Ebook: Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach

Part I. Bach's vocal music in theological context. In Honor of God and the City: Strategies of Theological and Symbolic Communication in Bach's Cantata Gott ist mein König (BWV 71) / Markus Rathey ; Two "Johannine" Cantatas: Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes (BWV 40) and Sehet, welch eine Liebe (BWV 64) / Eric Chafe ; Death to Life, Sorrow to Joy: Martin Luther's Theology of the Cross and J.S. Bach's Eastertide Cantata Ihr werdet weinen und heulen (BWV 103) / Mark A. Peters ; Toward an Understanding of J.S. Bach's Use of Red Ink in the autograph score of the Matthew Passion / Mary Greer ; The Theological in Bach research (2007) / Martin Petzoldt --;"Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J.S. Bach collects seventeen essays by leading Bach scholars. The authors each address in some way such questions of meaning in J.S. Bach's vocal compositions--including his Passions, Masses, Magnificat, and cantatas--with particular attention to how such meaning arises out of the intentionality of Bach's own compositional choices or (in Part IV in particular) how meaning is discovered, and created, through the reception of Bach's vocal works. And the authors do not consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss Bach's artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural trends--social, historical, theological, musical, etc. The chapters in this volume thus reflect the breadth of current Bach research in its attention not only to source study and analysis, but also to meanings and contexts for understanding Bach's compositions" --