Reviewed by: Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy by Erinn E. Knyt Marc-André Roberge (bio) Erinn E. Knyt. Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017). x, 357 pp. Full text available with subscription (otherwise excerpts) at https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52470. The literature on Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) has seen surges of various orders of magnitude on five occasions: first, on the tenth, thirtieth, and fiftieth recurrences of his death year in 1934, 1954, and 1974; and then on the centenary and sesquicentennial of his birth year in 1966 and 2016. Such anniversaries have offered authors of all stripes the opportunity to recall Busoni’s achievements both as a pianist and as a composer, outline the reasons for his importance as a transition figure at the beginning of the twentieth century, summarize his aesthetic ideas about music that left a mark on later composers, and discuss his best-known works. Publications, both scholarly and introductory, as well as recordings (starting especially in 1966), have been part of the untiring efforts of friends, disciples, and other champions to plead for better recognition. The sesquicentennial in 2016 was such a lavish year for Busoni research that a full article could be devoted to the topic. Especially in his native Italy and his adopted Germany, Busoni weeks (including public installations, flash mobs, and postage stamps), exhibitions, scholarly meetings, courses and seminars, publications, concerts, recordings, and radio programs helped put him in a brighter light than is usually the case. In the years preceding this anniversary, highly polished scholarly editions showed that the composer was being taken increasingly seriously in Germany. For example, in 2012 Busoni’s correspondence with his main publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, was published by Eva Hanau in two hefty volumes, and in 2015 the unexpurgated edition of his letters to his wife, Gerda, also in two big volumes, was edited by the indefatigable Martina Weindel.1 Between 1999 and 2006 Weindel published no fewer than six editions of letters and writings pertaining to Busoni. This impressive editorial activity, supported by hundreds if not thousands of documentary notes, was made possible by much easier access to the huge [End Page 123] resources of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin’s Busoni-Nachlass, most of which was housed in East Berlin before German reunification. Starting in the 2000s, locating items in the collection became considerably easier thanks to the cataloguing of the composer’s huge correspondence in the search engine Kalliope (more than 7,000 items) and the growing body of high-quality online reproductions of letters, documents, manuscripts, and rare editions on the library’s website (around 800 items). Another sign that Busoni’s heritage is valued by the state library that houses his massive bequest is the luxurious catalogue for the exhibition Freiheit für die Tonkunst! that opened in Berlin in the fall of 2016.2 All this activity is in keeping with the continual growth of the literature on Busoni, especially since the publication of my reference book in 1991, which contains annotations for 1,325 publications.3 This has reached such proportions that the update to be offered on my forthcoming Busoni website currently consists of more than 2,200 titles, of which 65 percent have been published since 1990. Much previous writing on Busoni has too often consisted of regurgitating the same well-known facts culled from a limited body of literature, usually about his Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, the concept of Junge Klassizität, and masterpieces such as the Fantasia contrappuntistica and the four completed operas, especially Doktor Faust. Recently, however, work based on primary sources, in the form of both scholarly articles and contributions to edited collections (including symposia) as well as several dissertations partly or entirely devoted to Busoni’s music and thinking, has become much more frequent. This is now redefining the kind of research likely to help Busoni take a more central place in music history. It is in this context, benefiting from easy access to sources, that Erinn E. Knyt has become a major actor in the field during the past decade. Knyt—referred to as Assistant Professor of Music at the University...

To date, J. S. Bach’s role in silent cinema has not received much attention, in part because so few sources seem to point in his direction. Bach is barely mentioned in film music’s major encyclopedic sources of the period. Likewise, his music is absent from silent-era mood music compilations, accompaniment manuals, and photoplay collections. But a close reading of the American film trade press, particularly from 1915 to 1925, suggests a more complex story. Bach did have a presence in silent film music, although perceptions of the composer varied widely. For some, his name and music represented the pinnacle of excellence and a standard for raising the quality of film music overall. Others openly disparaged his music, calling it too obtuse and complex for film accompaniment. These contradictory views are further complicated by the confusing cue sheet references to Bach, some of which most certainly refer not to Johann Sebastian but to other composers named Bach. The greatest saturation of Bach references in cue sheets occurs in the years 1916–1920, during which time Bach, or at least the name Bach, appears as suggested music for scenes in over 200 films, ranging from Westerns (e.g., Hair Trigger Burke) to dramas (e.g., A Wife’s Suspicion) to war movies (e.g., The Zeppelin’s Last Raid). Many of these suggested pieces are likely not by J. S. Bach, but rather by a collection of other Bachs (Christopher, Leonhard Emil, Karl). However, no effort was made at the time by the cue sheet compilers or the trade journal editors to clarify this distinction; all of the suggested pieces were simply by “Bach.” The work titles, moreover, offer only marginal guidance: some point directly to Johann Sebastian (“Air on a G String”), but others are too vague (“Fantasia”) or implausible (“Christmas Dreams—A Waltz”) to provide much insight.

Notice Samuel Jay Keyser With Volume 48, Number 4, Andrew Nevins and Yasutada Sudo ended their coeditorship (with Coppe van Urk) of the Squibs and Discussion department of Linguistic Inquiry. The editors of the journal wish to express their gratitude to Andrew and Yasutada for their excellent stewardship and to welcome Ora Matushansky, Hazel Pearson, Francesc Torres-Tamarit, and Coppe as the new and continuing Squibs and Discussion editors. [End Page i] Copyright © 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article presents a method for guiding students in the beginning phase of prelude composition, advancing them to the point where the opening gesture is complete and the rest of the prelude can proceed by maintaining the momentum already acquired. This teaching strategy focuses on the notion of what I term the quadruple gambit, a type of opening gesture often employed by Bach. Each gambit (opening move) is quadruple in its evenly timed presentation of four harmonic stages—stable, unstable, unstable, stable—forming either an underlying harmonic circuit of I–IV(or II)–V(or VII)–I or a harmonic shuttle of I–V(or VII)–V(or VII)–I. The harmonic categories of the circuit and shuttle combine with bass-line categories of pedal, clausula, and cadence to create idiomatic gambits for students to deploy in their compositions. In the first half of this article, I define the characteristics of this type of beginning and give multiple examples. In the second half, I demonstrate how instructors can help students emulate these gestures.

When, in the late 1740s, Johann Sebastian Bach decided to expand to a complete Mass one of the Kyrie-Gloria Masses he had written in the 1730s, he turned to the most ambitious work among the five: the Missa of 1733 which he had dedicated to the Dresden court. This work, BWV 232 1 , scored for five rather than four voices and for a particularly large orchestra (including a full brass section and three pairs of woodwinds), represented the type of 'missa solemnis', whereas the other pieces, BWV 233–236, fell into the 'missa ferialis' category. Naturally, the choice of such a grand-scale work as a point of departure had to have a major impact on the overall plan of the eventual composition.

Im Jahre des 750jährigen Bestehens des Thomanerchores zeichnete Friedrick Blume in einem Vortrag auf dem Bach-Fest der Internationalen Bachgesellschaft in Mainz die „Umrisse eines neuen Back-Bitdes" 1 in einer Weise, die wie selten die Gemüter in Erregung brachte und die Journalisten von einer „echten Sensation" (DIE WELT, 7. 6. 62) sprechen ließ.

Reviewed by: Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture by Markus Rathey Mark A. Peters (bio) Markus Rathey. Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 414 pages. Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio is among the best-known and best-loved works in the Western art music repertory and, like the composer's St. Matthew Passion and B-minor Mass, is regularly heard by concert audiences. Given the frequency with which it is performed and recorded, it is surprising to note how little research has been published on the Christmas Oratorio, particularly in English. The only English-language monograph dedicated to the work is Ignace Bossuyt's Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio. BWV 248, which was translated from Dutch and is more an introductory handbook than it is a work of new scholarship.1 One other significant recent monograph dedicated to the Christmas Oratorio is Meinrad Walter's Johann Sebastian Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium of 2006 (published only in German), which focuses primarily on theological perspectives on the work.2 Three recent publications in English provide valuable resources for encountering the Christmas Oratorio, but none attempts a comprehensive study of the work. Michael Marissen includes an annotated text of BWV 248 with a new English translation in his Bach's Oratorios of 2008.3 Christoph Wolff provides an excellent broad introduction to Bach's three oratorios (Christmas, Easter, and Ascension) in his "Under the Spell of Opera? Bach's Oratorio Triology" of 2011.4 And Markus Rathey offers a helpful introduction to the Christmas Oratorio for a general readership in his 2016 chapter "From Love Song to Lullaby: The Christmas Oratorio BWV 248."5 [End Page 126] Rathey's Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture thus addresses a significant gap in Bach research by offering the first comprehensive English-language monograph dedicated to the oratorio. And it does so by masterfully weaving together source study, music analysis, textual analysis, contextual study, and historical theology to present a comprehensive and compelling body of research into this well-known composition. In my introduction to current research on Bach's vocal music in The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, I presented six broad approaches to the study of Bach's vocal music: source study, musical analysis, performance practice, theology, text, and contextual studies.6 While Rathey does not focus on performance practice in this volume, he treats in detail all five of the other approaches in relation to the Christmas Oratorio. Rathey's varied approaches to understanding the Christmas Oratorio are not separated into distinct chapters, but are rather interwoven throughout each chapter. By way of example, I briefly trace here the primary themes and sources addressed in Chapter 3, "Layers of Time: The Theology of the Christmas Oratorio," as representative of Rathey's approach throughout the book. Chapter 3 focuses primarily on the libretto of the Christmas Oratorio, explicating it through the lens of historical theology around the concept of the "threefold coming of Christ, which represents the common view of the birth of Jesus at that time and connects the historical event to a chronological continuum with the present and with the end times" (52, italics in original). Following the chapter's introduction that presents historical theology as a framing approach for understanding the Christmas Oratorio and calls attention to the shifting perspectives and chronological layers of the libretto (50–52), a substantial section of the chapter explores theological sources from Bach's time that inform our understanding of Jesus's "threefold coming" (52–59). Rathey begins by discussing a didactic book for school children published in 1727 by Hamburg theologian Johann Joachim Neudorf and drawing on sources such as cantata librettos by Benjamin Schmolck [End Page 127] and Erdmann Neumeister, as well as the Leipziger Kirchenstaat. Rathey continues with what he identifies as "[t]he most influential exposition on the threefold advent in Lutheran Orthodoxy," Johann Gerhard's Postille of 1617. Within this context, Rathey explores how Advent hymns of the seventeenth century reflect the emphasis on Christ's threefold coming. In the next section of Chapter 3, Rathey shifts to explore how such a theological understanding is...

Abstract This chapter examines developments in the personal life and musical career of Johann Sebastian Bach during the period from 1708 to 1717. Six of the seven of Bach's children were born in Weimar, where he worked as court organist. Bach later moved to Cothen, and when he saw an opportunity for career advancement he requested Duke Wilhelm for his release. The duke became enraged at Bach's insistence and placed him under arrest and held him prisoner. After this imprisonment the duke granted Bach an ignominious dismissal.