), but it is actually the reissue recordings that make one realize that the composer is finally making it into the musical mainstream, and not just travelling on his father’s reputational coat-tails. Three large collections have appeared from Brilliant Classics, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Warner Classics, and the prices average only around £2 per disc; inevitably they are of slightly mixed quality, with a few out-dated recordings, but for the most part include impressive performances from the leading players of the last few generations. By far the largest set comes from Brilliant Classics, who have made a specialty of very substantial single-composer collections and complete works in recent years: their Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Edition (Brilliant Classics 94640, rec 1985–2013, 1768′) comprises no fewer than 30 CDs. Unlike the DHM and Warner sets (below), Brilliant Classics supplement their own many new recordings with material licensed from other labels, such as Dux, Edel, Nimbus, Phoenix and Tactus. The trade-off here between consistent quality of recordings and of repertory coverage is one that is worth making, however: as well as nine discs of symphonies and concertos, there are six of chamber music, nine of keyboard works and six of vocal music, allowing the listener to appreciate the impressive breadth, quality and imagination of C. P. E. Bach’s large output. The great majority of performances are on period instruments, and even those using modern forces are Historically Informed.

Review: The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard by Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al.

The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard . Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al. Recorded, edited, and mixed April 2007–March 2009. Naxos NBD0001-04, 4 Blu-ray discs. This review was prepared using the CD version: The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard . Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al. Recorded, edited, and mixed April 2007–March 2009. Naxos 8.501203, 12 CDs with accompanying DVD and 94-page booklet. In the celebrated portrait of Joseph Haydn by Ludwig Guttenbrunn, now in the Haydn Museum at Eisenstadt, the composer sits at a square piano with his left hand on the keyboard and a quill pen poised in his right (Fig. 1).1 An inkwell rests on a piece of manuscript paper on the top of the case, awaiting the composer's inspiration. The illegibility of the musical notation stresses the pregnant silence of the image. Here Haydn is portrayed alone in his study, absorbed in the mental space of his own musical imagination. Although he was not the most virtuoso performer of his age, he used various types of keyboard instrument throughout his career for composition, teaching, and performance. The present series of recordings directly addresses his extraordinarily effective use of the keyboard as a medium of multifaceted communication—with pupils, patrons, publishers, women friends, and concertgoers. It explores the ways in which Haydn adapted his compositions to the acoustics of particular music rooms. In the picture, his surroundings are strictly private and spatially compressed, but the act of composition itself is predicated on the expectation of performance in more expansive, public settings. Figure 1 Ludwig Guttenbrunn, Joseph Haydn , ca. 1770. Eisenstadt, Landesmuseum Burgenland. Used by permission. Haydn's solo keyboard works have received less attention in his discography than the symphonies, chamber music, and choral works, although they chart a crucial period in the development of the Classical sonata during the second half of the eighteenth century. Around eighty of his keyboard sonatas are known, even if only twelve …

Off the beaten track: An exploration of Bach reception in the Slovenian lands in the nineteenth century / Na robu znanega: raziskave recepcije Bachove glasbe na Slovenskem v 19. stoletju

Evidence of the presence of J. S. Bach in the Slovenian lands in the first half of the nineteenth century is limited to a few fleeting references to his name in contemporary periodicals. This article examines the role of the composer Anton Foerster and his Czech roots in the Slovenian Bach awakening through a detailed discussion of two manuscripts containing copies of Bach’s keyboard works, which accompanied the composer on his journey from Bohemia to Ljubljana. The manuscripts are housed in the National and University Library, Ljubljana.

The music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Of Bach's four sons who became composers, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88) was most prolific, most original, and most influential both during and after his lifetime. This is first comprehensive study of his music, examining not only famous keyboard sonatas and concertos but also songs, chamber music, and sacred works, many of which resurfaced only recently and have not previously been evaluated. A compositional biography, book surveys C. P. E. Bach's extensive output of nearly a thousand works while tracing his musical development-from his student days at Leipzig and Frankfurt (Oder), through his nearly three decades as court musician to Prussian King Frederick the Great, to his final twenty years as cantor and music director at Hamburg. David Schulenberg, author of important books on music of J. S. Bach and his first son, W. F. Bach, here considers legacy of second son from a compelling new perspective. Focusing on C. P. E. Bach's compositional choices within his social and historical context, Schulenberg shows how C. P. E. Bach deliberately avoided his father's style while borrowing from manner of his Berlin colleagues, who were themselves inspired by Italian opera. Schulenberg also shows how C. P. E. Bach, now best known for his virtuoso keyboard works, responded to changing cultural and aesthetic trends by refashioning himself as a writer of vocal music and popular chamber compositions. Audio versions of book's musical examples, as well as further examples and supplementary tables and texts, are available on a companion website. David Schulenberg is professor of music at Wagner College and teaches historical performance at Juilliard School. He is author of The Music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (University of Rochester Press, 2010).

Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn by Matthew Dirst (review)

Reviewed by: Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn by Matthew Dirst Mark A. Peters Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn. By Matthew Dirst. (Musical Performance and Reception.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. [xiii, 186 p. ISBN 9780521651608 (hardcover), $103; ISBN 9781139334679 (e-book), $82.] Music examples, facsimiles, tables, bibliography, index. A number of scholars in recent years have begun to examine, in much more detail, the reception of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music between the composer’s death in 1750 and the Sing-Akademie performance of the St. Matthew Passion under Felix Mendelssohn’s direction in 1829. Although it is commonly posited that an admiration for Bach’s works never fully died out, especially among composers such as Mozart and Beethoven, little specific research has been done in this area until recently. Matthew Dirst’s Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn is a welcome addition to the literature on this topic, not only providing a detailed account of key developments in the reception of Bach’s keyboard works (especially Well-Tempered Clavier), but also connecting these developments to broader cultural trends. Furthermore, Dirst demonstrates how such trends in the reception of Bach’s keyboard works helped lead to an openness to Bach’s works in general among the cultural elites of both Germany and England, thus preparing the way for the subsequent Bach “revival” of the mid-nineteenth century. Dirst has formatted the volume in such a way as to lead the reader into a deeper consideration of Bach’s keyboard legacy through a series of key questions: Why were these works crucial to Bach’s historical legacy? What impact did they have on their respective genres? What lessons did they convey to composers and to other students of the art? Who played this music and why? How did successive generations and different national communities interpret and perform it? (p. xii) Rather than providing an overview of the answers to such questions in an introduction, Dirst instead jumps right into the topic and its significance in chapter 1, “Why the keyboard works?” Readers seeking a more traditional introduction may want to first read the “Epilogue,” which presents an excellent summary of the book’s contents as well as its main arguments and conclusions. Dirst does not present a comprehensive account of the reception of Bach’s keyboard works from 1750 to 1829, but rather engages six case studies that each provide a different perspective on this topic. (In addition, the book actually treats a slightly longer time period, from Bach’s death in 1750 to the establishment of the Bach-Gesellschaft in 1850.) While it is clearly connected as a single monograph and reads well as such, Engaging Bach has the added advantage that each chapter also stands well on its own and can be read independently of the others. Given this format, the book as a whole or individual chapters of it are well suited to classroom use at either the undergraduate or graduate level. For example, chapter 3, “What Mozart learned from Bach,” provides an excellent study of compositional influence, which could be made use of both to study this particular case of influence and to engage the topic of influence more broadly in conjunction with examples from other time periods (Beethoven and Brahms, for example, or Wagner and Debussy). Dirst frames the chapter within the broad context of the study of compositional influence and closely engages the issues related to this topic through the study of the perceived influence of Bach on Mozart. Through a careful study of documentary and compositional evidence, Dirst clearly defines for the first time just what it is that Mozart’s compositional style owes to Bach. Engaging Bach is well written and easy to read, with clearly-fashioned arguments. Dirst combines careful and well-documented research with insightful music analysis and good use of music examples. Furthermore, in treating the legacy of Bach’s keyboard [End Page 703] works from 1750 to 1850, Dirst addresses many topics often mentioned in passing—such as the continuous regard in which Well-Tempered Clavier was held even after the composer’s death, Mozart’s relationship...

Experiencing Mozart: a listener's companion

Titles in the Listener's Companion Series provide readers with a deeper understanding of key musical genres and the work of major artists and composers. Aimed at nonspecialists, each volume clearly explains how to listen to works from particular artists, composers, and genres. Examining both the context in which the music appeared and its form, authors provide the environments in which key musical works were written and performed-from a 1950s bebop concert at the Village Vanguard to a performance of Handel's Messiah in eighteenth-century Dublin. Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791) remains as popular today as ever. His recordings fill iTunes playlists, and annual Mozart festivals are performed worldwide. His eminence as a musician has supported overseas guided tours, served as the subject of a cartoon series (Little Amadeus: twenty-nine episodes from 2006 to 2008), inspired movies and documentaries, and launched a French rock opera. In Experiencing Mozart: A Listener's Companion, music historian David Schroeder illustrates how the issues Mozart cared about so deeply remain important to modern listeners. His views on politics, women, authority, and religion are provided, along with compelling analysis of selected great symphonies and sonatas, moving concertos and innovative keyboard works, and groundbreaking operas. Schroeder merges his vast knowledge of the great artist's personal and professional life, late eighteenth-century European culture and society, and remarkable musicianship to guide listeners in the art of listening to Mozart. This work is an ideal introduction to readers and listeners at any level.

Review of Matthew Dirst,Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn(Cambridge University Press, 2012)

[1] Historical research on Johann Sebastian entered its modern era in the late 1950s with the development, spearheaded by Alfred Durr, Georg von Dadelsen, and Wisso Weiss, of the so-called chronology of works.(1) In parallel with this revolution, the history of the dissemination and reception of was also being rewritten. Whereas Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel wrote, in 1945, that Bach and works ...[were] practically forgotten by the generations following his (358), by 1998 Christoph Wolff could describe the far more nuanced understanding of reception that had arisen in the intervening years in terms of complementary aspects:on the one hand, the beginning of a more broadly based reception of Bach's music in the early nineteenth century, for which Mendelssohn's 1829 performance of the St. Matthew Passion represents a decisive milestone; on the other hand, the uninterrupted reception of a more kind, largely confined to circles of professional musicians, who regarded Bach's fugues and chorales in particular as a continuing challenge, a source of inspiration, and a yardstick for measuring compositional quality. (485-86)[2] In most respects it is with the latter (though chronologically earlier) aspect that Matthew Dirst's survey Engaging Bach: Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn concerns itself, serving as a fine single-volume introduction to the private side of reception up to about 1850. Yet with a growing focus in its later chapters on performance trends for this private repertoire, it satisfyingly sets the stage for the emergence of the public Bach, stitching the two narratives together. Copiously footnoted and engagingly written, the book collects in one place many compositional, critical, and performative responses to that have previously been detailed in monographs, book chapters, and German-language sources.(2)*[3] breadth of Engaging can be seen in the topics of the three chapters of Part I, The posthumous reassessment of selected Chapter 1, Why the keyboard works?, is an overview of critical reaction to from well before death to about the turn of the nineteenth century. answer to the titular question, then, is less that Dirst wished to focus on the keyboard works to the exclusion of other repertoire, and more that reception in those first decades was largely reception of the keyboard works. While the 1720s and -30s saw controversy around Bach's sacred vocal music in well-known polemics involving Johann Mattheson and Johann Adolph Scheibe, advocates of Bach's music from death onward mostly chose to make their case on works such as Art of Fugue and Well-Tempered Clavier. Berlin-based critics and theorists such as Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg and Johann Friedrich Agricola constructed entire systems of aesthetic virtue around qualities they perceived in Bach's music, in which naturalness became equated with unity in diversity. At chapter's end, Friedrich Rochlitz's writings for Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung foreshadow what the new century would make of Bach, with a renewed interest in the intellectual and didactic value of works, a thread that is picked up in the second half of the book.[4] By contrast, Chapter 2, Inventing the chorale, is about the nexus of the world of music publishing in the later eighteenth century and the transformation of the practical, sacred genre of the harmonized chorale into a type of piece whose value lay in its exemplification of harmony and voice leading, and which was expected to be more studied than performed. key figures here are Marpurg, C. P. E. Bach, and Johann Philipp Kirnberger, who in various combinations collaborated to produce two early editions of the chorales-a selection of 200 published by Birnstiel (1765-69) and the famous complete Breitkopf edition (1784-87)-both of which suffered from nearly nonexistent sales. …