Bach's Legacy: The Music as Heard by Later Masters

by Russell Stinson

Overview

Johann Sebastian Bach's legacy is undeniably one of the richest in the history of music, with a vast influence on posterity that has only grown since his rediscovery in the early nineteenth century. In this latest addition to his long list of Bach studies, renowned Bach scholar Russell Stinson examines how four of the greatest composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Edward Elgar - engaged with Bach's legacy, not only as composers per se, but also as performers, conductors, scholars, critics, and all-around musical ambassadors. Detailed analyses of both musical and epistolary sources shed light on how these later masters heard and received Bach's music within their musical circles, while colorful anecdotes about their Bach reception help humanize them, reconstructing the intimate social circumstances in which they performed and discussed Bach's music. Stinson focuses on Mendelssohn's and Schumann's reception of Bach's organ works, Schumann's encounter with the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Wagner's musings on the Well-Tempered Clavier, and Elgar's (resoundingly negative) thoughts on Bach as a vocal composer. Engagingly written, copiously annotated, and thoroughly up to date, Bach's Legacy traces the historical afterlife of Bach's music and offers fascinating insights into how these later masters defined it for their audiences and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190091224
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/22/2020
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Russell Stinson is the Josephine Emily Brown Professor of Music at Lyon College. His many publications on the music of Bach include J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on His Organ Works (OUP, 2012), The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms (OUP, 2006), J. S. Bach's Great Eighteen Organ Chorales (OUP, 2001), and Bach: The Orgelbüchlein (OUP, 1999).

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction
1. Felix Mendelssohn's Reception of Bach's Organ Works: New Evidence from the Sämtliche Briefe
2. New Light on Robert Schumann's Bach Reception
3. Bach in Bayreuth: Richard Wagner and the Well-Tempered Clavier
4. Edward Elgar Reads Albert Schweitzer: A Case of Negative Bach Reception

Literature Cited
Tables

Editorial Reviews

"Stinson is to be applauded for uncovering interesting source material that he uses as the basis for his arguments, for revealing new insights about the minds and emotions of four composers, and for sharing interesting details about Bach transmission in the nineteenth century." — Erinn E. Knyt, University of Massachusetts Amherst, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute

"For students of nineteenth-century performance practice this book will be intriguing for all the questions it leaves unanswered. In itself this marks the book as a significant contribution to the field. It will make readers rethink and quite possibly reevaluate the period ... . I recommend it most especially to anyone who wants to have a very, very long discussion about what we think we know for certain when it comes to Bach in the nineteenth century." — Iain Quinn , Bach Notes

"Bach's Legacy is a well-researched volume and contains helpful contributions to the reception history of J. S. Bach's music in nineteenth-century Europe." — Mark Peters, Eighteenth-Century Music

From the Publisher