Bach Books
Bettina Hatwig: Rethinking Bach
Review - Part 4

Continue from Part 3

Rethinking Bach, Chapter 13, Michael Marissen's "Bach against Modernity"

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 6, 2022):
The penultimate chapter in Rethinking Bach,¹ Chapter 13, Michael Marissen's "Bach against Modernity," challenges the notion, beginning in 1829 when his St. Matthew Passion was revived, that Bach was a progressive and cosmopolitan, when previously in 1750 at his death the Baroque era had ended and the Age of Enlightenment had begun. Observes Bettina Varwig, editor of the collection of essays: "Meanwhile, if Bach had loomed large in the imagination of Western concert audiences ever since, this celebrity has been grounded in the (tacit) understanding that his music encapsulates and speaks to some of the central concerns of Western modernity, of which, classical concert culture can be regarded as one small but hugely revealing side effect. But here, too, we may need to be weary: Michael Marissen's essay alerts us too the strong likelihood that Bach would have had very little positive to say if confronted with the beliefs of an average, liberal-minded "modern " concertgoer. Such an argument, with its provocative echo of Theodore Adorno's scathing critique of the early music movement in 1951,[²] asks us to take a critical look at some of the core convictions of modern-day Bach appreciation. It thereby not only demands some serious soul-searching from today's community of Bach devotees, but also productively destabilizes the academic frameworks, cultural values, and even ways of writing within which past discussion about Bach have traditionally and comfortably unfolded."

Here is Marissen's summary of his essay, "Bach against Modernity": "By key standards of what in the eighteenth century and later was considered to be forward-looking and modern — namely to exalt reason (above revelation, whatever the flaws of reason) as arbiter of truth, to exalt human autonomy and achievement, to exalt religious tolerance, to exalt cosmopolitanism, and to exalt social and political progressiveness — Bach and his music reflected and forcefully promoted a premodern world and life view. While we are arguably free to make use of Bach and his music in whatever historically informed or uninformed ways we find fitting, we ought also to be on the ethical alert for a kind of cultural narcissism in which we end up miscasting Bach in our own ideological image and proclaiming the authenticity of that image, and hence its prestige value, in support of our own agendas" (source, Oxford University Presss Scholasrship).

Marissen,³ scholar, author and lecturer, has an extensive biography, Bach Bibliography, and has written primarily about Bach spirituality (see Swarthmore: Michael Marrisen), while in recent years has lectured about "Bach Against Modernity").⁴ Marissen's introduction (Ibid.: 315-17) establishes his discussion with a citation of recent authors "arguing for or against the idea that Bach and his music project a modern worldview" (315). Cited authors below are Karol Berger, John Butt, Bettina Varwig, Jeremy Begbie, and Harry White.⁵ Marissen, rejecting "leading Enlightenment thinkers Bach may (doubtfully?) resonate with," takes the perspective of "devoting less attention to the abstract theories of Adorno and others (Bakhtin, Benjamin, Gadamer, Foucault, Jameson), and more attention to the substantive repertory and the primary sources that are directly associated with Bach" (315). Marissen initiates this with an investigation of the Lutheran concept of time and eternity in theologian Martin Geier's tome, Zeit und Ewigkeit (Leipzig 1670), found in Bach's personal library. Marissen's comments (FN2: 330f) refer to religious books in Bach's library: "Several of these books and other affirmative volumes are examined with great insight and with close attention to their direct evidentiary relevance for conceptions of time in Bach's milieu, in Varwig, "Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach."

Bach against Modernity

"When it comes to sorting out properly which precise biblical or scientific notions of linear time (versus cyclical time)[⁶] plausibly shed light on Bach," says Marissen (Ibid.: 315), "it seems we do not have much that is truly of use to go on," citing the Jeremy Begbie article,⁷ "Disquieting Conversations" (see FN5, Cited authors). Various "linear notions of passing time, often held now to be 'modern,' also run deep through premodern, biblically-based thought." Thus, "This chapter will, instead touch briefly on a whole series of more probative, workable, and down-to-earth topics, and they will turn out strongly to place Bach against modernity" (my italics, 315). The three words Marissen defines as follows: "Bach" means essentially "Bach's music," "only sometimes" (316) "Bach the human being"; "against," primarily "opposed in tendency to," sometimes "compared to"; and "modernity," in the following factors with religious overtones: exalting "reason above revelation — whatever the flaws of reason — as arbiter of truth," "human autonomy and achievement," "religious tolerance," "cosmopolitanism, and "social and political progressiveness." Based on his extensive public experience, Marissen issues a caveat that "a great many music lovers do not, strictly speaking, value Bach for the things he may, strictly speaking, be about" (Ibid.). Instead, "What I hear time and again from Bach lovers is that they derive great hope, comfort, and joy from his music," that is the Bach repertory beyond "emotions of aesthetic exaltation," spiritual or otherwise. "Many Bach lovers," says Marissen (317), find his music to be "modern" because of "mathematical" or "scientific" qualities, considered "secularist and therefore modern." "Bach's music is orderly in the extreme," he observes, laboring "out of the belief that orderliness was next to Godliness," citing Bach's Calov interpreter's commentary bible that "Denn Gott ist ein Gott der Ordnung" (For God is a God of order, Google translate; Wittenberg, 1681-82, Vol. 1:1049).

"Significance of Bach Inscriptions 'J. J.' And 'S. D. G.'"The sections of Marissen's essay begin with the "Significance of 'J. J.' And 'S. D. G.'"?, Bach sacred inscriptions beginning and ending his scores (317-20); then Marissen poses three questions on human activities in "Exalting Human Reason?" (320-22), "Exalting Human Achievement and God Works?" (322-24), and "Exalting Religious Tolerance?" (324-27); then the sections are "Chauvinism [jingoism] in Bach?" (327), "Bach the Progressive?" (328), "God and King in Bach" (328-330), and concluding "Envoi." (330). Marissen's extensive, accompanying end Notes (330-35) offer a wealth of books and articles on the related subjects of modernity, time, and religion, as cited below. In the first section following his introduction (317), "Significance of 'J. J.' and 'S. D. G.'," Marissen examines the beginning notation, Jesu Juva (Jesus, help me), and concluding Soli Deo Gloria (to the glory of God alone),⁸ while Bach in composing seeks and finds divine assistance, primarily in his sacred cantatas as musical sermons for the church year. A "subtle, nuanced claim about these notations was put forward by the great scholar John Butt in his widely read and widely cited essay on Bach's conception of music,"⁹ says Marissen (317), who disputes Butt's perspective on Bach's notations, such as the sacred-secular dichotomy involving Bach (318).¹⁰ A Marissen review of Bach's vocal music manuscripts shows "significant patterns" of liturgical and secular vocal works in "chronological groupings" involving Bach's three Leipzig cycles (319). Particularly with major vocal works and collections, "Bach often truly did seek divine help in starting his scores and somewhat less often truly did offer forth divine praise in completing them."

However, in his last decade of the 1740s, "Bach appears, through his various frustratwith authorities, to have lost nearly all interests in his tasks as director of church music in Leipzig," says Marissen (319).¹¹ Meanwhile, Bach in the 1740s focused his compositional interests on learned polyphonic projects. <<By 1742, Bach had completed his first version of the Art of Fugue (still untitled), BWV 1080, in an autograph fair copy (Bach Digital 1266). The seed was planted but would not germinate until after Bach had first explored the theme and variations with his final Clavier-Übung IV, the Goldberg Variations in 1741, which interspersed variations set as canons. In June 1746, he became a member of the distinguished Mizler Corresponding Society of Musical Sciences, which included other distinguished composers such as Telemann, Stölzel, Handel, and C. H. Graun (Wikipedia). The society required that each member each year present "a composition with a scientific content," says Alberto Basso.¹² Published annually were three Bach works that utilized canons as variations "based on a single theme and designed as a cycle of variations," says Basso: the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch," BWV 769 in 1747; The Musical Offering, BWV 1079 in 1748; and The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080, originally planned for 1749 but published posthumously in 1751 by son Emanuel.>> (source, BCW).

Questioning Reason, Human Achievement, Religious Tolerance

In next three sections, Marissen examines standards developed beginning in the 18th century which were considered "forward-looking and modern": "Exalting Human Reason?" above revelation as an arbiter of truth (320-322), "Exalting Human Achievement and Good Works?" as well as autonomy (322-324), and "Exalting Religious Tolerance?" (324-326), as well as exalting cosmopolitanism and social and political progressiveness (Ibid.: 316 and passim). In all three sections, Marissen presents examples in Bach's works with traditional Lutheran orthodoxy to place Bach in a pre-modern perspective. He cites poetic passages in Bach cantatas which deplore reason as "anti-Enlightenment messages" (321), showing "the dim view of reason expressed in Bach's church cantatas" as Lutheran musical sermons. In a similar vein, cited in Marissen's essay (322), Bach's Cantata 26, "Ach, wie flüchtig, ach, wie nichtig" (Ah, how fleeting, ah, how transitory),¹³ is a chorale cantata for the late 24th Sunday after Trinity in 1725, based on a Michael Franck 1682 hymn on "Death and Dying," showing the brevity of human life and the futility of human pursuits. Another Lutheran theme is sola fide (faith alone, 323), that mankind is justified by grace through faith alone, without the Calvinist need for good works to measure human achievement. Meanwhile Bach's concept of his Lutheran calling (Berufung, Wikipedia Translate: "Vocation from a Protestant point of view)" was a states as a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God" in five cycles of church pieces (Kirchenstücke) completed in Leipzig. Composers also in the 18th century sought autonomy from the dominant employment authorities of the church, the ruling courts, and municipalities, best expressed in Harry White's The Musical Discourse of Servitude.¹⁴ Within Bach's later works are the mixed style (style misto) of the stile antico and stile moderno, with the latter discussed in Robert L. Marshall's "Bach, the Progressive; Observations on his later works" (Jstor). Concerning religious tolerance, Marissen cites Luther's chorale, "Erhalt uns Herr be deinem Wort" (Preserve us, Lord, with your word, BCW), found in Bach's chorale Cantata 126, which rails (325) against the Papists (Catholics) and the Turks (Muslims). A more nuanced perspective shows Luther late in hIs life (1546) facing their hostilities while previously Luther also had railed against the Jews and the German peasants (Maybe he needed some anger management?!). Meanwhile, in Bach's time, there were staunch critics of Lutheran Pietism (Wikipedia), while Pietists did not have a monopoly on piety.

Bach as Cosmopolitan?, Political Progressive? Anti-Monarchist?

In the final, brief sections, Marissen questions "Chauvinism in Bach?" (Ibid.: 327), excessive zeal for one's country rather than being cosmopolitan; "Bach, the [Political] Progressive" (328), one's official station rather than reform; and in "God and King" (328-30, the divine right of rulers while conflating secular and sacred. Finally, in his last brief section, "Envoi" (concluding words, 330), Marshall asks: ''All things considered, what basis is there for believing that Bach was, and is, in any way a modern figure?" Marissen's answer is found above, second paragraph, sentence beginning "While we are arguably free . . . ." In his final footnote 50 (335), Marissen cautions against the "genetic fallacy" of inherent, unquestioning acceptance and the "fallacy of reception," i.e. "the notion that an interpretation has to be considered warranted simply by dint of the fact that it is felt to work so well for one's purposes," what in today's parlance could be called "rationalizing."

One new Bach research topic is material (earthly) treasure, discussed in Noelle M. Haber's Bach's Material and Spiritual Treasures: A Theological Perspective (Woodbridge GB: Boydell Press, 2021), Amazon.com: Look inside: Contents [ix]. Bach in the spirit of capitalism is first shown in Heber's article, "Bach and Money: Sources of Salary and Supplemental Income in Leipzig from 1723 to 1750," online Understanding Bach 12: 111–125, © Bach Network UK 2017, Young Scholars’ Forum, Bach Netweok UK. Heber will discuss her book at the Bach Network Dialogue Meeting, 20 July, "Session 7: New Research Publications."

ENDNOTES

¹ Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2021: 193-225), Amazon.com.
² Theodore W. Adorno, "Bach Defended against his Devotees," in Theodore Adorno, Prisims (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995: 135-146); article, Adorno: Bach defended against his devotees; discussion, Deconstruction in Music; source, White Chapter 3, "The Steward of Unmeaning Art: Bach and the Musical Subject," section "'Sympathy in White Major': Deconstructing Bach," BCW.
³ Michael Marissen: biography (Wikipedia), Bach Bibliography (Bach-Bibliography).
⁴ Michael Marissen, Bach Against Modernity (to be published in 2023, Oxford University Press), lectures, articles ( Goggle Search Results, accessed 27 May 2003).
⁵ Cited authors: Karol Berger, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (Amazon.com); John Butt, Bach's Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions (Amazon.com), Bettina Varwig, article "Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach" (University of California Press); Jeremy Begbie, "Disquieting Conversations: Bach, Modernity, and God," in Music, Modernity, and God: Essays in Listening (Amazon.com); and Harry White, article "Evangelists of the postmodern: Reconfigurations of Bach since 1985" (Bach Netweork, section "New Bach Studies: Evangelists of the Modern" (BCW).
⁶ Linear and prior cyclical time concepts are explored in Karol Berger, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow (cited in FN5), also see https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Mozart-Gen3.htm. Varwig's "Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach" observes that Berger focuses on "changing perceptions of time from a premodern sense of circular stasis to a modern linear idea of progress" (source, University of California Press). Varwig's "article proposes an alternative model of historical inquiry into these issues by presenting a detailed look at attitudes of time in early eighteenth-century Protestant Leipzig. My approach reveals a complex constellation of conflicting ideas and metaphors that encompass notions of time as both circular and linear and evince a particular concern for the question of how to fill the time of one's earthly existence productively"
⁷ Begbie also writes the Rethinking Bach essay, Bach and Theology (Begbie summary, Oxford University Press Scholarship; critique, BCW).
⁸ See Thomas Braatz's "Abbreviations used by Bach" (BCW) and "Use of Concerto, J.J. and SDG in Bach's Sacred Works" (BCW), with List by BWV Number of vocal works (BCW). "Concerto" was Bach's vastly preferred designation for his cantata compositions, as found on the score title page inscription, with the work's title and use in performance.
⁹ John Butt, "Bach's Metaphysics in Music," in The Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. John Butt (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990: 53-59), Butt summary, Cambridge University Press. Butt discusses "music theorists who embrace natural theology" (46), "Theological prescriptions for music" (47-49, "Religious music in music theory" (49-52), and the last, main section, "Bach's conception of music" (52-59), with reference to "Bach's 'musico-centric'" viewpoint and the Calov Bible Commentary (54): See Robin A. Leaver, "The Place of the Calov Volumes in Bach's library," in the Introduction to J. S. Bach & Scripture: Glosses From The Calov Bible Commentary, Introduction. Annotations, and Editing by Robin A. Leaver [St. Louis MO: Concordia, 1985: 24-31; Amazon.com); Bach's marginal comments in his Calov Bible Commentary emphasize passages showing God's love of music and respect of musicians.
¹⁰ See Leo Schrade, Bach: The Conflict between the Sacred and the Secular (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973 [©1955], Jstor; a more nuanced, recent study is Markus Rathey's "The “Theology” of Bach’s Cöthen Cantatas: Rethinking the Dichotomy of Sacred versus Secular," in Journal of Musicological Research 35/4 (2016: 275-298), abstract Taylor & Francis Online.
¹¹ See Michael Maul, "'Having to perform and direct the music in the Capellmeister’s stead for two whole years’: Observations on How Bach Understood His Post during the 1740s," Eng. trans. Barbara M. Reul, in Understanding Bach 12 (© Bach Network UK 2017: 37-58), Bach Network; "Bach and Authority" is the theme of the American Bach Society's forthcoming biennial meeting, October 7-9, 2022, at Temple University (Philadelphia PA), American Bach Society.
¹² Alberto Basso, liner notes to Der Kunst der Fuge, Eng. trans. John Sidgewick, Rinaldo Alessenadrini (Paris: Opus iii, 1999: 4), BCW, Amazon.com).
¹³ Cantata 26 new translation (Bach Cantata Texts) and original hymn text translations (BCW) as well as Cantata 26 discussions (BCW); Marissen and Daniel R.Melamed online translations of Bach cantata texts (Bach Cantata Texts), they will address the Bach Network, July 19, Session 2, "Bach Cantata Texts, texts and new historically informed translations," with annotations, Bach Network.
¹⁴ Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach and Handel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2020), BCW.

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To come: Rethinking Bach, Michael Markham's "Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past."

Rethinking Bach, Michael Markham's "Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past."

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 14, 2022):
The final chapter in the new Bach essay collection Rethinking Bach,¹ Michael Markham's "Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past," is a reception history analysis that looks both backward and forward to consider thoughtfully Bach's legacy in the contemporary world where worry and uncertainty await Bachians of many perspectives. As such, it is a fitting conclusion to a unified assemblage of often thought-provoking studies by established scholars on a wealth of concerns, many referred to in Markham's work. These range from the temporal interests of material culture, status, and context, as well as the substantive issues of talent, affect, and creativity to the various influences of theology, the seemingly superficial, and the inherent musical work concept, as well as the currents of imparted teaching, editorial insights into musical editions, athe meaning(s) of modernity. The essay collection editor Bettina Varwig addresses critical issues involving Markham's contribution in her general introduction (Ibid.: 4): The name "Bach" represents more than the historical individual, his musical legacy, and the "more capacious cipher, encompassing the multitude of intersecting and shifting meanings, feelings, beliefs, and values" in his reception history. The two broad connotations of "Bach" — "the music at large" and "the public mythic profile" as Markham calls it — are considered together since the music "evolved jointly with changing figurations of 'Bach' as a cultural icon." A "further objective" found in some of the essays "concerns unpicking a number of foundational assumptions that have shaped the coevolution of these two domains. "One — or perhaps the — abiding perception of Bach, consolidated in the wake of his requisitioning for German Protestant and nationalist causes, has been of pervasive profundity and seriousness of purpose, a perception that, as Markham shows here, has operated in conjunction with further clusters of associations such as purity, abstraction, universality, the arcane, and the divine."

"Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past"

Markham, a younger, post-modern musicologist with extensive experience in popular media, culture, teaching, and writing, focuses on the contemporary reception of classical music. Here is his summary: "A recent Twitter post by the composer Nico Muhly aligns with a recurring trope of “Bach-ness” that defines Bach’s public mythic profile. This chapter focuses on similar images of Bach, whether visual or aural. Bach has been most commonly imagined in the popular consciousness as representing not the human but the superhuman, the inhuman, the dehumanized, and the sublime. One can sense in recent writings on Bach an anxiety about how well these attributes can continue to resonate in our current moment of political or cultural relevance tests, and about which works by Bach are most likely to thrive in this new postmodern media world. I will wonder aloud, with some trepidation, whether Bach’s public mythic profile, long solidified along Modernist lines as the encyclopedic mathematical mystic, is undergoing a broad, gradual change; indeed, if it needs to in order for his music to survive in a twenty-first-century media environment and amid a postmodern audience sensibility" (source, Oxford University Press Scholarship. Here is a summary of Markham's essay's sections: "The Current State of Bach" (337-343), symmetrical visuals representing "Bach's public mythic profile" (338) and the more-recent "Pythagorean Bach," with citations from film, performers and writers; "Universal Bach" (343-349), biography, other composer's perspective quotes on Bach, and a symmetrical illustration of "A shared domain of [overlapping] metaphors for Bach the 'Universal'"; and concluding "Future Bach" (349-357), with excursions into contemporary biographical perspectives including John Eliot Gardiner, John Butt, Robert Marshall, Helga Thoene, and Peter Sellers.

Current State of Bach

In the first section, "The Current State of Bach," introduced are "prominent strands of Bach reception" by people "who have played an important part in shaping Bach's popular image," says Marhkam (337). It begins with a Michael Guyot photo of New York's downtown showing a rail yard with steam engines on rail lines converging into one set of rails in the foreground, representing "the continuation of several prominent strands of Bach reception, forming part of a long line of pubic pronouncements on Bach" by famous people "who have played an important part in shaping Bach's popular image." "Bach's public mythic profile" (338) entails a sundry of pronouncements "that make up a kind of word cloud or character field around famous artists," where every "composer who has ascended the imaginary museum² has one." These are not static profiles but part of "a self-regenerating aesthetic system that ensures the sound of the composer is aligned with listeners expectations and that listeners expectations are aligned with popular biographical mythology." Peter Schaffer's Amadeus film (1984) is the starting point in the "shifting mythologizing of history," says Markham (338) while "popular reception is a particularly chaotic strand of history." His focus is "on popular image if Bach, both visual and aural" (339). Another major strand of Bach reception is the Susan McClary³ designation of the "Pythagorean Bach" as "symbolic of the modernist mathematically sublime." Another symmetrical image beside the Guyot photo involves the Rene Jodoin and Norman McLaren animated short film Spheres (1969), to represent "that special relationship between" Bach and Glenn Gould (YouTube). This Markham describes (340) as "the familiar Modernist image of Bach as the conduit between the human and the more-than human, between the limits of them mind and the utopian belief in an incorruptible Pythagorean mathematical order." The historical Bachian shift from the theologically sublime to the mathematical, from the "Romantic" Bach toward "Modernist" or "Pythagorean" Bach, makes Bach's "survival across the 20th century much easier."⁴

Bach Pythagorean Modernism

The odyssey of "Bach guiding us toward the beyond" is a common Pythagorean theme beginning with "the surge toward modernist 'objectivism' in the 1920s," says Markham (Ibid.: 340), that "resonates strongly with his listeners still today." Paul Elie's Reinventing Bach (2012)⁵ is a "popular study of modern Bach reception" for the past century. Albert Schweitzer was one of the first of the great Bach recording pioneers and has one of the major mini-biographies in Elie's book. What Markham calls Bach's "Modernist reception" (341) continues with Bach as a "timeless abstraction," citing Daniel Chua (Oxford Academic), and Bach as the "tower stretching to the unknown" in Karl Richter 1971 symbolic semi-staging of the St. Matthew Passion (YouTube). Another example is Dr. Hannibal Lecter accompanied by his signature theme of the Goldberg Variations as the "modern mythic type," says Markham (341) in the Jeremy Denk radio episode (NPR Music), where "Bach enhances and clarifies the intellectual portrait of Lecter while Lecter re-certifies the modernist image of Bach," says Markham (341). Among the other Markham citations are further thoughts on Lecter (342), the "othered mind" with Bach (343) in the 2010 BBC Sherlock series, the 2016 movie The Accountant, and the 2014 sci-fi thriller Ex-Machina. Finally, Markham's "The Current State of Bach" opening section concludes with Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid,⁶ in which, says Markham (343), "Hofstadter makes Bach the unheard soundtrack of the mathematically sublime strivings of M. C. Escher and Kurt Gödel and a tool for mental enhancement."

"Universal Bach"

Markham's next section, "Universal Bach" (Ibid.: 343-349) considers that a "contributing factor in Bach's ongoing success has been the biographical, or more accurately anti-biographical" (343), depending on one's perspective involving the New Criticism (Wikipedia) denigration of the historical-biographical or, as Markham puts it, Bach biography "is a prickly and thankless calling." This is in part due to the lack of first-hand historical-biographical sources, as in the case of Shakespeare, where recent biographical authors have explored the Bard's milieu and his work, such as Stephen Greenblatt's 2004 Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Amazon.com) and Jonathan Bate's 2009 Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare (Amazon.com). Markham cites the caveats of Robert L. Marshall, Christoph Wolff, and John Eliot Gardiner about the challenges of Bach biography⁷ (343f). The venerable Albert Schweitzer more than a century ago established the concept of the biographical Bach in which in J. S. Bach,⁸ "the artistic personality exists independently of the human, the latter remaining in the background as if it were something almost accidental," says Markham (344). "Of course, 'universal' is a problematic descriptor that encompasses whatever is needed or desired in the moment." "And among Western concert audiences in the post-World War II era, he could be universal in a way that could stand for anything from 'enormous in scope' to 'to everyone's taste' to 'critically unassailable'," with memorable ones from great artists (see BBC Radio 3), Markham citing Brahms, Beethoven, Goethe, Chopin, Schumann, and Douglas Adams (345f), as well as Tan Dun's 1994 Ghost Opera (Wikipedia), "as a form of summoning" (345). Tan is one of four modern composers chosen in "Passion 2000"⁹ by conductor Helmut Rilling of the Bach Akademie, who commissioned a tribute to the 250th anniversary of Bach's death with four unique settings of the four gospel Passions.

Beyond "Great Composer"

Beyond the "romantic trope" of the "great composer," says Markham (Ibid.: 345), where "Bach has not functioned quite in this way," "Bach's counterpoint became a metaphysical icon, exemplary of a series of goals for music: purity, complexity, truth," he says (345f). While "Bach scholars have spent much of the late twentieth century trying to pinpoint the localness of Bach" with all his facets and foibles, says Markham (346), "Bach's public mythic profile [his "universalism"] has gone in the other direction," in the "process of expansion," "with terms that are gradually changing but always significantly overlapping."¹⁰ It is "A shared domain of metaphors for Bach the 'Universal'" (Figure 14.4: 347) with two distinct categories, Cosmopolitan and German with overlapping ovals, the former embracing Spiritual, Uplifting, Apollonian, Objective, Mathematical while the latter is Lutheran, Healthy, Stable, Pure, and Incorruptible. "What emerges is a basic interrelatedness of images and gradual movement in the direction of 'Modernist' or 'Pythagorean' Bach," buoyed by the great artists (see above) "as a point of intersection" for Bach and other public mythic profiles, complementing each other. The 19th century romantic transformation of Bach evolves at the beginning of the 20th century into "both a cosmopolitan and nationalistic reflection of each Bach trope." Since then, much has been said (too much, sometimes, suggest certain New Musicologists) from a chauvinistic perspective involving the "complicated nature of these transformations," where Bach "could represent the 'purity' of a German aesthetic and the state of Bach's reception mirrored the health of the German nation," says Markham (348f). A calculating ontology suggests that "If Bach represents the healthy, solid, and stable, then whatever one believes to be the right path forward (for music or society) will somehow align with Bachism" (349). The great alignment can entail Bach and the "individual mind/soul," "objectivity," "national spirit," and "mathematical precision." "Bach the theologian numerologist was easily adapted into Bach the mathematician."

"Future Bach"

The final section, "Future Bach" (Ibid.: 349-357), begins: "Given Bach's history of adaptation and endless mutating ideals that can stretch out from 'spirituality' and 'complexity,' Bach may well be the best bet for a survivor among canonic composers struggling for attention after the bursting of the 'classical' music bubble," says Markham (349). He finds various challenges: sensing "a new anxiety" when writers "seek yet a new public image for him"; Bach's "universality must face new times and new audiences"; "another re-certification of "which version of Bach (and which music by him) will thrive, and what new meanings they will yield." "If Bach was able to provide the Romantics with an antidote to the Enlightenment, and the Modernists with an antidote to Romanticism, what will he look like when we have settled on an antidote to Modernism?" Various "postmodern tendencies" around Bach have existed "in the last two generations of listeners, scholars, and critics," Markham finds (350). An almost half-century long shift from "Modernism's belief in intellectual challenge and uplift as the most prominent marker of the value of a work of art" to a "renewed emphasis" "on social and political relevance to everyday life," what could be considered an external contextual apparatus beyond the momentary avant-garde irrelevance, replaced by "a social or personal relevance," "with the expected academic delay, by the discipline of musicology in the 1990s," attempting "to overturn the primacy of challenging uplift over cultural relevance as a marker of value." The "Romantic/Modernist credo" of value for its "innovation and exploration" yields to the value "of cultural/political relevance and the familiarity of its testimony to what its audience might recognize as everyday human experience." "The complexity of Bach's music" and its association "with objective integrity" make him "a force worth confronting and appreciating," reflecting not the listener's life but uplifting "the listener spiritually, nationalistically, intellectually, metaphysically." "There is room for that image to persist" where "Pythagorean Bach will always have a place as a symbol of that intellectual tension." Of particular concern is how Bach's public image can adapt to "the personal-testimonial requirements of the new-millennium audience."

Outlines of New New New Picture of Bach

Since the beginning of the 21st century, some musicologists have been concerned about the broader audience, says Markham (351), where these "crossover" "Bach scholars"¹¹ "sense a change is necessary or inevitable for Bach's image — call it the Outlines of New New New Picture of Bach." English scholar-conductor John Butt¹² takes pride of place in Markham (351), seeing "Bach's association with Modernism as increasingly problematic in "The Postmodern Mindset, Musicology and the Future of Bach Scholarship."¹³ While Butt finds some "crossovers" "who have returned a sense of the socially constructed to Bach," says Markham (351), "he concludes that Bach is still often seen as a 'reserved area' set aside to display and preserve certain tenants of Modernism 'at once removed from human concerns'" (Butt Ibid.: 11). Robert L. Marshall's "proposed antidote is a conjectural psychological portrait," says Markham (351), citing Marshall (500; see FN7 below, "Toward a Twenty-First-Century"), to consider Bach's work as "an awesome natural phenomenon" that can "humanize" Bach. Gardiner follows in his 2013 Bach musical biography, Music in the Castle of Heaven (see FN7), showing Bach as a "very, very human being" (Gardiner, 147) "with the vulnerability of an ordinary person" and with the "new popular mythology of a humane and psychological Bach" shown in Gardiner's related BBC documentary, "Bach: A Passionate Life" (YouTube). Sometimes the psychologizing can be carried to extremes of one's imagination. One example is Helga Thoene's theory that Bach's "Chaconne" was a memorial to first wife Maria Barbara, made popular in the 2001 recording, Hilliard's Morimur (BBC Music Reviews), which Markham calls a "questionable" study but a "magnificent" "act of reception history" (353), like "Tan or Sofia Gubaidulina's remixes of Bach" (see FN 9 below).

Bach Passions, Staging

Meanwhi, Bach works' recertification on a piecemeal basis may cause "a special anxiety surrounding Bach's vocal works," says Markham (354), at a time of increasing secularization when the austere, pietist-like sentiments in Bach's works seem embarrassing today. In the sphere of Bach's dramatic oratorio Passions, Markham cites Daniel R. Melamed,¹⁴ who finds "two subsets of listeners" today to ensure their survival: listeners who experience the continued relevance of the [Passion] story to their modern-day faith and the "many amateur choral singers" who savor the experience of performing them. Beyond the "preordained greatness engrained in the culture (and enforced by gatekeepers of the canon)," "for everyone else," the Passions could "seem like works from a distant and incomprehensible world" involving liturgical content and Baroque performing conventions. Recent "attempts to bring a more contemporary spiritual relevance to Bach sacred works through dramatic restagings," are explored in Bettina Varwig's 2014 essay.¹⁵ She finds two types of stagings: Bach's older Modernist role in the Karl Richter 1971 symbolic semi-staging of the St. Matthew Passion (see above, "Bach Pythagorean Modernism") and the "secular empathy" "to humanize Bach's sacred works by emphasizing his unique familiarity with humans under distress." Varwig singles out Sellers' controversial staging of mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson in Cantata 82 (audio only, YouTube). "In the process Bach's theological musings were framed as expressions of pain and empathy that could be called on to deal with the everyday struggles of everyday people," says Markham (355). Sellers' staging of the St. Matthew Passion (YouTube, commentary YouTube), is exemplified in the Alex Ross review of mezzo Magdalena Kožená singing "Erbarme dich" (Have mercy on me; New Yorker: paragraph beginning "The most beloved passage . . . ."; video YouTube). "These artistic and biographical reimaginings of Bach work together with Gardiner's and Marshall's portraits of the psychologically troubled outsider to offer us a set of biographical bullet points by which to confirm the emotions of Sellers's stagings or Hilliard's mourning chaconne."

Postscript

On a lighter but still human note are recent "stagings" of Bach's Coffee (YouTube) and Peasant (YouTube), cantatas, Phoebus and Pan Cantata 201 (YouTube) and the Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524 (YouTube). Another example of dramatic speculation is Martin Jarvis' book and BBC documentary film, "Written by Mrs. Bach," that Anna Magdalena composed Bach's Six Cello Suites and that Bach and Anna Magdalena had an elicit affair that led to Maria Barbara's suicide. Bach scholars have almost unanimously rejected Jarvis' contentions, particularly in articles involving the Bach Network.¹⁶ There are various recent novels and plays about Bach: James Gaines' 2006 Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (Amazon.com), Nancy Huston's 2008 The Goldberg Variations (Amazon.com), Lauren Belfer's 2017 And after the Fire (Amazon.com), and Itmar Moses' 2005 Bach at Leipzig (Amazon.com).

There are several perspectives on today's reception history, on the basis of its entry in Bach Bibliography (Bach-Baibliography). A new and growing pursuit in reception history is national experience¹⁷ beyond Bach's Germany, England, and the United States to embrace Poland, Austria, Italy, Australia, Japan, and Russia.

Other reception history interests involve: genre, Russel Stinson, Bach's Legacy: The [Keyboard] Music as Heard by Later Masters, Amazon.com); topical, Stephen Rose, Musical authorship from Schütz to Bach, Amazon.com); institutional, Michael Maul, Bach's Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212-1804 (Amazon.com); community, Jeffrey S. Sposato, Leipzig After Bach: Church and Concert Life in a German City (Amazon.com); and Anna Magdalena Bach, David Yearsley, Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks (review, BCW).

Finally, there is the thoroughness and modern perspective of Bach 333, J. S. Bach: The New Complete Edition of Deutsche Grammaphon and the Leipzig Bach Archive (LBA, see Limelight Magazine). Its emphasis is on the recordings with liner notes whie the project also has three publications: 1. BWV (Bach Werke Verzeichnis), Bach Works Catalogue; 2. Bach: The Life biography of Dorothea Schroeder, with topical essays by members of the LBA; and 3. Bach: The Music by Nicholas Kenyon, which is a condensed, updated version of his BACH Faber Pocket Guide to all Bach's music (London: Faber & Faber, 2011, Faber). The articles are well-written and up-to-date, especially the "Life" book Peter Wollny's "Bach the European" (109-117) and "Bach as a teacher (155-160), and Maria Hübner's "Bach and the University of Leipzig (138-144), as well as the "Music" Book recordings with Christoph Wolff's introduction, "Complete Bach: what is missing?" (5-10) and the final three chapters by Nicholas Kenyon, "Bach Interactive," "Bach after Bach," and "Performing Traditions" (187-218).

ENDNOTES

¹ Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2021: 193-225), Amazon.com.
² The "imaginary museum," it is assumed, is a reference to Lydia Goehr's "The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music" (Oxford University Press Scholarship), see Amazon.com, especially Chapter 7, "Musical Production without the Work-Concept": 177-204, which is critical of Bach (for commentary, see White Chapter 3, "The Steward of Unmeaning Art: Bach and the Musical Subject," sections "Those Masterful Images:" Bach and the New Musicology and "Sympathy in White Major:" Deconstructing Bach, BCW.
³ Susan McClary, "The Blasphemy of Talking Politics During the Bach Year," in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Cambridge University Press.
⁴ Other 20th-century images of Bach include Brian Blessed's bewigged "The Joy of Bach" ( 1978, YouTube); The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971, Wikipedia, YouTube) with Vincent Price in the title role as the famous concert organist whose theme is Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," BWV 565, like Amadeus, another artifact for the imaginary museum; the 1977 Voyager project music, beginning with Bach (Voyager, YouTube), and that old chestnut, BWV 565, in Disney's 1940 Fantasia, orchestration and conductor Leopold Stokowski, recording without the animated visuals, YouTube.
⁵ Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012; NY Times); Schweitzer study (BCW: paragraph beginning "Schweitzer was at the forefront of recording Bach's music . . . .")
⁶ Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (Amazon.com: "Look inside": "Preface to GEB's Twentieth-anniversary edition: P-1 to P-23; Contents: vif covering Bach works; review Tal Cohen's Bookshelf).
⁷ Challenges of Bach biography: Robert L. Marshall, "Toward a Twenty-First-Century Bach Biography" (499f, Oxford Academic); Christoph Wolff, Bach's motivation, “The Extraordinary Perfections of the Hon. Court Composer”: An Inquiry into the Individuality of Bach’s Music," in Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (391, Harvard University Press); and John Eliot Gardiner, Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach (147, Amazon.com). Bach biography, for a recent summary of books, see "Bach Biography: History, Topics; Recent, New Perspectives," BCW.
⁸ Albert Schweitzer, J. S. Bach, vol. 1, trans. Ernest Newman (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911: 1), Amazon.com: "Look inside": Chapter I, "The Roots of Bach's Art": 1, as well as "Bach, indeed, is clearly not a single but a universal personality" (2); cautionary note: Schweitzer's chapter on Bach's "Death and Resurrection" (Ibid.: I, 222-265) established the myth that Bach was unknown from 1750 to 1800, disproven by Gerhardt Herz in his 1935 PhD dissertation, "Johann Sebastian Bach: im Zeitalter des Rationalismus und der Frühromantik; zur Geschichte der Bachbewegung von ihren Anfängen bis zur Wiederaufführung der Matthäuspassion im Jahre 1829" (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1935); English edition, "Johann Sebastian Bach in the Early Romantic Period," in Essays on J. S. Bach (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1985: 67), the first significant historical musicology account involving what would become known as reception history, now an important branch of historical musicology.
⁹ "Passion 2000": Wolfgang Rihm’s “Deus Passus” (after Luke), Sophia Gubaidulina’s “Johannes Passion,” Osvaldo Golijov’s “Las Pasion Sugun San Marco” and Tan Dun’s “Water Passion after St. Matthew,” see "Honoring Bach with New Passions," Los Angeles Times.
¹⁰ Expanding Universalism: "A unique attempt to include as much as possible in four volumes is Michael Heinemann et al, eds., Bach und die Nachtwelt," (Bach and Posterity, reception history), cited in Markham (FN22: 358); Vol. 1, 1750-1850, "With Bach" (Laaber-Verlag); Vol. 2, 1850-1900, "The German Bach" (Laaber-Verlag); Vol. 3, 1900-1950, "Bach's Popularity (Laaber-Verlag); Vol. 4, 1950-2000, "Bach from the perspective of composers since 1950" (Laaber-Verlag). Review of Vols. 1 & 2, The Free Library.
¹¹ Recent Bach crossover scholars cited in Markham (Ibid.: 351ff) include John Butt, Robert L. Marshall, John Eliot Gardiner, Helga Thoene, Daniel R. Melamed, Bettina Varwig, and Peter Sellers.
¹² English scholar-conductor John Butt (BCW), Bach Bibliography (Bach-Bibliography).
¹³ John Butt, "The Postmodern Mindset, Musicology and the Future of Bach Scholarship," in Understanding Bach 1 (© Bach Network UK 2006: 9-18), Bach Network UK; a closely-related study, Harry White's 2017 "Evangelists of the postmodern: Reconfigurations of Bach since 1985" (Bach Network UK), commentary, "New Bach Studies: Evangelists of the Modern" (BCW).
¹⁴ Daniel R. Melamed, Hearing Bach's Passions, updated ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016: 4, 8), Amazon.com; review, BCW.
¹⁵ Bettina Varwig, "Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach's Passions," in Twentieth-Century Music 11/2 (2014: 254-274), abstract Cambridge University Press; Bach scholar Uri Golomb has written extensive articles appearing in the Bach Cantatas Website on the staging of Bach's vocal works, particularly the Passions: "Text, music and performative interpretation in Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug" (BCW); "Sellars Staging" (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Sellars[Golomb].htm, scan and Google paste); "Liturgical drama in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion" (BCW); "The St. John Passion on stage (https://www.cantatas.com/Articles/SJP-Stage[Golomb].htm, scan and Google paste); and "Hierarchies and continuities in televised productions of Bach’s Passions" (BCW , scan and Google paste).
¹⁶ Bach Network articles: Yo Tomita, "Anna Magdalena as Bach's Copyist" ( Bach Network UK); Yael Sela, "Anna Magdalena Bach’s Büchlein (1725) as a Domestic Music Miscellany" (Bach Network UK), and Ruth Tatlow's "A Missed Opportunity: Reflections on Written by Mrs Bach" (Bach Network UK).
¹⁷ Reception history, national experience: The coming Bach Network dialogue meeting will include a session on "Global Bach Transmission," featuring Thomas Creesy (Japan), Szymon Paczkowski (Poland), Ruth Tatlow (?Baltic countries), and Chiara Bertoglio (Italy), Bach Network UK.

—————

To come: Rethinking Bach: An Epilogue

Sara Manobla wrote (June 14, 2022):
[To William L. Hoffman] William Hoffman - many thanks for enabling us to read your review of Markham’s “Bach Anxiety: a meditation on the future of the past”. Very interesting and thought-provoking. I look forward to following up on the links provided, (most useful) and to the Epilogue.

My own life-long love of Bach’s music has recently been invigorated by learning and playing with a partner the magnificent organ Preludes and Fugues arranged for piano 4 hands. IMHO they are among the finest of his works, right up there alongside the Passions, the 48, the Goldberg Variations and the other greats. With 4 hands replacing the organist’s 2 hands and 2 feet very little arrangement is needed and they are a joy to play - with a good partner on a good piano!

Sara Manobla (Jerusalem)

--
I am a new member of BML - so let me briefly introduce myself. I have played the piano from age 7, and fell in love with Bach starting with the Anna Magdalena notebook. Wanting to play with other instrumentalists I took up the flute at age 15 and enjoyed playing chamber music and in amateur orchestras for many years, at an intermediate level. My working career was in broadcast journalism. Then at age 65, on retirement, I took up the cello. Playing the piano I had never given a thought to playing "in tune" or "out of tune": all I had to do was to call the piano tuner. But playing a string instrument opened up for me a whole new world of tuning. Open strings, octaves and fifths - no problem. But what about thirds and fifths and leading note sevenths? Perfect pitch and relative pitch? Equal temperament, well-temperament, mean temperament? And what was this pythagorean comma that I came across? After some serious arguments with my piano tuner I began googling and soon found Bradley Lehman and his work on Bach and the spiral image on the title page of the Well Tempered Clavichord. It seemed very reasonable and answered a lot of my questions. But was this the answer to my question about playing in tune with other instruments. It seemed that equal temperament would apply in essence only to an instrument played solo, or perhaps to an ensemble where all the instruments are tuned to the same temperament. There's no way a piano organ could be tuned anew each time in order to play a different piece of music, or with a different instrumentalist, or in a different key. Equal temperament was clearly the answer for modern performance. Bradley Lehman's insights are indeed thought provoking and helpful, but leave a lot of questions unanswered. Perhaps there is no one answer. Perhaps it's all a matter of compromise. Your thoughts!

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 15, 2022):
[To Sara Manobla] My thoughts. Brad Lehman offers important insights. The question of temperament has been around a long time. Each new generation can engage it from a different perspective, raise new questions, offer new insights. It is like other rhetorical devices still being explored, such as affekt, Bach codes (representation), unity through diversity, autonomy, and agency. Yo Tomita has been working on the WTC II since 1990, now involving its genesis and early history as well as aspects of afterlife. I recall three years ago he suggested that the WTC II may be incomplete, that some preludes and fugues were still being altered, and that sons Friedemann and Emmanuel had deep involvement. Compromise and engagement can play major roles.

Etta Tsubouchi wrote (June 19, 2022):
[To William Hoffman] Many thanks for your thoughts.

I'm very much intrigued by Yo Tomita's suggestion--
I hope to read more about it in the Book II of The Genesis and Early History of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 19, 2022):
[To Etta Tsubouchi] I too am looking forward to the WTC II publications. According to the publisher, it will be released on 1 June 2024, Book Depository. Like other publications, the pandemic has caused delays.

Rethinking Bach: An Epilogue

William L. Hoffman wrote (June 18, 2022):
Essay collections covering Bach have greatly expanded this century, far beyond the single author collections of articles, what could be called "The Best of Bach Scholars" (Gerhard Herz, Robert L. Marshall, Christoph Wolff, Raymond Erickson, and Han-Joachim Schulze). The newest and most intriguing is Bettina Varwig's Rethinking Bach,¹ which delves into a wide range of 14 scholars in contemporary subjects such as historical temporal concerns involving material culture, benchmark activities, and colonial impact on native peoples as well as corporeal-material imagination in Bach's world involving available voices, keyboard music, and affect theory in German Baroque rhetoric to meanings involving theology, humor, codes, and the listener's perspective as well as currents (shifts) in chorale pedagogy, rethinking musical editions, Bach as premodern, and present Bach reception response. Complementing the previous scholarly findings are the New Wave of essay anthologies² often published by academic presses and edited by recognized Bach scholars covering multi-disciplinary fields. For Rethinking Bach, collection editor Varwig provides various perspectives (see below), beginning with her "Introduction: (Still) Talking about Bach", followed by Conclusion (Ibid.: 6), Abstract (Ibid.: inside front cover flap), and Publication (commentary 2022). Bolstering these perspectives are two seminal articles of Varwig: the 2014 "Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach," and the 2008 "One More Time: J. S. Bach and Seventeenth-Century Traditions of Rhetoric," with additional commentary.

"Introduction: (Still) Talking about Bach"

"Introduction: (Still) Talking about Bach," the concept of "rethinking Bach" entails the following: "The paradoxical challenge of 'rethinking Bach' thus consists in thinking about Bach by thinking beyond him: remapping the contours and borders of that island of Bach research, populating it with different people and unexpected objects, launching" (Ibid.: 2) "forays into the wider ocean of scholarship — all while keeping an eye on its principal site of attraction, the initial shared object of scholarly inquiry." Her in-depth introduction involves framing the essays with insightful perspectives on various essays (with endnotes), beginning with a summary of Bach scholarship reception from Forkel's 1802 biography to new musicology thinking of Susan McClary in 1987 ("The Blasphemy of Talking Politics During the Bach Year," in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Cambridge University Press) Still, "ample scope undoubtedly remains for entering Bach more decisively into current intellectual trends adebates, both those within musicology and those shared with adjacent disciplines" (source, Rethinking Bach: Introduction; Part I, Histories: "Bach and Material Culture," Part 1).

Conclusion

Conclusion <<Perhaps, then, the simple fact that "Bach," in all these different formulations, has persisted into the 2020s — somewhat battered in places, newly brushed up in others — offers as good a reason for why he can and should still demand our attention. I suspect that many past and present Bach scholars, myself included, may ultimately trace their fascination with their subject matter to a hearty sense of love for and enjoyment of his music (even if, like in most branches of Western music studies, such infatuations tend to be buried fairly deeply these days). But such recourse to aesthetic valorization seems hardly necessary in light of the (super)saturation with "Bach" of many of the dominant strands of past and present music history. Bach's legacy has been so richly entangled in so many domains of European and global cultural practices, and so crucial in shaping some of the fundamental assumptions about the nature and capacities of Western music (whether we like them or not), that talking about Bach still offers an exceptionally promising avenue toward a better understanding and more grounded critique of those practices and assumptions. Put more pointedly, we cannot profitably think through the development of Western (musical) cultures over the past three hundred years and more years without grappling with Bach's continual presence throughout that time. In this volume, therefore, we are indeed, for good reasons, still talking about Bach. And yet, in expanding the remit of what a nominally coherent field of "Bach studies" might encompass, the contributions offered here also intend to build bridges, between this island of splendid Bachian isolation and surrounding enclaves of knowledge — in the evocative phrase of Michel Serres, those other "islands sown in archipelagos on the noisy, poorly-understood disorder of the sea."³ Among our ideal relationship we encourage frequent crossings of those bridges in all directions.>>

Abstract

<<Johann Sebastian Bach has loomed large in the imagination of scholars, performers, and audiences since the late nineteenth century. This new book [Rethinking Bach], edited by veteran Bach scholar Bettina Varwig, gathers a diverse group of leading and emerging Bach researchers as well as a number of contributors from beyond the core of Bach studies. The book's fourteen chapters engage in active 'rethinking' of different topics connected with Bach; the iconic name which broadly encompasses the historical individual, the sounds and afterlives of his music, as well as all that those four letters came to stand for in the later popular and scholarly imagination. Rethinking Bach challenges certain fundamental assumptions about the nineteenth-century Bach revival, the rise of the modern work concept, Bach's music as a code, and about editions of his music as monuments. Collectively, these contributions thus take apart, scrutinize, dust off and reassemble some of our most cherished narratives and deeply held beliefs about Bach and his music. In doing so, they open multiple pathways towards exciting future modes of engagement with the composer and his legacy. >> (source: Oxford University Press: Description.)

Publication

<<When I took on the editorship of Rethinking Bach, I wanted to acknowledge and give room to that imaginative dimension. How do you rethink a historical figure so thoroughly researched and re-thought over the past 250 years? You have to think left, right, low and high; to discern the imaginative strands in this past thinking; and to allow your own scholarly imagination to become an active agent in (re)thinking again.>>

<< In many ways, it is a fraught undertaking to encourage imaginative thinking. The margin for abuse is wide and inviting. And yet, if there is continued value in humanities research today, some of that value may well reside in reminding us that there are always other ways of making sense of the world. What other modes of doing Bach research could we envisage? What other Bach-inspired sounds might we make? What other worlds dare we imagine?>> (source, "Bettina Varwig on the Publication of Rethinking Bach" Music @ Camridge: Reasearch).

"Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach"

<< Narratives of music and modernity have been prominent in musicological writings of the past decade, and the place of Johann Sebastian Bach within these narratives has formed the subject of stimulating debates. Recent studies by Karol Berger and John Butt have aimed to integrate Bach's Passion compositions into broadly conceived philosophical frameworks, in Berger's case focusing specifically on changing perceptions of time from a premodern sense of circular stasis to a modern linear idea of progress. This article proposes an alternative model of historical inquiry into these issues by presenting a detailed look at attitudes to time in early eighteenth-century Protestant Leipzig. My approach reveals a complex constellation of conflicting ideas and metaphors that encompass notions of time as both circular and linear and evince a particular concern for the question of how to fill the time of one's earthly existence productively. In this light, pieces like Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Georg Philipp Telemann's Brockes Passion can be understood to have offered a range of different temporal experiences, which depended on individual listening attitudes, performance decisions, and surrounding social conventions. I argue that only through paying close attention to these fluid and often incongruous discourses can we gain a sufficiently nuanced picture of how music may have reflected and shaped early eighteenth-century conceptions of time, history, and eternity.>> (source, Bettina Varwig, "Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach," in Journal of Musicology (2012: 154–190), abstract, University of California Press)

"One More Time: J. S. Bach and Seventeenth-Century Traditions of Rhetoric"

Abstract: <<Although the question of a connection between Bach’s music and the discipline of rhetoric has been raised repeatedly in the past, the proposed solutions have rarely taken into account the particular kind of rhetorical thinking prevalent in the eighteenth century. In this article, I show that a notion of rhetoric initially developed by Erasmus of Rotterdam and perpetuated in seventeenth-century writings, which focused on argumentative procedures involving variation and amplification, continued to underlie poetic and musical theory in Bach’s time. By articulating fundamental creative patterns that came to underpin a variety of disciplines, this Erasmian model can provide the starting-point for a reassessment of rhetorical techniques in Bach’s music, shifting the focus from isolated moments of affective decoration to the formal-expressive trajectories that shape the layout of whole pieces. Constituted in the interplay of compositional processes and their listening reception, these trajectories emerge as the result of the skilful arrangement of musical phrases into individual and flexible large-scale designs that often leave aside or undercut the supposed structural conventions of concerto or aria forms. The first movement of the third ‘Brandenburg Concerto’, BWV1048, serves as an example of how an awareness of these seventeenth-century rhetorical and musical legacies makes possible a thorough reconsideration of Bach’s compositional strategies.>> (source, Bettina Varwig: "One More Time: J. S. Bach and SeveCentury Traditions of Rhetoric," in Eighteenth-Century Music on line; Cambridge Vol. 5/2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sep 2008: 179-208): Abstract, accessed 15 June 2022; abstract, Cambridge University Press.

Additional Commentary: Rhetoric

The concept of rhetoric was significant in Bach's time and was a principal subject at the Thomas School in Leipzig. Most important was the school rector, Johann Matthias Gesner, commenting on Bach rehearsing a major vocal work (Theory of Music), demonstrating rhetorician Quintilian's "point that a person can do many things at the same time." Quintilian is referred to in Daniel R. Melamed's Rethinking Bach essay, "Rethinking Bach Codes" (Ibid.: 243, BCW), on the extra-musical phenomenon of rhetoric in the abstract musical work of the Musical Offering (Ursula Kirkendale) and "Goldberg" Variations (Alan Street), source Quintilian's Institutio orartoria (Amazon.com). The humanist Erasmus (1466-1636) borrowed extensively from Quintilian for his rhetorical textbook of 1512 "Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style" (De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia, Wikipedia). In the late 19th century, German musicologists developed the concept of "Figurenlehre (Doctrine of Musical Figures) based on these treatises," says Uri Golomb in his Bach Cantatas Website article, "Rhetoric in the Performance of Baroque Music" (BCW), which is also discussed in Isabella van Elferen, "Rethinking Affect," in Rethinking Bach, an interdisciplinary reexamination of the Doctrine of the Affections in German Baroque music, called Affektenlehre (affect theory, BCW).

Rethinking Bach Essay Summaries

All 14 essays in Rethinking Bach have on-line summaries with two appearing in Michael Marissen's "Bach against Modernity," BCW, and Michael Markham's "Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past," BCW. For the remaining 12 chapter summaries, see sumaries:

Stephen Rose's "Bach and Material Culture," Oxford University Press Scholarship: Chpater 2
Ellen Exner's "Rethinking 1829," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 3
Yvonne Liao's "Post/Colonial Bach," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 4.
Wendy Heller, "Bach and the Soprano Voice," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 5
Bettina Varwig, "Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard," OUP: Scholarship: Chapter 6
van Elferen's "Rethinking Affect," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 7
Jeremy Begbie, "Bach and Theology," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 8
David Yearsley, "Bach the Humorist," OUP: Chapter 9
Daniel R. Melamed, "Rethinking Bach Codes," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 10
John Butt's "Bach's Works and the Listener's Viewpoint," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 11
Derek Remeš, "Bach's Chorale Pedagogy," OUP Scholarship: Chapter 12
Joshua Rifkin, "Rethinking Editions: Mass, Missa, and Monumental Culture," OUP Scholarsip: Chapter 13.
One review of Rethinking Bach is available: Early Music America: Bpok Review.
Postscript: Six essay authors in Rethinking Bach — Wendy Heller, Michael Markham, John Butt, Jeremy Begbie, Stephen Rose, Bettina Varwig — will participate in a Bach Network Session 11 Rethinking Bach Round Table, Thursday 21 January, 14.15-15.45 (Bach Network: Session 11). Also attending are Rethinking Bach essayists Michael Marissen and Daniel R. Melamed, Session 2: "BachCantataTexts.org, Texts and new historically informed translations.

ENDNOTES

¹ Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2021: 193-225), Amazon.com; critique, BCW.
² Essay anthologies: Exemplary are the topical collections of the American Bach Society publication Bach Perspectives beginning in 1995 (American Bach Society: Perspective). Two geographic collections are Carol K. Baron's 2006 Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community (see Boydell & Brewer: CONTENTS) and the 2011 Music at German Courts: 1715-1750, Changing Artistic Priorities (Amazon.com). Other exemplary collections are the 2013 Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass (Amazon.com: "Look inside": contents: vii), the 2017 The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach (Amazon.com: "Look inside": contents: vii), and the 2018 Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Amazon.com)
³ See Varwig (Ibid.: FN 11: 7): "Cited in Georgia Born, "For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn," in Journal of the Royal Musical Association 135 (2010: 209)"; abstract, text, Taylor & Francis Online; citing Rethinking Music, Preface (Amazon.com: "Look inside": v).