Analyzing Bach cantatas

The Resource Analyzing Bach cantatas
Label
Analyzing Bach cantatas
Statement of responsibility
Eric Chafe
Creator
Subject
Language
eng
Summary
Bach's cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art, yet studies of the individual cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few. In this book, noted Bach expert Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer readers and listeners alike the richest possible experience of these works. A respected theorist of seventeenth-century music, Chafe is sensitive to the composer's intentions and to the enduring and universal qualities of the music itself. Concentrating on a small number of representative cantatas, mostly from the Leipzig cycles of 1723-24 and 1724-25, and in particular on Cantata 77, Chafe shows how Bach strove to mirror both the dogma and the mystery of religious experience in musical allegory. Analyzing Bach Cantatas offers valuable information on the theological relevance of the structure of the liturgical year for the design and content of these works, as well as a survey of the theories of modality that inform Bach's compositional style. Chafe demonstrates that, while Bach certainly employed "pictorialism" and word-painting in his compositions, his method of writing music was a more complex amalgam of theological concepts and music theory. Regarding the cantatas as musical allegories that reflect the fundamental tenets of Lutheran theology as established during Bach's lifetime, Chafe synthesizes a number of key musical and theological ideas to illuminate the essential character of these great works [Publisher description]
Cataloging source
DLC
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • music
Index
index present
LC call number
ML410.B13
LC item number
C38 2000
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

Context of Analyzing Bach cantatas

Work of

Zepheira Logo
Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Boston University Libraries. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.
Processing Feedback ...