Bach Perspectives, Volume 8

About the Book

These essays consider Bach's oratorios from a variety of perspectives: in relation to models, antecedents, and contemporary trends; from the point of view of musical and textual types; and from analytical vantage points including links with instrumental music and theology.

Christoph Wolff suggests the possibility that Bach's three festive works for Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Day form a coherent group linked by liturgy, chronology, and genre. Daniel R. Melamed considers the many ways in which Bach's passion music was influenced by the famous poetic passion of Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Markus Rathey examines the construction and role of oratorio movements that combine chorales and poetic texts (chorale tropes). Kerala Snyder shows the connections between Bach's Christmas Oratorio and one of its models, Buxtehude's Abendmusiken spread over many evenings. Laurence Dreyfus argues that Bach thought instrumentally in the composition of his passions at the expense of certain aspects of the text. And Eric Chafe demonstrates the contemporary theological background of Bach's Ascension Oratorio and its musical realization.

* 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/