Synopses & Reviews
For many today Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as towering representatives of European music of the eighteenth century, composers whose works reflect intellectual, religious, and aesthetic trends of the period. Research on their compositions continues in many ways to shape our broader understanding of eighteenth-century musical thought and its contexts. This collection of essays by leading authorities in the field offers a variety of new perspectives on the two composers, as well as some of their important contemporaries, Haydn in particular. Addressing topics as diverse as the historiography of eighteenth-century music, concepts of time and musical form, the idea of the musical work and its relation to publishing practices, compositional process, and performance practice, these essays together constitute a major contribution to eighteenth-century studies.
This book had its origin in a conference that took place at the Music Department of Harvard University on September 23–25, 2005, to honor Professor Christoph Wolff, Adams University Professor at Harvard University.
About the Author
Thomas Forrest Kellyis Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at <>Harvard University.Sean Gallagheris Associate Professor of Music at <>Harvard University.Elaine R. Sismanis Associate Professor of Music, <>Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Eighteenth-Century Music in its Intellectual ContextsThe German Eighteenth Century: Marking Time
David Blackbourn, Harvard UniversityFundamenta Partiturae: Thorough-Bass and Foundations of Eighteenth-Century Composition Pedagogy
Thomas Christensen, University of ChicagoMishmash or Synthesis? On the Psychagogic Form of The Creation
Hermann Danuser, Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinSix of One: The Opus Concept in the Eighteenth Century
Elaine Sisman, Columbia UniversityComposing and Hearing Music in the Eighteenth Century
Bach’s Passions and the Textures of Time
John Butt, University of Glasgow
Bach and Hypocrisy: Appearance and Truth in Cantatas 136 and 179
Eric Chafe, Brandeis University
Tartini and his Texts
Sergio Durate, Università di Padova
Sources and Transmission
The Evolution of “Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär” BWV 80/5
Daniel R. Melamed, Indiana University
Bach and Mozart: From the Perspective of Different Documentary Evidence
Hans-Joachim Schulze, Bach-Archiv Leipzig
On Johann Sebastian Bach’s Creative Process: Observations from His Drafts and Sketches
Peter Wollny, Bach-Archiv Leipzig
One More Time: Mozart and His Cadenzas
Neal Zaslaw, Cornell University
Issues in Historiography
On Ancient Languages: The Historical Idiom in the Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ulrich Konrad, Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Universität Würzburg
Eighteenth-Century Music as a Socio-Political Metaphor?
Reinhard Strohm, University of Oxford
The Century of Handel and Haydn
James Webster, Cornell University
Mozart’s Fantasy, Haydn’s Caprice: What’s in a Name?
Gretchen Wheelock, Eastman School of Music
Interpreting Eighteenth-Century Music
The Clavier Speaks
Christopher Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music
Ten Years of Bach Cantatas
Ton Koopman, The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir
Mozart’s Working Methods in the Piano Concertos
Robert Levin, Harvard University