Sequence (musical form)
A sequence is a chant or hymn sung or recited during the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist for many Christian denominations, before the proclamation of the Gospel. By the time of the Council of Trent there were sequences for many feasts in the Church's year; the sequence has always been sung before the Gospel. The 2002 edition of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, reversed the order and places the sequence before the Alleluia; the form of this chant inspired a genre of Latin poetry written in a non-classical metre on a sacred Christian subject, called a sequence. The Latin sequence has its beginnings, as an artistic form, in early Christian hymns such as the Vexilla Regis of Venantius Fortunatus. Venantius modified the classical metres based on syllable quantity to an accentual metre more suitable to be chanted to music in Christian worship. In the ninth century, Hrabanus Maurus moved away from classical metres to produce Christian hymns such as Veni Creator Spiritus; the name sequentia, on the other hand, came to be bestowed upon these hymns as a result of the works of Notker Balbulus, who popularized the genre in the ninth century by publishing a collection of sequentiae in his Liber Hymnorum.
Since early sequences were written in rhythmical prose, they were called proses. Notker's texts were meant to be sung. In the Latin Mass of the Middle Ages, it became customary to prolong the last syllable of the Alleluia, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the ambo, to sing or chant the Gospel; this prolonged melisma was called the jubilatio, or laudes, because of its jubilant tone. It was called sequentia, "sequence," because it followed the Alleluia. Notker set words to this melisma in rhythmic prose for chanting as a trope; the name sequence thus came to be applied to these texts. A collection of sequences was called the Sequentiale. One well-known sequence, falsely attributed to Notker during the Middle Ages, is the prose text Media vita in morte sumus, translated by Cranmer and became a part of the burial service in the funeral rites of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Other well-known sequences include the ninth-century Swan Sequence, Tommaso da Celano's Dies Irae, St. Thomas Aquinas' Pange lingua in praise of the Eucharist, the anonymous medieval hymn Ave maris stella, the Marian sequence Stabat Mater by Jacopone da Todi.
During the Middle Ages, secular or semi-secular sequences, such as Peter of Blois' Olim sudor Herculis were written. The Carmina Burana is a collection of these sequences. In the Missal of Pius V the number of sequences for the entire Roman Rite was reduced to four: Victimae paschali laudes for Easter, Veni Sancte Spiritus for Pentecost, Lauda Sion Salvatorem for Corpus Christi, Dies Irae for All Souls and in Masses for the Dead. In 1727, the 13th century Stabat Mater for Our Lady of Sorrows was added to this list. In 1970 the Dies Irae was removed from the Requiem Mass of the revised, new Roman Missal and was transferred to the Liturgy of the Hours to be sung ad libitum in the week before the beginning of Advent; the Christmas sequence Laetabundus, not present in the Roman Missal, is found in the Dominican Missal. This sequence is permitted for the Third Mass of Christmas, the Epiphany, Candlemas; the Third Edition of the Roman Missal, implemented in the United States in 2010, states that the Sequence is optional except on Easter Sunday and Pentecost Day, it sung before the Alleluia.
Sequences are distinguished by a structure dominated by couplets, in forms of AA'BB'CC'... and ABB'CC'DD'... Z. Although it is understood that sequences fall into early and late periods, the history of developments in the genre is better thought of as unfolding in layers that overlap. In the early period, sequences such as Notker's included single lines that were not part of a couplet; these single lines most appeared at the beginning or end of the sequence, but could appear in the middle. Sequences from the middle period, starting around the 11th century, such as the sequence for the Mass of Easter Day, Victimae paschali laudes, are less to have single lines outside of couplets, their couplets are more to rhyme. By the 12th century sequences, such as the sequence for Pentecost, Veni Sancte Spiritus, showed increasing regularity of structure, with rhyming couplets throughout. Medieval sequences are modal melodies. While syllabic, sequences can have short neumatic moments, but they never contain melismas.
The two verses of each couplet are sung to the same musical line ending on a tonally stabilizing pitch, with variety being created by couplets of different lengths and with different musical arches. Although sequences are vocal and monophonic, certain sequence texts suggest possible vocal harmonization in organum or instrumental accompaniment; the composition of sequences became less frequent when Humanist Latin replaced medieval Latin as the preferred literary style in Latin. New sequences continued to be written in Latin. Hoppin, Richard. Medieval Music. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-09090-1. Crocker, Richard; the Early Medieval Sequence. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02847-0. Schaff, History o
Rhythm
Rhythm means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds. In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music, the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of the style. Rhythm may refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. In recent years and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston, Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty, Godfried Toussaint, William Rothstein, Joel Lester, Guerino Mazzola. In his television series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls the regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat.
Other research suggests that it does not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which influences heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that since certain features of human music are widespread, it is "reasonable to suspect that beat-based rhythmic processing has ancient evolutionary roots". Justin London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time"; the "perception" and "abstraction" of rhythmic measure is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, as when we divide a series of identical clock-ticks into "tick-tock-tick-tock". Joseph Jordania suggested that the sense of rhythm was developed in the early stages of hominid evolution by the forces of natural selection. Plenty of animals walk rhythmically and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, but only humans have the ability to be engaged in rhythmically coordinated vocalizations and other activities.
According to Jordania, development of the sense of rhythm was central for the achievement of the specific neurological state of the battle trance, crucial for the development of the effective defense system of early hominids. Rhythmic war cry, rhythmic drumming by shamans, rhythmic drilling of the soldiers and contemporary professional combat forces listening to the heavy rhythmic rock music all use the ability of rhythm to unite human individuals into a shared collective identity where group members put the interests of the group above their individual interests and safety; some types of parrots can know rhythm. Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm is fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost. "There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat" Human rhythmic arts are to some extent rooted in courtship ritual.
The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as a subjective perception of loudness is relative to background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence before the next occurs if it is to be distinct. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter; such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking kotekan rhythms of the gamelan. For information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala. For other Asian approaches to rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music, Rhythm in Arabian music and Usul—Rhythm in Turkish music and Dumbek rhythms. Most music and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying "metric level", a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied, the pulse or tactus of the mensural level, or beat level, sometimes called the beat.
This consists of a series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time. The "beat" pulse is not the fastest or the slowest component of the rhythm but the one, perceived as fundamental: it has a tempo to which listeners entrain as they tap their foot or dance to a piece of music, it is most designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation. Faster levels are division levels, slower levels are mul
Sin
In a religious context, sin is an act of transgression against divine law. In Islamic ethics, Muslims see sin as anything. Judaism regards the violation of any of the 613 commandments as a sin. Sin can be viewed as any thought or action that endangers the ideal relationship between an individual and God. In Jainism, sin refers to anything; the word derives from "Old English syn, for original *sunjō. The stem may be related to that of Latin ` sont-is' guilty. In Old English there are examples of the original general sense, ‘offence, wrong-doing, misdeed'"; the English Biblical terms translated as "sin" or "syn" from the Biblical Greek and Jewish terms sometimes originate from words in the latter languages denoting the act or state of missing the mark. "To sin" has been defined from a Greek concordance as "to miss the mark". In the Bahá'í Faith, humans are considered good, fundamentally spiritual beings. Human beings were created because of God's immeasurable love. However, the Bahá'í teachings compare the human heart to a mirror, which, if turned away from the light of the sun, is incapable of receiving God's love.
There are a few differing Buddhist views on sin. American Zen author Brad Warner states; the Buddha Dharma Education Association expressly states "The idea of sin or original sin has no place in Buddhism."Ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf explained, In Buddhist thinking the whole universe, men as well as gods, are subject to a reign of law. Every action, good or bad, has an inevitable and automatic effect in a long chain of causes, an effect, independent of the will of any deity. Though this may leave no room for the concept of'sin' in the sense of an act of defiance against the authority of a personal god, Buddhists speak of'sin' when referring to transgressions against the universal moral code. However, Anantarika-kamma in Theravada Buddhism is a heinous crime, which through karmic process brings immediate disaster. In Mahayana Buddhism these five crimes are referred to as pañcānantarya, are mentioned in The Sutra Preached by the Buddha on the Total Extinction of the Dharma, The five crimes or sins are: Injuring a Buddha Killing an Arhat Creating schism in the society of Sangha Matricide Patricide The doctrine of sin is central to Christianity, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ.
Christian hamartiology describes sin as an act of offence against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, by injuring others. In Christian views it is an evil human act, which violates the rational nature of man as well as God's nature and his eternal law. According to the classical definition of St. Augustine of Hippo sin is "a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God."Among some scholars, sin is understood as legal infraction or contract violation of non-binding philosophical frameworks and perspectives of Christian ethics, so salvation tends to be viewed in legal terms. Other Christian scholars understand sin to be fundamentally relational—a loss of love for the Christian God and an elevation of self-love, as was propounded by Augustine in his debate with the Pelagians; as with the legal definition of sin, this definition affects the understanding of Christian grace and salvation, which are thus viewed in relational terms. Original sin called ancestral sin, is a Christian belief in the state of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man, stemming from Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden, namely the sin of disobedience in consuming the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt. The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine shaped and developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle and the Old Testament verse of Psalms 51:5. Tertullian, Cyprian and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine's formulation of original sin after 412 CE was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted after baptism and destroyed freedom to do good.
Before 412 CE, Augustine said that free will was not destroyed by original sin. But after 412 CE this changed to a loss of free will except to sin. Modern Augustinian Calvinism holds this view; the Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead the Catholic Church declares "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature and inclined to evil, persist in man and
Erfurt Enchiridion
The Erfurt Enchiridion is the second Lutheran hymnal. It appeared in 1524 in Erfurt in two competing editions. One of them contains 26 songs, the other 25, 18 of them by Martin Luther, others by Elisabeth Cruciger, Erhard Hegenwald, Justus Jonas and Paul Speratus. While the songs of the Enchiridion could be used in churches, they were intended for singing elsewhere, such as at home, at court, in guild meetings; the songs of the reformer Luther and others were first sold as broadsheets, contributed to the spreading of Protestant ideas. They were printed in collections, beginning with the First Lutheran hymnal, called the Achtliederbuch, with the Wittenberg song book, both published in 1524; the Erfurt Enchiridion appeared the same year, in two equal editions by two different printers, Johannes Loersfeld and Matthes Maler. Both books are identical except for one song; the double appearance suggests. The edition printed by Loersfeld came first, to be copied by Maler; the version of Loersfeld was printed in octavo, includes 48 pages, 47 of them printed.
It contains the German version of the creed and a two-page anonymous preface. The version of Maler contains one song more. Sixteen different choral melodies are used, eighteen of the songs are by Luther, but his name is attached to only one of them. Three of the hymns were written by Paul Speratus, one or two by Justus Jonas, one by Elisabeth Cruciger, one is attributed to Jan Hus; the arrangement of the songs is not systematic, only seven paraphrases of psalms form a cohesive group. Five songs are German rhymed versions of Latin liturgical chants; the song "Ein neues Lied wir heben an" describes the execution in Brussels of two monks who were martyrs of the Reformation, Hendrik Vos and Johannes van Esschen. The title describes: "Eyn Enchiridion oder Handbüchlein. Eynem ytzlichen Christen fast nutzlich bey sich zuhaben / zur stetter vbung vnd trachtung geystlicher gesenge vnd Psalmen / Rechtschaffen vnd kunstlich verteutscht." The author of the preface describes the former ecclesiastical chant as "shouting like the priests of Baal in unintelligable cries" and "cry like the forest-donkeys to a deaf God".
The songs included in the collection are described as founded on scripture, serving improvement and the education of youth, the preface suggests that a Christian should always carry the book with him, for constant practise. While the songs of the Enchiridion could be used in churches, they were intended for singing elsewhere, such as at home, at court, in guild meetings. Many of the songs of the Erfurt Enchiridion were disseminated, seventeen are still in the current German Protestant hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch, some of them now with different melodies. Five of the hymns are part of the Catholic hymnal Gotteslob. Translations began with Goostly psalms and spiritual songes drawen out of the holy Scripture by Myles Coverdale, the so-called "first English hymn book", printed in London in 1555 and contained 16 of the songs from the Enchiridion. Full digital facsimile and diplomatic transcription of the hymnbook in the Deutsches Text Archiv Brodersen, Christiane. Ein Enchiridion oder Handbüchlein geistlicher Gesänge und Psalmen.
Kartoffeldruck-Verlag, Speyer. ISBN 978-3-939526-03-2. Doukhan, Lilianne. In Tune With God. Mn House Publishing. Pp. 163, 164 & footnote 15 on p. 191. Herbst, Wolfgang. Wer ist wer im Gesangbuch?. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. Pp. 86–87 Erfurter Enchiridion. ISBN 3525503237. Liersch, Helmut. Ein Unikat in der Marktkirchen-Bibliothek Goslar: Das Erfurter Färbefaß-Enchiridion von 1524. Goslar: Goslarsches Forum 6, ed. Otmar Hesse. Pp. 40–44, 81–83. Brodersen, Christiane; the Erfurt Enchiridion: A Hymn Book of 1524. Kartoffeldruck-Verlag. ISBN 978-3939526049. Hase, Martin von. "Die Drucker der Erfurter Enchiridien, Mathes Maler u. Johannes Loersfelt". Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie. 2: 91–93. JSTOR 24189314. Smend, Julius. Die evangelische Lied von 1524: Festschrift zum 400-jährigen Gesangbuch-Jubiläum. Leipzig
Martin Luther
Martin Luther, was a German professor of theology, priest, a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507, he came to reject several practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517, his refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor. Luther taught that salvation and eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin, his theology challenged the authority and office of the Pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge, opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these, all of Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, though Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.
His translation of the Bible into the German vernacular made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible, his hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry. In two of his works, Luther expressed antagonistic views towards Jews, his rhetoric was not directed at Jews alone, but towards Roman Catholics and nontrinitarian Christians. Luther died with his decree of excommunication by Pope Leo X still effective. Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder and his wife Margarethe on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, County of Mansfeld in the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was baptized the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours.
His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council. The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means" and notes that Luther's enemies wrongly described her as a whore and bath attendant, he had several brothers and sisters, is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob. Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer, he sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium": grammar and logic. Luther compared his education there to purgatory and hell. In 1501, at the age of 17, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he described as a beerhouse and whorehouse.
He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been described as "a day of rote learning and wearying spiritual exercises." He received his master's degree in 1505. In accordance with his father's wishes, he enrolled in law but dropped out immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, Gabriel Biel, he was influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of the greatest thinkers and to test everything himself by experience. Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter's emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question institutions, but not God.
Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, Scripture therefore became important to him. On 2 July 1505, while returning to university on horseback after a trip home, a lightning bolt struck near Luther during a thunderstorm. Telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" He came to view his cry for help as a vow. He left university, sold his books, entered St. Augustine's Monastery in Erfurt on 17 July 1505. One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends. Luther himself seemed saddened by the move; those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, not again," he said. His father was furious over. Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer and frequent confession. Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair, he said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul."
Johann von Staupitz, his superior, pointed
Heinrich Scheidemann
Heinrich Scheidemann was a German organist and composer. He was the best-known composer for the organ in north Germany in the early to mid-17th century, was an important forerunner of Dieterich Buxtehude and J. S. Bach, he was born in Wöhrden in Holstein. His father was an organist in both Wöhrden and Hamburg, Scheidemann received some early instruction from him. Scheidemann studied with Sweelinck in Amsterdam from 1611 to 1614, evidently was one of his favorite pupils, since Sweelinck dedicated a canon to him, prior to Scheidemann's return to Germany. By 1629, earlier, Scheidemann was in Hamburg as organist at the Catharinenkirche, a position which he held for more than thirty years, until his death in Hamburg in early 1663 during an outbreak of the plague. Scheidemann was renowned as an organist and composer, as evidenced by the wide distribution of his works. Unlike the other early Baroque German composers, such as Praetorius, Schütz, Schein, each of whom wrote in most of the current genres and styles, Scheidemann wrote entirely organ music.
A few songs survive, as well as some harpsichord pieces, but they are dwarfed by the dozens of organ pieces, many in multiple movements. Scheidemann's lasting contribution to the organ literature, to Baroque music in general, was in his settings of Lutheran chorales, which were of three general types: cantus firmus chorale arrangements, which were an early type of chorale prelude. In addition to his chorale arrangements, he wrote important arrangements of the Magnificat, which are not only in multiple parts but are in cyclic form towards liturgical use in alternation with the choir during the so-called Vespers, a technique in multiple-movement musical construction, not to return with vigor until the 19th century. Among his students were Johann Adam Reincken, his successor at the St. Catharine Church in Hamburg, Dieterich Buxtehude. See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Heinrich Scheidemann; the Organ Works of Heinrich Scheidemann. Vol. 1. Calcante Recordings. CAL-023. 1999. 2 CD The Organ Works of Heinrich Scheidemann.
Vol. 2. Calcante Recordings. CAL-024. 1999. 2 CD The Organ Works of Heinrich Scheidemann. Vol. 3. Calcante Recordings. CAL-025. 2003. 2 CD Article "Heinrich Scheidemann, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2 Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W. W. Norton & Co. 1947. ISBN 0-393-09745-5 Pieter Dirksen, Heinrich Scheidemann's Keyboard Music, its Transmission and Chronology, Aldershot, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7546-5441-4 Free scores by Heinrich Scheidemann at the International Music Score Library Project Scores and MIDI files by Scheidemann at the Mutopia Project
Johann Kuhnau
Johann Kuhnau was a German polymath: known as composer today, he was active as novelist, translator and music theorist, being able late in life to combine these activities with the duties of his official post of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, which he occupied for 21 years. Much of his music, including operas and other large-scale vocal works, is lost, his reputation today rests on a set of programmatic keyboard sonatas published in 1700, in which each sonata depicted in detail a particular story from the Bible. After his death, Kuhnau was succeeded as Thomaskantor by Johann Sebastian Bach. Much of the biographical information on Kuhnau is known from an autobiography published by Johann Mattheson in 1740 in his Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte. Kuhnau's Protestant family was from Bohemia, their name was Kuhn. Kuhnau was born in Geising, present-day Saxony, his musical talents were apparent early, at around 1670 he was sent to Dresden to study with court musicians there. During the next decade, he studied keyboard playing and music composition, as well as languages: Italian and French.
In 1680 an offshoot of the Great Plague of Vienna reached Dresden, Kuhnau returned home. He subsequently studied music at the Johanneum at Zittau, law at the Leipzig University. Exceptionally active as composer and performer during his university years, he was appointed organist of Leipzig's Thomaskirche in 1684, at the age of 24. In 1688 Kuhnau began practicing law, he was still working as organist and continued composing. In 1689 he published his first collection of keyboard works, followed by three more in 1692, 1696, 1700. During the 1690s he translated a number of books into German from Italian and French and published his best-known novel, the satirical Der musicalische Quack-Salber, devoted his spare time to studying various subjects such as mathematics and Greek. In 1701 he succeeded Johann Schelle as Kantor of Thomaskirche, kept the position until his death. Although he was successful in directing the many musical activities at Thomaskirche and teaching at Thomasschule, Kuhnau started suffering from bad health.
Scholar Willi Apel noted that the job was "as vexatious and difficult for him as for his successor, J. S. Bach." Not only health troubles, but efforts by rival musicians and composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann and Kuhnau's own student Johann Friedrich Fasch, were undermining Kuhnau's activities as Kantor. Kuhnau died in Leipzig on 5 June 1722, he was survived by three daughters, from a marriage of 1689. His pupils included not only Fasch, but Johann David Heinichen and Christoph Graupner. See: List of music students by teacher: K to M#Johann Kuhnau. Kuhnau's reputation today rests on four collections of music for keyboard, which he published in 1689–1700. Important is the last volume, titled Musicalische Vorstellung einiger biblischer Historien, known popularly as "Biblical Sonatas", it contains six sonatas, each outlining a biblical story in several contrasting movements: The Fight between David and Goliath Saul's melancholy cured by the music played by David on his harp Jacob's Wedding Hezekiah's sickness and restoration Gideon, Saviour of Israel Jacob's Death and BurialKuhnau uses a wide variety of devices to portray both the actual events, as well as the characters' psychological states.
These devices are not limited to changes of texture or harmony, but include quotations from Protestant chorales and imitations of operatic arias. The other keyboard works by Kuhnau show a varied approach to form; the two parts of Clavier-Übung both include 7 suites, the first only in major mode, the second only in minor mode. The suites always begin with a prelude, continue through the usual order of dances – allemande, sarabande, gigue – with a minuet or aria placed between the dances. Kuhnau's preludes are always in two sections: a prelude and a fugue, complete with countersubjects Kuhnau mentions in the preface. Kuhnau's Sonata in B-flat major, appended to the Neuer Clavier-Übung, anderer Theil, was for some time considered to be the earliest known keyboard sonata. Research has shown that it was rather the first keyboard sonata published in Germany, that Kuhnau followed the naming convention established by contemporary foreign composers; the composer himself commented on the issue in the preface: I have appended a Sonata in B-flat major, which should be pleasing to the amateurs.
Why shouldn't one provide such pieces for keyboard which are provided for other instruments? Indeed, no instrument has been able to dispute the clavier's reputation for perfection; the third volume, titled Frische Clavier Früchte, contains six sonatas modelled after Italian chamber sonatas. A wide variety of forms and textures is employed: the opening movements range from toccata-like miniatures to full-fledged chaconnes. Kuhnau's approach to the episodes of the many fugues of this collection has been called "perhaps his primary contribution to the historical development of fugue as an extended form" by one scholar. Frische Clavier Früchte was Kuhnau's most popular work in his lifetime, reprinted five times. Much of Kuhnau's vocal music is lost, including an opera, a setting of the Passion according to St. Mark, a three-choir Te Deum, at least two settings of the mass; the surviving cantatas are simple harmonically and melodically, yet expre
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