As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. Volume 8 of Bach Perspectives emphasizes the place of Bach's oratorios in their repertorial context. These essays consider Bach's oratorios from a variety of perspectives: in relation to models, antecedents, and contemporary trends; from the point of view of musical and textual types; and from analytical vantage points including links with instrumental music and theology. Christoph Wolff suggests the possibility that Bach's three festive works for Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Day form a coherent group linked by liturgy, chronology, and genre. Daniel R. Melamed considers the many ways in which Bach's passion music was influenced by the famous poetic passion of Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Markus Rathey examines the construction and role of oratorio movements that combine chorales and poetic texts (chorale tropes). Kerala Snyder shows the connections between Bach's Christmas Oratorio and one of its models, Buxtehude's Abendmusiken spread over many evenings. Laurence Dreyfus argues that Bach thought instrumentally in the composition of his passions at the expense of certain aspects of the text. And Eric Chafe demonstrates the contemporary theological background of Bach's Ascension Oratorio and its musical realization

In this work, nine scholars track Johann Sebastian Bach's reputation in America from an artist of relative obscurity to a cultural mainstay whose music has spread to all parts of the population, inspired a wealth of scholarship, captivated listeners, and inspired musicians.

Scholars and performers have long noted J.S. Bach's abundant use of parody procedures: that is, the recycling and reworking of pre-existing material from his own compositions or from other sources. Laura Buch edits essays exploring how the composer parodied the work of others and how other composers did the same with him. The contributors delve into the works of Baroque-era composers from Bach himself to C. P. E. Bach, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, and Ferruccio Busoni. But they also cast a wider net, investigating the ways Bach's music cross-pollinates with contemporary composer-performers John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, and keyboardist Bernie Worrell and Parliament-Funkadelic. The diverse contexts illuminate a broad range of parody techniques, from structural scaffolding and contrapuntal elaboration to integration with stylistic languages far removed from the Baroque. An insightful look at how composers build on each other's work, Bach Reworked reveals how nuanced understandings of parody procedures can fuel both musical innovation and historically informed performance. Contributors: Stephen A. Crist, Ellen Exner, Moira Leanne Hill, Erinn E. Knyt, and Markus Zepf

Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran and much of his music was for Lutheran liturgical worship. As these insightful essays in the twelfth volume of Bach Perspectives demonstrate, he was also influenced by--and in turn influenced--different expressions of religious belief. The vocal music, especially the Christmas Oratorio, owes much to medieval Catholic mysticism, and the evolution of the B minor Mass has strong Catholic connections. In Leipzig, Catholic and Lutheran congregations sang many of the same vernacular hymns. Internal squabbles were rarely missing within Lutheranism, for example Pietists' dislike of concerted church music, especially if it employed specific dance forms. Also investigated here are broader issues such as the close affinity between Bach's cantata libretti and the hymns of Charles Wesley; and Bach's music in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment as shaped by Protestant Rationalism in Berlin. Contributors: Rebecca Cypess, Joyce L. Irwin, Robin A. Leaver, Mark Noll, Markus Rathey, Derek Stauff, and Janice B. Stockigt.

Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public. Eschewing the great composer style of music history, Andrew Talle takes us on a journey that looks at how ordinary people made music in Bach's Germany. Talle focuses in particular on the culture of keyboard playing as lived in public and private. As he ranges through a wealth of documents, instruments, diaries, account ledgers, and works of art, Talle brings a fascinating cast of characters to life. These individuals--amateur and professional performers, patrons, instrument builders, and listeners--inhabited a lost world, and Talle's deft expertise teases out the diverse roles music played in their lives and in their relationships with one another. At the same time, his nuanced re-creation of keyboard playing's social milieu illuminates the era's reception of Bach's immortal works.

The essays in this volume examine the full breadth and complexity of the extensive oeuvre of American literary pioneer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867).

The sixth volume in the Bach Perspectives series opens with Joshua Rifkin's seminal study of the early source history of the B-minor orchestral suite. Rifkin elaborates on his discovery that the work in its present form for solo flute goes back to an earlier version in A minor, ostensibly for solo violin. He also takes the discovery as the point of departure for a wide-ranging discussion of the origins and extent of Bach's output in the area of concerted ensemble music. In other essays, Jeanne Swack presents an enlightening comparison of Georg Phillip Telemann's and Bach's approach to the French overture as concerted movements in their church cantatas. Steven Zohn views the B-minor orchestral suite from the standpoint of the "concert en ouverture." In addition, Zohn responds to Rifkin by suggesting Bach may have scored the early version of the B-minor orchestral suite for flute.