The Church Cantatas of J. S. Bach
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- Synopsis
- For nearly every Sunday from 1723 to 1728, J S Bach composed and his young orphan boy-students performed, a half-hour cantata in the Lutheran church services of the Saint Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. A cantata usually began with a chorus, contained recitatives (narrative) and arias (meditations) and closed with a hymn (chorale). Bach's cantatas contain more than 1500 movements, filling 67 compact discs in today's recordings. They contain dozens of magnificent choruses and hundreds of deeply-felt and spectacular arias and chorales. Alec Robertson analyzes 173 of Bach's roughly 210 extant cantatas. He organizes them according to the Lutheran church year, starting with Advent and ending with the Reformation Festival of October 30. He introduces each Sunday and feast day with the Biblical citations which were usually the basis for the cantatas. He discusses each movement, even listing the instrumentation. Bach's cantatas are at the pinnacle of western classical music. Not only do they give spiritual nourishment to Christians and non-Christians but they are studied the world over by amateur and professional musicians for their penetrating pictorialization, harmonizations, counterpoint and beautiful melodies. They contain great choruses, arias for all types of singers, plus some duets and trios. Whether you are an amateur or serious musician, this book will help you to understand and appreciate these works. Cantatas not discussed in this book are those intended for special occasions such as weddings, funerals, birthdays of prominent persons, civic events such as town council inaugurations, those with secular themes and those originally included in the Bach canon but which modern scholarship has determined not to have been his compositions (de-established). Accordingly, the following cantatas are not discussed: 11, 15 (deest.), 29, 50, 53 (deest), 54, 71, 97, 106, 117, 118, 119, 120, 131, 141 (deest.), 142 (deest.), 150, 160 (deest.), 189 (deest.), 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198 and 200-215. In this braille file, German words are shown using Braille grade 2 English contractions. If you download the DAISY file, you will get the German words uncontracted. Note: an excellent internet source for all things Bach cantatas is http://bach-cantatas.com/ .
- Copyright:
- 1972
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 356 Pages
- Publisher:
- Praeger Publishers, Inc.
- Date of Addition:
- 08/31/10
- Copyrighted By:
- Alec Robertson
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Entertainment, Nonfiction, Reference, Religion and Spirituality, Music
- Submitted By:
- Terry Gorman
- Proofread By:
- Kenny Peyatt
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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