Internationally recognized Bach authority Hans-Joachim Schulze authored a 225-part series on the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. In this collection, James A. Brokaw II translates a selection of the essays, illuminating a wide range of biographical and cultural features of Bach’s life and creative milieu. Schulze’s lively and engaging discussions provide a wealth of rewarding insights and perspectives focusing on individual cantatas, their texts, and the questions of chronology and context that attend them. The University of Illinois Press has paired the volume with a special web-based companion overseen by the translator and hosted by the Illinois Open Publishing Network. This online resource includes Brokaw’s translations of all 225 of Schulze’s essays alongside digital tools for searching, sorting, and bundling the commentaries according to date of composition, position within the liturgical church year sequence, and librettist.

Bach's cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art, yet studies of the individual cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few. In this book, noted Bach expert Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer readers and listeners alike the richest possible experience of these works. A respected theorist of seventeenth-century music, Chafe is sensitive to the composer's intentions and to the enduring and universal qualities of the music itself. Concentrating on a small number of representative cantatas, mostly from the Leipzig cycles of 1723-24 and 1724-25, and in particular on Cantata 77, Chafe shows how Bach strove to mirror both the dogma and the mystery of religious experience in musical allegory. Analyzing Bach Cantatas offers valuable information on the theological relevance of the structure of the liturgical year for the design and content of these works, as well as a survey of the theories of modality that inform Bach's compositional style. Chafe demonstrates that, while Bach certainly employed "pictorialism" and word-painting in his compositions, his method of writing music was a more complex amalgam of theological concepts and music theory. Regarding the cantatas as musical allegories that reflect the fundamental tenets of Lutheran theology as established during Bach's lifetime, Chafe synthesizes a number of key musical and theological ideas to illuminate the essential character of these great works. This unique and insightful book offers an essential methodology for understanding one of the central bodies of work in the Western musical canon. It will prove indispensable for all students and scholars of Bach's work, musicology, and theological studies.

This Theological Commentary is the first full-length work in English to consider Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion in its entirety, both the words and the music. Bach’s oratorio is a globally popular musical work, and a significant expression of Lutheran theology. The commentary explains the Biblical and poetic text, and its musical setting, line by line. Bach’s Passion is shown to be the work of a master craftsman and trained theologian, in the collaborative and cultural milieu of eighteenth-century, Lutheran Leipzig. For the first time, this work makes much German scholarship available in English, including archival sources, and includes a new scholarly translation of the libretto. The musical and theological terms are explained, to enable an interdisciplinary understanding of the Passion’s meaning and continued significance.

Please click here to check out Volume 1 of this book! These two volumes contain the English translations of the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Professor, musician, and author Z. Philip Ambrose preserves the meter and original noun/verb placement in his translations so that listeners and interpreters will see Bach's own "translation" of the texts into music. J.S. Bach: The Vocal Texts in English Translation with Commentary is a good guide to the poetics of Bach's music and will give to performing musicians a clearer understanding of Bach's wonderful vocal works.

The German church cantata of the eighteenth century was the culmination of a long tradition of Lutheran "sermon music" that used the proclamation, amplification, and interpretation of scripture to teach and persuade the listener. Bach's cantatas also served this didactic purpose and typically incorporate numerous allusions to scriptural passages or themes in their librettos. Unfortunately, many of these passages remain obscure to the twentieth-century musician because they demand a much closer familiarity with the Bible than is common today. The Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts identifies scriptural references for the wording, imagery, and themes that Bach's listeners would have known. In addition, the religious or literary theme of each text is summarized within the specific context of the cantata as a whole. With interlinear translations and a full complement of indexes.

This is the only English translation of this important book by the world's most distinguished Bach scholar. This work is widely regarded as the most authoritative and comprehensive treatment of the Bach cantatas. It begins with a historical survey of the seventeenth-century background to the cantatas, and performance practice issues. The core of the book is a work-by-work study in which each cantata in turn is represented by its libretto, a synopsis of its movements, and a detailed analytical commentary. This format makes it extremely useful as a reference work for anyone listening to, performing in, or studying any of the Bach cantatas. All the cantata librettos are given in German-English parallel text. For the English edition the text has been carefully revised to bring it up to date, taking account of recent Bach scholarship.

In this pioneering work of systematic research, Meyer demonstrates in detail how Bach quoted and alluded to the text of Luther's German Bible in his liturgical libretti. Compiled with the interests of both scholar and performer in mind, this volume supplements the fundamental understanding of the liturgical functions of these cantatas of Bach, as well as providing a resource for further theological, musical, and linguistic study.

The church cantatas of J. S. Bach were designed, composed, and performed to enhance and interpret the message of the Bible to worshippers in the congregations which Bach served. The Lutheran Church of 18th-century Germany appointed specific biblical texts to be read each Sunday and festival day of the year. This series of appointed readings, one from the New Testament letters and the other from one of the four gospels, was the lectionary. The lectionary readings determined the day's theme for the sermon, hymns, organ music, and the cantata. Although Bach clearly indicated the occasion on which most of his cantatas were performed, the readings, and therefore the theme of the day, do not necessarily coincide with the readings and themes of the modern church. The Revised Common Lectionary, in widespread use today among churches in North America, appoints three readings for each Sunday, rotating them in a three-year cycle. For that reason, Bach Through the Year has reassigned the cantatas, as well as the motets, passions, and oratorios, to the Sundays and festivals with whose current readings and themes they most closely correspond. In each commentary, the relationship between a lectionary reading, usually the gospel, and the designated cantata is highlighted. JOHN S. SETTERLUND is an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, now retired. He has served as pastor of congregations in South Dakota and Illinois, and as campus pastor at the University of Illinois. A graduate of Luther Theological Seminary, he studied also at Wartburg Theological Seminary under Gordon W. Lathrop and Bach scholar Reuben G. Pirner. Bach Through the Year actually began during the 1985 Bach tercentenary, when the first complete recorded set of Bach's church cantatas was published. Subsequently, alternatives were selected, commentaries written, and adjustments made according to minor changes in the lectionary and the hymnal; finally, listings were added to correlate with the lectionaries of the Lutheran Service Book and Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal, as well as Evangelical Lutheran Worship.

Annotation In this book, noted Bach expert Eric Chafe combines theological, historical, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the cantatas to offer readers and listeners alike the richest possible experience of these works.