Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint

Interpretations of Bach's late compositions which include complex musical techniques such as canon.

In Bach's Germany musical counterpoint was an art involving much more than the sophisticated use of advanced compositional techniques. A range of theological, cultural, social and political meanings attached themselves to the use of complex procedures such as canon and double counterpoint. This book explores the significance of Bach's counterpoint in a range of interrelated contexts: its use as a means of reflecting on death; its parallels to alchemy; its vexed status in the galant music culture of the first half of the eighteenth century; its value as a representation of political power; and its central importance in the creation of Bach's image in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching on a wide array of contemporary literary, philosophical, critical, and musical texts, the book includes new readings of many of Bach's late works in order to re-evaluate the status and meaning of counterpoint in Bach's work and legacy.

1. Vor deinen Thron and the art of dying; 2. The alchemy of Bach's Canons; 3. Bach's taste for pork and canary; 4. The autocratic regimes of A Musical Offering; 5. Bach the machine; 6. Physiognomies of Bach's counterpoint.

Offers interpretations of many of Bach's late compositions which include complex musical techniques such as canon. These techniques had significant meanings attached to them which were crucial to, for example, the Lutheran rituals of death and Enlightenment philosophies of stylistic change and musical progress.

David Yearsley is an assistant professor at Cornell University. His scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music, Music & Letters, and the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music.