- Hardcover: 984 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford; Bilingual edition (9 Jun 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0198167075
- ISBN-13: 978-0198167075
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.4 x 5.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,675,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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For students studying Bach's cantatas, this book is the best reading material currently available. This is a book that every university library must have on its shelf. (Bach Bibliography Book Review )
Product Description
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. In this edition all the cantata librettos are given in German-English parallel text. The most recent (sixth) German edition appeared in 1995. For the English edition the text has been carefully revised to bring it up to date, taking account of Bach scholarship since that date.
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The cantata occupies a prominent position among the musical genres of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The cantata occupies a prominent position among the musical genres of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
...such as myself. Yes, yes, I know, it's bloomin' expensive for a paperback, but what a paperback! An essential companion to one of the greatest bodies of music ever written. Professor Dürr describes the cantatas in church year order, so first up is Advent cantata BWV61 "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" for the first Sunday in Advent. In addition to the church cantatas, you also get the secular cantatas and the Christmas Oratorio, not to mention detailed historical and musical descriptions. In short, a treasure trove of a book
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is an extremely thorough reference book covering all the cantatas (sacred or otherwise) of JS Bach. The book contains a very interesting introduction covering mostly historical issues (including the difficult questions of the arrangement of the church cantatas into 5 supposed cycles, and how much of each cycle survives), and issues of performance practice. Its format, with respect to the church cantatas, is then to follow the liturgical year, and then for each Sunday/feast day deal with each cantata in chronolgical order before moving onto the next Sunday. The secular cantatas are treated in analogous fashion.
This is the general organisational scheme. For each cantata Professor Durr then provides the full German text, with an English translation (with hymn quotations very usefully highlighted), details of key, time signature, and some details of orchestration. A discussion section then follows, giving the performance history of the work, and also detailed information about biblical references and allusions. There is then a fairly detailed description of the music, movement by movement, including a limited discussion of the thorny topic of musical symbolism. For a very small minority of cantatas, a rather more detailed description is included.
Clearly an enormous amount of factual information is contained in this book, which probably distills a vast amount of research. It can be seen from the description above that Durr is immensely thorough in his approach, and, even with the slightly limited discussion of the music, the book still weighs in at well over 900 pages! The book seems to me particularly strong on chronology (Durr is a ground-breaking researcher in this area), musical structure, and also biblical references and allusions. I think a Bach-lover who is a committed Christian (a category into which I do not fall) might well, inter alia, find this book a very useful aid to devotion.
The main reservations I have are as follows:
1. Professor Durr does not seem to me to be very successful in conveying the character of the music (although he tries to do so), or in justifying his value judgments of the music's qualiity (or otherwise)- and there are a fair number of value judgments in the book. For me this is a very important aspect. I suppose this can to some extent be explained by the fact that he is a musicologist, as opposed to a professional musician.
2. Speaking strictly from the standpoint of a music-lover who is attempting to collect the complete cantatas on CD, I find that the liner notes of the series I am collecting (Suzuki and Gardiner) already cover most of the areas covered by Durr (although usually less thoroughly on the three particular areas I highlight above). So there is a substantial amount of overlap. I would add that John Eliot Gardiner is particularly sucessful on the area where Professor Durr is weakest (see paragraph 1 above), and the Suzuki writer is at least as good as Durr on decribing the music. So I would question whether this book really is "essential", at least from the above standpoint. I also don't think this book would be of interest to a CD collector who is only collecting a few of the cantatas.
This is the general organisational scheme. For each cantata Professor Durr then provides the full German text, with an English translation (with hymn quotations very usefully highlighted), details of key, time signature, and some details of orchestration. A discussion section then follows, giving the performance history of the work, and also detailed information about biblical references and allusions. There is then a fairly detailed description of the music, movement by movement, including a limited discussion of the thorny topic of musical symbolism. For a very small minority of cantatas, a rather more detailed description is included.
Clearly an enormous amount of factual information is contained in this book, which probably distills a vast amount of research. It can be seen from the description above that Durr is immensely thorough in his approach, and, even with the slightly limited discussion of the music, the book still weighs in at well over 900 pages! The book seems to me particularly strong on chronology (Durr is a ground-breaking researcher in this area), musical structure, and also biblical references and allusions. I think a Bach-lover who is a committed Christian (a category into which I do not fall) might well, inter alia, find this book a very useful aid to devotion.
The main reservations I have are as follows:
1. Professor Durr does not seem to me to be very successful in conveying the character of the music (although he tries to do so), or in justifying his value judgments of the music's qualiity (or otherwise)- and there are a fair number of value judgments in the book. For me this is a very important aspect. I suppose this can to some extent be explained by the fact that he is a musicologist, as opposed to a professional musician.
2. Speaking strictly from the standpoint of a music-lover who is attempting to collect the complete cantatas on CD, I find that the liner notes of the series I am collecting (Suzuki and Gardiner) already cover most of the areas covered by Durr (although usually less thoroughly on the three particular areas I highlight above). So there is a substantial amount of overlap. I would add that John Eliot Gardiner is particularly sucessful on the area where Professor Durr is weakest (see paragraph 1 above), and the Suzuki writer is at least as good as Durr on decribing the music. So I would question whether this book really is "essential", at least from the above standpoint. I also don't think this book would be of interest to a CD collector who is only collecting a few of the cantatas.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
An indispensable handbook of J.S. Bach's cantatas
6 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
There are a few books on J.S. Bach's cantatas for the general readership.(*) However, none rivals Alfred Dürr's in its comprehensive coverage, its scholarly information, its lucid writing, and its user-friendly layout. For those who are familiar with Bach scholarship, Dürr needs no introduction. He led the editing work of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, the new complete edition of Bach's works, and his credential on Bach scholarship is never a question. What one wants to know is whether he succeeded in producing a useful book. In my opinion, he more than did it! This massive volume, nearly 1000 pages in length, has added tremendously to my listening pleasure and deepen my understanding of Bach's cantatas. In a word, indispensable for me and, I think, for anyone enjoying Bach's cantatas. This is especially true with the recent releases of Bach box-sets which contain almost no information about the works.
This book is organized in 3 parts. Part 1, Introduction to Bach's Cantatas, includes a history of the genre before Bach, a chronological survey of the cantatas, and a 6-page discussion on performance practice. This covers the first 71 pages of the book. Part 2, Church Cantatas, and Part 3, Secular Cantatas, cover all Bach's cantatas. For each cantata, Dürr includes libretto in German-English parallel text (translated by Jones), estimated time,(**) instrumentation, a history of the work, and descriptions of each movement. The time signatures and keys are indicated on the upper-right corner of the texts. Many descriptions receive music examples integrated in the text.
There are 3 way to find a cantata. Dürr chose to organize the works according to the practical purposes for which they are written. The church cantatas, which constitute the majority, are ordered by their place in the liturgical calendar, and the secular cantatas by the types of occasion or venues for which they were written. The other 2 ways to find a cantatas is by the alphabetical order (of the beginning text) and by BWV numbers, which form 2 indexes at the end of the book.
Also included are: a table of abbreviation in the beginning, an extensive bibliography and a glossary of term at the end of the book.
This book is not meant to be at the cutting-edge of the Bach scholarship. There are other more specialized, more scholarly updated books on Bach's cantatas, notably Eric Chafe's Analyzing Bach Cantatas. However, for the general readership, nothing approaches this book in its comprehensiveness, depth, lucidity, and usefulness. It is a bargain even at the current price.(***)
Most highly recommended.
----------------------
(*) 1. Gillies Whittaker: The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach (Oxford, 1959).
2. Richard Stokes: J. S. Bach: The Complete Cantatas.
[1 & 2 both treat every Bach's cantata then known.]
3. Alec Robertson: The Church Cantatas of J. S. Bach (New York, 1972).
4. Charles Terry: J. S. Bach Cantata Texts, Sacred and Secular (London, 1926).
5. Melvin Unger: Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts: An Interlinear Translation with Reference Guide to Biblical Quotations and Allusions (Lanham, Md., 1996).
6. Murray Young: The Cantatas of J. S. Bach: An Analytical Guide (London, 1989)
(**) Estimate time is usually on the slow side. My conjecture is that this was the performance practice at the time of publication of the first (German) edition (1971).
(***) Buying tips: Oxford University Press' monographs on music tend to be more expensive in the U.S.. For this book, as well as Chafe's, the budget-conscious readers are advised to check out book vendors in the UK, e.g. Amazon's UK site.
This book is organized in 3 parts. Part 1, Introduction to Bach's Cantatas, includes a history of the genre before Bach, a chronological survey of the cantatas, and a 6-page discussion on performance practice. This covers the first 71 pages of the book. Part 2, Church Cantatas, and Part 3, Secular Cantatas, cover all Bach's cantatas. For each cantata, Dürr includes libretto in German-English parallel text (translated by Jones), estimated time,(**) instrumentation, a history of the work, and descriptions of each movement. The time signatures and keys are indicated on the upper-right corner of the texts. Many descriptions receive music examples integrated in the text.
There are 3 way to find a cantata. Dürr chose to organize the works according to the practical purposes for which they are written. The church cantatas, which constitute the majority, are ordered by their place in the liturgical calendar, and the secular cantatas by the types of occasion or venues for which they were written. The other 2 ways to find a cantatas is by the alphabetical order (of the beginning text) and by BWV numbers, which form 2 indexes at the end of the book.
Also included are: a table of abbreviation in the beginning, an extensive bibliography and a glossary of term at the end of the book.
This book is not meant to be at the cutting-edge of the Bach scholarship. There are other more specialized, more scholarly updated books on Bach's cantatas, notably Eric Chafe's Analyzing Bach Cantatas. However, for the general readership, nothing approaches this book in its comprehensiveness, depth, lucidity, and usefulness. It is a bargain even at the current price.(***)
Most highly recommended.
----------------------
(*) 1. Gillies Whittaker: The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach (Oxford, 1959).
2. Richard Stokes: J. S. Bach: The Complete Cantatas.
[1 & 2 both treat every Bach's cantata then known.]
3. Alec Robertson: The Church Cantatas of J. S. Bach (New York, 1972).
4. Charles Terry: J. S. Bach Cantata Texts, Sacred and Secular (London, 1926).
5. Melvin Unger: Handbook to Bach's Sacred Cantata Texts: An Interlinear Translation with Reference Guide to Biblical Quotations and Allusions (Lanham, Md., 1996).
6. Murray Young: The Cantatas of J. S. Bach: An Analytical Guide (London, 1989)
(**) Estimate time is usually on the slow side. My conjecture is that this was the performance practice at the time of publication of the first (German) edition (1971).
(***) Buying tips: Oxford University Press' monographs on music tend to be more expensive in the U.S.. For this book, as well as Chafe's, the budget-conscious readers are advised to check out book vendors in the UK, e.g. Amazon's UK site.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Essential resource for sacred musicians, Bach scholars
12 Dec 2007
Format:Paperback
Alfred Durr, co-editor of the Neue Bach Ausgabe, shares his wealth of knowledge of this vastly varied and enormously rich repertoire in this large, expensive, but excellent book.
The first section of the book traces the development of the sacred cantata as a genre through 1750. Durr here defines important terms and places Bach's works in historical context.
The bulk of the text is a presentation of the cantatas in the order of the liturgical calendar. For each cantata Durr provides the text, its English translation, and the circumstances surrounding the piece's composition. He also offers analyses/descriptions which vary from half a page for some of the briefer, simpler works, to ten pages for works of particular depth (BWV 106 comes to mind).
This book is an invaluable resource to Bach scholars, singers, and conductors. Also consider Melvin Unger's book on Bach's Cantata Texts for an intertextual look at Bach as theologian.
BMN
The first section of the book traces the development of the sacred cantata as a genre through 1750. Durr here defines important terms and places Bach's works in historical context.
The bulk of the text is a presentation of the cantatas in the order of the liturgical calendar. For each cantata Durr provides the text, its English translation, and the circumstances surrounding the piece's composition. He also offers analyses/descriptions which vary from half a page for some of the briefer, simpler works, to ten pages for works of particular depth (BWV 106 comes to mind).
This book is an invaluable resource to Bach scholars, singers, and conductors. Also consider Melvin Unger's book on Bach's Cantata Texts for an intertextual look at Bach as theologian.
BMN
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Costly but useful
9 May 2006
Format:Hardcover
This is a very expensive, but wonderfully useful book. It gives the libretto to every single cantata plus information on the liturgical occasion for the cantata and a good, albeit brief discussion of the meaning of the piecel I quailed when I first bought it, because it is expensive. But it is my vade mecum. I use it constantly.
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