Book Description
Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community studies the community in which Bach spent the last, longest, and most prestigious part of his life: the Leipzig middle class. These deeply researched and thought-provoking essays by prominent musicologists and scholars of religious history and German culture highlight the dynamic religious, social, and political forces that emerged during the composer's lifetime. Using entertainment venues and all forms of commercially produced and distributed literature -- "popular" in that world -- as well as "official" documents, they explore Leipzig's distinctive middle-class public culture. Contemporary thought was fragmented, intellectually complex, and unable to assimilate the multiplicity of ideas, beliefs, and values that were simultaneously current. The ambiguities and transitional structures in that early modern world have contributed to the inconsistencies that are part of Bach's legacy.
Bach was an accepted, admired, and trusted member of this community, as evidenced by the commissions for secular celebrations he received from royalty, academcis, and merchants alike and from his multiple functions as a church composer. He could only have acquired such prestige by participating in that community as a responsible citizen attuned to its values and concerns. The essays are complemented by important statements (never before translated) about Lutheran church music by two of Bach's close contemporaries, Gottfried Ephraim Scheibel and Johann Kuhnau.
Publisher comments
In a review on the online Bach Bibliography site, Elise Crean
concluded "Written in an engaging style, Bach's Changing World is an
informative and satisfying read that makes a substantial contribution to
our understanding of the era in which Bach lived and worked, whilst also
simultaneously providing new or alternative insights into the life and
occasionally the works of the man himself."
concluded "Written in an engaging style, Bach's Changing World is an
informative and satisfying read that makes a substantial contribution to
our understanding of the era in which Bach lived and worked, whilst also
simultaneously providing new or alternative insights into the life and
occasionally the works of the man himself."
