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This book employs transformational theory to illuminate the experience of tonal music. In addition to providing an accessible primer on transformational theory, the book introduces new theoretical constructs to model familiar tonal effects. Two effects are central: the infusion of sounding pitches with tonal qualities (or qualia) and the orientation of pitches toward a tonic. Tonal qualities are modeled via a Generalized Interval System (or GIS), while tonic directedness is modeled by oriented transformational networks. The arrows in such networks animate a special class of transformational action called tonal intention—the directing of the listener's awareness toward a tonal center. The book divides into two parts. Part I addresses theoretical and methodological issues, while Part II comprises four extended analytical chapters. The analytical chapters explore the E-major Fugue from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier; the aria “Un’aura amorosa” from Mozart's Così fan tutte; Brahms's A-major Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 2; and the slow movement from Brahms's String Quintet, op. 111. Analytical vignettes are present throughout Part I as well, demonstrating the efficacy of the book's theoretical ideas in music from Bach to Mahler. The analyses place the book's novel technologies in dialogue with existing methods for tonal analysis, including Schenkerian theory and neo-Riemannian theory.

Johann Sebastian Bach's two surviving passions—St. John and St. Matthew—are an essential part of the modern repertory, performed regularly both by professional ensembles and amateur groups. These large, complex pieces are well-loved; but because of our distance from the original context in which they were performed, questions and problems emerge. Bach wrote the passions for a particular liturgical event at a specific time and place; we hear them hundreds of years later, often a world away and usually in concert performances. They were performed with vocal and instrumental forces deployed according to early 18th century conceptions; we usually hear them now as the pinnacle of the choral/orchestral repertory, adapted to modern forces and conventions. In Bach's time, passion settings were revised, altered, and tampered with both by their composers and by other musicians who used them. Today, we tend to regard them as having fixed texts, to be treated with respect. Their music was sometimes recycled from other compositions, or reused itself for other purposes. We have trouble imagining the familiar material of Bach's passion settings in any other guise. We can learn about these issues by exploring the sources that transmit Bach's passion settings today, performance practice (including the question of the size of Bach's ensemble), delving into the passions as dramatic music, examining the problem of multiple versions of a work and the reconstruction of lost pieces, exploring the other passions in Bach's performing repertory, and sifting through the puzzle of authorship.

The structural and stylistic features of Johann Sebastian Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the history of these works, are the focus of this book. Historical topics include Bach as a violinist, the autograph score of the work, the published editions, and the history of performance traditions. Eighteenth-century notions of thoroughbass, harmony, keys, counterpoint, cadences, and rhetoric are the basis of Bach's music, from point-to-point musical continuity to the shape of the construction of movements. A general principle underlying all Bach's music is the heightening of activity as musical materials succeed one another and return in more elaborate guises. The solo-violin works are related to Bach's compositions in other genres and differentiated from music by later composers. This leads to thoughts on performing these works so as to bring to life these 18th-century features, while making the music alive in our own time.

This volume investigates topics surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach and his five musically gifted sons. Robert Marshall takes on a deeply psychological perspective by examining how each of the Bach sons personally dealt with Sebastian’s imposing legacy. Mary Oleskiewicz investigates the Bach family’s connections to historical keyboard instruments and musical venues at the Prussian court of Frederick “the Great.” David Schulenberg argues that Emanuel Bach’s most significant contribution to European music is the large and diverse body of keyboard music he composed for harpsichord, fortepiano, organ and the clavichord. Evan Cortens’s chapter takes a detailed view of Emanuel Bach’s singers, vocal performance materials, and pay records in Hamburg and concludes that, as in most other parts of Germany at that time, one singer per part was the norm for Emanuel’s liturgical music after 1767. Finally, Christine Blanken’s essay continues research into Breitkopf’s publishing firm. Her discovery of unknown manuscripts by several members of the Bach family demonstrates much about what we can still learn about musical transmission, performance practice, and concert life in Bach’s Leipzig.

This work is a comprehensive guide to the resources and materials of Bach scholarship, both for students beginning work in the enormous literature on J. S. Bach, and for the Bach specialist looking for a convenient and up-to-date survey of the field. Covering a broad range of both primary and secondary sources, the book describes the principal tools of Bach research and how to use them. With clear descriptions and explanations, the multiple bibliographies and tables help students and instructors to quickly find the most appropriate sources on Bach’s life, his repertory, approaches to his music, and many other topics. Additionally, this volume provides insights into potentially confusing sources, and detailed information on the technical topics important to all Bach scholars.

Although Mendelssohn was most famous during his lifetime as a composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor, he also enjoyed an enviable reputation as a highly skilled organist. The instrument had fascinated — one might almost say mesmerized — him from earliest youth, but aside from a year or so of formal training at the age of about 12 or 13, he was entirely self-taught. He never held a position as church organist, and never had any organ pupils. Nevertheless, the instrument played a uniquely important role in his personal life. In the course of his many travels, whether in major cities or tiny villages, he invariably gravitated to the organ loft, where he might spend hours playing the works of Bach or simply improvising. Although the piano clearly served Mendelssohn as an eminently practical instrument, the organ seems to have been his instrument of choice. He searched out an organ loft, not because he had to, but because he wanted to, because on the organ he could find catharsis. Indeed, as he once exclaimed to his parents after reading a portion of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, “I must rush off to the monastery and work off my excitement on the organ!” Mendelssohn's public performance on the organ in Germany was rare, and he gave but one public recital: in the Thomas-Kirche in Leipzig in 1840. In England, however, he evidently felt more comfortable on the organ bench and played there often before large crowds. Indeed, he performed as Guest Organist twice at the Birmingham Music Festivals in 1837 and 1842. Given Mendelssohn's profound affinity for the organ, it is remarkable that he composed but relatively little for the instrument, and assigned an Opus number to only two works: his Three Preludes and Fugues for Organ (Op. 37) and his Six Sonatas for the Organ (Op. 65). A small number of organ works, plus sketches and drafts, were scattered among his musical papers; most of these only gradually found their way into print, and it was not until the late 20th century that an edition of his complete organ works was finally published. This volume is intended as a companion to that edition.