Product Description

The Bach cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art; yet studies of individual Bach cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few in number. In this book Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer the reader and listener the richest possible experience of the works in the light of the composer's intentions and of the enduring and universal qualities of the works. Concentrating on a small number of representative cantatas, mostly from the Leipzig cycles of 1723-24 and 1724-25, and in particular on Cantata 77, Chafe illustrates how Bach strove to mirror both the dogma and the mystery of religious experience in musical allegory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #908556 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review

"[A] truly remarkable achievement, at once expanding the depth of his inquiry and making his theories accessible to readers with relatively little knowledge of music theory...[C]hafe's approach bring attention to rich relationships within the music, and allows large works to make coherent statements in new ways...I know of no work that offers a more powerful or comprehensive picture of how the basic materials of music can serve the expression of faith."--Books & Culture
"...Chafe has worked to push Bach studies beyond formalist analysis and to demonstrate how the composer represented Lutheran theology by means of musical language and structures...Perhap's Chafe most interesting contribution is the application of his own pioneering studies of modality in Monteverdi to Bach's compositions."--Theological Studies
"The book's observations are firmly grounded in the realm of the heard, or the felt. The results achieve the aim of all good analysis: a direct impact on the reader's musical encounter. Listeners, who now mainly experience Bach's cantatas in the context of the concert hall rather than the church, will find their hearing altered by their new awareness of the network of sacred meaning that Chafe brings to light."--The Eighteenth Century Current Bibliography

About the Author

Eric Chafe is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Musicology at Brandeis University. His previous books include Monteverdi's Tonal Language (1992), which won both the American Musicological Society's Kinkeldey Award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, and Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (1991).

Customer Reviews

The meaning of music
Far from being a mind unconscious that it is calculating, Chafe convincingly argues that Bach carefully set his canata texts to illuminate their theological meaning. Beginning with simple devices such as triads to represent the trinity, Chafe describes Bach's use of more subtle musical ideas such ascending or descending lines and harmonies to represent, for example, God's incarnation (descent to earth) and mankind's redemption (ascent to heaven). Bach's use of numerology, for example in his use of extended musical patterns repeated ten times to represent the Ten Commandments, strongly belies the notion that this composer was uncalculating. While the musical power of Bach's cantatas touch us even though we may not understand the significance -- or even the meaning -- of the text, Chafe's insights reveal for us the many ways in which Bach's music expresses Lutheran theological ideas, allowing us to appreciate Bach on an entirely different level. Highly recommended.