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  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Bach: The Goldberg Variations
  • Cited by 7
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511606007
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606007
Subjects:
Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, Music: General Interest
Series:
Cambridge Music Handbooks
Information

Book description

Many listeners and players are fascinated by Bach's Goldberg Variations. In this wideranging and searching study, Professor Williams, one of the leading Bach scholars of our time, helps them probe its depths and understand its uniqueness. He considers the work's historical origins, especially in relation to all Bach's Clavierübung volumes and late keyboard works, its musical agenda and its formal shape, and discusses significant performance issues. In the course of the book he poses a number of key questions. Why should such a work be written? Does the work have both a conceptual and a perceptual shape? What other music is likely to have influenced the Goldberg and to what extent is it trying to be encyclopedic? What is the canonic vocabulary? How have contemporaries or musicians from Beethoven to the present day seen this work and, above all, how has its mysterious beauty been created?

Reviews

Peter Williams manages to pack in an extraordinary amount of information about the work's background, compositional techniques and structures, and reception history. His consideration of the work's relationships to a large amount of other music is particularly remarkable. The writing style is fresh and engaging and the material presented clearly and concisely. We can safely say that Williams's book will be the fundamental work on its subject for years to come.'

Source: Eighteenth-Century Music

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Contents

Contents
References
Bibliography
Alain, Olivier, ‘Un supplément inédit aux Variations Goldberg de J. S. Bach’, Revue de musicologie 61/2 (1975), pp. 243–94
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, 2 (Berlin, 1753, 1762)
Beisswenger, Kirsten, ‘An Early Version of the First Movement of the Italian Concerto Wolfgang Schmieder, Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. 2. überarbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1990) 971 from the Scholz Collection?’, in Daniel R. Melamed, ed., Bach Studies 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–19
Bloom, Harold, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994)
Breig, Werner‘Bachs Goldberg-Variationen als zyklisches Werk’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 32 (1975), pp. 243–65
Butler, Gregory, ‘The Engraving of J. S. Bach's Six Partitas’, Journal of Musicological Research 7 (1986), pp. 3–27
Butler, Gregory ‘Neues zur Datierung der Goldberg-Variationen’, Bach-Jahrbuch 74 (1988), pp. 219–23
Butler, Gregory Bach's Clavier-Übung III: The Making of a Print (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990)
Dähnert, Ulrich, Der Orgel-und Instrumentenbauer Zacharias Hildebrandt (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1962)
Elster, Peter, ‘Anmerkungen zur Aria der sogenannten Goldbergvariationen Wolfgang Schmieder, Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. 2. überarbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1990) 988. Bachs Bearbeitung eines französischen Menuetts’, in Winfried Hoffmann and Armin Schneiderheinze, eds., Bericht über die Wissenschaftliche Konferenz zum V. Internationalen Bachfest 1985 (Leipzig: DVfM, 1988), pp. 259–67
Emery, Walter, in Neue Bach-Ausgabe. Johann Sebastian Bach. Neue Ausgabe sämt licher Werke. Herausgegeben vom Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut Göttingen und vom Bach-Archiv Leipzig (Leipzig/Kassel: DVfM/Bärenreiter, 1954–) vol. V/2 Johann Sebastian Bach Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke vol. V/2 (1981), Kritischer Bericht, ed. Walter Emery and Christoph Wolff, pp. 137ff., 141, 143f
Forkel, J[ohann] N[ikolaus], Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Für patriotische Verehrer echter musikalischer Kunst (Leipzig: Hoffmeister & Kühnel, 1802)
Hawkins, John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, III (London: Payne, 1776), pp. 256–58
Hilgenfeldt, C[arl] L[udwig], Johann Sebastian Bach's Leben, Wirken und Werke (Leipzig: Hofmeister, 1850), appendices
Humphreys, David, ‘More on the Cosmological Allegory in Bach's Goldberg Variations’, Soundings 12 (1984–5), pp. 25–45
Jerger, Wilhelm, ed., The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt 1884–1886 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996)
Kindermann, William, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987)
Kindermann, William, ed., ‘Bach und Beethoven’, in Michael Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, eds., Bach und die Nachwelt, I (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1997), pp. 351–77
Kobayashi, Yoshitake, ‘Zur Chronologie der Spätwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs. Kompositions-und Aufführungstätigkeit von 1736 bis 1750’, Bach-Jahrbuch 74 (1988), pp. 7–72
Plantinga, Leon B., Schumann as Critic (New York: Da Capo, 1976)
Quantz, Johann Joachim, Versuch einer Anweisung, die Flöte traversière zu spielen (Berlin, 1752)
Rosen, Charles, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1972)
Schulenberg, David, The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach (New York: Schirmer, 1992)
Schulze, Hans-Joachim, ‘Melodiezitate und Mehrtextigkeit in der Bauern-kantate und in den Goldbergvariationen’, Bach-Jahrbuch 62 (1976), pp. 58–72
Schulze, Hans-Joachim ‘Notizen, zu Bachs Quodlibets’, Bach-Jahrbuch 80 (1994), pp. 171–5
Spitta, Philipp, Johann Sebastian Bach, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1873, 1880)
Street, Alan, ‘The Rhetorico-musical Structure of the “Goldberg” Variations: Bach'sClavierübung IV and the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian’, Music Analysis 6 (1987), pp. 89–131
Tomita, Yo, ‘Bach and his Early Drafts’, BACH Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 30/2 (1999), pp. 49–72
Tovey, Donald Francis, ‘Bach: Goldberg Variations’, Essays in Musical Analysis: Chamber Music, ed. Hubert J. Foss (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 28–73
Vickers, Brian, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988)
Williams, Peter, The Organ Music of J. S. Bach, vol. I: Preludes [etc.] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Wolff, Christoph, ‘Bach's Handexemplar of the Goldberg Variations: A New Source’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 29 (1976), pp. 224–41
Wolff, Christoph, Bach: Essays on his Life and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 162ff., 189ff., 347ff
Zenck, Martin, ‘“Bach, der Progressive”. Die Goldberg-Variationen in der Perspektive von Beethovens Diabelli-Variationen’, Musik-Konzepte 42 (1985), pp. 29–92

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