Johann Sebastian Bach Read Online Free PDF Page A

Johann Georg Pisendel.
    Bach’s collection of Lutheran Bibles contained the famous Merian edition with some two hundred engravings (Frankfurt/Main, 1704) that turned up in private possession and is now on long-term loan at the Leipzig Bach Archive. It shows the composer’s autograph initials and 1744 as the year of acquisition.
    Peter Wollny, “Zwei Bach-Funde in Mügeln. C. P. E. Bach, Picander und die Leipziger Kirchenmusik in den 1730er Jahren,” BJ (2010): 111–51; “Zur Rezeption französischer Cembalo-Musik im Hause Bach in den 1730er Jahren: Zwei neu aufgefundene Quellen,” In organo pleno: Festschrift für Jean-Claude Zehnder zum 65. Geburtstag , ed. L. Collarile and A. Nigito (Bern, 2007), pp. 265–76; and “Fundstücke zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1744–1750,” BJ (2011): 35–50; Kerstin Delang, “Couperin - Pisendel - Bach. Überlegungen zur Datierung des Trios BWV 587 anhand eines Quellenfundes in der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden,” BJ (2007): 197–204.
    â€¢ On Bach’s knowledge of music literature and teaching methods (pp. 305–11, 331–35):
    Surprisingly copious evidence has been found relating to the central thesis of this book, as expressed in its subtitle, “The Learned Musician.” The evidence demonstrates the systematic breadth and historical depth of Bach’s study of older music literature and theory as well as his pragmatic start in using this knowledge for his teaching of composition.
    Already during his time in Weimar, Bach supplied himself with a volume of Masses and Mass movements by the old master of classic vocal polyphony, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. This manuscript collection, which has only recently been connected to Bach, served above all as primary study material; nevertheless, at least two of its works were later performed in Leipzig. Besides the known performance materials dating from around 1740 for a Missa sine nomine , an unknown Bach performance part from the same time appeared containing the Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus , a cantus firmus Mass directly connected with the Symbolum Nicenum of the B-Minor Mass.
    An autograph manuscript in the field of theory that must be considered a unique document relating to Bach’s teaching practice dates from the early to mid-1740s. Its first part contains rules, formulated by Bach, for handling syncopations in double counterpoint; its second part offers a collection of excerpts dealing with the teaching of counterpoint, fugue, and canon that Bach compiled from Latin treatises of Zarlino, Calvisius, and others, together with Latin explanations.
    What Bach missed in older counterpoint teachings were the voice-leading rules for a five-part setting, especially in the framework of a modern, harmonically richer language. His absolute command of the art of multivoiced composition and his feel for pedagogically handy rules led him to construct a “Regula J. S. Bachii,” which bears on the prohibition of doubling certain intervals in a five-voice setting and which can be confirmed in a previously unknown manuscript by his pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola.
    The systematic way Bach approached difficult contrapuntal problems, even taking into consideration the old church modes, shows the musically challenging “mind game” dialogue of the late 1730s that he established with his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Also appearing among these important and extensive studies first discovered in 1999 is the oldest indication that Bach began work on The Art of Fugue before 1740.
    Bach’s various contributions to thorough bass practice, contrapuntal studies, and theory are now collected in the NBA Supplement (Kassel, 2011).
    Christoph Wolff et al., “Zurück in Berlin: Das Notenarchiv der Sing-Akademie; Bericht über eine erste Bestandsaufnahme,” BJ (2002): 165–80;