Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907246
Reviewed by: The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel by Harry White Ivan Ćurković (bio) Harry White. The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). xvi, 307 pp. In an era when musicological specialization and the case study are the prevalent approaches to scholarly writing, there are few books such as Harry White's ambitious comparative study. Its title is precise in naming the key categories used to define interpretive contexts that bring together three different composers of the high baroque. Servitude, a social category stemming from the employment of musicians by sacred and secular authorities, is epitomized by Johann Joseph Fux's career at the helm of the Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna (1715–1741). In the course of the book, Fux's servitude enters into dialogue with the other pair of titular categories, artistic autonomy and the related aesthetic concept of the musical work, as embodied in the late works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. White undertakes this in order to prove that "the relations between servitude and autonomy exist in a continuum" (xi). Since the 1990s, the Irish musicologist has revisited Fux periodically, the research specialization from the earlier stages of his career, even though he has devoted more of his research output to music in Ireland. Thus, The Musical Discourse of Servitude is a grand, summarizing achievement that channels a lifetime of keen scholarly interest in music between 1700 and 1750 by taking up a "smaller" topic (the music of Fux) and tackling it with big questions in an attempt to provide equally comprehensive, often bold answers. The monograph is clearly structured into five lengthy chapters, framed by an extensive introduction ("Servitude, Autonomy and the European Musical Imagination") and a much more concise conclusion with the playful, joking title "Well, Well, Well: Fux, Bach and Handel." This balanced "macroform" reminiscent of Fux's harmonious approach to the formal shaping of da capo arias can be summarized here before going into detail. After having outlined his subject matter and explained the methodology in the introduction, White devotes chapter 1 to a detailed investigation of the social and cultural conditions that governed Fux's activity as Kapellmeister in Vienna and the traces it left behind. Chapter 2 is devoted to the philological and [End Page 315] musical background of Fux's Viennese oeuvre and how this phenomenon was received by generations of later scholars. It concludes with an analysis of selected pieces, most notably a comparison of three pairs of arias by Fux and Bach that exemplify the composers' opposing treatment of da capo form. Chapter 3 delves deeply into the rich reception history of Bach's music, outlining at length some of the main points of critique in recent Anglo-American musicology that the auth
{"title":"The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel by Harry White (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/bach.2023.a907246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bach.2023.a907246","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel by Harry White Ivan Ćurković (bio) Harry White. The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy, & the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, & Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). xvi, 307 pp. In an era when musicological specialization and the case study are the prevalent approaches to scholarly writing, there are few books such as Harry White's ambitious comparative study. Its title is precise in naming the key categories used to define interpretive contexts that bring together three different composers of the high baroque. Servitude, a social category stemming from the employment of musicians by sacred and secular authorities, is epitomized by Johann Joseph Fux's career at the helm of the Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna (1715–1741). In the course of the book, Fux's servitude enters into dialogue with the other pair of titular categories, artistic autonomy and the related aesthetic concept of the musical work, as embodied in the late works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. White undertakes this in order to prove that \"the relations between servitude and autonomy exist in a continuum\" (xi). Since the 1990s, the Irish musicologist has revisited Fux periodically, the research specialization from the earlier stages of his career, even though he has devoted more of his research output to music in Ireland. Thus, The Musical Discourse of Servitude is a grand, summarizing achievement that channels a lifetime of keen scholarly interest in music between 1700 and 1750 by taking up a \"smaller\" topic (the music of Fux) and tackling it with big questions in an attempt to provide equally comprehensive, often bold answers. The monograph is clearly structured into five lengthy chapters, framed by an extensive introduction (\"Servitude, Autonomy and the European Musical Imagination\") and a much more concise conclusion with the playful, joking title \"Well, Well, Well: Fux, Bach and Handel.\" This balanced \"macroform\" reminiscent of Fux's harmonious approach to the formal shaping of da capo arias can be summarized here before going into detail. After having outlined his subject matter and explained the methodology in the introduction, White devotes chapter 1 to a detailed investigation of the social and cultural conditions that governed Fux's activity as Kapellmeister in Vienna and the traces it left behind. Chapter 2 is devoted to the philological and [End Page 315] musical background of Fux's Viennese oeuvre and how this phenomenon was received by generations of later scholars. It concludes with an analysis of selected pieces, most notably a comparison of three pairs of arias by Fux and Bach that exemplify the composers' opposing treatment of da capo form. Chapter 3 delves deeply into the rich reception history of Bach's music, outlining at length some of the main points of critique in recent Anglo-American musicology that the auth","PeriodicalId":42367,"journal":{"name":"BACH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135653418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907250
{"title":"Martha Goldsworthy Arnold Fellowship at the Riemenschneider Bach Institute","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/bach.2023.a907250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bach.2023.a907250","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42367,"journal":{"name":"BACH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135653421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907241
Amy Ming Wai Tai
Abstract: George Balanchine is widely acknowledged as one of the most musical choreographers of the twentieth century. He was also the pioneer of neoclassical ballet, that is, ballet without stories or characters in the conventional sense. Instead, neoclassical ballet focuses on inflecting our interpretation of the music. Not having stories in the conventional sense, however, does not mean that neoclassical ballet is devoid of narrativity, because for Balanchine, dance "has its own means of telling a story" through formalistic elements such as space, movement, and their interaction with music. Concerto Barocco (1941), choreographed to Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor BWV 1043 by J. S. Bach, is one of his first neoclassical ballets and has been praised for its musicality. As such, it serves as a good example for discussing what narrativity is in neoclassical ballet, and its relationship with music. This article analyzes the first movement of this ballet, choreographed to the first movement of Bach's concerto. Balanchine's view on how formalistic elements in dance can tell narratives reflects the view in structuralist and formalist literary theories that form is part of content. Although dance scholars have not used structuralist and formalist literary theories to analyze neoclassical ballets, music theorists such as Fred Maus have adapted these theories to interpret how absolute music tells narratives with tonal tension and relaxation, instrumentation, rhythm, meter, and other parameters. Taking inspiration from these models, this article examines how the formal properties of dance interact with formal properties of music in creating narratives. Bearing in mind the differences among literature, music, and dance, this article extends and refines existing theories where they prove inadequate for understanding the relationship between dance and music. In the first movement of Concerto Barocco , the music generally evokes ideas of conflict and collaboration through tonal departure and return, and the relationship between the soloists and the orchestra. However, exactly how the ideas of conflict and collaboration play out is left indeterminate. Balanchine's choreography tells a tale where the conflict between the soloists and between the soloists and the corps de ballet at the beginning becomes collaboration when the music returns to the home key at the end of the piece. This narrative is enhanced by the choreographic unison at the end, which reinforces the idea of collaboration, and by the emphasis on the tonal narrative of the music at the expense of the thematic one. This article concludes by reflecting on what narrativity means for neoclassical ballet and absolute music. Without words, dance and music can tell intricate narratives in their own ways. Indeterminacy in these media can even be seen as an advantage in enhancing emotional impact and conveying abstract ideas.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907244
Reviewed by: Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways ed. by Paul Corneilson Julian Rushton (bio) Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways, Bach Perspectives 14, ed. Paul Corneilson (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2022). xi, 132 pp. This aptly titled book derives from the proceedings of a joint meeting of the American Bach and Mozart Societies (Stanford, 2020). The series in which it appears is named for the elder composer, or rather composers, as more than one Bach is involved. However, five of these six deep studies touch, or do more than touch, on Mozart. Eleanor Selfridge-Field writes on keyboard transcriptions by J. S. Bach and J. G. Walther; not surprisingly, we learn most about the latter, who is far less researched. Here are catalogued in detail what The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians merely mentions as "14 concs. by other composers, arr. Kbd." Selfridge-Field also lists Bach's sixteen transcriptions, registering some different attributions for the music being reworked; some remain hazy, and perhaps always will. For Walther's transcriptions, possible routes of transmission are traced via manuscripts or Roger's Amsterdam publications. Particularly interesting is the analysis of these composers' relative fidelity to sources (see 20–21). Bach enriched the textures, and for "musical" (I would say "practical") reasons, he accommodated the higher flights of Vivaldi's violin writing to the Weimar organ keyboard, but he "did not violate the integrity of pre-existing material as nonchalantly as Walther did" (21). The article places the works discussed within a wider "culture of musical transcription … a tide of adaptation and allusion that swelled periodically from their time to ours" (22). As indeed it still does. Yoel Greenberg writes on precedents for the "Secondary Development" with examples from J.S. and C.P.E. Bach and Leopold Mozart. Previous theorists of sonata form, it is suggested, have not fully represented the implications for understanding mid-century composers as precedents (rather than merely precursors). This is because they assume that the "double return" of the opening key and theme must define the point of recapitulation, whereas binary-form [End Page 304] movements of the mid-century sometimes make only passing reference to the theme at this point; they may lack clear dominant preparation until the true recapitulation comes with "secondary" material resolved in the tonic, and closure often "rhyming" with the first part. This is not the only chapter that is a useful corrective to the way mid-century composers are squeezed between the giants that came before and after them—Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart. But in their sonata-type pieces C. P. E. Bach and others produced satisfying designs that should be appreciated for their own qualities. The argument could be developed in connection with, for instance, the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, whose works were dissemina
审查:巴赫和莫扎特:连接，模式和途径，由保罗·科尼尔森朱利安·拉什顿(传记)巴赫和莫扎特:连接，模式和途径，巴赫的观点14，编辑保罗·科尼尔森(厄巴纳，芝加哥和斯普林菲尔德:伊利诺伊大学出版社，2022年)。这本书名恰当的书来自美国巴赫和莫扎特协会联合会议的记录(斯坦福大学，2020年)。它出现的系列是以老作曲家的名字命名的，或者更确切地说，作曲家，因为不止一个巴赫参与其中。然而，这六项深入研究中有五项涉及或不仅仅涉及莫扎特。埃莉诺·塞尔弗里奇-菲尔德(Eleanor Selfridge-Field)在j·s·巴赫(J. S. Bach)和J. G.瓦尔特(J. G. Walther)的键盘上书写;毫不奇怪，我们对后者了解最多，而对后者的研究要少得多。以下是《新格罗夫音乐与音乐家词典》中仅仅提到的“14场音乐会”的详细目录。其他作曲家，arr。Kbd。”塞尔福里奇菲尔德还列出了巴赫的16个转录，记录了一些不同的音乐归属。有些仍然模糊不清，也许永远如此。对于瓦尔特的转录，可能的传播途径是通过手稿或罗杰在阿姆斯特丹的出版物来追踪的。特别有趣的是分析这些作曲家对来源的相对保真度(见20-21)。巴赫丰富了织体，出于“音乐”(我想说“实用”)的原因，他在魏玛管风琴键盘上容纳了维瓦尔第的小提琴写作的更高层次，但他“没有像瓦尔特那样漠不关心地破坏现有材料的完整性”(21)。文章将讨论的作品置于更广泛的“音乐转录文化……从他们的时代到我们的时代，一股周期性膨胀的改编和典藏浪潮”(22)。事实上，它现在仍然如此。约尔·格林伯格以J.S.巴赫和C.P.E.巴赫以及利奥波德·莫扎特为例，写了“二次发展”的先例。以前的奏鸣曲形式理论家，它被认为，并没有完全代表理解中世纪作曲家作为先例(而不仅仅是先驱)的含义。这是因为他们认为开场键和主题的“双重回归”必须定义重述的点，而本世纪中叶的二元形式的运动有时只是在这一点上对主题的间接引用;他们可能缺乏明确的主音准备，直到真正的重唱出现了“次要”材料在主音中解决，并且结尾处通常与第一部分“押韵”。这并不是唯一一章对中世纪作曲家被挤在他们之前和之后的巨人之间——巴赫、亨德尔、海顿、莫扎特——的方式进行有效纠正的章节。但在他们奏鸣曲式的作品中，巴赫和其他人创作了令人满意的设计，这些设计应该因其自身的品质而受到赞赏。这个论点可以与多梅尼科·斯卡拉蒂(Domenico Scarlatti)的奏鸣曲联系起来，例如，他的作品在本世纪中叶传播开来，甚至在英国，在巴赫的另一个儿子约翰·克里斯蒂安(Johann Christian)到达英国之前。格林伯格的例子，除了长周期的五度圆曲线图和巴赫和老莫扎特的节选外，还包括沃尔夫冈·莫扎特的早期作品，它看起来更像是中世纪而不是“高级古典”。然而，在他的成熟时期，“双重回归已经具有了一种意义，既和谐又主题，这在18世纪中期是不可能的”(36)。我们只能同意。诺埃尔·m·希伯这一章的标题是“追求财富:巴赫和莫扎特的自由事业”。Heber的结论是，尽管他们经常抱怨缺钱，但他们的工资、赞助、教学、出版和费用收入使他们处于中等收入水平。这并不罕见;他们并不是自由职业的先驱，而是各自拥有不同职业收入的典型代表。巴赫在莱比锡时期出版的作品市场有限，但他的收入却相当可观，而莫扎特在维也纳时期放弃了成为“著名乐团指挥”的野心(正如他父亲所希望的那样)，找到了更多的出版空间，并获得了写歌剧的费用。然而，与巴赫不同的是，他的作品在他死后销量迅速增长，而他的遗孀，现在也是他的遗孀……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907242
Maria Borghesi
Abstract: The dramatization of J. S. Bach's Passions is now an accepted fact among audiences and music critics, but what were the beginnings of this tradition? This article examines the first two stagings of the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion . These appeared in 1984–1985, staged by Pier Luigi Pizzi and Jurij Ljubimov, respectively, in two major Italian theaters (Teatro la Fenice in Venice and Teatro alla Scala in Milan) on the occasion of Bach's 300th anniversary and the European Year of Music. The focus is on the dimension of movement and the interaction among stage space, those involved in the production, and the audience. Using the available materials, I sketch the contours of the performance spaces, define the role of the actors on stage, and attempt to reconstruct their movements in relation to Bach's music and the Gospel narrative. These two case studies are related to other experiences with the dramatization of Bach's Passions in the Italian context by Edward Gordon Craig (1913, 1933), Ferruccio Busoni (1924), and Vittorio Biagi (1974, 1983, 1985). The aim is to identify common issues related to the staging of the Passions, and to clarify the ways in which macroand micro-movements were important for mediating Lutheran works such as the Passions for Catholicism.
{"title":"Movement in Italian Dramatizations of J. S. Bach's Passions: From the Church to the Theater and Back","authors":"Maria Borghesi","doi":"10.1353/bach.2023.a907242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bach.2023.a907242","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The dramatization of J. S. Bach's Passions is now an accepted fact among audiences and music critics, but what were the beginnings of this tradition? This article examines the first two stagings of the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion . These appeared in 1984–1985, staged by Pier Luigi Pizzi and Jurij Ljubimov, respectively, in two major Italian theaters (Teatro la Fenice in Venice and Teatro alla Scala in Milan) on the occasion of Bach's 300th anniversary and the European Year of Music. The focus is on the dimension of movement and the interaction among stage space, those involved in the production, and the audience. Using the available materials, I sketch the contours of the performance spaces, define the role of the actors on stage, and attempt to reconstruct their movements in relation to Bach's music and the Gospel narrative. These two case studies are related to other experiences with the dramatization of Bach's Passions in the Italian context by Edward Gordon Craig (1913, 1933), Ferruccio Busoni (1924), and Vittorio Biagi (1974, 1983, 1985). The aim is to identify common issues related to the staging of the Passions, and to clarify the ways in which macroand micro-movements were important for mediating Lutheran works such as the Passions for Catholicism.","PeriodicalId":42367,"journal":{"name":"BACH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135653680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907240
Robert Riggs, Mary Barres Riggs
Abstract: In 1980–1981, the American choreographer John Neumeier, director of the Hamburg Ballet since 1973, created a ballet to Bach's St. Matthew Passion . Aware that choreographing a revered icon of sacred music might be viewed as a violation of its sacrosanct status, he expressed his belief that "A choreographic realization of the Matthew Passion only appeared justified to me if it gives a new, unique dimension to the work … [and that like music] dance offers a means of escape from the grip of time and history to achieve inner reflection and a psychic state." In this essay, we discuss representative sections of the ballet and explore Neumeier's realization of these goals. Sometimes he focuses on visualizing a movement's structure and enhancing its affective and dramatic impact with contemporary ballet choreography. In other movements, he employs eclectic modern dance styles that, while contrasting in striking ways with the music, also enhance it. Both approaches inspire new dimensions and inner reflection. Ultimately, the choreography represents a visual corporeal transcription of the score and its timbres, which, without altering them, contributes new aesthetic perspectives. Our choreo/musical analysis will also address relationships between the ballet and issues in subsequent musicological scholarship, including aspects of Bach's performance practice, his cyclical versus linear approach to time, his occasional composition of works that threaten to stretch performers beyond their limits, and concerns about antisemitism in the turbae. The Hamburg Ballet has performed Matthäus-Passion , which has become one of Neumeier's most important and signature creations, throughout Europe, as well as in Japan, China, Canada, and the United States. The ballet reveals new and unexpected dimensions and affective experiences to audiences already familiar with the St. Matthew Passion and introduces it in a compelling manner to those who have never experienced one of Bach's most esteemed works.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907243
Erinn E. Knyt
Abstract: Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), known as the first important American-born ballet choreographer, set over sixty ballets and numerous pieces for Broadway during his lifetime. His success can be attributed not only to his assimilation of different choreographic styles, but also to his attentiveness to the music. He was equally adept at setting a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from Frédéric Chopin (viz., The Concert 1956), Leonard Bernstein (viz., West Side Story 1957), and J. S. Bach (viz., The Goldberg Variations 1971) to Alban Berg (viz., In Memory Of … 1985). If he excelled at realistic character portrayals in some settings, in others he created abstract visual realizations of the music. Although Robbins choreographed many musical styles throughout his career, he developed a special affinity for the music of Bach at the end of his life. It is notable that his final three new choreographies were all based on the music of Bach: A Suite of Dances (1994); Two& Three-Part Inventions (1994); and Brandenburg (1997). Moreover, Bach's music was the last that he heard before he died; the soft strains of a recording of Bach's French Suites reportedly filled the air as Robbins lay dying at his house on 81st Street in New York in 1998. Based on recordings, letters, essays, and other choreographic sketches, some unpublished, this essay examines Robbins's littlediscussed late Bach settings in relation to concepts of Late Style. While Robbins's settings of three final pieces by Bach might not be summative—that is, they might not be as epic, lengthy, and encyclopedic as his The Goldberg Variations from 1971—they can be seen as synthesizing a lifetime of choreographic styles, including ballet, modern dance, theater, and folk. Since they were all abstract realizations of Bach's music through movement, as opposed to narrative settings, Bach's music seems directly to have inspired Robbins's contrapuntal choreography. In turning to Bach for his final creative projects, Robbins was thus participating in certain ways of thinking about art that Edward Said has claimed can be associated with artistic Late Style, including counterpoint and fragmentation. In addition, aspects of the rhythmic energy and stylistic pluralism so central to Bach's music became muses for Robbins's multi-stylistic choreographies late in life, even as he displayed both nostalgia for the past and a newfound interest in youth and youthfulness. In drawing connections among the last works of Robbins, the music of Bach, and theories of Late Style, this essay provides one of the first explorations of concepts of Late Style in relation to choreography, an art form in which the aging body and the artistic work are closely linked. In addition, it contributes new knowledge not only about the late choreographies of Robbins, but also about movement responses to Bach's music, and ways in which Bach reception has intersected with characteristics of Late Style.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/bach.2023.a907251
{"title":"American Bach Society Frances Alford Brokaw Grant at the Riemenschneider Bach Institute","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/bach.2023.a907251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bach.2023.a907251","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42367,"journal":{"name":"BACH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135653681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S cholars and students of historical Scottish music are, owing to a lack of modern studies, over-reliant on antiquarian sources. These are loaded with myth and inaccuracy, which tends to perpetuate both. Major figures, such as John Gunn (1766–1824), are consigned to footnotes or simply fade into perhaps undeserved obscurity. George Kennaway’s book John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain should therefore be met with rejoicing, for it provides the first full account of Gunn’s life, career, and writings and places him within the context of Enlightenment ideals. Gunn was himself an antiquarian, as well as a music teacher and writer of pedagogical books in Cambridge, Edinburgh, and London. He is now best known for his pedagogical works for flute and cello, but as Kennaway shows by a thorough investigation of archival sources and contemporary publications, Gunn was a significant figure in late eighteenth-century British musical culture. Kennaway starts by resolving the question of where and when Gunn was born; previous writers have been undecided as to the Highlands or Edinburgh, in 1765. As Kennaway reveals, no John Gunns were baptized in Scotland in 1765, making that year extremely unlikely. Baptismal records for the parish of Glospie, Sutherland, list a John, son of the farmer Donald Gunn, in 1766. Since his burial record in 1824 lists his age as fifty-seven, he was most likely born in 1766 or early in 1767. This is the first of many inaccuracies Kennaway corrects. Others include Gunn’s education; dates of his residences in Edinburgh, London, and Cambridge; his international travels, especially in France; the date of his marriage; and the fate of his wife. Chapters 2–5 are devoted to analyses of each of Gunn’s nine books (and one translation):
{"title":"John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain by George Kennaway (review)","authors":"Elizabeth Ford","doi":"10.1353/bach.2022.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bach.2022.0021","url":null,"abstract":"S cholars and students of historical Scottish music are, owing to a lack of modern studies, over-reliant on antiquarian sources. These are loaded with myth and inaccuracy, which tends to perpetuate both. Major figures, such as John Gunn (1766–1824), are consigned to footnotes or simply fade into perhaps undeserved obscurity. George Kennaway’s book John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain should therefore be met with rejoicing, for it provides the first full account of Gunn’s life, career, and writings and places him within the context of Enlightenment ideals. Gunn was himself an antiquarian, as well as a music teacher and writer of pedagogical books in Cambridge, Edinburgh, and London. He is now best known for his pedagogical works for flute and cello, but as Kennaway shows by a thorough investigation of archival sources and contemporary publications, Gunn was a significant figure in late eighteenth-century British musical culture. Kennaway starts by resolving the question of where and when Gunn was born; previous writers have been undecided as to the Highlands or Edinburgh, in 1765. As Kennaway reveals, no John Gunns were baptized in Scotland in 1765, making that year extremely unlikely. Baptismal records for the parish of Glospie, Sutherland, list a John, son of the farmer Donald Gunn, in 1766. Since his burial record in 1824 lists his age as fifty-seven, he was most likely born in 1766 or early in 1767. This is the first of many inaccuracies Kennaway corrects. Others include Gunn’s education; dates of his residences in Edinburgh, London, and Cambridge; his international travels, especially in France; the date of his marriage; and the fate of his wife. Chapters 2–5 are devoted to analyses of each of Gunn’s nine books (and one translation):","PeriodicalId":42367,"journal":{"name":"BACH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45456696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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