Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  chiastic (Gk ‘arranged crosswise’): Structures – ordered symmetrically, such as A-B-c, c-B-A, A-B-B-A formal patterns, derived from literature and used with underlying theological purpose.

  chorale cantata: A form perfected by Bach at Leipzig between 1724 and 1725 in which a chorale is used either as a hymn, developed into an extended melody or used as the basis of a contrapuntal movement.

  chorus musicus (Lat. ‘musical choir’): This term is closely related to the German vernacular Cantorey / Kantorei, denoting a church choir.

  clarino (It. ‘clarion’): The clear and high register of the natural, long-tube trumpet.

  Clavier/Klavier (Fr./Ger.): Generic term for a keyboard instrument, harpsichord, organ or clavichord.

  colla parte (It. ‘with the part’): An indication in a score to direct the player of the accompaniment to follow or double or shadow the main part or voice.

  concertante (It. ‘like a concerto’): One of the names given to the solo instruments in a concerto grosso, as distinct from the ripieno instruments, which play the tutti sections.

  concertato (It. ‘concerted’): A style favoured by Italian and German composers of the Baroque to heighten the dramatic interplay of concerted voices and instruments.

  Concertisten: (Ger. ‘concertist’): The principal ensemble singers of a particular voice type who sing throughout in a concerted piece, or instrumental section leaders as opposed to the Ripienisten (q.v.).

  concerto grosso (It. ‘great concerto’): A work in several movements, related to the suite written for a consort of instruments playing antiphonally, containing a concertino, or solo group, alongside a ripieno or tutti group.

  consort: An old English spelling of ‘concert’ indicating any body of performers, either a whole consort of one family of instruments or a broken consort of mixed instruments.

  continuo (It. abbr. for basso continuo): Also known as thoroughbass or figured bass. An accompaniment played from a bass line by a bass instrument and a keyboard, underneath the notation of which figures are placed to indicate chords.

  cori spezzati (It. ‘broken choirs’): A technique of writing for two or more spatially separated choirs developed by Willaert and the Gabrielis in sixteenth-century Venice and later by Schütz in Germany to exploit dramatic contrasts of timbre and to achieve increased sonority; later adopted by Bach in BWV 50 Nun ist das Heil and in the Matthew Passion.

  Currende/Kurrende (Ger. ‘itinerant choir’): Refers to a widely practised tradition whereby boys at Latin and choir schools were required to sing (or ‘busk’) in town streets several times a week to raise supplementary money for their board and lodging, their takings usually apportioned by strict regulations. The practice sometimes erupted into gang warfare between rival groups over disputed territory or favourite sites within the same town.

  da capo (It. abbr. D.C. ‘from the head’): An instruction at the end of a piece indicating a return to the beginning and to repeat the music until the pause, double bar or fine (the ‘end’) indication.

  détaché (Fr. ‘detached’): A short, vigorous bow stroke on a stringed instrument applied to notes of equal time value.

  diatonic (Gk ‘at intervals of a tone’): Music set unambiguously in a major or minor key.

  Elector: German Prince-Electors (of whom there were nine at the time of Bach) entitled to elect the Holy Roman Emperor, for example the Margrave of Brandenburg or Augustus, King of Poland.

  Endzweck (Ger.): Ultimate purpose or object.

  falsettist: Male singer who produces his voice falsetto in a treble range.

  figura/figura corta (It. ‘a short figure’): Motif or musical cell as catalogued by Bach’s cousin and friend J. G. Walther in his Musicalisches-Lexicon (1732): three fast notes of which the first is as long as the next two taken together.

  fioriture (It. ‘flowerings’/’flourishes’): Ornamental figures embellishing a plainer melodic line.

  fugue (It. ‘flight’): A contrapuntal composition in parts or voices using imitation, augmentation, diminution and inversion of the subject, brought to its climax as a form by J. S. Bach in The 48 Preludes and Fugues. The overall structure includes exposition, middle and final entries, which are separated by episodes. Fugue was used as an ear-training device for choirboys singing in canon by ear to develop their musicianship.

  galant (Fr. ‘courtly’): Elegant and light style of music from the eighteenth century, characteristically represented by the minuet.

  gigue (Fr. ‘gig’): Dance movement – graceful, capricious and jaunty – distinct from the Italian giga, which is longer, more stylised and complex.

  ground bass: A persistent melody in the bass (q.v. ostinato) recurring many times with changing harmonies, accompanied by variations in the upper parts.

  Hausmann: Head town piper.

  hemiola (Gk ‘in the ratio of one and a half to one’): Rhythmic device, often located at cadences, obtained by grouping two bars of triple metre as if they were three bars of duple time.

  Hoff Musicus: Court musician.

  imitation: Compositional device, whereby a musical figure is repeated after its first statement, either exactly as before or modified at the same or a different pitch.

  invertible counterpoint: The art of combining melodies where each line can serve equally as the bass or the melody, whether in two, three or four parts, without grammatical error.

  Kammerton/Cammer-Ton (Ger. ‘chamber pitch’): The term used to describe the pitch at which chamber music and, increasingly, church music was performed in Baroque Germany. It caused problems involving transposition and double notation once instruments tuned at this or at a still lower pitch were required to play with church organs, generally tuned to Chortan (Ger. ‘choir pitch’), a tone or a minor third higher.

  Kammersänger/Kammersängerin (Ger. ‘chamber singer’) (Ger. ‘chamber pitch’): Honorific title for distinguished singers bestowed by princes or kings.

  Lateinschule (Ger. ‘Latin School’): Similar to grammar schools, most were founded in German-speaking areas after the Reformation and were often closely connected to town churches or former monastic foundations.

  melisma (Gk ‘song’): A group of notes sung to a single syllable.

  Mettenchor (Ger. ‘Matins Choir’): An elite chamber choir such as the fifteen-voiced ensemble employed at the Michaeliskirche in Lüneburg which Bach joined briefly as a treble.

  Nachspiel: Playout or postlude.

  Nekrolog: Obituary.

  notes inégales (Fr. ‘unequal notes’): The practice of performing running quavers unequally with a long-short lilt in some French dance movements and adopted by German composers. Not dissimilar to twentieth-century Blues, it was used to loosen and spice up a regular, even delivery of continuous notes.

  obbligato (It. ‘indispensable’): When attached to the name of an instrument in a score, the part is regarded as essential to the scoring and must not be omitted, though another instrument can be substituted for it (flute for oboe, violin for organ, etc.).

  ostinato (It. ‘obstinate’): Persistently repeated figure, generally in the bass (hence ‘walking bass’), used to create length and continuity, but can be applied to a recurrent melodic figure, as in the Crucifixus of the B minor Mass.

  ouverture (Fr. ‘overture’): An instrumental piece composed as the introduction to an opera, oratorio or suite. Bach adopted the French style of ouverture, with its stately, angular and rhythmically dotted character (opening section) followed by a fast, fugato (second section).

  parody: A technique involving the replacement of a secular text with a sacred one in a pre-existing vocal work with no pejorative sense of mimicry.

  partita (It. ‘departure’): A division (for example, a variation) of an instrumental suite or a set of pieces, as in Bach’s Clavier-Übung I, similar to Partien (Ger.) or ordre (Fr.).

  passepied (Fr. ‘pass-foot’): Originally a Breton dance in triple time, a faster version of the minuet, in which the feet move ‘as quickly as if gre
ased’ (Niedt, 1721).

  passing notes: Any unaccented notes which form part of the melodic or polyphonic material, but are not integral parts of the harmony, to which they contribute a passing dissonance.

  pasticcio (It. ‘little pie’): A composite work, often by several composers, forming a musical entertainment, usually for the stage.

  permutation: A contrapuntal technique, particularly in fugues, in which the order of events is carefully formalised to vary the texture, prevent duplication and preserve the character, or Affekt, of the composition.

  per omnes versus (Lat. ‘in all verses’): Use of a chorale melody unaltered in all verses and individual movements, as in Bach’s cantata BWV 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden.

  Pietism: A religious and pastoral practice that grew out of Lutheranism and led to a strong emphasis on individual piety, reaching its greatest strength by the middle of the eighteenth century. The movement was inspired by Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), who founded the University of Halle.

  polychoral: Modern term describing Venetian sixteenth-century compositions for divided forces – two or three specific groups of chorus with or without orchestra, often spaced at a distance in performance.

  quodlibet (Lat. ‘as it pleases’): An ingenious combination of popular tunes, as in the final variation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, in which two or more folk-tunes are woven into the harmonic frame of the theme; also a description of the more scatological music that went on in the Bach family get-togethers.

  recitativo secco (It. ‘dry recitation’): Replacing spoken dialogue, a musical style in which a solo singer accompanied only by continuo (with a figured or unfigured bass line) propels the narrative forwards.

  Rector (Ger.): Headmaster of a school, usually an ordained clergyman living on site.

  Regalist: Player of a regal – a small portative organ manually pumped by bellows and having a raucous, nasal sound.

  ricercar(e) (It. ‘to search out’): An instrumental composition, not far removed in style from a motet; a study in counterpoint following the permutations of a melody and one which, from its seventeenth-century origins in the hands of Frescobaldi (1583–1643), led to the development of the fugue. Bach created a six-part ricercar in the Musical Offering.

  Ripienisten (Ger. ‘ripienists’): Singers used by Bach in his cantatas to reinforce, support or act as a foil to the Concertisten (q.v.).

  ripieno: See concerto grosso.

  ritornello (It. ‘a little return’): An instrumental refrain in a composition that returns complete or in part more than once, in the same or another key, often etween vocal episodes.

  rubato (It. ‘stolen’): Elasticity of rhythmic performance style in which the pulse is llowed to fluctuate subtly and a sense of freedom prevails.

  sarabande: One of four dance movements that made up the instrumental suite q.v.), it originated in the sixteenth century as a Latin American and Spanish sung dace (zarabanda) with lascivious connotations, migrated to the French Court as a triple rhythm dance in slow time with a characteristic pattern of a minim, a dotted minim and a crotchet. scena (It. ‘scene’): A discrete episode in musical drama made up of recitative, arioso and one or more arias, duets and choruses.

  serenata (It. from sera, ‘evening’): A musical greeting, usually instrumental, performed out of doors in the evening.

  siciliano: A dance movement of Sicilian origin in a lilting, pastoral style set either in or time, usually presented as a slow movement.

  sinfonia (It. ‘symphony’): The name usually given to an orchestral piece serving as the introduction to a cantata, a suite or an opera (where it is traditionally called an overture).

  Spielmann: A minstrel-fiddler, often itinerant, one rung above Bierfiedler.

  Spruch/Spruchmotetten (Ger. ‘quotation’): A scriptural citation often used as the basis for a motet.

  Stadtpfeifer (Ger. ‘town piper’): A professionally trained musician employed by a city or town, similar to the English town wait (watchman). The Bach family, Thuringian town musicians for generations, held posts as Stadtpfeifer. Leipzig employed both wind and string players in this capacity, and in 1748 Bach auditioned applicants, preferring one who played both oboe and violin ‘with greater dexterity’, presumably because these instruments were useful in church performance.

  stile antico (It. ‘old style’): A term describing church music written after 1600, imitating Palestrina, used in the eighteenth century by both Johann Mattheson and Johann Joseph Fux in their theoretical writings on strict counterpoint.

  stretto (It. ‘narrow’ or ‘tight’): The introduction of entries in a fugue in close canon.

  suite: The stringing together of a number of movements of dance origin (in binary form), of which allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue were obligatory, and to which others could be added; in Bach’s usage, interchangeable with partita.

  suspension: In harmony, the dissonance caused by holding a note from one chord during the change to the next, which is then resolved usually by falling.

  tablature: A shorthand notational system that uses letters, numbers or other signs as an alternative to staff notation. By the mid eighteenth century the system was waning, but Bach used it occasionally in the Orgel-Büchlein as a space-saving device and as a compositional aide-mémoire when waiting for the ink to dry before turning the page; also in certain cantatas.

  temperament: A term used to designate the tuning of the musical scale in which notes are not ‘pure’ (that is, not according to the natural harmonics) but are ‘tempered’ or modified. Bach’s term ‘Well-Tempered’ (as in his 48 Preludes and Fugues) describes an intermediate stage on the way towards equal temperament which divided the octave into twelve equal semitones, enabling the composer and player to venture into remote keys.

  terzetto (Ger. Terzet): Vocal composition for three voices without accompaniment as defined by Walther in 1732 and used by Bach in cantata BWV 48.

  tessitura (It. ‘texture’): The range of a vocal work or, less often, the instrumental compass in which a piece of music is set.

  tetrachord (from Gk tetrachordon, ‘four-string instrument’): Four descending notes contained within a perfect fourth interval, indicating where the semitone can lie.

  tierce de Picardie: The raised mediant degree of a tonic chord used for the ending of a movement in a minor mode in order to give it a greater sense of finality.

  tonus contrarius/peregrinus (Lat. ‘wandering tone’): One of the irregular psalm tones, postdating the traditional eight Gregorian psalm tones sung during Holy Office.

  traversa (It.): More usually traverso, relating to the German flute, as opposed to he flauto, by which composers in Bach’s era meant the recorder.

  tritone: The interval arising from three whole tones producing an augmented fourth (C-) or diminished fifth (C-G) forbidden in medieval theory as the Devil in music’ (diabolus in musica), but tolerated from the Baroque era onwards as the spice in seventh chords.

  tromba da tirarsi/tromba spezzata: A natural trumpet fitted with a slide altering the length of the instrument while it is played, so enabling it to fill in the gaps in the natural harmonic scale.

  trope (Gk tropos, ‘turn’ or ‘turn of phrase’): An introduction to a Gregorian chant or an interpolation within the chant.

  turba/turbae (Ger. ‘crowd’): Words (and therefore choruses) in Passion oratorios elivered by more than one person, for example, the disciples, the Jews or the oman soldiers.

  Türmer (Ger. ‘tower-men’): Musical tower guards working in shifts, equipped with horns or trumpets, fire flags, lanterns and hour glasses, charged with sounding the alarm at the approach of marauding armies; their musical duties, which included ‘ringing in’ the New Year, varied according to the size of towns.

  Vokaleinbau (Ger. ‘vocal insertion’): Technique of incorporating the voice part(s) within the reprise of the instrumental introduction.

  Notes

  PREFACE

  1. Words scrawled by Albert Einst
ein in the margin of a letter from the editor of the Reclams universum (an illustrated monthly) on 24 Mar 1928, reproduced in The Einstein Scrapbook, Ze’ev Rosenkranz (ed.) (2002), p. 143.

  2. J. N. Forkel, Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (1802), p. 82; NBR, p. 459.

  3. BD I, No. 23/NBR, p. 152.

  4. George Steiner, Grammars of Creation (2001), p. 308.

  5. Laurence Dreyfus, ‘Bach the Subversive’, Lufthansa Lecture, 14 May 2011.

  6. Robert L. Marshall, ‘Toward a Twenty-First-Century Bach Biography’, MQ, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Fall 2000), p. 500.

  7. Gilles Cantagrel, Le Moulin et la rivière: air et variations sur Bach (1998), p. 8.

  8. Rebecca Lloyd, Bach among the Conservatives (2006), p. 120.

  9. Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1989), p. xvi.

  1 UNDER THE CANTOR’S GAZE

  1. Hans Raupach, Das wahre Bildnis des Johann Sebastian Bach (1983).

  2. Theodor Adorno, ‘Bach Defended against His Devotees’ (essay) (1951) in Prisms, S. and S. Weber (trs.) (1981), p. 139.

  3. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (1986), p. 25.

  4. NBR, p. 161.

  2 GERMANY ON THE BRINK OF ENLIGHTENMENT

  1. Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werken, Josef Nadler (ed.) (1949–57), Vol. 3, p. 231.

  2. Frosch’s song from the first draft of Goethe’s Faust (dating from the early 1770s), quoted by Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (2007), p. 275.

  3. Samuel Pufendorf, De statu imperii germanici liber unus (1667), Vol. 6, p. 9.

  4. Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire (2012), Vol. 1, p. 633.

  5. H. J. C. von Grimmelshausen, The Adventures of a Simpleton, W. Wallich (trs.) (1962), p. 19.

  6. Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (2007), p. 187.