Eric Chafe

Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach collects seventeen essays by leading Bach scholars. The authors each address in some way such questions of meaning in J. S. Bach's vocal compositions--including his Passions, Masses, Magnificat, and cantatas--with particular attention to how such meaning arises out of the intentionality of Bach's own compositional choices or (in Part IV in particular) how meaning is discovered, and created, through the reception of Bach's vocal works. And the authors do not consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss Bach's artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural trends--social, historical, theological, musical, etc. The chapters in this volume thus reflect the breadth of current Bach research in its attention not only to source study and analysis, but also to meanings and contexts for understanding Bach's compositions.

In 1714, the 29 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach was promoted to the position of concertmaster at the ducal court of Weimar. This post required him for the first time in his already established career to produce a regular stream of church cantatas-one cantata every four weeks. Among the most significant works of this period is Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis in meinem Herzen (Cantata 21). Generally known in English as "I had much affliction," Cantata 21 draws from several psalms and the Book of Revelations and offers a depiction of the spiritual ascent of the soul from intense tribulation to joy and exaltation. Although widely performed and loved by musicians, Cantata 21 has endured much criticism from scholars and critics who claim that the piece lacks organizational clarity and stylistic coherence. In Tears into Wine, renowned Bach scholar Eric Chafe challenges the scholarly consensus, arguing that Cantata 21 is an exceptionally carefully designed work, and that it displays a convergence of musical structure and theological purpose that is paradigmatic of Bach's sacred work as a whole. Drawing on a wide range of Lutheran theological writing, Chafe shows that Cantata 21 reaches beyond the scope of the individual liturgical occasion to voice a breadth of meaning that encompasses much of the core of Lutheran thought. Chafe artfully demonstrates that instead of simply presenting a musical depiction of the soul's journey from sorrow to bliss, Cantata 21 expresses the various stages of God's revelation and their impact on the believing soul. As a result, Chafe reveals that Cantata 21 has a formal design that mirrors Lutheran belief in unfolding revelation, with the final movement representing the work's "crown"--the goal toward which all of the earlier movements are directed. Complete with full text translations of the cantata and the liturgical readings that would have accompanied it at the first performance, Tears into Wine is a monumental book that is ideally suited for Bach scholars and students, as well as those generally interested in the relationship between theology and music.

Bach's Johannine Theology: The St. John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725 is a fertile examination of this group of fourteen surviving liturgical works. Renowned Bach scholar Eric Chafe begins his investigation into Bach's theology with the composer's St. John Passion, concentrating on its first and last versions. Beyond providing a uniquely detailed assessment of the passion, Bach's Johannine Theology is the first work to take the work beyond the scope of an isolated study, considering its meaning from a variety of musical and historical standpoints. Chafe thereby uncovers a range of theological implications underlying Bach's creative approach itself. Building considerably on his previous work, Chafe here expands his methodological approach to Bach's vocal music by arguing for a multi-layered approach to religion in Bach's compositional process. Chafe bases this approach primarily on two aspects of Bach's theology: first, the specific features of Johannine theology, which contrast with the more narrative approach found in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke); and second, contemporary homiletic and devotional writings - material that is not otherwise easily accessible, and less so in English translation. Bach's Johannine Theology provides an unprecedented, enlightening exploration of the theological and liturgical contexts within which this music was first heard. -- Publisher

"In honor of Christoph Wolff"

Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stand as representatives of European music of the eighteenth century, composers whose works reflect intellectual, religious, and aesthetic trends of the period. Research on their compositions continues in many ways to shape our broader understanding of eighteenth century musical thought and its contexts. This collection of essays offers a variety of perspectives on the two composers, as well as some of their important contemporaries, Haydn in particular. The book addresses topics such as the historiography of eighteenth-century music, concepts of time and musical form, the idea of the musical work and its relation to publishing practices, compositional process, and performance practice.--From publisher's description.

Part I. Eighteenth-century music in its intellectual contexts. The German eighteenth century : marking time / David Blackbourn. Fundamenta partiturae : thorough bass and foundations of eighteenth-century composition pedagogy / Thomas Christensen. Mishmash or synthesis? : on the psychagogic form of The creation / Hermann Danuse ; (translated by Nicolas Betson). Six of one : the opus concept in the eighteenth century / Elaine Sisman -- Part II. Composing and hearing music in the eighteenth century. Bach's passions and the textures of time / John Butt. Bach and hypocrisy : appearance and truth in Cantatas 136 and 179 / Eric Chafe. Tartini and his texts / Sergio Durate -- Part III. Sources and transmission. The evolution of "Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär" BWV 80/5 / Daniel R. Melamed. Bach and Mozart : from the perspective of different documentary evidence / Hans-Joachim Schulze. On Johann Sebastian Bach's creative process : observations from his drafts and sketches / Peter Wollny. One more time : Mozart and his cadenzas / Neal Zaslaw -- Part IV. Issues in historiography. On ancient languages : the historical idiom in the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Ulrich Konrad ; (translated by Thomas Irvine). Eighteenth-century music as a socio-political metaphor? / Reinhard Strohm. The century of Handel and Haydn / James Webster. Mozart's fantasy, Haydn's caprice : what's in a name? / Gretchen Wheelock -- Part V. Interpreting eighteenth-century music. The clavier speaks / Christopher Hogwood. Ten years of Bach cantatas / Ton Koopman. Mozart's working methods in the piano concertos / Robert Levin.

D"Eric Chafe argues that Schopenhauerian metaphysics do not merely underpin the opera but that the opera's musical exposition critiques and actually refashions Schopenhauer's concepts, using Gottfried von Strassburg's poetic rendering of the Tristan legend as a dramatic frame." "Chafe begins with an analysis of Wagner's notion of how music and philosophy are interconnected, and how Wagner came to embrace Schopenhauerian metaphysics, which offered a compelling metaphysical definition of music. He delineates Schopenhauer's idea of the tragic character of existence as rooted in sexual desire, a product of the metaphysical "will-to-life," and how Schopenhauer concluded that the denial of the will-to-life and its empty illusions could produce an ecstatic, transfiguring experience that redeemed human existence. Chafe then turns to Gottfried's Tristan und Isolt, examining the ways in which Schopenhauer conditioned Wagner's reading of the poem, particularly through his interpretation of the medieval concept of Minne, the union of life and death through love. In these discussions, Chafe locates an essential, evolving difference between Schopenhauer's and Wagner's concepts of physical love. Schopenhauer's concept of the individual will viewed physical passion as wholly biological and as the source of tragedy since nothing could pacify it, whereas Wagner understood sexual love as also containing the seeds to transcend the will-to-life. Throughout the opera's three acts, the lovers progress from a physical to a metaphysical experience of love, a metaphysical journey that simultaneously borrows from and amends Schopenhauer's conceptions. Ultimately, as Chafe demonstrates through musical analysis, this metaphysical journey is developed primarily through the opera's musical argument rather than through its drama." "Blending musicological and philosophical analysis, this tour de force reading of Tristan und Isolde will engage seasoned musicologists, Wagner scholars, and philosophers."

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

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

Claudio Monteverdi's sixty-year compositional career spans one of the most crucial junctures in Western music. Laying the groundwork for harmonic tonality - the pervasive musical language of Western culture until the twentieth century - Monteverdi's break with the self-contained harmonic world of the Renaissance and his confident assertion of human rationality and order through music was a crucial contribution to the emergence of the Baroque style. Monteverdi's Tonal Language is a provocative new examination of the theoretical issues surrounding the emergence of early seventeenth-century tonality combined with systematic analysis of a wide range of Monteverdi's secular works. Eric Chafe argues that the composer's music was rooted in a strong sense of musical logic and a secure grasp of tonality combined with Monteverdi's assertion that music should be dominated by allegory. Chafe offers a new framework for understanding the complex historical style and systematic features of the tonal language of Monteverdi's time and the composer's particular version of it. Building on Carl Dahlhaus's analysis of emerging tonality in Monteverdi's madrigals, Chafe expands the scope of the "modal-hexachordal" system rooted in the composer's work at the time of his fourth and fifth madrigal books. In addition to covering text-music relationships of a large and representative amount of Monteverdi's music, Chafe discusses several unexplored areas crucial to any understanding of the composer's tonal language. The two madrigals "Cor mio, mentre vi miro" (from Book Four) and "O Mirtillo" (from Book Five) illustrate the theoretical features of early seventeenth-century tonality. Chafe examines the pronounced sense of tonal clarity that distinguishes the Fourth Book of Madrigals, and he articulates the tonal styles Monteverdi used as organizing criteria in the Fifth Book. In subsequent chapters he demonstrates how the characteristic devices of Orfeo emerge as basic properties of the "modal-hexachordal" system, and discusses Monteverdi's creation of ordered reality in Il Ballo delle in grate and the "Lamento d'Arianna." He further argues that the Sixth Book symbolized the interaction of polyphonic madrigal and monody, and demonstrates convincingly that the Seventh Book was a milestone in Monteverdi's creative development, assuming the characteristics that marked his later tonal style. In the Eighth Book the composer set forth a manifesto for the allegorical nature of Baroque music; Il ritorno d'Ulisse un patria is a mature working out of the potential of tonal allegory. Finally in the last three chapters, Chafe discusses the tonal-allegorical framework, aspects of musical characterization, and questions of authenticity in Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea.