Bach Perspectives, Volume 6

J. S. Bach's Concerted Ensemble Music, The Ouverture
Author: Edited by Gregory Butler
New issues at the heart of Bach studies
Cloth – $54
978-0-252-03042-0
eBook – $44.95
978-0-252-09950-2
Publication Date
Cloth: 01/02/2007
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About the Book

As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. In a series long known for its major essays by leading Bach scholars and performers, Bach Perspectives, Volume 6 is no exception.

This new volume opens with Joshua Rifkin's seminal study of the early source history of the B-minor orchestral suite. It not only elaborates on Rifkin's discovery that the work in its present form for solo flute goes back to an earlier version in A minor, ostensibly for solo violin, but also takes this discovery as the point of departure for a wide-ranging discussion of the origins and extent of Bach's output in the area of concerted ensemble music.

Jeanne Swack presents an enlightening comparison of Georg Phillip Telemann's and Bach's approach to the French overture as concerted movements in their church cantatas, and Steven Zohn views the B-minor orchestral suite from the standpoint of the "concert en ouverture," responding to Rifkin by suggesting that the early version of the B-minor orchestral suite may also have been scored for flute.

* OA Edition: This book is freely available in an open access edition at Bibliopen thanks to a grant from the American Bach Society. For information about the American Bach Society, please see its web site at www.americanbachsociety.org. This title is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC). Read the license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

About the Author

Gregory Butler is a professor emeritus of musicology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Bach's Clavier-Übung III: The Making of a Print.

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Bach Perspectives, Volume 7 cover

Reviews

"Joshua Rifkin, whose essay on Bach's Ouverture, BWV 1067 forms the major part of this volume, is one of the most virtuosic scholars in the positivist musicology."--Early Music History

"Anyone concerned with Bach or Telemann scholarship, or even merely with German late-Baroque music, will profit from this book."--Music and Letters