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Preface
1. Introductory
Dialogue
2. Musical discourse
and rhetorics in Bach: two examples
3. Attempting a
semantic approach: the two “da capo” fugues
4. On free
ornamentation
5. The kaleidoscope of
motives
A note on Figurenlehre
and numerology
Basic Bibliography |
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The range of issues the author deals
with is impressive
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The book opens with an imaginary dialogue between a teacher and student (that
sounds like a modern parody of Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum) which
immediately caught my attention: it is very amusing! I am also very impressed by
his tactfulness in communicating various subjects relating to the interpretation
of Bach’s music to a naïve conservatory student: I wish every teacher should
read this! The remaining chapters of this book deal with the issues of
interpretation. In Chapter 2, BWV 997/1 and BWV 998/3 are analysed in accordance
with his premise that Bach’s musical discourse follows a pattern of the 18th
century rhetorical principle – introduction, thesis, argument in both in favour
and against the thesis, refutation, and conclusion. In Chapter 3, BWV 997/2 is
discussed from a semantic approach, examining if any of the piece’s motives have
semantic meanings (e.g. emotional response from the commonly known figures such
as the lamento bass and the motivic shape resembling particular chorale
tunes), and how they are exploited in the composition. In Chapter 4, aspects of
ornamentation are explored in detail, for which the second movement of the
Italian Concerto is used as example; the author then explores how one can
apply the ornaments and the rhetorical structure in his analysis of BWV 996/4.
Chapter 5 continues the discussion of Bach’s use of motives discussed in Chapter
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