Rethinking Bach
- Editor: Varwig, Bettina
You can never think about Bach too often. This excellent book inspires the reader to do just that, and in some new and interesting ways. It is rich in historical, scholarly and analytical details...
Rethinking Bach
- Editor: Varwig, Bettina
Purchase product
You can never think about Bach too often. This excellent book inspires the reader to do just that, and in some new and interesting ways. It is rich in historical, scholarly and analytical details...
About
Johann Sebastian Bach has loomed large in the imagination of scholars, performers, and audiences since the late nineteenth century.This new book, edited by veteran Bach scholar Bettina Varwig, gathers a diverse group of leading and emerging Bach researchers as well as a number of contributors from beyond the core of Bach studies. The book's fourteen chapters engage in active 'rethinking' of different topics connected with Bach; the iconic name which broadly encompasses the historical individual, the sounds and afterlives of his music, as well as all that those four letters came to stand for in the later popular and scholarly imagination. In turn, challenging the fundamental assumptions about the nineteenth-century Bach revival, the rise of the modern work concept, Bach's music as a code, and about editions of his music as monuments. Collectively, these contributions thus take apart, scrutinize, dust off and reassemble some of our most cherished narratives and deeply held beliefs about Bach and his music. In doing so, they open multiple pathways towards exciting future modesof engagement with the composer and his legacy.
Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: (Still) Talking about Bach
- Bettina Varwig
- I. Histories
- Chapter 1
- Bach and Material Culture
- Stephen Rose
- Chapter 2
- Rethinking 1829
- Ellen Exner
- Chapter 3
- Post/Colonial Bach
- Yvonne Liao
- II. Bodies
- Chapter 4
- Bach and the Soprano Voice
- Wendy Heller
- Chapter 5
- Embodied Invention: Bach at the Keyboard
- Bettina Varwig
- Chapter 6
- Rethinking Affect
- Isabella van Elferen
- III. Meanings
- Chapter 7
- Bach and Theology
- Jeremy Begbie
- Chapter 8
- Bach the Humorist
- David Yearsley
- Chapter 9
- Rethinking Bach Codes
- Daniel R. Melamed
- Chapter 10
- Bach's Works and the Listener's Viewpoint
- John Butt
- IV. Currents
- Chapter 11
- Bach's Chorale Pedagogy
- Derek Remes
- Chapter 12
- Rethinking Editions: Mass, Missa, and Monument Culture
- Joshua Rifkin
- Chapter 13
- Bach Against Modernity
- Michael Marissen
- Chapter 14
- Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past
- Michael Markham
- Works Cited
- Index
Awards and reviews
You can never think about Bach too often. This excellent book inspires the reader to do just that, and in some new and interesting ways. It is rich in historical, scholarly and analytical details and offers different approaches to, or total reevaluations of, long-held beliefs
