Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729) was a distinguished composer, a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Cappellmeister at the court of August I in Dresden. His tratise, Der General-Bass in der Composition, is one of the most comprehensive sources for the late Baroque practice of figured-bass, or thorough-bass, accompaniment. It is a fund of information about many complex problems confronting musicians in the performance and interpretation of Baroque music, including meters, embellishments, dissonance, particular complications for recitative, and use of the figured bass. With a judicious combination of translation, interpretation, and commentary George J. Buelow makes Heinichen's famous treatise accessible for contemporary scholars and performers. Buelow provides translations of key sections of the treatise, explains its historical significance, clarifies Heinichen's obscurities, and relates the treatise to other musical theories and practices of the Baroque, including those of Gasparini, Mattheson, and the Bachs. Buelow, one of the world's premier experts on Baroque music, is a professor of musicology at Indiana University.

Listeners, performers, students and teachers will find here the analytical tools they need to understand and interpret musical evidence from the baroque era. Scores for eleven works, many reproduced in facsimile to illustrate the conventions of 17th and 18th century notation, are included for close study. Readers will find new material on continuo playing, as well as extensive treatment of singing and French music. The book is also a concise guide to reference materials in the field of baroque performance practice with extensive annotated bibliographies of modern and baroque sources that guide the reader toward further study. First published by Ashgate (at that time known as Scolar Press) in 1992 and having been out of print for some years, this title is now available as a print on demand title.

This essential summation of Palisca's life work was nearly finished by his death in 2001, and it was brought to completion by Thomas J. Mathiesen.

This book is born out of two contradictions: first, it explores the making of meaning in a musical form that was made to lose its meaning at the turn of the nineteenth century; secondly, it is a history of a music that claims to have no history - absolute music. The book therefore writes against that notion of absolute music which tends to be the paradigm for most musicological and analytical studies. It is concerned not so much with what music is, but with why and how meaning is constructed in instrumental music and what structures of knowledge need to be in place for such meaning to exist. From the thought of Vincenzo Galilei to that of Theodore Adorno, Daniel Chua suggests that instrumental music has always been a critical and negative force in modernity, even with its nineteenth-century apotheosis as 'absolute music'.

Originally published in 1752, this is a new paperback edition of the classic treatise on 18th-century musical thought, performance practice, and style

Analysing novels and autobiographies from Bach's Germany, this book presents new insights into the lives, mindset and status of musicians.