Bach's numbers : compositional proportion and significance
Ruth Tatlow (Author)
In eighteenth-century Germany the universal harmony of God's creation and the perfection of its proportions still held philosophical, moral and devotional significance. Reproducing proportions close to the unity (1:1) across compositions could render them beautiful, perfect and even eternal. Using the principles of her groundbreaking theory of proportional parallelism and the latest source study research, Ruth Tatlow reveals how Bach used the number of bars to create numerical perfection across his published collections, and explains why he did so. The first part of the book shows the wide-ranging application of belief in the unity, demonstrating how planning a perfect structure was a normal compositional procedure in Bach's time. In the second part Tatlow presents practical demonstrations of this in all Bach's publications and fair copies, showing that layers of proportion can appear within a movement, a work, between two works in a collection, across a collection or between collections themselves
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xviii, 411 pages : illustrations, facsimiles ; 26 cm
9781107088603, 9781107459694, 1107088607, 1107459699
908334086
Bach's numbers
Symmetry, proportion and parallels
Unity, proportions and universal harmony in Bach's world
Bars, compositional planning and proportional parallelism
Three collections for strings
Four in two collections for keyboard
Two further collections for keyboard
Two small late collections
Two large late collections
Collections of concertos
Collections of organ works
Great passions and cantatas
Festive cut-and-paste projects : masses and oratorios
Lost blueprints
"First published 2015; Rerinted 2016"--Title page verso