Contents

1. New Bach Essays, Bettina Varwig, Rethinking Bach, Part I, Histories
2. Rethinking Bach, Part II, Bodies: Wendy Heller, "Bach and the Soprano Voice"
5. Rethinking Bach, Bettina Varwig, Chapter 5, "Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard"
6. Varwig's Rethinking Bach, Chapter 6, van Elferen's "Rethinking Affect"
7. Rethinking Bach, Part III, Meanings; Chapter 7, Jeremy Begbie, "Bach and Theology"
8. Rethinking Bach, Chapter 8, David Yearsley, "Bach the Humorist"
9. Rethinking Bach, Part III, Meanings; Chapter 9, Daniel R. Melamed, "Rethinking Bach Codes"
10. Rethinking Bach, Meanings, John Butt's "Bach's Works and the Listener's Viewpoint"
11. Rethinking Bach, Part IV Currents, Chapter 11 Derek Remeš, "Bach's Chorale Pedagogy"
12. Joshua Rifkin, "Rethinking Editions: Mass, Missa, and Monumental Culture"
13. Rethinking Bach, Chapter 13, Michael Marissen's "Bach against Modernity"
14. Rethinking Bach, Michael Markham's "Bach Anxiety: A Meditation on the Future of the Past"
Epilogue. Rethinking Bach: An Epilogue

Review - Part 1

New Bach Essays, Bettina Varwig, Rethinking Bach, Part I, Histories

William L. Hoffman wrote (January 31, 2022):
The writing format of essays involving Bach has evolved in the past half century and more recently has prospered through diversity as scholars pursue all manner of inquiries, especially in the fields of spirituality and interdisciplinary new musicology.¹ Publications of Bach essays offer a variety of perspectives, ranging from Bach authorities on various topics² (Gerhard Herz, Robert L. Marshall, Christoph Wolff, Raymond Erickson, Hans-Joachim Schulze) to other formats.³ The latest and most impressive essay collection is the academic perspective of Rethinking Bach,⁴ edited by expert and versatile Bach scholar Bettina Varwig and published by Oxford University Press. It yields 14 chapters from a range of Bach scholars (See Rethinking Bach: Look inside: List of Contributors, xiff) and is divided into four generic topical parts: I. Histories (of Bach, three chapters, 9ff); II. Bodies (voices, corporeal-material, three chapters, 77ff), III. Meanings (theology, reception tropes, four chapters, 167ff), and IV Currents (reevaluation, editors' perspectives, deconstruction, four chapters, 269ff). Lecturer in early modern music at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Dr. Varwig has compiled 15 entries in Bach Bibliography on a range of topics (Bach-Bibliography). Her interests are expressed in her Cambridge on-line biography (University of Camnbridge: Faculty of Music): "I am interested in questions of musical meaning and expression, historical modes of listening, and music’s place in the history of the body, the emotions and the senses. I have also worked on issues of reception and historiography, in particular the reception of J. S. Bach’s music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." Her most recent posting is the American Bach Society Tiny Bach Concerts, Episode 13, which involves remarks on Bach's second Brandenburg concerto, American Bach Society.

Rethinking Bach: Introduction; Part I, Histories: "Bach and Material Culture"

In her "Introduction: (Still) Talking about Bach," the concept of "rethinking Bach" entails the following: "The paradoxical challenge of 'rethinking Bach' thus consists in thinking about Bach by thinking beyond him: remapping the contours and borders of that island of Bach research, populating it with different people and unexpected objects, launching" (Ibid.: 2) "forays into the wider ocean of scholarship — all while keeping an eye on its principal site of attraction, the initial shared object of scholarly inquiry." Her in-depth introduction involves framing the essays with insightful perspectives on various essays (with endnotes), beginning with a summary of Bach scholarship reception from Forkel's 1802 biography to new musicology thinking of Susan McClary in 1987.⁵ Still, "ample scope undoubtedly remains for entering Bach more decisively into current intellectual trends and debates, both those within musicology and those shared with adjacent disciplines." Beginning with Part I, Histories presents three chapters on temporal concerns related to people, time and place in Bach studies. The first chapter, Stephen Rose's "Bach and Material Culture" (Ibid.: 11-35), frames the entire essay collection with contextual and agency concerns (the latter as an inherent "power to act," says Rose (Ibid.: 12), who has a distinguished resume and publishing credentials.⁶ He shows that Bach's "musical practices hold the potential for offeparticularly — even unique — kinds of insight into broader patterns of cultural production and social interaction," says Varwig (Ibid.: 3). He "demonstrates that this material focus embraces pertinent personal subjects," "the things surrounding those bodies and practices associated with them" ("Bodies" in the subject of Part II, relatiing to corporeal-material interests). While Bach's works are considered "as products of his mind, transcending the material conditions of everyday life," says Rose (Ibid.: 11), "insights into Bach's musical activities," on the other hand, "can be gained from an investigation of material culture," involving "physical properties of an object" as well as "the network of social entanglements and strategies within which the object is embroiled," says Varwig, citing Ian Holder.⁷ Humans create a sense of being in the world and in a "creative exchange" with material objects (11) in shared agency. Rose's chapter studies three Bach perspectives (Ibid.: 12), "each inspired by different approaches within the diverse field of material culture studies": 1. "Bach and Leipzig's Consumer Culture," especially Bach's possessions and activities (13-18); 2. "Musical Sources in Material Culture," Bach's late works and homage funeral Cantata 198, (18-24), and 3. "Bach and the Agency of Body and Materials" (24-29), the interplay between performer and instruments and compositions. "Methods from the study of material culture can place Bach's activities in broader contexts," Rose concludes (Ibid.: 29), to "enhance close readings of Bach's compositions" as "a craft of musical materials," "illuminating the constant interplay between human and material agency."

Exner's "Rethinking 1829," Matthew Passion Revival

Chapter 2, Ellen Exner's "Rethinking 1829" (Ibid.: 37-57) reexamines the reception of Bach's St. Matthew Passion of 1829 led by Mendelssohn, a benchmark of German nationalism and the concert hall, which suggests that in this "fêted moment," says Varwig (Ibid.; 5), for Exner, "preceding and surrounding cultural events" seemed to make the Berlin public concert both inevitable and singular. This essay is a rich exploration of Bach and pronounced musical reception in the past two centuries, citing a wide range of authorities. One of the Bach myths of Romanticism was that his music died with him in 1750 and was resurrected in the 19th century. "If we put aside the miracle rhetoric and seek instead evidence of human agency behind the concert, it become's clear that Berlin's history was full of Bach before 1829," says Exner (Ibid.: 37). The hallowed (revered) event also seems hollowed (shaped). It is a "very human story of appreciation of Bach's music that is traceable from generation to generation in the decades leading up to the famous Passion concert," she says (Ibid.: 39). Her essay reveals the community's "engagement with older repertories" and "it's active patronage of Bach's music" as "a continuation of long-standing elite tradition made public." Exner provides a chronicle of watershed events in the sections, "Dr. Burney's Complaint [of 1775 re. Berlin musical life] and the Case of Mendelssohn's Great Passion," "Mendelssohn, Bach and Berlin in 1829," and "1929: Centennial Celebrations, National Socialism, and the Battle for Bach." In Exner's hands, "the miracle narrative" is replaced with "a more inclusive, very human picture of Bach's early reception — one in which new voices, including those belonging to women, might finally be heard" (Ibid.: 51). Exner's essay is a fitting reception history conclusion to her forthcoming Matthew Passion study guide from Oxford University Press and the American Bach Society, hopefully with similar insight into Bach's Passion materials, the unique ingredients in BWV 244, Bach's special Passion tapestry, BWV 244-247, and perhaps even an early history of his "Great Passion" (see BCW).

"Post/Colonial Bach" in Hong Kong

Music historian Yvonne Liao presents a distinctive and unique historical-geographical account of 20th century Bach reception history in Hong Kong and its emergence as an indigenous expression of musical creativity. Chapter 3, Liao's "Post/Colonial Bach" provides a pathway "by which this product of the Western imagination traveled beyond its home turf as part of the European colonial enterprise," says Varwig in her Introduction (Ibid.: 5f), as well as to "begin to appreciate Bach as a potential interlocutor in a broader cross-disciplinary conversation about developing a historical-critical paradigm of 'after Europe'." Liao's essay follows recent/current geographical-historical studies of Bach in Berlin, Italy, Japan (and far East), Australia, Poland.⁸ Much of Liao's essay relates to her conflation of "Post/Colonial" within the context of "After Europe" in East Asia (Ibid.: 61f), notably British-ruled Hong Kong. Here she presents three institutional manifestations of Bach sonic presence in three British institutions: the Helena May colonial club recital 1936, St. John's Cathedral and "Landmark Churches" in Bach Motets, BWV 225-230 in 2011, and the "New" City Hall with still dominant British influence such as the St. John Passion in 1983 (before the Chinese take-over of Hong Kong in 1997), where Liao displays pejorative bias, freighted with British Colonialism, citing "musicians of their ilk" (Ibid.: 73). Meanwhile, recent Chinese influence in performers and audience suggests a "shifting collective listening, and a nascent democratization of access," she concludes (Ibid.: 74). Obviously, Hong Kong, in contrast to Japan, is a special case of cultural appropriation.

Further Bach Studies, Post-Script: Bach & Disabilities

In the "historical-critical paradigm of "After Europe'," Varwig in her Introduction suggests new areas of Bach pursuit (Ibid.: 6), such as "disability studies" involving Bach's late-life visual impairment or excessive vocal demands on performers. A worthy subject might be the three distressed Bach sons (David Gordon: Spirited Sound): Gottfried Heinrich (1724-1763), mentally handicapped ("feeble-minded") and required a caregiver; Johann Gottfried Bernhard (1759-1739), who may have been emotionally troubled and whose cause of death is unknown; and eldest Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-1784), who squandered his talent and his father's manuscript legacy.

ENDNOTES

¹ See "Encountering Bach Today: Historical, Listening, Post-Modern, especially New Bach Studies: Evangelists of the Modern," BCW; also, see BCW: "Previous Bach Essays, Contextual Approaches."
² Bach essay authorities: 1. Gerhard Herz, Essays on J. S. Bach, Studies in Musicology (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1985), Essays on J.S. Bach, by Gerhard Herz; 2. Robert L. Marshall, The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Sources, the Style, the Significance (New York: Schirmer Books, 1989), Google Books); 3. Christoph Wolff, BACH, Essays on His Life, Music (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), Amazon.com; 4. Raymond Erickson, The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach (New York: Amadeus Press, 2009); BCW: 3, BOOK REVIEWS; 5. Hans-Joachim Schulze, Bach-Facetten: Essays – Studien – Miszellen (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017), Amazon.com; contents, Ciando eBooks.
³ Bach publication essay formats: single authors on one topic (Robin A. Leaver, Bach Studies; Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology), topical studies (The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach's Changing World [Leipzig], Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass, Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach), to series from one source (American Bach Society: topical Bach Perspectives 1-13, American Bach Society) and general collections by various authors (Bach Studies and Bach, 32 essays, Routledge) and festschrifts (A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William H. Scheide). Other essays involve speciality publications such as the venerable Bach Jahrbuch (annals, Neue Bachgesellschaft e.V., still a German-only enterprise, and the English-language periodical Bach, journal of Riemenschneider Bach Institute (Baldwin Wallace University). Still others are found in the emerging electronic field on-line: Yo Tomita's Bach Bibliography ( Bach-Archiv Leipzig), Bach Network: Understanding Bach, Discussing Bach (https://bachnetwork.org), and the Bach Society Houston: Notes on Bach (primarily author interviews, Bach Society Houston); Noelle M. Heber, J. S. Bach's Material and Spiritual Treasures: A Theological Perspective (Woodbridge GB: 2021), Amazon.com; review, Mark A. Peters, ProQuest.
⁴ Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), Amazon.com.
⁵ See Encountering Bach Today, BCW: "New Bach Studies: Evangelists of the Modern."
⁶ Stephen Rose, Rethinking Bach (Ibid.: xiiif) and Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliography; Rose's most recent book is Musical authorship from Schütz to Bach (Cambridge University Press, 2019), especially Chapter 2, "Between Imitatio and Plagiarism" in Bach's "Sanctus," BWV 241: 78-80); Houston Bach Society, Bach Society Houston. Musical Creativity, Originality, and Ownership in Early Modern Germany, interview with Stephen Rose, Musical Authorship from Schütz to Bach (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Bach Society Houston, Hwcdn.Libsyn; review, Daniel R. Melamed, Jstor.
⁷ Ian Holder, "The Social," in "Archeological Theory: An Historical and Contemporary Perspective," in A Companion to Social Archaeology, ed. Lynn Meskell and Robert Preucel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) p. 28); cited in Rethinking Bach (Ibid.: 11, 29).

Rethinking Bach, Part II, Bodies: Wendy Heller, "Bach and the Soprano Voice"

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 7, 2022):
Having laid the groundwork (? and footwork) for Rethinking Bach,¹ Bettina Varwig (See New Bach Essays²), the editor and scholar in Part II, Bodies, explores (Ibid.: 3) "this sense of the elusive immateriality of his legacy," intending "to address this over- (or through-)sight by delving into Bach's imagination of the bodies/voices of his soprano singers," as explored in Wendy Heller's essay ["Bach and the Soprano Voice," Chapter 4, Ibid: 79-113]; "into contemporary theories of musical affect as a corporeal-material force, discussed in Isabella van Elferen's contribution ["Rethinking Affect," Chapter 6, Ibid.: 141-166]; and, in my own chapter, into the material fleshiness of Bach's keyboard practice" ["Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard," Chapter 5, Ibid.: 115-140], "discussed in dialogue with recent neurophysiological approaches to human creativity." "Crucially," Varwig continues, "it is not only Bach's body that thereby comes more decisively into view, but also those of his performers, listeners, congregants, surrounding family members and so on, thus situating Bach's own physical existence within a larger assemblage of (gendered) boodies that productively widens the scholarly field on vision. . . . "Bach as historical figure here becomes merely one node in an extensive network of cultural agents and activities; and while such a de-centering exercise may well threaten Bach's inherited hegemonic position in the Western canon, it contributes appreciably to a more textured, interconnected, and alive understanding of his actions in an engagement with the world around him."

Heller: Bach, Soprano Voice (Solo Arias, Love Duets)

In "Bach and the Soprano Voice," Wendy Heller,³ Scheide Professor of Music History and Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University, provides a musical analysis of significant Bach solo soprano arias, often heard as the voice of the Soul or Congregation, as well as the pairing of the Soul with the bass Vox Christi in spiritmystical love duets⁴ of the symbolic bride and bridegroom (see BCW: Solo Cantatas for Soprano, Solo Cantatas for Soprano & Bass). To bolster her findings, she relies on an array of endnote sources involving academic studies, recordings, established Bach documents, topical Bach writings, and recent vocal music studies. Heller's essay begins with an exposition of the recent omnibus recording collection, Bach 333, J. S. Bach: The New Complete Edition of Deutsche Grammaphon and the Leipzig Bach Archive (BCW), containing what she calls "a provocative contradiction regarding the use of soprano soloists" (Ibid.: 79). On the one hand, Bach used boy soprano voices in virtually all his church vocal music while Bach 333 almost exclusively uses recordings "performed by women" and increasingly such is the case in new recordings in both solo and chorus parts. The pioneer Harnoncourt/Leonhardt Das Kantatenwerk "complete" cycle (1971-89, BCW) used boy sopranos except in Cantata 199 (Barbara Bonney, YoiuTube), "one that today's early music practitioners have soundly rejected," says Heller (Ibid.: 80). At "the heart of the matter are fundamental aesthetic questions concerning changing notions about voices, gender, and historical performance in this repertory." Heller explores femininity in Bach's Magnificat, BWV 243 (Mary's canticle), beginning in her 2015 article.⁵

Modern Preference for Female Sopranos

Today, says Heller (Ibid.: 80), "modern day preference for female sopranos in Bach's sacred music," "codified" in Bach 333, "is in fact a function of qualities intrinsic to the music": "Bach's musical expression of Lutheran theology" and "the tension between performance practices past and present." Heller considers (Ibid.: 80f) "rhetorical strategies" in Bach's soprano arias: "choice of affect, use of certain topoi [topos], form, and vocal writing," "evoked in Bach's listeners an unambiguous sense of the feminine." This Bach bolstered with the use of special instruments "such as the oboe da caccia or violoncello piccolo in certain theological contexts," she says (Ibid.: 81), and "stylistic features": dance rhythms, elements of galant style, sensual vocal lines replete with chromaticism." These give "a distinctly feminine aura" with "illustrative texts that share certain affective sensibilities: passion, desire, optimism, confidence, compliance, modesty, submission, and pleasure."⁶ Heller offers striking examples with music in Cantata 32/1 for the First Sunday after Epiphany 1926 (YouTube) which culminates in the duet, YouTube, Ibid.: 85). This is reinforced in Heller's study (Ibid.; 87) of Luther's mystical union, expressed as "Ich bin deine, du bist meine" (I am yours, you are mine), found in the early Motet BWV 228 (YouTube) and profane Cantata 213 (YouTube). Heller displays the sense of the feminine in two soprano solos from Bach's 1723 Magnificat (Ibid.: 88): "Et exultavit" optimism (YouTube) and "Quia respexit" humility (YouTube), and joy, German Magnificat, Cantata 10, "Herr, der du stark und mächtig" (Lord, you are strong and might, YouTube). Emotional extremes are found in dialogue Cantata 57 for the second day of Christmas 1725, in the free da capo aria, No. 3"Ich wünschte mir den Tod" (I would wish for myself death, YouTube), in which "the Soul is simultaneously anxious and confident," she says (Ibid.: 89), similar to aria BWV 32/1 (above). "Anxiety, humility, introspection, and desire, often juxtaposed with or leading to optimism, confidence, and utter pleasure" "are the qualities that emerge. As her study continues into more oblique feminine references, "we see Bach using many of the same compositional strategies: dance rhythms, modifications, the da capo scheme, an intimate relationship between the voice and various obbligato instruments, and a preference for rarely used instruments and instrumental combinations," she observes (Ibid.: 91f). She then cites (Ibid.: 92) the free da capo trio aria, No. 3, "Erfüllet, ihr himmlischen göttlichen Flammen" (Fill, you divine flames of heaven, YouTube), a chorale cantata paraphrase of the third verse of Philipp Nicolai's Epiphany (and wedding) hymn, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" (How beautifully shines the morning star), for the Marian feast of the Annunciation in 1725. As in the Magnificat "Et exultavit" aria (cited above), the sense of desire is expressed in a dance setting (here a bourrée) with intimacy "experienced in the relationship" between voice and oboe da caccia, she notes (Ibid.: 93).

Other Soprano Arias: Minuet, Bassetto, Trios

Then Heller turns to an aria from Leipzig poetess Christiane Mariane von Ziegler,⁷ who crafted on commission a mini series of nine cantatas for the 1725 Easter to Trinityfest season,⁸ "Höchster Tröster, Heilger Geist" (Greatest Comforter, Holy Spirit), No. 4, in Cantata 183, Sie werden euch in den Bann tun II (They will put you under a ban, John 16:2), for the Sunday after Ascension 1725. This two-part aria (YouTube), set as a 3/8 minuet, is "the anticipation of the comfort provided by the Holy Spirit (soprano aria in C major, accompanied by strings and a pair of oboes da caccia in unison)," says Heller (Ibid.: 94). Next is a multi-parodied 3/8 binary dance soprano aria in unaccompanied bassetto style (no basso continuo texture), symbolizing innocence, No. 10, "Jesu, deine Gnadenblicke" (Jesus, your gracious look, YouTube), in the Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11, of 1738,⁹ with its secular origin in a profane wedding cantata of 1725, BWV 1163=Anh. 196, sung by allegorical figure Modesty (Schamhafftigkeit), No. 5, "Unschuld, Kleinod reiner Seelen" (Chasteness, jewel of pure spirits, Z. Philip Ambrose, University of Vermont: J.S. Bach: Texts of the Vocal Works with English Translation and Commentaryt). Observes Heller (Ibid.; 100): A "recognition of the origins here, I would suggest, frees the imagination, allowing us to hear what would have been obvious to his contemporaries from the surface of the music: the ways in which Bach associated femininity with innocence, purity, intimacy, and sensuality." Two additional citations in the early (c1713) multi-use undesignated cantatas involve "another secular convention" of "the lament in the Soul's search for Jesus," says Heller (Ibid.: 101), are the soprano trio aria, "Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not" (Sighs, tears, grief, distress), No. 3 in Cantata 21, "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis in meinem Herzen" (I had much affliction in my heart, YouTube), and the soprano trio aria, "Stumme Seufzer, stille Klagen" (Silent sighs, quiet moans, YouTube), No. 2 in the solo soprano Cantata 199, "Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut" (My heart swims in blood, YouTube), as well as the arias Tief gebückt und voller Reue" (Bent low and full of remorse) and the concluding gigue, "Wie freudig ist mein Herz" (How joyous is my heart).

Final Section: Soprano Voice Reception History; Modern Expectations

In her final, untitled section, Heller provides a reception history of soprano voices in Bach's music (Ibid.: 103-07), aswell as a concluding note on the inherent qualities of Bach's music for female voices and bodies (Ibid.: 107). While "theological connotations may well have faded as Bach's sacred music moved from its original liturgical context to the concert stage," "later listeners seem to have taken the music's intrinsic femininity for granted," she suggests (Ibid.: 103). When Bach's vocal music was disseminated in the 19th century and entered the concert stage, adult choirs with female singers replaced Bach's male church choruses in Germany and "also became the norm for English performances," as well as the United States. "The first sopranos to record arias from Bach cantatas were no less varied in terms of their voice type and repertory," Heller says (Ibid.: 105). Numerous and varied sopranos pursued Bach works such as Cantata 51 with its coloratura display such as Kathleen Battle (YouTube), and Cantata 199 with its low tessitura in the first aria sung by mature mezzo sopranos, and Bach's B-Minor Mass sung by women.¹⁰ Vocal technique and recordings now are able to capture the full timbre and nuances of adult voices which in turn, such as those of Emma Kirkby (Zach Uram's Blog), have the pure quality of boy's voices. Concerning reconciling modern expectations of the soprano aria perceived expressivity with historical record and affects/moods was considered inherently feminine, says Heller (Ibid.: 107). "Bach's listeners — like Shakespeare's audiences — were more adept at using their imaginations to transcend conventional gender expectations than modern audiences have tended to be." Bach's music for soprano now "is identified with female voices and bodies," "regardless of pressure from the early music revival." At the same time, Bach's audiences were more attuned to the theological import of his sacred music.¹¹ The enduring notion of femininity in music makes a woman "compelled to express her desire for and joy in salvation a physical act of singing and dancing," Heller concludes (Ibid.: 107).

ENDNOTES

¹Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), Amazon.com: "Look inside."
² New Bach Essays, Bettina Varwig, Rethinking Bach, Part I, Histories," BCW.
³ Wendy Heller, biography Depatment of Music at Princeton; Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliography;
⁴ See "Jesus-Soul Dialogue Cantatas & Arias," BCW.
⁵ Heller article, "‘Aus eigener Erfahrung redet’: Bach, Luther, and Mary’s Voice in the Magnificat, BWV 243," in Understanding Bach 10 (2015): 31–69, © Bach Network UK, Bach Network UK; sections: "Magnificat and the Feast of the Visitation," "Transforming Mary," "Mary as singer: Luther’s Commentary on the Magnificat," "Bach’s Magnificat through the lens of Luther’s Commentary," and "Bach’s feminine voice."
⁶ Serendipitously, a discussion of the bodily existence of emotions involving Varwig, Heller, and others has just been released at the Bach Network, "Bach and the Corporeality of Emotions," Issue 4 of Discussing Bach, Bach Network.org. It was recorded 15 July 2021 at a roundtable discussion of Bach scholars, 'Bach and the History of Emotions,' at the 19th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music (University of Birmingham; video, Bach Network.og; transcript, Bacjh Network.org). There are three very diverse approaches to Bach and the emotions: the physiological, from Varwig, the proportional or mathematical from Ruth Tatlow, and John Butt's approach through the physical and regulative qualities of dance. Heller asks (Ibid.: 11) the three scholars to amplify on the subject and the common directions to come. Varwig suggests that an early modern anthropology approach can help understand how humans interact with the world through music and interact today in the domains of physiology, proportional/mathematical, and dance; Tatlow on how proportions move emotions (Ibid.: 12), and Butt on proportions and dance steps.
⁷ Ziegler is the subject of two fine monographs cited in Heller: 1. Eric Chafe, J. S. Bach's Johannine Theology: The St. John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; Part III, Chapters 10-14), Amazon.com, John Butt review (H-Music); and 2. Mark A. Peters, A Woman’s Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane von Ziegler and J.S. Bach (Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2008), Amazon.com; review, Mark A. Peters, "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)," in Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, ed. Mark A. Peters & Reginald Sanders, Contextual Bach Studies No. 8, ed. Robin A. Leaver (Lanham MD; Lexington Books, 2018), BCW: paragraph beginning "One of the von Ziegler texts . . . ."
⁸ Ziegler's mini-series of cantatas marks the virtual beginning chronologically of Bach's third and final church-year cantata cycle, as recently recognized in two Bach cantata handbooks in German: 1. Reinmar Emans and Sven Hiemke eds., Bachs Kantaten: Das Handbuch, vol. 2, Der sogenannte "Dritte Jahrgang" (The so-called "Third Year") (Lilenthal: Laaber-Varlag, 2012; Amazoin.com), beginning with "Zu den nur durch Textdrucke nachweisbaren Auffürungen des jahres 1724" (On the performances of the year 1725, which can only be verified by text prints; and 2. Konrad Klek. Dein ist Allein die Ehre: Johann Sebastian Bachs geistliche Kantaten erklärt (Yours alone is honor: Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred cantatas explained), Vol. 3, From Easter 1725 (Leipzig, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017; Stretta Music; these handbooks will be discussed in a forthcoming Bach Cantatas Website, Bach Handbooks installment (BCW).
⁹ Ascension Oratorio of 1738: previously listed as premiering in 1735, recent research shows 1738 (Bach Digital), composed in three stages (Facebook: BACH - We Are FAMILY! - Bachfest Leipzig).
¹⁰ B-minor Mass sung by women chorus and soloists in 1986 vs. children in 1968: Harnoncourt, BCW; 1986 liner notes: "on this occasion we used women solinstead of boys [and a mixed choir]. It is, after all, known that Bach did this, even though it was frowned upon, that he was interested in the attractiveness and the difference between a fine boy's voice and a female voice, and that he preferred to have women rather than boys to sing certain works" (Ibid.: 29) where "they also contribute the sensuous flair of adults to the music" and "it is no longer important whether the ideal, historically accurate rendering is by boys' choir or mixed choir" since "a modern boys' choir is not the same as it was in Bach's day."
¹¹ The authoritative study of Bach's sacred music is Martin Petzoldt, Bach Kommentar, Theological and musicological commentary on the sacred vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach (Kassel; Bärenreiter), 4 volumes: 1. The sacred cantatas of the 1st to 27th Trinity Sunday (omnes tempore, 2005), 2. The spiritual cantatas from the 1st Advent to the Feast of Trinity (de tempore, 2007), 3. Festive and causal cantatas, passions (2018, Bärenreiter), 4. Masses, Magnificat, Motets (2019, Bärenreiter). Kommentar, Theological and musicological commentary on the sacred vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach (Kassel; Bärenreiter), 4 volumes: 1. The sacred cantatas of the 1st to 27th Trinity Sunday (omnes tempore, 2005), 2. The spiritual cantatas from the 1st Advent to the Feast of Trinity (de tempore, 2007), 3. Festive and causal cantatas, passions (2018, Bärenriter), 4. Masses, Magnificat, Motets (2019, Bärenriter).

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To come: Rethinking Bach, Bettina Varwig, Part II, Bodies, Chapter 5, "Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard"

Rethinking Bach, Bettina Varwig, Chapter 5, "Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard"

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 13, 2022):
Part II, Bodies, in the new Bach essay collection, Rethinkiing Bach,¹ began with Chapter 4, "Bach and the Soprano Voice", examining Bach's imagination of the bodies/voices of his soprano singers, the dominant voice in his vocal music which constitutes almost half of his canon of extant vocal works, BWV 1-524 (Wikipedia). The next essay, Chapter 5, Bettina Varwig's "Embodied Invention: Bach at the Keyboard" (Ibid.: 115-140), logically and contextually considers Bach's instrumental music, here the keyboard works² (organ and clavier), BWV 525-994, the second largest "body" of Bach music, where the hands take creative and interpretive pride of place over the voice. Dr. Varwig, also the book's editor, nears its mid-point with an iconic exploration of "the material fleshiness of Bach's keyboard practice, discussed in dialogue with recent neurophysiological approaches to human creativity," she says (Ibid.: 3). Varwig in Part I, Histories, had laid the groundwork for this provocative and challenging thematic gathering with her primary interests in Bach scholarship centering on "questions of musical meaning and expression, historical modes of listening, and music’s place in the history of the body, the emotions and the senses" (see BCW). The first three chapters (Ibid.: 11-76) related to 1. Stephen Rose's "Bach and Material Culture," 2. Ellen Exner's cultural reception history essay of "Rethinking 1829," and 3. Yvonne Liao's "Post/Colonial Bach" historical-geographical account of 20th century Bach reception history in Hong Kong. Now, "Crucially, it is not only Bach's body that thereby comes more decisively into view, but also those of his performers, listeners, congregants, surrounding family members and so on, thus situating Bach's own physical existence within a larger assemblage of (gendered) bodies that productively widens the scholarly field of vision," she says (Ibid.: 3).

Bach as Creator-Performer, Goldberg Variations

Where the voice involves a single line of music in melodic expression, the hands on the keyboard entail all manner of complex harmonic, compositional, and stylistic devices in a captivating choreography of motion and gesture. As the premier keyboard virtuoso of his generation, Bach set the gold standard for physically performing repertoire that initially was set apart as the creation of the mind in a dichotomy that only recently, "gratefully embraced by this study (see below) has been much more attuned to the physical dimensions of his music" and to the practitioner . . . who "might find intuitively that the body is central to their conception and execution," she suggests (Ibid.: 115). There is only one detailed description of Bach the creator-performer, in all his grandeur at the Thomas School in Leipzig in the early 1730s, rehearsing a major vocal work from the keyboard, a multi-task activity without seeming parallel: Theory of Music. Varwig focuses (Ibid.: 116) on a "performer-centered mode of analysis" "to embrace the embodied aspects not just of performing but also of listening and, especially, of composing." She offers "an exploratory engagement with questions of invention and embodiment specifically in relation to Bach's keyboard practice, in a manner that establishes a dialogue between early eighteenth century conceptions of bodies, minds, and souls on the one hand, and some recent thinking in embodied cognition and the neuroscience of creativity on the other." Further, "the different keyboard instruments of Bach's time required distinct kinds of physical action, finger placement, agility, strength, and touch, thus linking playing and compositional style directly to bodily activity," she observes (Ibid.: 116f). Considered is "the interface between a keyboard, the fingers that touch it, and the body-souls that produce and/or/receive the sonic signal," she says (Ibid.: 117). Her "primary focus falls on the Goldberg Variations"³ and "the illusive nexus between the mechanical and the spiritual from which this music seems to spring." The sections of her essay that follow are the "Purposive Hands" (Ibid.; 117ff) of Bach the player and teacher, especially in the context of thorough-bass realization (Ibid.: 119); "A Black Key" (Ibid.; 121ff) of constraints from "more uneven keyboard topographies" (121) while seeking "pre-cadential intensification" (123); "Thinking (and) Matter" (Ibid.: 124ff), especially the improvisational process and "muscle memory" (127); "Embodied [Goldberg] Variations" Ibid.: 128ff), "grounded in bodily affordances" (129); and the final "Touching Souls" (Ibid.: 131ff), "the vastly different haptic character of the [Goldberg] variations and the corporeal musical knowledge they carry" (131).

"Purposive Hands," "Black Keys"

Descriptions of Bach at the keyboard are found at the beginning of the first section, "Purposive Hands" in accounts of Bach students Johann Adolph Scheibe and Johann Christian Kittel (Ibid.: 117f). These are followed by the influences on the learned Bach of musical writings, treatises and collections⁴ involving Johann Mattheson, Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Gottfried Walther, Johann Joseph Fux 1725 Gradus ad Parnassum counterpoint treatise, Johann David Heinichen 1728 Generalbass treatise, Bach Clavierbüchlein for Friedemann after 1719 (BCW), Emanuel Bach 1787 Versuch über die Wahre Art das clavier zu spielen, and other keyboard sources.⁵ The keyboard "also affords a multitude of multi-sensory feedback loops for its player, including aural, visual, haptic, kinesthetic, and cognitive feedback, giving rise to complex patterns of what scientists now describe as auditory-motor coupling," says Varwig (Ibid.: 120f). The challenge of chromatic keys in the next section, "A Black Key" (Ibid.: 121ff) relates to thoriginal early modern "constraints" of these chromatic keys in "uneven keyboard typographies," she says (121). Now, "modern performance practice has tended to prioritize smooth, longer lines over local gestural articulation," she says (Ibid.: 122). While a "pre-cadential intensification forms a common strategy in many of Bach's keyboard works," she observes (Ibid.; 123), there is the realization that the first of the Goldberg Variations (YouTube: 5:01) "counteracts this sense of potential ease at both ends of the piece, thereby setting the tone for the whole set as an exploration of the limits of a keyboardist's prowess." she says.

"Thinking (and) Matter," "Embodied Variations"

The next section, "Thinking (and) Matter" (Ibid.: 124ff), focuses on the "ingenious and idiosyncratic" Goldberg Variations, showing that the "Improvisational processes, in particular, have attracted the interest of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, as they seem to allow us too capture the creative act as it unfolds." Psychological creative processes involve spontaneous improvisation, offering "this growing body of insight into the creative process," says Varwig (Ibid.: 125). A key area of influence involves the 18th century "conceptions of 'soul'," that is "the gap that still remains in current scientific analyses between neural activity and conscious experience" that leads to "the finely contoured melodic arch of the opening phrase in the Aria from the Goldberg Variations" (as above, YouTube). Various personal, subjective factors in musical invention are discussed at length (Ibid.: 126-128), including "imagination as one of the faculties of the soul" (126), "closely allied to the movements of the affections" (see Wikipedia), "a valuable source of inspiration" — "mixed motions generated by the intermingling agencies of body, soul, and spirits." "Memory, as the third principal faculty of the soul beside reason and imagination thus has a central role to play in enabling creative activity." Skills of keyboard manual dexterity today are "colloquially referred to" as "muscle memory," she says (Ibid.: 127). The next section, "Embodied Variations," studies the Goldberg Variations 5, 8, 19, and 29 (Ibid. 128-131, YouTube). Among the influential factors are "intermingled agencies" and imitation in Variation 5, "competing automatisms" in Variation 8, three-voice texture in Variation 19, and syncopation in Variation 29.

"Touching Souls"

The concluding section of Chapter 5, "Touching Souls" (Ibid.: 131-135), suggests that embodied analysis can stimulate sensory touch characters "of the variations and the corporeal musical knowledge they carry" (131). Thus, "something as minute as a finger movement potentially emerges as a generative of large-scale features of design and expression. Within the "domain of expression" (Ibid.: 131f) is where "most writers of the time [early modern] would have located the illusive presence of 'soul'." Variation 13 "opens with the standard clavieristic (and vocal) figuration of a groppo" (knot), she says (Ibid.; 132), that initiates a melody creating a "singing effect" which is "fundamentally determined by the quality of touch," the "most fundamental of the five senses," says Varwig (Ibid.: 133), confirmed by Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel and son Emanuel. Early modern writers explored "Four Temperaments" of human personality types (Wikipedia) while contemporary writers sometimes consider the four overarching, sentient faculties or phases of human existence in three parallel categories: places of body, mind, heart, and soul; activities of doing, thinking, feeling, and being; and health categories of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. "When Bach offered up his Goldberg Variations for the 'Gemüths-Ergötzung' [mind's or spirit's delight]⁶ of his fellow keyboardists, this hoped-for effect would have relied on the powers of music to enable a corporeal-spiritual exchange between performer, instrument, sound and(performer-as)listener," she comments (Ibid.: 134). The "delight" is "particularly manifest in the song-like outpouring of melody in Variation 13, when tackled with an appropriately fluid internal state and suppleness of touch." The gigue style in Variation 7 with "its persistent dotted rhythms and sprightly melodic shapes," "could also, through an analogous alchemy of kinesthetic effort, ensouled touch, and affective contagion, set a human heart and spirit literally a-leaping." In conclusion, Varwig argues (Ibid.: 134f) a more "carnal" "musicology of Bach, imagining him and his knowing hands at the clavier, improvising, performing, and creating, can offer an impetus for upending the long-standing tradition of approaching Bach as a bloodless cerebral entity." 'Music, including Bach's music, continually and prolifically unsettles the dualisms of mind and body, idealism and materialism. The fundamental questions about human nature it thereby raises remain tantalizingly unanswered."

ENDNOTES

¹Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), Amazon.com: "Look inside."
² Keyboard music (organ and clavier): Wikipedia, Wikipedia; keyboard topics: Keyboard Music Intro.: Repertory, Development, Reception, BCW.
³ Goldberg Variations, fourth and final published Clavier-Übung (keyboard exercise or practice) of 1741, theme and variations with canons interspersed (see Clavier-Übung I to IV: Keyboard Publications: scroll down to "Clavier-Übung IV: Goldberg Variations," BCW). The Clavier-Übung starting in 1725 was the second of three major keyboard endeavors which began with the earlier pedagogical and compositional Three Köthen Keyboard Collections (1722-23, BCW) involving the Orgel-Büchlein chorale preludes, BWV 599-644; 2. the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) preludes and fugues, Book 1, BWV 846-69; and 3. the Aufrichtige Anleitung (Faithful Guide) book of 15 each sinfonias and inventions, BWV 772-801, and concluding in the 1740s with the WTC Book 2, BWV 870-893, and the "Great 18" organ chorales, BWV 651-668.
⁴ "The Learned Musician" is the subtitle of Christoph Wolff's decisive Bach biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, updated ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), W.W. Norton; select Bach keyboard compositions can be considered as applied, practical examples of treatises, most notably the two manuscript books of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the four published Clavierübung, as well as the publications in the late 1749s of the Musical Offering, BWV 1079; Schübler Chorales, BWV 645-50; and the Canonic Variations on "Von Himmel hoch," BWV 768, and the posthumous publication of the Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 — annual examples of his work for the Mizler scientific society of composers, BCW.
⁵ Other keyboard sources: Varwig cites thoroughbass realization in keyboard chorale-based pedagogy (Ibid.: 119), reference to Derek Remeš (Ibid.: 4) and Works Cited of Remeš (Ibid.: 378; see also Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliography; see also Keyboard Music: Historical Bac, 1600-1750, BCW.
⁶ The four Clavier-Übung publication begins with the inscription Denen Liebhabern zur Gemüths Ergötzung verfertigen (For those who love to make it for the pleasure of their hearts, Google Translate), Wikipedia.

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To come: Rethinking Bach, Chapter 6, Isabella van Elferen, "Rethinking Affect" (New Materialism).

Varwig's <Rethinking Bach>, Chapter 6, van Elferen's "Rethinking Affect"

William L. Hoffman wrote (February 27, 2022):
Part II, Bodies, in the new Bach essay collection, Rethinking Bach,¹ concludes with Chapter 6, Isabella van Elferen,² "Rethinking Affect," an interdisciplinary reexamination of the Doctrine of the Affections in German Baroque music, called Affektenlehre (affect theory), "to replace the discredited twentieth century myth of Affektenlehre with an approach to affect that is simultaneously more in tune with Baroque thinking that takes inspiration from the vast body of contemporary scholarship on affect," says van Elferen. Now, it is "musical affect as a corporeal-material force," says Bettina Varwig, editor of Rethinking Bach in her Introduction, "(Still) Talking about Bach" (Ibid.: 3). Van Elferen addresses the "Doctrine of the Affections" (Wikipedia) with "musical affect as a new perspective on what musicology has tended to isolate historically under the umbrella of German baroque rhetoric" (Ibid.; 141).³ The first section, "Affektenlehre" (Ibid.: 141-45), seeks to "sketch a historiography of hermeneutic views" as originally promulgated at the beginning of the 20th century by German musicologists. "I investigate the ways" they "developed views on affect in German Baroque music, the relation of these views to the historical situation, and their role in Bach studies." These are discussed in the succeeding sections: "Rethinking the Doctrine" (Ibid.: 145-52), 'The Affective Turn" (Ibid.: 152-54), "Toward an affective Turn in Bach Studies" (Ibid.: 155-57; and "The Vital Fold of Musical Affect" (Ibid.: 157-161). Says van Elferen (Ibid.: 141); "Taking into account early modern affect theories as well as modern philosophies of affect based upon them, the final paragraphs aim to achieve an understanding of affect that is more in line with contemporary musical practice and theory. The chapter proposes an approach to affect in German Baroque music, and Bach's music in particular, that takes into account the ways in which affect was (and is) material rather than cerebral, spontaneous rather than mimetic, unpredictable and changeable rather than representational and decodable." "The aim of Baroque musical rhetoric was movere, which meant that music ought to move the human affects."

Affektenlehre Pioneers

She begins by deconstructing the challenges of Affektenlehre, outlining the pioneering efforts of German musicologists Hermann Kretzschmar and Arnold Schering in essays on affect, then the recent studies of Rolf Dammann and Dietrich Bartel on Baroque musical rhetoric, as well as treatises on the "links between music, rhetoric, and affect" from Michael Praetorius to Johann Mattheson, examining stylized affects,⁴ says van Elferen (Ibid.: 142). Historical musicology considers affect "as a stylized aesthetic concept offering of musical representation of human emotion." The original Baroque concept of affect she finds very literal, exclusive, and simplistic with few corporeal manifestations, particularly when old treatises are examined by contemporary musicologists from a pervasive hermeneutics perspective. She cites (Ibid.: 143f) the sorrow of the closing chorus, "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder" (We sit down with tears), from the St. Matthew Passion and the joyous "Sanctus" from the B-Minor Mass.⁵ Because van Elferen finds a "dichotomy between the strict determinism of hermeneutics and the complete relativism of individual variance," she s considers "a history of Affeketenlehre with the aim of achieving an approach to affect that can lead us out of this dichotomy" (Ibid.: 145).

Rethinking the Doctrine (of the Affections)

In the next section, "Rethinking the Doctrine" (Ibid.: 145ff), van Elferen finds that the term Affeketenlehre "was not widely used in the Baroque" and that the romantic Wagnerian perspective of emotive significance directly (Ibid.: 146f) influenced the Affeketenlehre pursuit at the beginning of the 20th century. She resurrects the treatises of Bach contemporaries Mattheson and Johann David Heinichen "as evidence of the prevalence of affects in Baroque music" subsequently transformed "to music as a form of mimesis and representation, and from early twentieth-century music education to analytical methodology." She examines the work of Kretzschmar (Ibid.: 145-47), Schering and Gotthold Fritscher (1926) (Ibid.: 147) as well as the later work between 1950 and 2000 of "(i)nfluential scholars" Dammann and Bartel plus Renate Steiger, Arnold Schmitz, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, and Arno Forchert, who found "more sources from the German Baroque, studied period rhetoric and composition, and demonstrated that Figuren and Affekte were intricately connected to the rhetorical aims of persuasiveness and movere" (147). 'The focus of this hermeneutics was often the music of Bach, in whose works the Affektenlehre was considered to have reached its zenith" (148). Steiger coined the term "hermeneutics plus" to show "those moments in which Bach's music exceeded textual expression," shows van Elferen (Ibid.: 148), "that music in those cases simply "does what the text means." She then finds that "The hermeneutic approach to Baroque musical affect, which culminated in the notion of a fixed Affektenlehre, has met with criticism⁶ since the early twentieth century, citing Fritz Stege, Peter Hoyt, and especially Roger Grant, George J. Buelow, and Daniel Chua (148f). "And while they acknowledge that 'music cannot be held down to a fixed meaning'," says van Elferen (Ibid.: 149), "Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess⁷ search for 'enduring truths of human emotion that can . . . approach the original meanings' of Bach cantatas." The Baroque treatises are lacking substantial "lists of codified emotions," and "can be summed up in a disenchantingly short space," she finds. She cites (Ibid.: 150), the noted work of Athanasius Kircher, Joachim Burmeister, Johann Gottfried Walther, Wolfgang Caspar Prinz, Andreas Herbst, and Andreas Werckmeister, finding few mentions of "enumerations of musical affects," "lopi topici" (Thoughts Co.), "rhetorical figures," and other pertinent musical descriptions.⁸ Van Elferen finds that "there was no doctrine of the affections" and it "simply did not exist in the Baroque." After reviewing the various meanings of the suffix -Lehre, van Elferen concludes (Ibid.: 151): "Kretzschmar's term Affektenlehre would thus more adequately have been translated "collected knowledge pertaining to the affections" rather than "doctrine pertaining to the affections." She concludes the section, "Rethinking the Doctrine": the conception of musical affect that underpins" the mythical 20th century doctrine of affections is arguably flawed." Thus, the next section, "The Affective Turn" (Ibid.: 152-54), looks at "notions of affect" current in the Baroque which regained interest in the 20th century, "outlining the ways in which these notions may help adjust the musicological understanding of affect as coded emotional representation," she says (Ibid.: 152).

The Affective Turn

Although affect "was firmly grounded" in German Baroque philosophical thought, says van Elferen (Ibid.: 152), it "is strikingly different from that used" by 20th century proponents of the Affektenlehre. Instead of a cognitive cerebral phenomenon, affect was perceived as the physical action of the mind and body, "connected by perceptions of the senses, which sent vibrations to the soul through the fluids in the body and the nerves," treaching back to the Greeks and related to the four temperaments or humors (Wikipedia), "a mechanistic view." Thus, affect was not an isolated, static state but a distinction, citing Spinoza's 1677 Ethics,⁹ between affection (affectio) and affect (affectus) as fluid actions. Further, emotion had just one in a range of manifestations and in many writings, affect "was not considered universal" among people and activities. "Emotion as one form of affect was far from unified." Now, citing Brian Massumi's 1995 article, "The Autonomy of Affect," van Elferen (153) and the 20th century's "affective turn" in the humanities, she goes on to suggest "that affect should be seen as an emergent potential or property that connects bodies and minds with broader networks of agencies and events," both interior and exterior to the human body. Affect conflates the body to the world around it, creating "networks of connected [affective] events," she says, citing Jane Bennet's 2010 Vibrant Matter, which "explores agency across the boundaries separating body, and mind, life and matter." She finds (Ibid.: 154) distinctions between Baroque definitions of affect and traditional affect in historical musicology: Affect is corporeal and mental, not static but fluid, not predictable but changeable, not restricted to emotion and humans; "therefore affect cannot be coded as the representation of human emotions." She advocates restoring to Baroque affect its "disturbing, unpredictable, distributed agency." In the final two sections, "Towards an Affective Turn in Bach Studies" (Ibid.: 155-57) and "The Vital Fold of Musical Affect" (Ibid.: 157-61), "I will study the ways in which Baroque affect philosophy was negotiated in Baroque music theory, and subsequently explore the ways in which contemporary affect theory can enhance historical musicology."

Towards an Affective Turn in Bach Studies

The penultimate section, "Towards an Affective Turn in Bach Studies," examines the Baroque era concept of affect as a "lively material event," beyond stylized emotions, says van Elferen (Ibid.; 155) with the corporeal dimensions of music "embedded in mechanistic conceptions" and "especially apparent in the affective movements stirred by musical experience." These musical affections "were described in [early modern] contemporary medical, musical, and devotional literature as simultaneously corporeal and mental, leading to a very different approach to understanding how Bach's music affected his congregational listeners," she says, citing a recent article by Bettina Varwig.¹⁰ Van Elferen again cites (Ibid.: 156) pertinent treatises (Ibid.: 150) and Spinoza (Ibid.: 152-54), as well as the Four Temperaments where Kircher and Johann Kuhnau (Bach's Leipzig predecessor) showed that "no two listeners are the same," "each temperament lead to different affective responses to music," and are unpredictable.¹¹ "The affective turn that galvanized early modern affect theory for cultural research is beginning to be explored in musical terms," she observes, citing Marie Thompson and Ian Biddle's 2013 essay collection, Music, Sound, Affect.¹² The essays, says van Elferen (Ibid.: 156) "explore the affective registers of sonic experience through the musical shaping of physical, psychological, aesthetic, social and political motion." She discusses musicology's struggle with "romantic notions of musical autonomy and the extra-musical" (Ibid.: 157).

The Vital Fold of Musical Affect

in the final section, Jane Bennett's "vital materialist affect philosophy holds an exciting potential for musicology and for our approaches to the music of Bach in particular," van Elferen says. She brings to bare context of vital materialism in German Baroque music, discussing the Johann Adolph Scheibe (BCW) dedication poem for Mattheson's Capellmeister.. "Music of the German Baroque, of course, wallows in the strongest of effective encounters," says van Elferen (Ibid.: 159), citing the chorus "Sind Blitze, Sind Donner" from the St. Matthew Passion (YouTube). The music impacts the senses as well as the listener's body, "and that experience can lead to visual, emotional, and mnemonic imaginations related to storms, violence, or Passion theology alike," she says. She proceeds to discuss a philosophy of intensity based on the work of philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, reliant on "the ongoing motion of Baroque forms," interpreted as an amalgam of thinking, aesthetics and metaphor, based on Gilles Deleuze's The Fold: Leibnitz, and the Baroque.¹² "The Baroque endlessly produces folds" and "the Baroque fold unfurls all the way to infinity" and she observes: "This perpetual organic folding of lines, in Baroque arts and thinking alike, is vibrant, vital, and affective." Deleuze's "conception of the Baroque, we would argue, turns the vital motion of counterpoint into the musical form of the fugue," she says (Ibid.; 160f), where "polyphony is perpetually folding, unfolding, and refolding, leading to countless affective encounters." Her proposal is "to replace the discredited twentieth-century myth of the Affektenlehre with an approach to affect" (160) that is both "more in tune with Baroque thinking and that takes inspiration from the vast body of contemporary scholarship on affect," paying "closer attention to the many corporeal, imaginative, and unexpected aspects of the music of Bach and his contemporaries" involving rhythm, "aesthetic intensities," "and to the articulation of a discourse that addresses" both the vague and the immediate. Avoiding the discernment of representational meanings, the listening "can experience all manner of things heard and unheard." "Performing or hearing Bach can become an experience of being corporeally and spiritually affected by the singularity of the vibrant musical events he created. We cannot predict or control these affections: precisely this ungraspable, emergent quality is arguably the joy of listening to music" in a musical assemblage of Bach and us as "co-creators of affect" in "the vital folds of Bach's music."

Post Script: 20th Century Theatrical Affect

The related 20th century's experience with theatrical affect in acting is examined in Isaac Butler's The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (Bloomsbury, 2022; Amazon.com), reviewed by Alexandra Schwartz, "What's My Motivation," in The New Yorker, Feb. 7, 2022: 60-65), NewYorer. In 1931, director Lee Strasberg "conducted Stanislavski-style improvisations to help actors feels their way organically through a scene's action, and he taught exercises related to two kinds of memory: sense and affective," says Schwartz (65). Sense memory is related to concepts such as corporeal "muscle memory" (see also BCW: "Rethinking Bach, Bettina Varwig, Chapter 5, "Embodied Invention; Bach at the Keyboard," paragraph "Thinking (and) Matter," "Embodied Variations") and "body language." "Affective, or emotional, memory is trickier. Stanislavsi was convinced that people form emotional impressions as well as physical ones; the task, for actors, was figuring out how to conjure up specific feelings on command." "Strasberg had been taught to take note of his feelings, as they spontaneously arose, then to associate them with a stimulus from the past — a trigger." While the acting "Method" techniques widely varied among so-called practitioners (65) such as plumbing inner depth (Strasberg) or a "kind of imagination (Stella Adler), "The old method was about paring back, stripping down. In the new method, more is more," says Schwartz, who concludes: "Acting changes, and so do actors; so drealism."

ENDNOTES

¹Rethinking Bach, ed. Bettina Varwig (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), Amazon.com: "Look inside."
² Isabella van Elferen]: brief biography, Amazon.com: "Look inside": xiv; Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliography. Van Elferen's major contribution to Bach studies is Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology, Poetry, Music, Contextual Bach Studies No 2, ed. Robin A. Leaver (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), Amazon.com, see BCW: "Unio Mystica, Bach"; in her Chapter 6 essay (Ibid.: 141) van Elferen cites this book's Chapter 3 (71-81), "Affective Expression in Poetry and Music," which is an effective introduction to the topic.
³ The concept of a single emotion (affect) in music came from arias in Baroque opera seria, notably the genre of rage arias (Wikipedia) such as "Why do the nations" in Handel's Messiah (YoiuTube); a sub-genre is the "mock rage" aria, such as "Rase nur, verwegner Schwarm" (Rage on, presumptuous swarm), in Bach's profane congratulatory serenade, BW 215 of 1734, set as a da-capo satirical song against the Saxon King's detractors in a sprightly 3/8 bourrée (BCW); also, the sorrowful modified da-capo aria, "Es ist vollbracht!" (It is accomplished!), at Jesus death in the St. John Passion has a contrasting middle "B" section emphasizing the triumph of the Johannine Christus Victor, "Der Held aus Juda siegt mit Macht" (The hero from Judah triumphs in his might), ref. YouTube.
⁴ A recent study of one-affect theory is Robin A. Leaver's Chapter 5."Bach and the Cantata Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century," in Bach Studies: Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology (Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2021); Amazon.com; discussions, BCW BCW; paragraphs "Cantatas Libretto Disputes" and "Rhetoric To Move Emotions."
⁵ Stylized affects were traced back to Greek writers and part of the process could involve the four temperaments or humors (Wikipedia) with variant perspectives and applications.
⁶ Affektenlehre criticism is found in the Bach Bibliography listing under "Affektenlehre," Bach-Bibliography.
⁷ See Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess, The Pathetick Musician: Moving an Audience in the Age of Eloquence (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2016), Amazon.com: "Look inside," and Oxford University Press. David Kjar's review of The Pathetick Musician, "A Revival for Bach Revivalists" in Bach Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Vol. 49, No. 2 (2018), pp. 425-428), Jstor, finds the study of rhetorical devices in select recordings of Bach's vocal works yields "a growing reception history of mid- to late-twentieth-century 'early musicking,' rich in firsthand narratives and preserved soundscapes." "The interpretive endeavor will certainly resonate with early music performers and listeners who strive on a daily basis to reimagine music silenced long ago" (428).
⁸ Van Elferen also cites early composer-theorist Christoph Bernhardt (BCW), whose major work, Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schützens in der Fassung seines Schülers Christoph Bernhard (The Composition Theory of Heinrich Schütz in the Version of his Pupil Christoph Bernhard), ed. Joseph Maria Müller-Blattau (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1926), is available at Bärenreiter, Bärenreiter.
⁹ On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Ethics, Correspondence, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (new York : Dover, 1955); "The Autonomy of Affect," Cultural Critique 31 (1995: 83-109); Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham NC; Duke University Press, 2010.
¹⁰ Bettina Varwig, "Heartfelt Musicking: The Physiology of a Bach Cantata," in Representations 143 (2018: 35-62), University of Cambridge; Abstract: "This essay proposes a somatic archaeology of German Lutheran music making around 1700. Focusing on a single cantata [BWV 199] by Johann Sebastian Bach, it sets out to reconstruct the capacities of early modern body-souls for musical reverberation, affective contagion, and spiritual transformation." Varwig's Bach Bibliography (Bach-Bibliography), also in Rethinking Bach, Works Cited (Ibid.: 383) are articles on Bach's Passions, Cantata 82, and related topics. Recent scholarship has accepted music's plural application as "musics" and musical activity as "musicking."
¹¹ One-affect theory, its Lutheran origins, and use in Bach's time is studied in Robin A. Leaver, "Bach and the Cantata Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century," in Bach Studies: Liturgy, Hymnology, and Theology (Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2021), Amazon.com; see critique (BCW), paragraphs "Cantatas Libretto Disputes" and "Rhetoric To Move Emotions."
¹² Marie Thompson and Ian Biddle, "Introduction: Somewhere between the Signifying and the Sublime," in Music, Sound, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience, eds. Thompson & Biddle (London: Bloomsbury: 2013: 6), Amazon.com; "Look inside."
¹³ Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibnitz, and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (London: Continuum, 1993: 3), Amazon.com: "Look inside"; University of Minnesota Press.

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To come: Rethinking Bach, Part III, Meanings; Chapter 7, Jeremy Begbie, "Bach and Theology"

Continue on Part 2