Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach, Expanded Edition

Book excerpt: Johann Sebastian Bach devoted a significant portion of his life to the composition of stylized dance music and music based on dance rhythms. Although the music of this very special genre has long been a part of every serious musician's repertoire, very little has been written about it. In Part I, the authors describe the French dance practices in the cities and courts in which Bach lived. It also introduces terminology and analytical tools necessary for discussing dance music of Bach's time. Part II presents the dance forms used by Bach, annotating all of his named dances. It offers information from choreographies, studies of harmony, theorists' writings, and the music of many 17th- and 18th-century composers in order to arrive at a model for each dance type. In Appendix I all of Bach's named dances are listed in convenient tabular form; included are the BWV number for each piece, the date of composition, the larger work in which it appears, the instrumentation, and the meter. Appendix II supplies the same data for pieces clearly recognizable as dance types but not named as such. This volume will stimulate both the musical scholar and the performer with a new look at the rhythmic lifeblood of Bach's remarkable repertoire of dance based music.