Bach Keyboard 2 Flashcards

Question

Mizler on CU3

Answer 1

‘a powerful refutation of those who have made bold to criticize the compositions of the Honourable Court Composer’ (1740) CU3 as provocative critique of new aesthetic

Answer 2

Bach's Metaphysics of Music 1. Explores hypothesis that Bach viewed ’the very substance of music as constituting a religious reality’, where the more perfectly composition/performance is realised, ‘the more God is immanent in music’ 2. Rationalist philosophers Leibniz/Wolff/Spinoza illuminate Bach’s compositional mind 3. Tension between intrinsic God-given properties of music and necessity music be put to good use by setting good text 4. Contemporary conceptions of music were several and conflicting o Pythagorean o Styles had connotative significance for certain audiences o Theological view: unable to express anything without suitable text 5. Mattheson’s 1739 treatise: all styles can serve all levels of public/private devotion 6. Butt argues Bach’s valued music independently for its craftmanship and specifically musical qualities This contrasts with writings of traditional theologians, theorists (Kuhnau, Buttsett, Fuhrmann) and new breed Enlightenment aestheticians

Answer 3

1. ‘Few writers, even those comparatively close to Bach, seem adequately to account for his creative personality’ 2. ‘well-sounding harmony results for the glory of God and the permissible delight of the soul’ 3. ‘the final purpose of all music and therefore also of the thorough-bass is nothing other than the praise of God and the recreation of the soul. When this is not taken into account, then there is no true music, only a devilish bawling and droning’ 4. Secularist title-pages of Clavier-Ubung 5. Butt argues Bach had ‘musico-centric’ viewpoint: ‘the view that the very substance of music both reflects and embodies the ultimate reality of God and the Universe’ 8. Examines Bach’s annotated bible, which shows music as a medium through which God becomes imminent o Controversial among Pietists and Orthodox Christians who believed in supremacy of scripture

Answer 4

1. an excess of art’ 2. Extremely difficult to perform 3. Every conceivable ornament is present in the notation 4. Voices are equal in partnership, difficulty and hierarchy 5. Uses schwulst (turgidity), deriving from Gottsched’s critique of 17thC literary bombast 6. Calls Bach ‘Musikant’ 7. Underlying principles: no awareness of differentiations of style and proprieties of taste

Answer 5

1. Scheibe is primarily concerned with Bach’s vocal music 2. Downplays scale of Scheibe’s attacks: vocal music comprised large part of Bach’s output 3. Butt: attacks nonetheless significant

Answer 6

1. reveals Bach’s attitudes 2. Bach: anyone could match his achievements ‘if one industriously strives to convert natural abilities, by untiring zeal, into perfected skills’ 3. Music as timeless art which Bach saw as his responsibility to pass on to all those who were not merely concerned with the contingencies of fashion and taste’ 4. Perfections/completeness (vollkommenheiten) is recurring theme in Birnbaum’s essay Relies on satisfaction of entire potential of musical idea 5. Birnbaum modifies imitation of nature principle: art brings out beauty in imperfect nature 6. Bach’s art for connoisseurs o Its difficulty/impropriety testimony to its greater significance o Universal/timeless

Answer 7

1. Bach can only incompletely be appreciated according to aesthetics of his own day 2. Music anticipates early-19thC ‘absolute’ music 3. Bach’s compositional style ‘partly generated by the frictions within his environment and career’

Answer 8

1. Completed around 1742 2. Less unified than book 1: assembled from pre-existing fugues (sometimes transposed) 3. New works likely composed late-1730s 4. Several fugues show retrospective tendencies

Answer 9

1741-2): ‘Goldberg’ Variations o Cyclical architectonic organisation: 30 variations grouped in 10x3: 1: stylistic diversity (Aria, stretto, giga, fughetta, cantabile, ouverture, etc. 2: keyboard virtuosity (studies increasing in brilliance/virtuosity) • Possible influence of Scarlatti’s Essercizi 1738 3: strict counterpoint (canons in rising intervals) o Monothematic/contrapuntal conception anticipates Musical Offering and Art of Fugue) o Witty anticlimactic Quadlibit ending: melodies from 2 bawdy folk tunes about cabbage and sex are integrated into original bass line o Based on 32-bar Ruggerio-esque ground bass  Within Romanesca tradition? o Virtuosity shows Scarlatti influence

Answer 10

1. Rhetoric was modelling science 2. Late-18th C Enlightenment: critical theory abandoned rhetoric in favour of aesthetics, replacing the perfectible art of invention with the godlike realm of creativity 3. Gerard Essay on taste (1759): ‘the first and leading quality of genius is invention’ 4. Invention: conventional metaphor for the idea behind a piece, a musical subject whose discovery precedes full-scale composition o Bach choosing genre of Inventions and the title-page places him square in this tradition ``` 5. Traditional usage: o Subject matter of oration o Mechanism for discovering good ideas  Inventions developed through studying works of reputable authors ``` 6. Development is key: successful invention is mechanism that triggers further elaborative thought from which a whole piece is shaped 7. Teaching o One of Germany’s greatest 18thC music teachers o Bach’s pupils had to master thoroughbass and four-part chorales o Rigorous musical skills developed through studying Bach, with no book learning 8. Dreyfus takes Mattheson’s 1739 5-part model of invention as revealing what Bach might have thought o Fuses Cicero with 17thC music theorist Bernhard o 5-part model (not necessarily chronological, but in hierarchy of most to least important)  Invention (discovery of ideas) • Functional segments and their transformations • Not just first subject  Disposition (form [Mattheson uses architectonic metaphor])  Elaboration (filling in methods of amplifying basic ideas) Detail of Bach’s elaborations distinguish him from contemporaries  Decoration (ornamentation)  Execution (performance) 9. Mattheson’s conception is strictly analogical, Bach’s is more metaphorical 10. Dreyfus methodology: analysing inventions as structured repetitions o Work as residue of human thoughts/actions rather than static work o Favours ‘mechanist’ over ‘organicist’ analysis o Analytic indifference to ‘inventions’ tends to sanction methods that in fundamental ways are grossly anachronistic  Favouring of form over invention o Example: first invention (C maj) 11. Bach and invention o Invention crystallizes deeply held views about high art o Invention depends on genre  Concerto/fugue: inventions used to formulate complex mechanism for crafting large-scale movements  Hybrid genres o Refers to Bach’s tendencies as ‘patterns of invention’ rather than ‘style’ o Invention as philosophical/theological position  Nature of musical meaning, ability of music to interpret and change world rather than merely represent it

Answer 11

Suggests Bach’s music was neither archaically conservative nor assertively progressive, but simply a critical response to contemporary aesthetic trends (Enlightenment). Argues ‘the preoccupation with progress’ in 1730s and late-20thC historiography ‘has failed to grasp the complex ways in which Bach responded to his contemporaries. Contextualising debate • Bach paradoxically had highly distinctive, idiosyncratic style, yet fits with contemporary trends • Bach’s idiosyncratic approach o Argues it derives from Bach’s staunch Lutheran faith (which viewed human works as ultimately fallible) and astounding powers of invention o Challenged Enlightenment ideology (primitive Enlightenment, not Kant) o New conception of music (affecting composition as well as reception) Bach traditionally seen pseudo-politically as either reactionary/conservative or modern/progressive • Conservative o German Enlightenment belief that composer should accommodate to audience by following latest taste  Scheibe Critical Musician 1737:

Bach Keyboard 2 Flashcards

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