In this major new interpretation of the music of J. S. Bach, we gain a striking picture of the composer as a unique critic of his age. By reading Bach’s music “against the grain” of contemporaries such as Vivaldi and Telemann, Laurence Dreyfus explains how Bach’s approach to musical invention in a variety of genres posed a fundamental challenge to Baroque aesthetics. “Invention”—the word Bach and his contemporaries used for the musical idea that is behind or that generates a composition—emerges as an invaluable key in Dreyfus’s analysis. Looking at important pieces in a range of genres, including concertos, sonatas, fugues, and vocal works, he focuses on the fascinating construction of the invention, the core musical subject, and then shows how Bach disposes, elaborates, and decorates it in structuring his composition. Bach and the Patterns of Invention brings us fresh understanding of Bach’s working methods, and how they differed from those of the other leading composers of his day. We also learn here about Bach’s unusual appropriations of French and Italian styles—and about the elevation of various genres far above their conventional status. Challenging the restrictive lenses commonly encountered in both historical musicology and theoretical analysis, Dreyfus provocatively suggests an approach to Bach that understands him as an eighteenth-century thinker and at the same time as a composer whose music continues to speak to us today.

In Bach's Germany musical counterpoint was an art involving much more than the sophisticated use of advanced compositional techniques. A range of theological, cultural, social and political meanings attached themselves to the use of complex procedures such as canon and double counterpoint. This book explores the significance of Bach's counterpoint in a range of interrelated contexts: its use as a means of reflecting on death; its parallels to alchemy; its vexed status in the galant music culture of the first half of the eighteenth century; its value as a representation of political power; and its central importance in the creation of Bach's image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching on a wide array of contemporary literary, philosophical, critical, and musical texts, the book includes new readings of many of Bach's late works in order to re-evaluate the status and meaning of counterpoint in Bach's work and legacy.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A tale of passion and obsession from a philosophy professor who learns to play Bach on the piano as an adult. Dan Moller grew up listening to heavy metal in teh Boston suburbs. But one day, something shifted when he dug out his mother's record of The Art of the Fugue, inexplicably wedged between ABBA's greatest hits and Kenny Rogers. Moller was fixated on Bach ever since. In The Way of Bach, he draws us into fresh and often improbably hilarious things about Bach and his music. Did you know the Goldberg Variations contain a song about his mom cooking too much cabbage? Just what is so special about Bach’s music? Why does it continue to resonate even today? What can modern Americans—steeped in pop culture—can learn from European craftsmanship? And, because it is Bach, why do some people see a connection between music and God? By turn witty and though-provoking, Moller infuses The Way of Bach with philosophical considerations about how music and art enable us to contemplate life's biggest questions.

'Bach Counterpoint - Two-part invention' is a textbook in two volumes. The aim of this book is to explain Bach's compositional methods in an accessible manner, using methods and tools specially developed for this purpose. The two-part Bach inventions are a natural starting point, and have certain clear advantages when used to illustrate Baroque contrapuntal composition; it is in two parts, its form is clear, and it contains the same compositional techniques as the fugue, such as countermelody/counterpoint, sequences and motivic development. The book develops a method of understanding and composing inventions, based on a throrough analysis and exploration of Bach's inventions. To illustrate the progression and stringency of this method, this book has been structured as an insight into the 'compositional workshop'. Through analyses and music examples, the process of creation is illustrated, and throughout the book, how and why musical decisions are made are explained. Volume I will mainly focus on the first section of the form, up to the entry of the theme in the dominant or tonic parallel tonality. While relatively short, this willprove sufficient in introducing Bach's music. The exercises in this volume include writing counterpoint to a given melody, composing a longer sequence that concludes in a cadence in the new tonality, and will also cover topics such as melodic development, rhythm, and the treatment of dissonance in the style of Bach. In Volume II, instruction in compositional development continues with the analysis and composition of complete inventions, including the first section of the form, which is covered in this volume. In this second edition, minor errors and omissions have been corrected, and the section on mediant chords has been rewritten.

INCLUDES LINK TO VIDEO DEMOS. Pianists are horizontalists. When confronted with competing horizontal lines, though, we are called upon to rethink our predilection for spinning a single line beautifully to the right. To some it may seem sacrilege, but we must think more vertically. In these pages we consider the techniques of coordinating more than one musical line. We learn to apply principles of grouping notes together and shaping lines in certain ways for technical ease. We consider fingerings, sometimes more than one. When technical solutions coincide with musical objectives, we are delighted. But when there is a technical problem, we examine it on its own merits. No mindless rote here. We consider approaches to ornamentation and articulation and their expressive partners, dynamics and phrasing. All of this gently couched in physical movements so natural to the body as to be irresistible.***Praise for the previous volume, "Piano Technique Demystified": "This is an excellent book. Whether you are an advanced pianist or a novice, the concepts shared in this book will bring your technical skills at the piano to a new level." "This is a very well written book with lots of humor and fascinating anecdotes shared by the author. The reader is sure to find a wealth of useful and helpful information to enhance mastery of the piano." "Neil Stannard provides a clear, concise summary of how to co-ordinate good movement patterns into your piano practice. He approaches learning difficult repertoire as a series of solvable problems, and offers the reader many tools to come up with solutions."