Matthew Passion Research Articles

Reflexiones en torno a la semanticidad musical

El propósito de este trabajo es exponer de manera sencilla la doble capacidad de la música tanto para mimetizar elementos lingüísticos como para comunicar emociones trascendiendo el alcance de la palabra. Tomaremos como referencia la Pasión según san Mateo (PSM) de J. S. Bach, ya que en ella el compositor realiza un minucioso trabajo de exégesis, donde todas las palabras son sopesadas para ser resaltadas según su importancia textual. Su objetivo es magnificar el mensaje evangélico, dotándolo de una dimensión emocional añadida, solo conseguible merced a las propiedades intrínsecas de la música. Para poder entender mejor el alcance de esta empresa debemos primero analizar la potencialidad expresiva de la música para interpretar ideas, describir sucesos y/o contagiar emociones.

La Passione (St. Matthew Passion) by Johann Sebastian Bach

La Passione (St. Matthew Passion) by Johann Sebastian Bach

I'm Nobody, Who am I?

Student Number 3169227 Supervisor(s) Andrew Wright Title I'm Nobody, who am I Research Question My research question is too long for the form. Summary Emily Dickinson's poetry can be hard to understand the first time you read it. How then can the artist communicate an Emily Dickinson poem in a song in a way that an audience grasps the meaning the first time? For that reason, you need to define who you are on stage and what you want to communicate. But what do you communicate on stage when your first sentence is 'I'm Nobody!'? This research turns Nobodies into Somebodies and the other way around by looking at the voices (the characters) that are present in the poems of Emily Dickinson, specifically the poem 'I'm Nobody!'. Who speaks to whom? The research makes a journey from Emily Dickinson to scholars who write about her, composers who make songs on her poems and in the end to the performer who with all these people in her mind communicates the poem and the song to the audience. Finally, the voices in the poem become defined as various characters that can be performed on different settings of 'I'm Nobody!' by Ernst Bacon, Nick Raspa and Lori Laitman. From something vague and ungraspable the poem and its voices become very concrete and close to our own daily lives. Short Bio Mezzo soprano Boukje started singing as soon as she could speak. After her Bachelor’s in History at the Utrecht University, she decided that she wanted to explore as much as possible about singing. In 2017 she graduated from the Fontys Conservatory in Tilburg and started her Master's in the Royal Conservatoire. Currently, she studies with Catrin Wyn-Davies. Boukje performed as a soloist in different concerts. She sang, for example, the alto solos in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Haydn’s Stabat Mater, Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle and she sang the role of Hänsel in the staged opera of Hänsel und Gretel from Humperdinck.

How Did J. S. Bach’s “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,” BWV 244/49, Get to Be So Slow?

A high point of almost every performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is the tragic and time-stopping aria “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,” BWV 244/49. It appears to make sense in context, but commentators have long wondered how Bach and his librettist could have reused such somber music in the so-called Cöthen Funeral Music, BWV 244a, with a new text that opens “Mit Freuden sei die Welt verlassen”; the invocation of joy apparently represents a strong contradiction in affect with the music, almost uniformly understood to be very slow. The slow tempo did not originate with Felix Mendelssohn, who included the aria in his second performance of the Passion in 1841. The aria’s character appears to have been established later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in critical writings that regarded it as transcendent and representative of the Passion’s supposed pure tragedy. The aria arguably came to be seen as the St. Matthew Passion’s transcendent “slow movement,” a much-venerated instrumental type. Its character was codified in influential nineteenth-century editions that assigned slow tempo and metronome markings, and the recorded history of the work documents very slow tempos, only recently moderated. Adaptations of the aria have taken it to be very slow as well, and represent readings of the received performance tradition of the work. The aria’s doctrinal and affectively neutral text and its musical construction suggest the plausibility of a much faster tempo. And this, in turn, could explain why it occurred to Bach and his librettist Picander to reuse it for a text that begins with the concept of joy. The slow tempo of “Aus Liebe” and the problem of its reuse with a very different text turn out to be an inheritance from the nineteenth-century reception of the work.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Carl Friedrich Zelter und „die musikaUsche Malerey"

Im Briefwechsel zwischen Johann Wolfgang von Goethe und Carl Friedrich Zelter nimmt die Diskussion um die sogenannte Nachahmungsästhetik einerseits und das Problem des „Durchkomponierens" andererseits einen breiten Raum ein. Am Beispiel der Ballade Johanna Sebus und ihrer Vertonung durch Zelter kann gezeigt werden, wie Goethe die Moglichkeiten der „musikalischen Malerey" einschatzte. Außerdem wird deutlich, daß der Dichter bei Balladen durchaus bereit war, vom strophischen Schema der Liedvertonung abzusehen und die individuelle Behandlung der einzelnen Abschnitte des Textes zuzulassen, hier sogar in einer der Kantate nahestehenden Form mit Vokalensemble. Mehrere Takte aus dem Eingangschor der Matthauspassion von Johann Sebastian Bach, die Zelter in seine Vertonung eingebaut hat, geben einen zusätzlichen Einblick in die ästhetischen Vorstellungen des Komponisten und belegen darüber hinaus, daß sich Zelter weitaus früher mit dem Werk Bachs befaßt hat als bisher angenommen wurde

Spontini and the City: Bach and Musical Politics in Berlin

In April 1828, Gaspare Spontini conducted a concert spirituel at the Berlin Opera that included sections of the Credo from J. S. Bach's Mass in B minor and the Kyrie and Gloria from Beethoven's Missa solemnis. Spontini was Italian by birth, had conquered Parisian opera houses, and was at the time Generalmusikdirektor of the Berlin Opera. Amidst turbulent controversy and consequent intrigues, Spontini's decision to pair Bach and Beethoven on the program encoded the concert with an overt political statement—the two giants of German music would be viewed in the context of the wider nationalistic politics surrounding German music in general and opera in particular in the first half of the nineteenth century. This essay places Spontini's concert in the context of the early nineteenth‐century Bach revival that preceded Mendelssohn's much anticipated performance of the St. Matthew Passion by almost a year.

J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and intellectual history

ABSTRACTRecent thinking about Intellectual History has moved beyond studying only verbal texts, to encompass other kinds of visual and aural texts that can be vehicles for generative thought. Where might music fit into this expanded conception? If ideas are defined purely as concepts that can be expressed in words, music can be no more than an “epiphenomenon”, a consequence or representation of ideas that lie behind it, but not capable of embodying those ideas in itself. Yet to many musicians, it seems obvious that music can function as a way in which ideas are developed and worked out. What kinds of knowledge might be embodied in music, then, and how do its meanings change over time? In this paper, I examine some of these issues through consideration of one of the key texts of Western art music, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, exploring how it was conceived in a liturgical context in Bach’s time, how its meaning changed when transposed to the very different milieus of concert performance in nineteenth-century Berlin and colonial Sydney, and as it has been re-imagined in a variety of recent staged and recorded versions.

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...

A SHORT HISTORY OF CONDUCTING

7 4 Y A S H O R T H I S T O R Y O F C O N D U C T I N G J O H N M A U C E R I It didn’t begin in a particularly mysterious way. Any group of musicians – whether they were monks in a ninth-century monastery or instrumentalists hired by an eighteenth-century Hungarian prince – always needed a leader: someone to run a rehearsal , someone everyone looked at to start a piece and perhaps to indicate its ebb and flow. In most cases, it was the composer. The job of the conductor as we know it today came into its own in the middle and late nineteenth century, and not without a certain amount of controversy from those who would have preferred a less overt organizer. Robert Schumann called conducting ‘‘a mania’’ and ‘‘a necessary evil’’ in 1836, and Giuseppe Verdi was horrified to learn that conductors were taking a bow, since he saw them only as necessary functionaries in the performance of his operas. In 1872, he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, ‘‘But now it is the style to applaud conductors too, and I deplore it.’’ You can sympathize with Verdi’s point of view. Most of his operas, including Rigoletto and La Traviata, were performed before the era of conductors and before opera houses were redesigned to have orchestra pits. Led by the principal violinist from a position among the orchestra players in front of the stage, the 7 5 R ‘‘leader’’ sometimes had to interrupt his playing to make signals to the singers and musicians using his bow. Toward the end of Verdi’s long career, which extended into the 1890s, a conductor was for the first time taking charge of rehearsals and performances of his Aida, Otello, and Falsta√ at La Scala, while Verdi sat in his seat – or ran down the aisle to protest something he did not like, which apparently was fairly often. That the role of a conductor became essential is inextricably linked to the development of Western music itself and the proliferation of concert halls and opera houses in cities. It was both a practical and a musical solution. The practical one is the development of notation – the indications of how a musical work should be played, written down so that the performer can replicate them without having heard the piece beforehand, and without the presence of the composer in person. It started out as a kind of security device, once the idea of performing a symphony without the composer’s physical presence became the new normal, an impossible task to execute without his or her intentions clearly represented on the pages of the musical score. Remember that the vast majority of music, ever since the very beginnings of humanity’s desire to sing and dance, was passed on and invented by rote and imitation. For example, we have no precise idea of what the music played in Cleopatra’s court sounded like – though we know what instruments were used from the drawings and paintings left behind – since the remnants of its notational system are not understood. Something of the sound probably exists in the current folk music of Egypt, passed down for thousands of years. We can only imagine it, as Verdi did in his score to Aida in 1871, as Alex North did for his score to the film Cleopatra in 1963, and as Samuel Barber did in his 1966 opera Antony and Cleopatra. This is not true of the music of Bach and Mozart, whose music exists and whose notation is understood. Though stylistic details will always be a matter of interpretation, we do know the entire scores of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Without notation we would have only vague echoes of Bach and Mozart in our current music; we could never have a performance of the repertory we hold so precious today. The notation system that developed over the centuries and is 7 6 M A U C E R I Y currently used worldwide began with the Roman Catholic Church and its desire to...

René Jacobs kończy 70 lat, czyli Bach dla wymagających

Wybitny wokalista i dyrygent – René Jacobs – świętuje w bieżącym roku swe 70. urodziny. Jego błyskotliwa kariera artystyczna trwa nieprzerwanie od ponad 50 lat. Działalność koncertowa Jacobsa łączy się nierozerwalnie z aktywnością fonograficzną. Artysta nagrał na płyty kilkaset utworów, dzieł reprezentujących różnorodne formy i style muzyczne. Istotnym i rozległym obszarem poszukiwań artystycznych Jacobsa jest muzyka wokalno-instrumentalna Johanna Sebastiana Bacha. Do chwili obecnej jako dyrygent zarejestrował on na płyty wiele kantat oraz obydwie Pasje, Oratorium na Boże Narodzenie, Mszę h-moll i komplet Motetów lipskiego kantora. Szczególne zainteresowanie słuchaczy wzbudzają nagrania Pasji wg św. Mateusza i Pasji wg św. Jana zrealizowane przez Jacobsa w ostatnich kilku latach.Opisywane w niniejszym przedstawieniu nagranie Pasji wg św. Mateusza Bacha jest jednym z najbardziej oryginalnych, jakie ukazały się w ostatnich latach na rynku płytowym. Interpretacja, pełna teatralnej narracji i kontrastów, zadziwia znakomitą obsadą wokalną, oryginalnym podejściem do realizacji warstwy agogicznej, a także niezwykle bogatą obsadą instrumentalną partii basso continuo. Porównanie nagrania Rene Jacobsa z innymi dostępnymi na rynku płytowym wzbudza respekt i szacunek dla oryginalnej, wręcz odkrywczej koncepcji dyrygenta. Nagranie jest w pewnym sensie podsumowaniem poszukiwań belgijskiego artysty, który słusznie uznawany jest przez krytyków muzycznych i melomanów za prawdziwego muzycznego wizjonera.

Body Language

Name: Charlotte Houberg Main Subject: Classical Singing Research Supervisor: Gerda van Zelm Title of Research: Body language of a singer on stage Research Question: How can a singer on stage use his body language to support his expression? Summary of Results: By the use of different research methods, there have been created ideas and strategies to become aware of your body language and how to use it in a confident way on stage. Body language is, next to singing, an equally important communication tool for singers on stage. It shows knowledge of the movements of the body and understanding of the role or character. The libretto can be translated into body language, so the audience can understand it without knowing exactly what text is sung. It can be concluded that all body parts can be chosen to show a certain mood which fits within the role or character. Gestures do not have to be over- exaggerated, because the audience is able to see and interpret small signs, even from a distance. Consciously chosen body language is easier to decode than spontaneous body language and can be more convincing, even though the singer is not in that certain mood. Body language is part of the luggage of a singer and a tool for showing his expression and intentions. I chose for the form of a research paper, because I would like to share new or expanded knowledge with my colleagues by doing an in-depth research. Biography: Charlotte (1991) takes part in Studio 32, an opera studio of her teacher Henny Diemer. She sang the roles Amor (Cadmus et Hermione), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and Bess (Porgy and Bess). She had a tour with Sinfonia Rotterdam and sang solo with several Dutch orchestras. In Jordan she performed Miroir de Peine of Andriessen with the Amman Orchestra. She has been invited for chamber concerts and has given song recitals on several stages of the Netherlands. From the oratorio repertoire she sings regularly the Matthew Passion (Bach) and the requiem (Fauré and Mozart). She will sing the role First Witch in the new opera of Andriessen (The Theatre of the World) in LA and Amsterdam.

4. Passion in the Work of Johann Sebastian Bach

Abstract Passions are exceptionally important in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. His passion compositions are based particularly on Luther’s reformation, chiefly on developmental tendency which is based on the works of Johann Walter, Hans Leo Hassler and Michael Praetorius. The most significant forerunner of J. S. Bach was Heinrich Schütz. J. S. Bach’s textual aspect is aimed at the model of passion oratorio the main representative of which was a librettist Heinrich Brockes who worked in Hamburg. The interesting fact is that before the arrival of J. S. Bach, in 1723, there was no long tradition of passions in Leipzig. They were performed there in 1721 for the first time. J. S. Bach is demonstrably the author of the two passions: St Matthew Passion BWV 244 and St John Passion BWV 245. The authorship of Johann Sebastian Bach in St. Lukas Passion BWV 246 is strongly called into question and from St Mark Passion BWV 24 only the text was preserved.

Mendelssohn, the Organ, and the Music of the Past: Constructing Historical Legacies ed. by Jürgen Thym (review)

Mendelssohn, the Organ, and the Music of the Past: Constructing Historical Legacies. Edited by Jurgen Thym. (Eastman Studies in Music, vol. 118.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014. [x, 339 p. ISBN 9781580464741. $99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliographic references, notes on contributors, index.In the first chapter of this volume, R. Larry Todd connects Hector Berlioz's criticism of Felix Mendelssohn, that he was little too fond of the dead, to Mendelssohn's abiding passion for the music and compositional practices of J. S. Bach (p. 16). More than simply a devotee of Bach, though, was a musician and music scholar whose activities contributed to the promotion of German musical tradition, in an era largely concerned with the establishment of a unified German culture.Indeed, Jurgen Thym, in his introduction, explains that the early nineteenth century was an age that favored monuments, markers commemorating German achievements of the past, which, by extension, also constructed historical legacies (p. 1). Mendelssohn's role in such commemorative activities is exemplified in his advocacy for a monument to honor J. S. Bach at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, no less than in his performance of a recital, in 1840, featuring Bach's music, in an effort to raise funds for that monument. This recital, like the earlier, famous performance of the St. Matthew Passion, in 1829, was a sort of monument cast in sound not stone (p. 5).The collection of essays here under consideration is quite unified in that each author takes up ways in which engaged the past as a contemporary response in a wide range of musical activities. This volume extends from the conference Mendelssohn and the Contrapuntal Tradition, in 2009, organized by the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative. The 2009 conference included a performance reenacting Mendelssohn's Bach recital of 1840, on the Craighead-Saunders Organ in Christ Church, Rochester, NY; the concert was repeated in 2012, and a recording is freely available online at: http://www.esm .rochester.edu/organ/mendelssohn (accessed 18 September 2015).Several chapters (especially 1, 4, 5, and 8) consider how came by his esteem for Bach's music, through several channels. Pedagogically, his teacher C. F. Zelter studied under J. P. Kirnberger and C. F. C. Fasch, who were both taught by J. S. Bach himself. It was through these sorts of teacher-student relationships that many of Bach's compositions were transmitted for years after his death, in 1750. In addition, had access to a large number of Bach manuscripts through his family; his father and mother acquired a large portion of the Bach estate (including over 100 autograph scores) in 1805, thinking to donate the music to the SingAkademie in Berlin (p. 216).The supposed discrepancy between Mendelssohn's sacred liturgical music and his secular instrumental music is considered in chapters 2 and 11. While chapter 2, by Siegwart Reichwald, is very focused in parsing historic Catholic influences in the op. 23 and 39 motets, chapter 11, by Benedict Taylor, reads Mendelssohn's compositional output in terms of the choice proposed by Soren Kierkegaard, his near contemporary, in Either/Or : Either, then, one has to live aesthetically, or one has to live ethically (p. 302)-applied here as a supposed choice between art-religion or religious art. In the end, for Taylor, it is an oversimplification to divide Mendelssohn's works into sacred and secular, for a religious impulse lay behind them all, though expressed differently as grew and matured.Chapter 3, by Peter Mercer-Taylor, offers a close analysis of Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, composed for the tercentenary celebration of the Augsburg Confession. Taylor reads this symphony, which quotes the Lutheran chorale melody Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott, as an engagement with Bach's St. Matthew Passion and especially Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, both of which include vocal music. …

Bach and God by Michael Marissen

Reviewed by: Bach and God by Michael Marissen Paul Westermeyer Bach and God. By Michael Marissen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 257pp. Michael Marissen is Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College. One of his teachers was Eric Chafe who discussed J. S. Bach’s Cantata 21 (Tears into Wine, 2015) in a lengthy tome of six [End Page 465] hundred pages. The detail in that book concerns the theological theme that produced the title, but the underlying theme is that Bach’s music requires both a theological/liturgical and a musical understanding. In far fewer words, Marissen argues the same underlying theme, that Bach’s music cannot be understood as aesthetic musical pleasure in which words can be ignored, nor can the importance of words be emphasized to make the notes trivial ornaments. Rather, the music interprets the text. Marissen’s book, however, unlike Chafe’s, is devoted to more than one work. Its detail centers in part on The Musical Offering as homage to God and not “abstract” chamber music or homage to Frederick the Great (7, chapter 7), but this book is primarily about anti-Judaism which here means not mean disagreement, but contempt. Bach, like all of us, had his blind spots. His period, like all periods, had its systems of injustice. The church, though sojourner, participates in and sometimes supports these principalities and powers, denying its own message which is partly why it confesses its unknown sins. Bach was not exempt from these sins. That is the detail Marissen examines. He points out that Bach sinned in against Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Calvinists; and he reflected the anti-Judaism of his time and place. He comes off better than Luther (113), and his St. John Passion comes off better than Handel’s Messiah. (Marissen devoted whole books to those two works [Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion, 1998; Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah, 2014]). But Bach is not exempt, at least not in Marissen’s view. In a long footnote (68) he acknowledges those who disagree with him. Marissen divided his book into four parts with seven chapters, each an edited version of an earlier article. Part I discusses basic Lutheranism with two chapters on the musically theological and historically informed readings of Bach’s librettos. Part II takes up anti-Judaism with a chapter on Bach’s Cantata 46 about the destruction of Jerusalem (amazing musical exegesis, but Bach at his “grimmest,” [115]) and one on Bach’s cantatas, the Jews, and the Gospel of John. Part III continues anti-Judaism with two chapters on Bach’s Passion settings. Part IV discusses religious expression in chamber music. Its chapter on the Musical Offering has affinities to Marissen’s [End Page 466] compelling insights in The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, 1995. Although Marissen may press some ambiguities to their breaking point, he notes that Bach’s St. John Passion indicates a greater concern for Christians and their sin than for anti-Judaism (155–157) and that other texts in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion work against Matthew 25:27, “His blood be on us and on our children” (158–59 and 179ff.). What Bach thought, however, whether he even agreed with his librettos (75, n. 26, and 123), or what Marissen believes are not the chief concerns here. (Marissen comes from a strict Dutch Calvinist background and views himself as an agnostic.) This is a careful study, in part a detailed biblical word study, laying out the anti-Judaic perspective of which Bach was a part. For providing us that data we need to be grateful. Paul Westermeyer Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

Some Remarks on my Composition Technique

Abstract Krzysztof Knittel’s text about his own composition techniques, also looking at such topics as: the influence of painting on his music (e.g. the works of Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee); truth in the musical work; the application of recycling ad re-use techniques to the form of the musical work; methods of constructing the sound of the composition; links between music and historical events; rollage - a technique borrowed from the painter Jiří Kolář for the needs of St. Matthew Passion; sound installations created by Knittel with sounds of nature and civilisation; Theodor Lipps’ theory of empathy (Einfuhlung), as well as intuitive and improvised music.

J.S. Bach og Danmark. En studie i den danske præsentation og musikfaglige behandling af Bachs værker indtil 1950

Claus Røllum-Larsen: J.S. Bach and Denmark
 The dissemination and pursuit of Bach’s music in the first decades of the 1800s was characterized by the circle surrounding Peter Grønland, not least C.E.F. Weyse. The dissemination of Bach’s printed works seems to increase around the year 1800, but does not reach a high level until 1850. During the 19th century, there were strongly committed performers, who scheduled Bach’s music: the earliest was Hans Matthison-Hansen (organ works), later — from 1875 — Niels W. Gade (including The St. Matthew Passion), Gottfred Matthison-Hansen (organ works) and Frederik Rung (The St. John Passion and Mass in B minor). Then the Cæcilia Society safeguarded Bach’s greater chorale works all the way up to its discontinuation in 1934, whereupon the Symphony Orchestra of the Danish State Broadcasting Service and the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir took over. With the Bach Society, Niels Otto Raasted displayed great activity with regards to exposing Bach’s music in many genres, and in this context presented a number of prominent musicians with backgrounds in the milieu of practicing historical performances in Berlin. From the beginning of the 1930s, Finn Viderø was also heavily engaged in Bach’s music, particularly from the perspective of performance practice. By end of the Second World War, the Bach Society came to an end, while Wöldike together with the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir and various orchestras maintained extensive concert activity with Bach’s works. The commemoration in 1950, over which Mogens Wöldike presided, cemented the central position of the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir and Wöldike in the dissemination of Bach. The historically- and scientifically-founded approach to the music and the performance of it by these musicians and the music teacher Gunnar Heerup had thereby replaced a more subjective cultivation of Bach, and based on this had established an objective, critical approach to the handling of Bach’s music. This development has not changed the assessment of Bach as a composer; his extraordinary endeavour and “by virtue of Bach’s genius, Bach’s [cantatas and passions] … has become something that is unparalleled anywhere else in the world.” (J.P. Larsen).

Viewing the Poetic Texts in Bach's Matthew Passion from a New Perspective

Viewing the Poetic Texts in Bach's Matthew Passion from a New Perspective

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...

Gustav Leonhardt, the Naarden circle and early music's reformation

From the 1950s onwards, Gustav Leonhardt spearheaded a movement towards greater historical awareness in the performance of early music in Holland. Though much of his work deserves the epithet ‘pioneering’, many of the guiding principles on which it was founded were inherited by the youthful Leonhardt from a group of theologians, musicians and music critics associated with the Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Dutch Bach Society). Leonhardt grew up in close proximity to this group of musical reformers (here referred to as the ‘Naarden Circle’) because his father, George Leonhardt, was a long-standing member of the Nederlandse Bachvereniging’s board of directors. The original goal of the Naarden Circle was to combat, by founding the Nederlandse Bachvereniging in 1921, the established and much-cherished Romantic performance tradition of J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, as performed each year by conductor Willem Mengelberg at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Moreover, the Naarden Circle intended thereby to return Bach’s work its liturgical function. This article examines the legacy of the Naarden Circle as it played itself out in Leonhardt’s thought.

Hearing the "T�ne eines Passionsliedes" in J. S. Bach's "Christmas Oratorio": The Nineteenth-Century Critical Reception of BWV 248

Hearing the "Töne eines Passionsliedes" in J. S. Bach's Chrìstmas Oratorio : The Nineteenth-Century Critical Reception of BWV 248 Carolyn Carrier-McClimon OnisSebastianDecemberconsideredBach's17,the1857,ChristmasfirstthefullBerlinOratoriopublicSing-,performanceBWVAkademie248,sinceofgaveJohannBach'swhat isconsideredthefirstfullpublicperformanceofJohann SebastianBach'sChristmasOratorio,BWV248,sinceBach's time.1Itwasthesecondconcertoftheseason'ssubscriptionseries underthedirectionofEduardGrell,wholedatotalof194singers and45instrumentalistsafter16hoursofrehearsaloverfivedays.2 'WhetherornottheorganizationperformedpartsoftheworkearlierinProbenis unclear;therearenoreferencesineitherGeorgSchünemannorMartinBlumner's historiesoftheSing-Akademiethatpre-daterehearsalsleadingtothe1857 performance.InSusanneOschmann'saccountofthatperformance,however,she notesthatitwasthefirsttimetheworkhadbeenperformed"musiziert,"implying previousperformanceswithoutorchestra,perhapswithpianoaccompaniment instead.AndreasGlöcknersimilarlystatesthatthemovementsoftheoratorio performedbytheSing-Akademiein1830areunknown,implyinganearlier engagementwiththework.SusanneOschmann,"DieBach-PflegederSingAkademien :'SinnlichesErgötzen*oder'SchöneKunst',"inBachunddieNachwelt,eds. MichaelHeinemannandHans-JoachimHinrichsen(Germany:Laaber,1997),312; AndreasGlöckner,"'IchhabedenaltenBachenwiederlebendiggemacht,abererhat michweidlichschwitzenlassen':CarlFriedrichZelterunddieBach-Auffuhrungen derSing-AkademiezuBerlin,"in"Zugroß,unrreichbar":Bach-ReņptionimZeitalter MendelssohnsundSchumanns,eds.AnselmHartinger,ChristophWolff,andPeter Wollny(Wiesbaden:Breitkopf,2007),354. ^heperformingforcesincluded76sopranos,61altos,24tenors,33basses,8first violins,6secondviolins,6violas,6cellos,4doublebasses,2flutes,2oboes,3 clarinets(presumablytocovertheabsentoboesdacacciaandd'amore),2bassoons,2 horns,3trumpets,andtimpani.Otherinterestingmattersofperformancepractice includeGrell'sallegeddecisiontoperformoratoriosingeneralahalfsteplowerthan written.HehadrecentlypurchasedthetuningforkusedbyCarlHeinrichGraunat theoriginalTodJesuperformanceanddeterminedthatheandhisSing-Akademiehad BACH:JournaloftheRiemenschneiderBachInstituteofBaldwinWallaceUniversity Reception of the Christmas Oratorio 35 This performance came several years after the acquisition o original score and performing parts by the Sing-Akademie's curr director Carl Friedrich Zelter, and several years more after the v parts were initially copied around 1 830 to be used in conjunction Bach's originals during rehearsal and performance.3 Though original purpose of the Sing- Akademie was not public performa after Mendelssohn's historic offering of Bach's St. Matthew Passi March 11, 1829, the group began presenting more public con including oratorios by Handel, works by contemporary comp and, significandy, other large Bach works like the St. John Passion excerpts from the B-Minor Mass.4 Indeed, Mendelssohn's wate performance of the St. Matthew Passion established the Sing- Akad as a leader of authentic Bach performance. One must wonder wh subsequent directors of the group did not pursue the Chris been performing old music too high. This likely accounts for the presence parts written one half step lower (the opening movement in D-flat major!). W Bollert, ed., Sing-Akademie %u Bertin : Festschrift ņtm 175 Jährigen bestehen Rembrandt Verlag, 1966), 82; Gottfried Eberle, "'Zu neuer, fr Lebensthatigkeiť: Grell ergreift das Ruder (1853-1874)," in 200 Jahre Sing-Aka tu Berlin: "Ein Kunstverein ßr die heilige Musik " (Berlin: Nicolai, 1991), 160. 3The original sources for the Christmas Oratorio were given in 1 81 4 to Zelter by Poelchau, who had acquired them from the estate of C. P. E. Bach. The add voice parts are believed to have been copied from and kept together with original performing parts since Zelter acquired them and are identified as part ms. Bach Stí 12. The copying is dated to approximately 1830-1832 based on the type and watermark of the parts. Walter Blankenburg and Alfred Dürr, Weihn Oratorium: Kritischer Bericht, Johann Sebastian Bach: Neue Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke S II, vol. 6 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962), 161; Paul Kast, Die Bach-Sammlung Kata Register: Katalog und Register herausgegeben von der Staatsbibliothek vp Berlin-Preu Kulturbesit^ (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2003), 125; Ulrich Leisinger, "The Bach Collec in The Archive of the Sing-Akademie %u Bertin: Catalogue , ed. Axel Fischer (Be Gruyter, 2010), 40-41; Georg Schünemann, Die Singakademie %u Berlin: 179 (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1941), 70-71. As of 1 81 6, the stated purpose in the first paragraph of the Sing-Akademie's sta was still the "practical study of musical works for the edification of its membe only "seldom" public performance. Further, it is, as Martin Blumner, former director of the Sing-Akademie and assistant music director during the time o Christmas Oratorio performance, explained, often difficult to distinguish b public performances and more private Proben, , which were often open to the Allowing slight room for error of exclusion, a list of performances believe public since the 1829 St. Matthew Passion is listed in Appendix A, Table 1. Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the St. M Passion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 192. 36 Bach Oratorio , another performance for ne Potential explanati reception of the w presented both ae solved. In the wak writer of spiritually compositional style thetical to the mus to the musical style Passion music, and t as being imbued wit expressed in Bach's part-writing...