"Good invention repaid with interest": The importance of borrowing in Bach's compositional practice.
Item
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Title
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"Good invention repaid with interest": The importance of borrowing in Bach's compositional practice.
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Identifier
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AAI3008882
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identifier
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3008882
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Creator
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White, Andrew Carl.
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Contributor
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Adviser: George B. Stauffer
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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Bach was unquestionably a prolific composer, often compelled by demands of the eighteenth century to produce a constant supply of new music. The more than 1100 surviving Bach compositions demonstrate his ability to generate a vast amount of music for a variety of purposes. Such variety was needed as accompaniment for various social and religious events, or for the purposes of entertainment or music instruction. But a significant number of Bach's works are borrowed or parodied versions of either his earlier compositions or of the works of others.;Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars sought to explain why a composer with so many original compositions would find it necessary to look for inspiration in his earlier works and in the works of other composers. Some scholars thought Bach borrowed for expediency. Often times, Bach was under extreme time constraints to compose new music and typically had little or no time to create preliminary versions of his works. By using other compositions as models, Bach could generate large amounts of music within a short span of time. But there are many other Bach parody works that were written during less harried periods in his life, revealing that Bach borrowed throughout his musical career.;As a youth, Bach borrowed from the works of others in order to learn the principles of composition. During his later years, Bach looked to the works of others in order to keep abreast of a wide range of historical and contemporary musical styles. And even in instances where time may have been the primary motivating factor for borrowing, Bach's parodies show his concern with structural matters as well as corrections of detail. Although their composing requirements were quite varied, Bach's contemporaries, including Handel, Vivaldi, and Telemann took a similar approach to composition. A survey of the parody practices of Bach and his contemporaries demonstrates their recognition of additional composing potential latent in many pre-existing musical ideas. Such abilities are clues to eighteenth-century musical memory, which can be linked with an eighteenth-century view of music composition and performance practice.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
