Bach, Johann Sebastian - 7 Canons for Strings BWVs 1072-78 Ensemble à Cordes |
Compositeur : | Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685 - 1750) | ||
Instrumentation : | Ensemble à Cordes | ||
Genre : | Baroque | ||
Arrangeur : Editeur : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||
Droit d'auteur : | Public Domain | ||
Ajoutée par magataganm, 17 Oct 2017 Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries were of the notion that music was a science "sounding mathematics" and therefore reducible to theorem and law. Bach's concurrence with the notion was demonstrated by his membership in Mizler's Society for Musical Sciences...joined in 1747 while composing the Musical Offering...for which he not only submitted the thirteenth canon of the Fourteen on the Goldberg Ground but also composed the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch. If Bach believed that music was a science, he may have conceived of canon as a window through which it might be possible to glimpse its laws. Given as we are to understand the eighteenth-century compositional ideal of elaboratio...the development of ideas from a single theme (inventio)...Bach's fascination with canon was more than entertainment. Bach may have composed canons for the same reason that we solve crossword puzzles; they were entertainment... a game. Perhaps he composed canons because he found in them a challenge of the first order. Or Bach may have written canons in order to stimulate his muse; composers often generate new ideas by employing canonic techniques. There is reason to suspect, however, that the Baroque taste for canon was more than a game, challenge, or method for generating ideas. There remains a third possible explanation why Bach and his contemporaries practiced the art of writing canons. The technique may have stood for them as a symbol of all that was NOT understood...that which was transcendent, therefore symbolic of themselves as creators and the processes of musical creation. Thus, while Bach may have composed canons in an effort to understand these processes, he could just as well have composed them as an expression of the very mystery of musical creation itself. We know by their enigmatical notations that Baroque composers viewed canon as something to be figured out, if not mediated by that select few (namely, composers) who understood it. . Source: NAU (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/tas3/honorific.html). Although originally written for 8 unspecified instruments, I created this Arrangement of the 7 Canons (BWVs 1072-78) for String Ensemble (4 Violins, 2 Violas & 2 Cellos). |