Bach's Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture

by David Yearsley

Overview

Winner of the 2012 Ogasapian Book Prize from the The Organ Historical Society The organist seated at the king of instruments with thousands of pipes rising all around him, his hands busy at the manuals and his feet patrolling the pedalboard, is a symbol of musical self-sufficiency yielding musical possibilities beyond that of any other mode of solo performance. In this book, David Yearsley presents a new interpretation of the significance of the oldest and richest of European instruments, by investigating the German origins of the uniquely independent use of the feet in organ playing. Delving into a range of musical, literary and visual sources, Bach's Feet demonstrates the cultural importance of this physically demanding mode of music-making, from the blind German organists of the fifteenth century, through the central contribution of Bach's music and legacy, to the newly-pedaling organists of the British Empire and the sinister visions of Nazi propagandists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316639832
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/02/2017
Series:	Musical Performance and Reception
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

David Yearsley is the author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge, 2002) as well as numerous essays on European musical culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; his scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music and Letters, Early Music and Eighteenth-Century Music. Active as a performer on organ and other keyboard instruments, his recordings are available on the Loft and Musica Omnia labels. Yearsley has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a Wenner–Gren Foundation Fellow at Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden. A long-time member of the pioneering synthesizer trio Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, he is Professor of Music at Cornell University, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Inventing the organist's feet; 2. Harmonies of the feet, visions of the body; 3. Walking towards perfection: pedal solos and cycles; 4. The pedal in the cosmopolitan age of travel; 5. Treading the globe: the world-wide expansion of the German pedal ideal; 6. Bach's feet.

Editorial Reviews

"There is much to enjoy in this compelling study"
—Early Music

"Yearsley’s ability to make con- nections among disparate elements shows a rare degree of insight pos- sessed by one at once passionate about the subject matter and deeply immersed in it through lifelong involvement and study. It is a rare book about the organ that can appeal to, and inform, both organ- ists and non-organists. In focusing on the feet, Yearsley crafts a point of view to which anyone can relate."
—Early Music America

"Part of his intent in writing Bach’s Feet, which is clearly a labor of love, is to reintroduce the organ into general musicological discourse, and perhaps even attract some lay readers. His book certainly deserves to succeed in its mission, and the organ, as he says, is “ready for a comeback.”
—NOTES

From the Publisher