1.
Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis
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The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis is a catalogue of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was first published in 1950, edited by Wolfgang Schmieder, the catalogues second edition appeared in 1990. An abbreviated version of second edition, known as BWV2a, was published in 1998. 1126 compositions were assigned a BWV number in the 20th century, more compositions were added to the catalogue in the 21st century. The Anhang of the BWV lists over 200 lost, doubtful, the first edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis was published in 1950. It allocated a number to every known composition by Bach. Schmieder published the BWVs second edition in 1990, with some modifications regarding authenticity discriminations, and more added to the main catalogue. Several compositions were repositioned in the structure of chapters organised by genre. In 1998 Alfred Dürr and Yoshitake Kobayashi published an edition of the catalogue. This edition, known as BWV2a, contained a few further updates, new additions to BWV2/BWV2a included, BWV 1081–1126 BWV Anh. 190–213 An upper case R was used as an addition to a BWV number to indicate a reconstructed version, numbers above BWV1126 were added in the 21st century. The numbers assigned to compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and by others in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis are widely used for the identification of these compositions. BWV numbers 1 to 1126 appear in the 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, BWV numbers 1127 and 1128 were assigned in the 21st century. Ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe BWV163 – Nur jedem das Seine BWV164 – Ihr, BWV167 – Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe BWV168 – Tue Rechnung. k. a. Mourning Ode BWV199 – Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV200 – Bekennen will ich seinen Namen BWV201 – Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde a. k. a. The Dispute between Phoebus and Pan BWV202 – Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten BWV203 – Amore traditore BWV204 – Ich bin in mir vergnügt a. k. a. On Contentedness BWV205 – Zerreißet, zersprenget, zertrümmert die Gruft a. k. a. k. a. k. a, coffee Cantata BWV212 – Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet a. k. a. Peasant Cantata BWV213 – Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen a. k. a, hercules at the Crossroads BWV214 – Tönet, ihr Pauken
2.
Canon (music)
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In music, a canon is a contrapuntal compositional technique or texture that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration. The initial melody is called the leader, while the imitative melody, the follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof. Repeating canons in which all voices are identical are called rounds—Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Why are some composers fascinated with canons, Canons are not unlike puzzles and other brainteasers, from just a few rules, you can achieve so much. Plus, canons have the appeal of any puzzle, there is the initial challenge, the mystery of solving it, and the feeling of satisfaction you get from completing it. Accompanied canon is a canon accompanied by one or more independent parts which do not take part in imitating the melody. Only in the 16th century did the word canon begin to be used to describe the strict, imitative texture created by such a procedure. The word is derived from the Greek κανών, Latinised as canon, which means law or norm and this rule was usually given verbally, but could also be supplemented by special signs in the score, sometimes themselves called canoni. Canons featured in the music of the Italian Trecento and the 14th century music of France, a famous example from Italy is “Tosto che l’Alba” by Gheraldo da Firenze. In both France and Italy, canons were often used to illustrate hunting songs. The Italian word for hunting is “caccia”, the French word “chace. ”A well-known French Chace is the anonymous “Se je chant”. ”Guillaume de Machaut also used the 3-voice “chace” form in movements from his masterpiece Le Lai de la Fontaine. Referring to the setting of the stanza of this work. Like the Trinity itself, a well-wrought chace can be far more than the sum of its parts, and this particular chace is possible Machaut’s greatest feat of subtilitas. In Dufay’s song “Resvelons nous, amoureux”, the two voices are in canon, but the upper part is what David Fallows describes as a “florid top line”. Bach and Handel featured canons in their works,2, Beethoven’s works feature a number of passages in canon. The following comes from his Symphony No,4, Antony Hopkins describes the above as “a delightfully naïve canon. ”An even subtler example comes from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata 29 Op.106. Wilfrid Mellers describes the section of the scherzo movement, as “mysterious”, with a metrical ambiguity that “makes the melodic phrases irregular. ”When the tune is repeated, it is “now in the left hand. In canon with the bass line. ”Mellers concludes, “Here contrapuntal oneness serves to control any airy floating in the asymmetry, it is not merely the wide-spread texture that sounds hollow
3.
Fugue
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A fugue usually has three sections, an exposition, a development, and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugues tonic key. In the Middle Ages, the term was used to denote any works in canonic style, by the Renaissance. Since the 17th century, the fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. Most fugues open with a main theme, the subject, which then sounds successively in each voice, when each voice has entered. This is often followed by a passage, or episode, developed from previously heard material. In this sense, a fugue is a style of composition, the form evolved during the 18th century from several earlier types of contrapuntal compositions, such as imitative ricercars, capriccios, canzonas, and fantasias. The famous fugue composer Johann Sebastian Bach shaped his own works after those of Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Pachelbel, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Dieterich Buxtehude and others. With the decline of sophisticated styles at the end of the period, the fugues central role waned, eventually giving way as sonata form. The English term fugue originated in the 16th century and is derived from the French word fugue or the Italian fuga and this in turn comes from Latin, also fuga, which is itself related to both fugere and fugare. A fugue begins with the exposition and is according to certain predefined rules, in later portions the composer has more freedom. Further entries of the subject will occur throughout the fugue, repeating the accompanying material at the same time, the various entries may or may not be separated by episodes. What follows is a chart displaying a fairly typical fugal outline, S = subject, A = answer, CS = countersubject, T = Tonic, D = Dominant A fugue begins with the exposition of its subject in one of the voices alone in the tonic key. After the statement of the subject, a second voice enters and states the subject with the subject transposed to another key, to make the music run smoothly, it may also have to be altered slightly. A tonal answer is called for when the subject begins with a prominent dominant note. To prevent an undermining of the sense of key, this note is transposed up a fourth to the tonic rather than up a fifth to the supertonic. Answers in the subdominant are also employed for the same reason, while the answer is being stated, the voice in which the subject was previously heard continues with new material. If this new material is reused in later statements of the subject, it is called a countersubject, if this material is only heard once. The countersubject is written in invertible counterpoint at the octave or fifteenth, for example, when the note G sounds in one voice above the note C in lower voice, the interval of a fifth is formed, which is considered consonant and entirely acceptable
4.
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
5.
Subject (music)
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In music, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based. In forms other than the fugue this may be known as the theme, a subject may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found. In contrast to an idea or motif, a subject is usually a phrase or period. The Encyclopédie Fasquelle defines a theme as Any element, motif, Thematic changes and processes are often structurally important, and theorists such as Rudolph Reti have created analysis from a purely thematic perspective. Fred Lerdahl describes thematic relations as associational and thus outside his cognitive-based generative theorys scope of analysis, Music based on a single theme is called monothematic, while music based on several themes is called polythematic. Most fugues are monothematic and most pieces in sonata form are polythematic, in the exposition of a fugue, the principal theme is announced successively in each voice – sometimes in a transposed form. In some compositions, a subject is announced and then a second melody, sometimes called a countersubject or secondary theme. Music without subjects/themes, or without recognizable, repeating, and developing subjects/themes, is called athematic, examples include the pre-twelve-tone or early atonal works of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Alois Hába. Schoenberg once said that, intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality, in fact, I … believed that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nevertheless. Examples in the works of later composers include Polyphonie X and Structures I by Pierre Boulez, Sonata for Two Pianos by Karel Goeyvaerts, and Punkte by Karlheinz Stockhausen. In a fugue, when the first voice has completed the subject, and the voice is playing the answer. The countersubject usually contrasts with the subject/answer phrase shape, in a fugue, a countersubject is the continuation of counterpoint in the voice that began with the subject, occurring against the answer. It is not usually regarded as a feature of fugue. Attacco Cell Figure Formula composition Leitmotif Thematic transformation Benward, Bruce, Music in Theory and Practice, eighth edition, vol. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, the Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Une nouvelle grammaire musicale, prémices et premiers essais / A New Musical Grammar, Principles, la Scena Musicale 6, no.3. Lerdahl, Fred. Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Encyclopédie de la musique,3 vols, Music and Discourse, Toward a Semiology of Music, translated by Caroline Abbate
6.
Frederick the Great
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Frederick II was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king. Frederick was the last titled King in Prussia and declared himself King of Prussia after achieving full sovereignty for all historical Prussian lands, Prussia had greatly increased its territories and became a leading military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great and was affectionately nicknamed Der Alte Fritz by the Prussian, in his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than the art of war. Upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked Austria and claimed Silesia during the Silesian Wars, winning acclaim for himself. Near the end of his life, Frederick physically connected most of his realm by conquering Polish territories in the First Partition of Poland and he was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics. Considering himself the first servant of the state, Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism and he modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the system and made it possible for men not of noble stock to become judges. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, some critics, however, point out his oppressive measures against conquered Polish subjects during the First Partition. Frederick supported arts and philosophers he favored, as well as allowing complete freedom of the press, Frederick is buried at his favorite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam. Because he died childless, Frederick was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II, son of his brother, historian Leopold von Ranke was unstinting in his praise of Fredericks Heroic life, inspired by great ideas, filled with feats of arms. Immortalized by the raising of the Prussian state to the rank of a power, Johann Gustav Droysen was even more extolling. However, by the 21st century, a re-evaluation of his legacy as a great warrior, Frederick, the son of Frederick William I and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, was born in Berlin on 24 January 1712. The birth of Frederick was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, with more than usual pleasure, with the death of his father in 1713, Frederick William became King of Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince. The new king wished for his sons and daughters to be educated not as royalty and he had been educated by a Frenchwoman, Madame de Montbail, who later became Madame de Rocoulle, and he wished that she educate his children. However, he possessed a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority. As Frederick grew, his preference for music, literature and French culture clashed with his fathers militarism, in contrast, Fredericks mother Sophia was polite, charismatic and learned. Her father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714, Frederick was brought up by Huguenot governesses and tutors and learned French and German simultaneously. Although Frederick William I was raised a Calvinist, he feared he was not of the elect, to avoid the possibility of Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination
7.
Ricercar
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A ricercar is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term means to search out, and many serve a preludial function to search out the key or mode of a following piece. A ricercar may explore the permutations of a motif. For example, Ricercar sopra Benedictus might develop motifs from a motet titled Benedictus, the term is also used to designate an etude or study that explores a technical device in playing an instrument, or singing. In its most common usage, it refers to an early kind of fugue. However the term has a more varied historical usage. In the sixteenth century, the word ricercar could refer to types of compositions. The second type of ricercar, the imitative, contrapuntal type, was to prove the more important historically, marco DallAquila was known for polyphonic ricercars. Examples of both types of ricercars can be found in the works of Girolamo Frescobaldi, e. g. in his Fiori musicali, gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, which includes a section entitled Six-part Ricercar. Ricercar, Fugue, Counterpoint in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ISBN 1-56159-174-2 Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. ISBN 0-393-09530-4 Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, ISBN 0-393-09745-5 Ursula Kirkendale, The Source for Bachs Musical Offering, Journal of the American Musicological Society 33, 99-141. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed, cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press,1986. ISBN 0-674-61525-5 Arthur J. Ness, Ricercar, Harvard Dictionary of Music, fourth edition, edited by Don Michael Randel, cambridge, Belknap Press for Harvard University Press,2003. The dictionary definition of ricercar at Wiktionary Petrucci Music Library Ricercar Collection
8.
Charles Rosen
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Charles Welles Rosen was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings and he was born in New York City. His father Irwin Rosen worked as an architect, his mother, née Anita Gerber, was a semiprofessional actress, Rosen began his musical studies at age 4 and at age 6 enrolled in the Juilliard School. At age 11 he left Juilliard to study piano with Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal, born in 1862, had been a student of Franz Liszt. Rosenthals memories of the 19th century in classical music were communicated to his pupil, every year from the ages of three to twelve, Rosen heard Josef Hofmann play, and he later suggested that Hofmann had a greater influence on him than Rosenthal. Rosens family background was not wealthy, the Guardian editor Nicholas Wroe interviewed him in old age and reported, His father had lost his job during the depression and things were pretty tough for a while. The family moved from Washington Heights to a ho in the less fashionable Upper West Side. Because money was so short Rosens parents arranged a contract with the Rosenthals not to pay them for Charless tuition, as I didnt make my debut in New York until I was 23, it was not a very satisfactory deal. But when I made my first recording I took some money to Hedwig Rosenthal, at age 17, Rosen enrolled in Princeton University, where he studied French, also taking courses in mathematics and philosophy. When he graduated in 1947, he was offered a fellowship of $2,000 to continue at Princeton in the French graduate program. While in graduate school he roomed with his fellow student Michael Steinberg, Rosen attained his status as a musical scholar with very little classroom training. Although Rosen in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is referred as one of the musicologist Oliver Strunks students, Rosens very extensive knowledge of music appears to have arisen partly from a culturally rich family background and partly from reading. Nicholas Wroe reported, Through the Rosenthals, Rosen was connected to the New York musical scene, says that by the time he went to Princeton, he knew all the music department socially. So that made me too proud to take a degree in music, I sound like a snotty bastard, which I might have been, but I really did know more music as an undergraduate than the postgraduate students. Ivan Hewett suggests that a major temptation of Rosens 1947 fellowship offer was that it offered him time to practice and to read extensively in the Princeton library. The year 1951 was a one for Rosen, he completed his French Literature Ph. D. gave his first piano recital. His career as a pianist made progress only slowly at first, in 1953 he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach French. He described this period to Nicholas Wroe, I suppose I could have stayed on as an academic, the only time I taught was when my playing would only support me for half a year, but I could only get a full-time job
9.
Douglas Hofstadter
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Hofstadters book Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid, first published in 1979, won both the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and a National Book Award for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science, Hofstadter was born in New York City, the son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter and Nancy Givan Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor and he was initially appointed to the Indiana Universitys Computer Science Department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research program in computer modeling of mental processes. In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 1988 he returned to Bloomington as College of Arts and Sciences Professor in both cognitive science and computer science. In 1988 Hofstadter received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquirys highest honor, in April 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Hofstadters many interests include music, visual art, the mind, creativity, consciousness, self-reference, translation and mathematics. Hofstadters doctoral student James Marshall subsequently extended the Copycat project under the name Metacat, the Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling, aims to model the act of artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform gridfonts. The pursuit of beauty has driven Hofstadter both inside and outside his professional work and he seeks beautiful mathematical patterns, beautiful explanations, beautiful typefaces, beautiful sonic patterns in poetry, etc. Hofstadter has said of himself, Im someone who has one foot in the world of humanities and arts, and he has had several exhibitions of his artworks in various university art galleries. These shows have featured large collections of his gridfonts, his ambigrams, the computational architectures that share these precepts are called active symbols architectures. In GEB he draws an analogy between the organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent colony of neurons. The prototypical example of this notion is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödels incompleteness theorems. Both in his writing and in his teaching, Hofstadter stresses the concrete, constantly using examples and analogies, typical of the courses he teaches is his seminar Group Theory and Galois Theory Visualized, in which abstract mathematical ideas are rendered as concretely as possible. He puts great effort into making ideas clear and visual, and asserts that when he teaches, if his students do not understand something, it is never their fault, in addition to English, his mother tongue, he speaks French and Italian fluently. At various times in his life, he has studied German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Mandarin, Dutch, Polish and his love of sounds pushes him to strive to minimize, and ideally get rid of, any foreign accent. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as pilingual, as well as an oligoglot, in 1999, the bicentennial year of Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkins classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. Hofstadters Law states that It always takes longer than you expect, the Law is outlined in his work Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid. Hofstadters former Ph. D. students include, Don Byrd—Music Notation by Computer David Chalmers—Toward a Theory of Consciousness Gray A
10.
Pulitzer Prize
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The Pulitzer Prize /ˈpʊlᵻtsər/ is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of American Joseph Pulitzer who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of the categories, each receives a certificate. The winner in the service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal. The Pulitzer Prize does not automatically consider all applicable works in the media, entries must fit in at least one of the specific prize categories, and cannot simply gain entrance for being literary or musical. Works can also only be entered in a maximum of two categories, regardless of their properties, each year,102 jurors are selected by the Pulitzer Prize Board to serve on 20 separate juries for the 21 award categories, one jury makes recommendations for both photography awards. For each award category, a jury makes three nominations, the board selects the winner by majority vote from the nominations or bypasses the nominations and selects a different entry following a 75% majority vote. The board can also vote to issue no award, the board and journalism jurors are not paid for their work, however, the jurors in letters, music, and drama receive a $2,000 honorarium for the year, and each chair receives $2,500. Anyone whose work has been submitted is called an entrant, the jury selects a group of nominated finalists and announces them, together with the winner for each category. However, some journalists who were submitted, but not nominated as finalists. For example, Bill Dedman of msnbc, Dedman wrote, To call that submission a Pulitzer nomination is like saying that Adam Sandler is an Oscar nominee if Columbia Pictures enters Thats My Boy in the Academy Awards. Many readers realize that the Oscars dont work that way—the studios dont pick the nominees and its just a way of slipping Academy Awards into a bio. The Pulitzers also dont work that way, but fewer people know that, newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Prize. It allocated $250,000 to the prize and scholarships and he specified four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one in education, and four traveling scholarships. After his death, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded June 4,1917, many people have won more than one Pulitzer Prize. Nelson Harding is the person to have won a Prize in two consecutive years, the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1927 and 1928. Four prizes Robert Frost, Poetry Eugene ONeill, Drama Robert E, in rare instances, contributors to the entry are singled out in the citation in a manner analogous to individual winners. Journalism awards may be awarded to individuals or newspapers or newspaper staffs, infrequently, Awards are made in categories relating to journalism, arts, letters and fiction
