“Global Bach”
Biennial Meeting of the American Bach Society
Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia)
September 26–29, 2024
Call For Papers | Register | Schedule | Abstracts | Travel and Hotel

Paper Abstracts

As of July 23, 2024 (subject to change as necessary)

Mary Greer
Anomalies in “Hercules at the Crossroads” (BWV 213): Implications for the Christmas Oratorio

When Bach and Picander undertook to create a forty-five-minute work based on the account of Hercules at the Crossroads in September 1733, they introduced several new elements into the plot in order to create a libretto of sufficient length. I propose that one, the reference to Hercules strangling a pair of snakes as an infant, was introduced in order to set up a parallel between Hercules and the Christ child—the Savior of mankind—who, it is prophesied in Genesis 3:15, will “trample the head of the serpent” (i.e., vanquish Satan). A further connection between the libretto and a key bible passage is found in movement 8, where “Tugend” addresses “Wollust” as the “temptress” (“Verführerin”) who was “cast out” (“verstoßen”). The juxtaposition of these two words bears a striking resemblance to Revelation 12:9: “the great dragon, the ancient serpent … Satan, who leads the whole world astray (‘verführt’), was cast out (‘ausgeworfen’).” It is notable that Bach annotated Genesis 3 and Revelation 12—chapters that are central to Luther’s understanding of salvation—in his Calov Bible Commentary. He acquired the three-volume set in 1733, the same year he composed “Hercules at the Crossroads.” This suggests that, when Bach and Picander introduced the reference to Hercules as the serpent-throttler, and juxtaposed the references to “Wollust” as the temptress and her being cast out of the company of the gods, they were laying the groundwork for the Christmas Oratorio. Positing an analogy between “Wollust” and Satan also casts the six mentions of the word “Feind” in Part VI of the oratorio in a new light. If the term “Feind” refers to “Satan” who, thanks to the Savior, is no longer to be feared, it suggests that we have overlooked an important metanarrative in the Christmas Oratorio: that the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

William Fischer
“Bring Your Bärenreiters”: The Colorful and Checkered History of a Major Music Publisher

The director of the Portland Bach Cantata Choir often previews rehearsals for upcoming concerts by saying “Bring your Bärenreiters.” After a while I began to wonder just what, or who, a Bärenreiter is.

Bärenreiter-Verlag, founded in Augsburg in 1923 by the very young Karl Vötterle (1903–1975), was an upstart startup that fairly soon competed with the established publishers of classical music. Deciphering its history is like peeling an onion.

The immediately available materials say little and neglect, even avoid, much. The English and German versions of the company’s website often lack the context needed by those who are not very familiar with German history and culture. The autobiography of founder Karl Vötterle is rich in anecdotes about his printing facilities and editorial resources, but only hints at his relation to National Socialism, which involved both cooperation and resistance. After World War II, Vötterle apparently initiated the project to issue the Neue Bach-Ausgabe. His interactions with the East German publisher and editors need more examination.

Such resources consistently offer a picture of Bärenreiter as an enterprise whose aim, from the very beginning, was to publish classical music. Yet the record of what Bärenreiter actually published, especially early on, shows something different. Beyond that are ethical issues for musicians, musicologists, and Germanists that are, in certain respects, like those encountered when Bach’s John Passion is performed: whether and how to acknowledge the darker past of music, and how to judge the behavior of individuals without either whitewashing or casting stones. No definitive answers will be proposed.

Bärenreiter’s history will be compared to that of other German music publishers (Breitkopf & Härtel, Edition Peters, the post-war East German remnants of the older publishers, and the new companies founded in the West after World War II). Topics for further research will be mentioned.

Daniel R. Melamed
How Not to Analyze a Bach Cantata

The analysis and interpretation of Bach's liturgical cantatas is, in large part, a mess. Most analyses are rooted firmly in a particular interpretive mode that seeks to identify the pictorial significance of musical motives Bach chooses for various texts, sometimes adding comments on the emotional character of vocal and instrumental lines.

The model for this, both in English- and German-language writings, is Albert Schweitzer, whose critical treatment of Bach's music (published in French, German, and English in 1905, 1908, and 1911, respectively) laid out an elaborate esthetic foundation for Bach as a “pictorial” musician in contrast to Wagner (said to be a “poetic” one). Schweitzer put forward a catalogue of musical figures, principally rhythmic, that he saw as a key to the decoding of all of Bach's music, vocal and instrumental. These figures could represent physical entities (angels, serpents, water) but also actions (rising, falling, walking, hurrying) and states of mind (faith, strength, weariness, tumult). The solution to the puzzle of a Bach cantata movement lay in understanding the relationship between the figure he chose and the text he set.

This methodology, combined with a Romantic conviction that Bach's cantatas represented his personal emotional outpourings on religious subjects, has been uncritically adopted by almost every writer since, despite its unhistorical basis. Albert Heuss, William Gillies Whittaker, John Eliot Gardiner, and Internet amateurs like Julian Mincham have all been more interested in arguing over the correctness of particular motivic identifications than in questioning the method. This is made clear by the history of writings on “Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot” BWV 39/1.

Schweitzer was correct, of course, in his instinct to understand Bach's cantatas by noting commonalities among movements. But it is far more productive (and respectful of the historical context) to understand similarities as representing conventions, “topics,” and other elements of a shared musical practice among Bach and others of his time, one inherited from earlier generations, rather than as invented elements of a personal expressive language of the composer.

Even with progress on this front, what is still largely lacking is a willingness to join historically-informed musical analysis to an understanding of contemporary Lutheran theology. That combination represents our best chance of understanding Bach's expressive aims in his cantatas.

Stephen Crist
The Roots of Bach’s Music in the Treasures of Lutheran Hymnody

Sashi Ayyangar
“Angewandtes eigenes Nachsinnen erlernet”: The Influence of Nicolaus Bruhns on J. S. Bach’s Early Cantatas

The idea that Nicolaus Bruhns (1665–1697) influenced J. S. Bach dates back at least to the 1754 obituary by C. P. E. Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola: “In the art of the organ he took the works of Bruhns, Reincken, Buxtehude, and several good French organists as models.” Bruhns appears again as an example of a composer whom J. S. Bach “heard and studied” in a 1775 letter from C. P. E. Bach to Johann Nikolaus Forkel. The question of precisely how Bruhns might have influenced Bach, however, has so far remained open (Hugh McLean’s entry on Bruhns in Grove Music Online, for instance, states: “Concerning Bruhns’s influence on Bach the evidence is inconclusive”). The present paper identifies several instances of musical borrowing from Bruhns in Bach’s early cantatas. These borrowings are concentrated in—but not limited to—fugal movements, within which Bruhns’s influence is traceable both in the thematic material Bach employs as well as in his ways of structuring fugues. Such correspondences, in combination with an investigation into the source histories of Bruhns’s sacred vocal works, situate Bruhns as a transitional figure between the north German school centering around Dieterich Buxtehude—with whom Bruhns studied in Lübeck—and the young J. S. Bach. This paper expands our knowledge of the reception of Bruhns’s music in the early eighteenth century, and provides new evidence of how J. S. Bach assimilated and built upon the music of his German precursors during his early creative development.

Annika Fabbi
“What’s in a Score?”: Exploring the Publication History of J. S. Bach’s Capriccio, BWV 992

This paper explores the influence that editorial practices have on musicians, and the implications of these findings for twenty-first-century performers of Baroque music. Throughout the many debates on Baroque performance practice, the influence and impact of published editions on musicians have been nearly absent, with the score at times misrepresented in scholarly literature as an objective and unbiased representation of the composer’s intent. In reality, each published edition represents a chosen interpretation of the musical work. By investigating the development of editorial trends over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this paper posits the existence of a symbiotic relationship between the music community’s ever-evolving attitudes towards Baroque music and trends in music editing. To do so, I will catalogue and analyze the innumerable variations between published editions of J. S. Bach’s Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo, BWV 992. As this research remains ongoing, I will focus on the first movement of the piece. The Capriccio is uniquely positioned to be a case study for research into developing editorial practices over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Likely because of its unique, programmatic nature, BWV 992 has been published numerous times by a wide variety of publishers, while its relative obscurity has allowed editors to perceive greater freedom in expressing their individual views on performance practice. Consequently, an in-depth study into the publication history of the Capriccio reveals much more about evolving knowledge of, and attitudes towards, Baroque music than a similar study into a mainstream Bach composition would. The findings of this study demonstrate the impact of the twentieth century’s rising Historically Informed Performance movement, alongside the lasting influence of nineteenth century artistic principals.

Kailan Rubinoff
From Authenticity to LGBTQ+ Empathy: Queering the St. John Passion

This paper considers Thomas Höft’s Utrechter Passion, a St. John Passion contrafact highlighting violence against queer communities. Leaving Bach’s music largely unchanged, Höft jettisons the libretto, foregrounding not Christ’s suffering but rather victims of anti-LGBTQ+ brutality in the eighteenth century (1730 Utrecht sodomy trials, a Prussian trans man) and recent times (Orlando, Chechnya, Lagos). Drawing on queer theories of subversion (Maus, Halperin) and sincerity (MacLachlan), I situate the Utrechter Passion within Dutch traditions of Bach performance and politically-engaged musicking, to demonstrate its transformation into a vehicle promoting understanding, tolerance, and activism.

The shock of Höft’s Passion was amplified by its premiere at the 2022 Utrecht Early Music Festival, a global center of “historically-informed performance” (HIP). In the Netherlands, Bach’s Passions are venerated thanks to a tradition of annual Eastertide performances first established by Willem Mengelberg (1899) and later rivaled by the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, which celebrated its centennial at the Festival. Since the 1960s the Dutch have been central to an “authenticity revolution” in Bach interpretation (Haynes) – and to LGBTQ+ activism.

Höft, former assistant of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, emerges from postmodern queer theatre and “legitimate” Bach performances, forcing confrontations between both worlds. Höft’s Passion, I argue, relies on the deep familiarity of Bach’s music and libretto to HIP audiences: hearing the “live” new version simultaneously with aural memories of the original produces a jarring stereo effect, augmented by familiar period-instrument timbres. Höft violates a sacred work at a site where Werktrue and composers’ intentions are ostensibly valued; yet in queering Bach’s Passion Höft moves beyond camp or parody, challenging homophobic complacency while inviting audiences to empathize directly with LGBTQ+ anguish. As the Festival shifts away from earlier authentistic approaches to ask, “What does the music have to say to us today?” Höft’s Utrechter Passion represents a powerful response to emergent HIP priorities.

George Stauffer
Bach and Democracy

The works of Johann Sebastian Bach are the quintessential demonstration of democracy in music. Every voice—instrumental and vocal—plays a significant melodic role while blending with other parts in harmonic and contrapuntal unity. Bach achieved this egalitarian style through the early application of Johann Theile’s permutation techniques and his own explorations in the Reincken and Corelli arrangements, the chorales of the Orgel-Büchlein, and other works. The fruits of these labors can be seen in the pure soprano-alto-tenor-bass texture of his four-part chorales, the invertible counterpoint of his mature fugues, or the open scoring of the six-part Ricercar of the Musical Offering, for instance. If the citizens of democracy are both the “rulers and the ruled,” as Adlai Stevenson once said, then the parts in Bach’s compositions are the musical equivalent of democracy in action. Every voice is independent, yet interdependent.

Bach also championed previously underrepresented instruments. In Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 he elevated the violas from their normally subservient status to leading voices in the concertino. In Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 he freed the harpsichord from anonymity in the continuo group to head protagonist, not only giving it a solo role but allotting it a virtuosic cadenza—a feature previously reserved for the violin. Susan McClary has likened its soloistic outbursts to the “storming of Bastille.”

Indeed, Bach’s music has represented rebellion against authoritarian regimes. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one of the first signs of defiance was Denys Karachevtsev’s performance of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 in the bombed-out ruins of Kharkiv. Or during the Cultural Revolution in China, the composer Tan Dun found hope in Bach’s music as “a medicine curing everything you were suffering.”

This paper will explore these and other aspects of Bach’s music that make it a powerful representative of democracy.

Andrew Talle
Bach’s Cello Suites in Global Politics

In recent decades, J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites have been frequently heard in explicitly political contexts. To cite a few prominent examples, selections were performed by Mstislav Rostropovich at the freshly breached Berlin Wall in 1989, by Yo-Yo Ma at the September 11 memorial in New York City in 2011, by Edgar Moreau at a concert given in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, and by Denys Karachevtsev among the decimated buildings of Kharkiv in 2022. Pablo Casals was apparently the first to connect Bach’s Cello Suites with humanitarian causes, particularly his principled opposition to the Franco regime in Spain. This presentation seeks to illuminate the ways in which this music has been used to celebrate the dignity of the individual, particularly one who has been threatened or victimized by totalitarian ideologies.

Derek Stauff
Early Music in The Glass Bead Game

In Hermann Hesse’s last novel, The Glass Bead Game (1943), early music, musicology, and Johann Sebastian Bach occupy conspicuous places. The novel recounts the development of the Glass Bead Game and its most important master, Joseph Knecht, set in the fictional province of Castalia about four centuries in the future. The game, whose origins lie in music and mathematics, eventually offers its elite practitioners a grand synthesis of all arts and sciences, an experience as much religious and liturgical as intellectual in nature.

If literary critics have already noted music’s role in the formation of the Glass Bead Game and in the development of the novel’s central character, they have not noticed how the anonymous narrator’s musical references and analogies often align with the ideals of the early music movement as practiced in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. For instance, the cultural renewal that brought about the Game started when musicians began to reject romantic individuality and the personal expression of nineteenth-century music and returned to music of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, a repertoire which, being shorn of all dynamic gradations, fluctuations in tempo, and other signs of individual expression, can finally let listeners hear the music as their composers wanted. Peppered through the narrative are references to names like Monteverdi, Froberger, Purcell, and Couperin, along with period instruments and older genres. J. S. Bach’s name appears nearly twice as frequently as others and his significance is more often assessed in detail. Most of these references are superficial on a level that Hesse’s public could appreciate mostly as symbols of Castalia’s rarified atmosphere.

For all his reliance on the ideas and assumptions of the early music movement, Hesse ultimately offers an implicit critique of Castalian ideals, a critique that we can easily extend to the early music movement of his day: the elite culture of Castalia had become severed from history, unconscious of its own past and of the contingency of its ideals; it had also become a society in which the making of new works of art had largely given way to the reproduction of the old or the recycling and synthesis of the old into the Glass Bead Game; and it had become an Order in which the most learned could remain wholly isolated from the larger world to pursue arcane, self-indulgent research. The novel’s references to early music symbolize the kind of aesthetic isolation that ultimately prompted Joseph Knecht to reject Castalia in favor of a life engaged with the world and its problems.

Keynote Address
Michael Maul
Three Years of “BACH – We are FAMILY!”: Experiences and Results of a Global Campaign

In 2017, I developed the idea of turning the Bachfest Leipzig 2020 into the largest family gathering of the international Bach community. The approach: in addition to the famous Bach performers, Bach choirs from all over the world, including amateur and semi-professional ensembles, should also have a place at the Bachfest and be allowed to perform in Bach's churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. Over fifty Bach choirs from all continents accepted our invitation—but then, uninvited, the coronavirus also announced itself and destroyed our plan. However, we made a virtue of necessity and united the Bach choirs virtually—be it in the legendary “St. John Passion à trois” on Good Friday 2020 or in a world-embracing Mass in B Minor in summer 2020. We then made up for the planned festival in the 2022 and 2024 Bachfests. For many Bach lovers, the motto “BACH – We are FAMILY” now seems to me to have become not just the motto of a past Leipzig Bachfest, but the slogan for an entire community.

Perhaps the most beautiful, emotional testimony to this and to the global Bach community as a whole is the documentary film “Living Bach,” which Leipzig filmmaker Anna Schmidt made in cooperation with the Bachfest in recent years. She portrayed one protagonist each from the second row of a Bach choir on all continents, featuring performers from Japan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, Paraguay, the USA, and Switzerland. The film shows how these Bach lovers, all amateurs, live for and with Bach. At the end of the film, they all travel to Leipzig for the Bachfest (2022) and perform together in the festival choir under the direction of Ton Koopman in the Church of St. Thomas.

All these aspects of our undertaking “BACH – We are FAMILY!” will be the subject of my presentation. In addition, the 120-minute film “Living Bach” will be shown during the conference. The trailer is available here.

Steven Zohn
Bach in Friendly Remembrance: Album Inscriptions as Reception History

During the nineteenth century, paying a call to an autograph collector usually entailed signing their album “in friendly remembrance” of the encounter. Musical visitors might also leave a small gift: a few measures of a favorite aria, a brief improvisation such as a cadenza or prelude, or even a complete piano piece or song. Some chose to signal their erudition, and that of the dedicatee, by writing out a contrapuntal curiosity such as a canon or fugue—part of a long tradition of learned Stammbücher entries. Among such remembrances are quotations of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the few “ancient” composers found among collectors’ album leaves. In this paper, I consider Bach-related inscriptions penned between the 1830s and 1890s as documents of the composer’s Romantic-era reception, most of which have been overlooked to date. Among the inscribers are several well known Bach enthusiasts: musicologist and collector Aloys Fuchs (who quoted a canon from The Musical Offering), violinist Joseph Joachim (the D-minor chaconne), pianist-composer Ignaz Moscheles (two original pieces on the BACH theme), and singer-conductor Julius Stockhausen (“Komm, süßer Kreuz” from the St. Matthew Passion). Others are less familiar, such as the Liszt pupils Anna Mehlig and Carl Tausig, the Leipzig Gewandhaus concertmaster Engelbert Röntgen, and the amateur organist Friedrich Schlemmer. Some of these musicians inscribed pieces that were in their active performing repertory, or for which they had a special affinity. But all chose to commemorate a social interaction by identifying themselves closely with Bach, whose music thereby functioned both as a personal calling card and a potent form of cultural currency.

Nicholas Phan
Bach 52