Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint

by David Yearsley

Overview

This book offers new interpretations of many of Bach's late compositions which include complex musical techniques such as canon. These techniques held great significance for Bach and his contemporaries not only on account of the great skill they demanded but because of the meanings attached to them. Intricate musical devices were crucial to the Lutheran rituals of death and dying, to alchemy, to Enlightenment philosophies of stylistic change and musical progress, to musical representations of political power, and to the legacy of Bach into our own time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521090995
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/27/2008
Series:	New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism , #10
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Yearsley is an assistant professor at Cornell University. His scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music, Music & Letters, and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music.

Table of Contents

1. Vor deinen Thron and the art of dying; 2. The alchemy of Bach's Canons; 3. Bach's taste for pork and canary; 4. The autocratic regimes of A Musical Offering; 5. Bach the machine; 6. Physiognomies of Bach's counterpoint.

Editorial Reviews

"...a fascinating glimpse into the use of counterpoint in Bach's music and the implications that technique had in a time when it was rapidly disappearing in favor of newer styles." Music Educators Journal

"This fascinating study explores the significance of Johann Sebastian Bach's learned counterpoint... A significant new voice in Bach studies. Essential." Choice

From the Publisher