57-846 Bach

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

This class will be a chronological retrospective of Bachs life and works, covering all major aspects of his instrumental and vocal music part historical and part analytical. We will be discussing the principles of historically informed performance practice in relation to modern and period instrument performances of his music. We will show the musical influences that affected Bachs work as we work our way though the cantatas and Passions, instrumental music solo, chamber, and orchestral, and finish up with the masterpieces of his final decade B Minor Mass, Goldberg Variations, Musical Offering, and the Art of the Fugue. At the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate familiarity with Bachs works and with an intimate knowledge of many of them and identify Bachs melodic, harmonic, contrapuntal, and structural vocabulary. The class is open to all graduate as well as undergraduate students, instrumentalists, vocalists, and composers. It can count as music support for graduate students and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students may register with instructor permission if space is available after graduate students have registered.

Prerequisites: none listed

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