Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work

by Christoph Wolff

Overview

A concentrated study of Johann Sebastian Bach’s creative output and greatest pieces, capturing the essence of his art.

Throughout his life, renowned and prolific composer Johann Sebastian Bach articulated his views as a composer in purely musical terms; he was notoriously reluctant to write about his life and work. Instead, he methodically organized certain pieces into carefully designed collections. These benchmark works, all of them without parallel or equivalent, produced a steady stream of transformative ideas that stand as paradigms of Bach’s musical art.

In this companion volume to his Pulitzer Prize–finalist biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, leading Bach scholar Christoph Wolff takes his cue from his famous subject. Wolff delves deeply into the composer’s own rich selection of collected music, cutting across conventional boundaries of era, genre, and instrument. Emerging from a complex and massive oeuvre, Bach’s Musical Universe is a focused discussion of a meaningful selection of compositions—from the famous Well-Tempered Clavier, violin and cello solos, and Brandenburg Concertos to the St. Matthew Passion, Art of Fugue, and B-minor Mass.

Unlike any study undertaken before, this book details Bach’s creative process across the various instrumental and vocal genres. This array of compositions illustrates the depth and variety at the essence of the composer’s musical art, as well as his unique approach to composition as a process of imaginative research into the innate potential of his chosen material. Tracing Bach’s evolution as a composer, Wolff compellingly illuminates the ideals and legacy of this giant of classical music in a new, refreshing light for everyone, from the amateur to the virtuoso.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393651799
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/24/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	62 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Christoph Wolff is Adams University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, where he taught from 1976 to 2012. A former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, Germany, he is the author of numerous works of music history including Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788–1791, winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Wolff lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

General Abbreviations x

List of Illustrations xi

Preface xv

Prologue: On the Primacy and Pervasiveness of Polyphony: The Composer's Business Card 1

Chapter 1 Revealing the Narrative of a Musical Universe: The First List of Works from 1750 13

Size of the Estate 18

Survival of Original Manuscripts 20

Benchmark Works 20

Chapter 2 Transformative Approaches to Composition and Performance: Three Unique Keyboard Workbooks 26

Revealing Afterthoughts: Three Unique Title Pages 27

Orgel-Büchleim A Collection of Short Chorale Preludes 34

Das Wohltemperierte Clavier: Preludes and Fugues in All Keys 44

Aufrichtige Anleitung: Inventions and Sinfonias 53

Chapter 3 In Search of the Autonomous Instrumental Design: Toccata, Suite, Sonata, Concerto 64

At Home on Keyboards and Other Instruments 67

The Inaugural Opus: Six Keyboard Toccatas 70

Opus Collections from Weimar and Cöthen 75

Two sets of six suites for harpsichord, with and without preludes 76

Two books of unaccompanied solos, for violin and for violoncello 85

Six concertos for several instruments 98

Early Leipzig Reverberations 105

Six sonatas for harpsichord and violin 106

Six trio sonatas for organ 110

Chapter 4 The Most Ambitious of All Projects: Chorale Cantatas throughout the Year 117

Background, Concept, and Schedule 120

A Serial Opus 127

Opening movements 133

Arias, recitatives, and final chorales 137

Incomplete and Yet Monumental 145

Chapter 5 Proclaiming the State of the Art in Keyboard Music: The Clavier-Übung Series 152

Clavier-Übung, Part I: Six Partitas 155

Clavier-Übung, Part II: Italian Concerto and French Overture 167

Clavier-Übung, Part III: A German Livre d'orgue 173

Clavier-Übung, Part IV: Goldberg Variations 183

Chapter 6 A Grand Liturgical Messiah Cycle: Three Passions and a Trilogy of Oratorios 192

St. John Passion 195

Christ the King: "Herr, unser Herrscher" 200

Man of Sorrows: "Betrachte, meine Seel" 203

Christus Victor: "Es ist vollbracht" 206

The different versions of the St. John Passion-a Note 209

St. Matthew Passion 211

Composer and librettist: A productive partnership 214

The choir loft as virtual stage 216

Human characters and emotions 221

St. Mark Passion 223

The Oratorio Trilogy 229

Christmas Oratorio 233

Easter Oratorio 240

Ascension Oratorio 243

Chapter 7 In Critical Survey and Review Mode: Revisions, Transcriptions, Reworkings 249

Disposal vs. Preservation 250

No Random Yield 253

The Great Eighteen Chorales for Organ 253

The Six "Schübler" Chorales for Organ 258

Harpsichord Concertos 261

Kyrie-Gloria Masses 269

The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part II 279

Chapter 8 Instrumental and Vocal Polyphony at Its Peak Art of Fugue and B-minor Mass 284

The Art of Fugue Completed: The Manuscript Version 290

Canonic Intermezzi 298

Fourteen Canons on the "Goldberg" Aria 299

Canonic Variations on the Christmas song "Vom Himmel hoch" 302

The canons of the Musical Offering 305

The Art of Fugue Unfinished: The Published Version 310

The Mass in B Minor 317

A wide spectrum of styles for a timeless genre 320

The parts and the whole 323

Legacy 330

Epilogue. "Praxis cum theoria": Maxim of the Learned Musician 333

Chronology 343

Notes 347

Bibliography 365

Illustration Credits 371

Genre Index of Bach's Works 373

Title Index of Bach's Works 389

General Index 403

Editorial Reviews

12/23/2019

The celebrated 18th-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was the great brainiac of classical music, according to this dense scholarly study. Harvard music historian Wolff (Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician) styles Bach a musical intellectual whose hallmarks were “swift mental processing of complex musical considerations” and “meticulous rationalizations of the creative act,” all bent toward perfecting the complex counterpoint of polyphonic voices that snake and twine through his music. This isn’t a full biography; instead, Wolff focuses on analyzing a group of landmark compositions, including the keyboard pieces in The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations, the giant cycle of chorale cantatas for church services; the Brandenburg Concertos and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. The book is quite technical and often bone dry as it delves into the details of compositional dating; issues of tuning, counterpoint, and instrumentation; the selection of texts for choral writing; and the revisions Bach made in pieces over the years. It’s full of music theory, tabularized data on the structures of compositions, and photos of Bach’s manuscript scores that convey little impression beyond how bewilderingly complicated they are. Readers with a serious musicological background will appreciate Wolff’s deep dive into Bach’s craft, but casual Bach-lovers will find it a heavy and not very tuneful slog. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Bach’s portrait, painted by Haussmann in 1748 and aptly described by Christoph Wolff as ‘the composer’s business card,’ is the subject of the vivid and visual prologue of Wolff’s newest oeuvre, Bach’s Musical Universe. Wolff, with his customary erudition, thoughtfully colored with deep affection, writes of the benchmark works that Bach himself chose for his musical legacy—a brilliant summing-up!"

William Christie

"Nobody writes about Bach with more authority, knowledge, and passion than does Christoph Wolff. This book—a great gift to all music lovers—is remarkable for showing how the largely self-taught composer set himself on a clear path to attain musical perfection."

Angela Hewitt

"Many of the finest musical minds have devoted themselves to Bach scholarship, none as comprehensively as Christoph Wolff. In his new book, he bears down on the music itself, following it wherever it leads, from the smallest secrecies to the largest designs."

John Harbison

"Bach’s Musical Universe is an exhilarating tour de force of erudition. The product of a lifetime of reflection, it is imaginatively conceived: comprehensive and abundantly detailed yet admirably coherent and clear, permeated throughout by keen, illuminating insights—a splendid achievement, indispensable for anyone fascinated by Bach."

Robert L. Marshall

"Having left no autobiography and hardly any letters, Johann Sebastian Bach has revealed himself only in his works. After Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Christoph Wolff has now given us completely new insight to Bach’s work, in the light of composing procedure and his personal and social background. Through this thoughtful book, Bach comes even closer to us."

Masaaki Suzuki

02/14/2020

For readers wishing to explore the universe that is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), there's no better guide than scholar Wolff (former director, Bach Archive; Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician). The author trains a sharp eye on the composer's vast musical legacy, focusing on what he refers to as benchmark works, "all of them without parallel or equivalent," which "produced a steady stream of transformative musical ideas that were clearly intended to stand as paradigms of his musical art." Among the pieces featured are The Art of the Fugue, The Well-Tempered Clavier, and the Goldberg Variations. Discussions of each composition include historical and musical context and illustrative tables. Helpfully, the volume also offers a chronology, extensive notes, and a concise bibliography. VERDICT Students, musicians, and serious aficionados of Bach will be the most appreciative audience for this artfully composed work.—Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago

Library Journal

2019-11-25
A close investigation of Bach's works reveals remarkable transformations.

Eminent musicologist Wolff (Adams University Professor Emeritus/Harvard Univ.; Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791, 2012, etc.) offers an erudite companion to his biography Johann Sebastian Bach (2000), a Pulitzer Prize finalist, with a detailed examination of the development of Bach's creative process, goals, and achievements. Because Bach left no theoretical writings, Wolff selects from the composer's prodigious oeuvre—including keyboard workbooks, toccatas, suites, sonatas, concertos, choral works, and oratorios—to focus on elements of musical design, engagement with other repertoires and genres, reassessment of existing conventions, and innovations. Facsimile pages are excerpted from an online library of Bach manuscripts. Bach, writes the author, "competed with himself constantly," making "judicious revisions to his own works." His competitive attitude also led him to pay careful attention to the works of other composers, past and contemporary, as he evaluated his own compositions. Also influencing his musical evolution were the demands of his changing professional duties: town organist, court organist and chamber musician, concertmaster, and cantor and music director in Leipzig, where he also directed the Leipzig Collegium Musicum for more than 10 years. As part of his duties in Leipzig, he was required to offer about 60 cantata performances yearly; although these did not have to be his own compositions, Bach added "a considerable repertoire of his own music" to his growing sacred and secular vocal compositions. Throughout his career, Wolff notes, Bach was "a passionate instrumentalist," acclaimed for his performances on the organ and harpsichord, and he was frequently invited to give guest concerts. His prowess on the keyboard fed directly into his "pathbreaking approaches" to harpsichord and fortepiano. The author identifies Bach's intense interest in exploring "all facets of the art of polyphony" as singularly characteristic of the composer's musical language. For a musically sophisticated reader familiar with Bach's works, as well as musical terminology and technique, Wolff's analyses have the potential of enriching the listening experience.

An authoritative, lucid chronicle of Bach's multifaceted musical context.

Kirkus Reviews