J S Bach

Este artículo trata de contextualizar históricamente el primer preludio del clavecín bien temperado de J. S. Bach a través de un breve recorrido por los sistemas de afinación previos al siglo XVII. Posteriormente se realiza un análisis armónico poniendo de relieve la relación entre su construcción y el nuevo sistema de afinación propuesto por Bach.

Over the past decade or so, historically informed theory, pedagogy, and (more recently) composition have emerged fully as outgrowths of the historically informed performance (HIP) movement, for which Bach’s music has been instrumental. In this light, “Bach in the music theory classroom” is a metaphor for a broader HI initiative, one where, in my own teaching, historically informed theory (HIT) becomes the basis for structuring a curriculum centered on period composition. In this article, I discuss the materials, process, rationale, and philosophical implications for a mini-curriculum that constitutes the first of a three-course HIT sequence. My aim with this first leg is to change students’ thinking from the “know-what” types of knowledge characteristic of present-day music theory curricula to a “know-how” mind-set consistent with eighteenth-century pedagogy.

The goals of music theory today approximate the reading knowledge of a language acquired in graduate school. Enough about its syntax, grammar, and vocabulary is learned to supply a translation, but without ever acquiring the knowledge and experience to speak, think, or write in the language itself. Score annotations and analyses, as ends in themselves, are like metalinguistic translations. In Bach’s day, on the other hand, music theory was the business of training musicians to speak the language, on the performance-improvisation-composition continuum that defined their daily activities. To implement a “know-how” curriculum in an environment designed for “know-what,” however, is not without its challenges, not least because of limited time and often resources.

I narrate how Bach himself offered me a solution through his own music and pedagogical materials. Rather than throwing students into the proverbial deep end, my mini-curriculum engages them actively and continuously in creative work. The goal is not to compose a self-standing composition, but to get students thinking in Bach’s language in terms of musical schemata, the everyday patterns and conventions of Bach’s day. I do so through a series of creative problem-solving activities that impart knowledge of schemata, particularly as they are used in Bach’s hands. Students are placed in Bach’s shoes as both a teacher and composer, by exploring the connections and differences among Bach’s figured basses from the Vorschriften und Grundsätze zum vierstimmigen spielen des General-Bass, the partimento-preludes of the Langloz manuscript, and certain preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier as well as selected fantasias. Through realization, analysis, and (class) composition exercises, students encounter a number of recurring schemata as a familiar cast of characters in these materials, all fashioned together into a modern-day Notenbüchlein or zibaldone (musical notebook), which tells a story about Bach’s schema usage—his compositional strategies employing schema development, elision, nesting, extension, and expansion.
The story culminates with Bach’s unique canonic treatment of a particular sequence, the 9/7–8/6/5. After ten weeks, students are able to realize a complex Bach partimento (BWV 908) and compose a continuo part for the Sanctus of the Mass in B Minor, for which no figures survive. These advanced creative problem-solving activities fill the last pages of the students’ Notenbüchlein, which is organized nearly single-handedly by Leipzig’s beloved Thomaskantor himself.

The keyboard toccatas of J. S. Bach, BWV 910-916, present a formidable challenge of interpretation to the modern-day performer. These works contain some of the most unusual compositional techniques to be found in Bach’s output due to their use of an improvisatory, virtuosic style inherited from the seventeenth century. While pianists of today are trained to perform with perfect fidelity to the score, the treatises from the time of Bach point to a rhythmically free approach to the improvisatory features of these toccatas. The goal of this treatise is to explore how the historical tradition from which Bach’s toccatas emerged influenced their stylistic characteristics with the purpose of applying this information to create an informed performance by today’s interpreters. In this effort, this treatise focuses on several broad categories in the process of understanding the inspiration and, therefore, the interpretation of these works. These categories include the genesis of the toccata as a genre, the compositional techniques associated with the toccata, Bach's personal contribution to the genre, and the interpretation of Bach's toccatas specifically.

In a recent study by Robin A. Leaver, the Sibley Choralbuch (Rochester, NY) was re-identified as likely stemming from J. S. Bach’s students in Dresden from around 1730–40 (2016). The manuscript contains 227 figured-bass chorales—melodies with single figured basses—and thus matches the first part of C. P. E. Bach’s description of his father’s teaching method, where students first received a figured-bass chorale and added two inner voices. Later, students composed their own basses and figures. Here, the plural “basses” is significant, because several “multiple-bass” chorale sources have also come to light in recent years, many stemming from J. S. Bach’s students, Kittel and Kirnberger, who discuss this technique in their treatises. These sources suggest that a little-known, keyboard chorale tradition also played an important role in Bach’s pedagogy. The present article attempts to reconstruct this pedagogical process using contemporaneous German sources.

Recent musicological discourse, while frequently considering issues of historiography and canonicity, has seldom critically engaged with biography as a genre of documentary significance to reception history for its attempts to shape public opinion of its subjects. In consequence, modern musicology has often taken for granted many tendencies and preoccupations that accumulated in musical biography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis presents a historiographical examination of the precedents for and accretions of these assumptions, in terms of the role played by biography both in the establishment and maintenance of ideological canons and in the resultant ‘top-down’ conception of music history as dominated by an elite handful of exalted composers. Exploration of the ways in which biographies constructed their subjects as ‘great’ and ‘exemplary’ – insofar as these concepts were idealized within the communities of readers for whom they were originally written – is conducted through two major studies of the published texts to c.1950 on canonical composers including J. S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. The first investigates the elaboration and distortion of a set of some twenty-five of the most famous myths of musical biography, from their origins in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Continental European texts to their fullest development (and, in many cases, their refutation) in English-language biographies up to the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, the second critically analyzes the twelve volumes of the original ‘Master Musicians’ series (1899-1906) as exemplars of the biographical and musical paradigms of composer life-writing, and as late Victorian period pieces of significance to canon formation for their conception as a closed set of monographs of historically-important subjects appropriated to English ends. The conclusion provides a preliminary assessment of the implications to modern musicology of the findings of this thesis through re-evaluation of elements of recent biographical and hermeneutical scholarship, and proposes that the discipline might usefully adopt a more inclusive, self-reflexive approach to the study of musical biography in the future.

During Bach’s lifetime, the history of temperament in Western music took new turns, but his relationship to this development is far from well understood. The article explores a number of relevant questions to help define what we actually can know about this matter:

• Which sources about musical temperament are relevant in regard to Bach’s practice and what can be learned from them?

• How detailed, plausible or credible is the relevant information?

• Do we know whether Bach had any influence on the choice of temperament in organ projects? If so, to what extent and what was his advice?

• To what degree do extant contemporary reports, expert opinions and historical instruments allow us to reconstruct temperaments in the organ building of Bach’s age?

• What role did the temperament of instruments with fixed pitches (like keyboards) play in interaction with free-intonating instruments and singers?


It appears that conclusive evidence for answering these question does not exist, which might be liberating:
In the end, it remains a matter for the individual to decide which temperament seems to be musically apt for the performance of any of Bach’s compositions.

In the Baroque era, the violino piccolo was the highest and smallest member of the violin family. Claudio Monteverdi wrote for the instrument in his L’Orfeo (1607), and Michael Praetorius mentioned it in his Syntagma musicum (1619). Surviving piccolo violins include one by Girolamo Amati from 1613 and another by Antonio Stradivari from 1734. They demonstrate that while thebody of the instrument is essentially quarter-sized, its neck is as thick as a standard violin. The instrument became extinct by the nineteenth century; new playing techniques on the standard violin resulted in an extended range that precluded the need for the smaller instrument, thus eliminating the unique timbre of the piccolo violin.
Surviving compositions suggests that the instrument was especially prevalent in the Leipzig orbit. The list of Thomaskantoren who wrote for it includes Sebastian Knüpfer, Johann Schelle, and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as Bach’s successors Johann Gottlob Harrer and Johann Friedrich Doles. This dissertation includes annotated editions of cantatas by Knüpfer and Schelle as well as a concerto by Johann Pfeiffer, who studied in Leipzig and worked in Weimar as the Konzertmeister, a position Bach once held. The most well-known works for the instrument are Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, BWV 1046, and Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140; he also employed the instrument in two additional cantatas. Bach’s works for the piccolo violin demonstrate that this aspect of his oeuvre is the culmination of a long tradition that his contemporaries also maintained.

This study tries to reveal the views of Cioran on music. First we notice
his regret for not being a musician and then we examine the links Cioran
establishes between musical passion and psychological pathology. Cioran.
We oppose Cioran’s thinking and those of Tolstoy and Plato. The analysis goes
on with Cioran’s favourite composers like Bach, Mozart and Brahms, but not
neglecting his taste for folklore. Finally, we examine Cioran’s views on music
as an expression of the desire for infinity.

This article proposes a historically informed method for introducing today’s students to figured-bass practice in J. S. Bach’s circle. Rather than using Bach’s vocal chorales, as is common today, this method imitates Bach’s pedagogy by using figured-bass keyboard chorales. C. P. E. Bach’s Neue Melodien (1787) are used within a series of six increasingly difficult levels. Soprano and bass are always given, while students supply the middle voice(s). The levels are: (1) add one voice indicated by figures; (2) add two voices indicated by two figures in score order; (3) add two voices indicated by all figures in score order; (4) add two voices indicated by all figures in numerical order; (5) add two voices indicated by abbreviated figures; and (6) add two voices with no figures given. In keeping with the theoretical outlook given in sources near to J. S. Bach (Johann Heinichen, David Kellner, and C. P. E. Bach), root identification via Roman numerals plays no role in this method. Instead, the scale degree of the bass is the analytical focal point. In keeping with the method outlined in Heinichen’s Der General-Bass in der Composition (1728), particularly as summarized in Kellner’s Treulicher Unterricht (1737), the bass voice’s scale degree and type of motion (step or leap) are the two factors that determine the appropriate harmony for unfigured basses. In the absence of Roman numerals, a simplified system of cadential terminology is also proposed. Moreover, figures are moved above the bass staff to conceptualize them better as intervals above the bass voice. The overarching goals of this article are: (1) to take the first steps in developing a curriculum centered around the keyboard chorale, replacing our current focus on Bach’s vocal chorales; (2) to strike a compromise between historical accuracy and the needs of today’s students; (3) to emphasize contrapuntal considerations equally with harmonic ones; (4) to simplify the current jumble of cadential terminology; (5) to use the keyboard as a means of “performing” music theory; and (6) to argue that J. S. Bach’s music requires a greater degree of historical and theoretical differentiation than we tend to give it as part of the so-called “Common Practice Period.”

This dissertation investigates developments in the performance of J. S. Bach’s music in the second half of the 20th century, as reflected in recordings of the Mass in B Minor, BWV 232. It places particular emphasis on issues relating to concepts of expression through performance.

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, most Bach performers shared a partial consensus as to what constitutes expression in performance (e.g., intense sound; wide dynamic range; rubato). Arguments against the application of such techniques to Bach’s works were often linked with the view that his music is more “objective” than later repertoires; or, alternatively, that expressive elements in Bach’s music are self-sufficient, and should be not be intensified in performance.

Historically-informed performance (HIP), from the late 1960s onwards, has been characterised by greater attention to the inflection of local details (i.e., individual figures and motifs). In terms of expressive intensity, this led to contradictory results. On the one hand, several HIP performances were characterised by a narrow overall dynamic range, light textures, fast tempi and few contrasts; these performances were often considered lightweight. On the other hand, HIP also promoted renewed interest in the practical application of Baroque theories of musical rhetoric, inspiring performances which projected varied intensity within movements.

More recently, traditional means of expression have enjoyed renewed prominence. Ostensibly “romantic” features such as broad legati, long-range crescendi and diminuendi, and organic shaping of movements as wholes have been increasingly adopted by HIP musicians.

In order to substantiate the narrative outlined above, the significance of the evidence preserved in sound recordings had to be checked against other sources of information. This dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses on specific “schools” of prominent Bach performers. Complete recordings of the Mass are examined in relation to the biographical and intellectual backgrounds of the main representatives of these schools, their verbally-expressed views on Bach’s music and on their own role as performers, and their style as documented in recordings of other works. The second part examines the performance history of specific movements within the Mass, comparing the interpretations preserved in sound recordings with relevant verbal analyses and commentaries.

The dissertation as a whole therefore combines the resources of reception and performance studies. Beyond its specific historical conclusions concerning Bach performance in the post-war era, it also provides specific insights into Bach’s music, its meaning and its role in contemporary culture.

This dissertation investigates harmonic properties of Italian secular songs with Baroque guitar accompaniment in alfabeto tablature, which was a system of letters and other symbols that represented a chord shape to be strummed using all five courses. All of the resulting chords form major or minor triads. These letters were printed in songbooks for guitarists to accompany secular songs. This triadic accompaniment has significant implications for understanding harmonic practices during the seventeenth century.

The purpose of this dissertation is to use computational methods to better understand the harmonic features of the alfabeto song repertoire, which can perhaps be a window through which we can understand the broader harmonic practices of secular genres in the early seventeenth century. Machine learning algorithms are employed to understand the modal framework and harmonic function of the alfabeto corpus. K-means clustering is used to determine how many modes are present within the corpus, building upon the recent work of Albrecht and Huron. To understand the harmonic function within the alfabeto corpus, hidden Markov models analyze the number of functions and which chords belong to each of those functions using a similar methodology to Quinn and White.

The analyses also compare the alfabeto corpus to corpora of other genres and eras such as J.S. Bach, Palestrina, and Franco-Flemish composers. The alfabeto corpus is also compared with itself to better understand its style and any changes over time. This dissertation provides a fresh look at harmonic practice in the seventeenth century by using statistical models that are informed by historical performance practice.

The principle question concerning the setting of any text to music is:
What does the music actually do to the text? How does it change or
transform it? The answer is twofold: first, music provides increased
expressivity, and second, it seeks to interpret the text. It is difficult to
express in words the additional depth of emotion achieved by adding
music to any text, let alone a story that concerns cruelty and death
and is directly related to religious beliefs. It is even harder to describe
how a composer might seek to contribute to our understanding
of this story by highlighting certain words, reordering the events,
or even by adding innovative elements to the traditional narrative.
Nonetheless, the developmental history of musical settings of the
passion is directly concerned with increased expressivity and is
intimately linked with developments in musical style. Study of musical settings requires reference to manuscript and source studies,
reception history, performance practice, cultural studies, and to
changing theological concerns, all of which demonstrate how
composers have sought to make the death of Jesus engaging to their
audiences.

Until a few decades ago, J.S. Bach’s Toccatas and Fantasias for harpsichord and organ were performed strictly measured, rubato being only applied minimally in some cadences. Then the performers of early keyboards became aware of Baroque discussions about the Stylus Phantasticus, and nowadays it is common to hear these works performed with sweeping rubato, entire sections being thoroughly unmeasured. We will scrutinise the historical record, as well as current musicology, to verify whether this is or not the performance manner intended by the composer.

The relationship between the visual and the acoustic worlds has been a historical exploration in the arts, physics, as well as psychology and neuroscience. In multimedia, the analysis of their cross-modal relationships and the formal relationships that do not take into account the narrative or meaning in film, are not a developed field in multimedia analysis today. To approach this subject, in this study we have analysed the Toccata & Fugue in Dm sequence of the music film Fantasia (1940), by Walt Disney. This is one of the first cases of commercial abstract imagery combined with music, and a unique film in its audiovisual relationships. We have approached the analysis in two ways: first, using a descriptive strategy, starting with Chion’s masking method and highlighting where the multimedia interacts or fails to do so, and then extracting visual and aural data of the sequence manually and digitally, and assembling a chart with these descriptors, inspired by Eisenstein. Our results have shown that this sequence is purely governed by music. We did not find steady general rules as to formal audiovisual relationships. Intensity was found to be one of the most repeated audiovisual congruences, interpreted by loudness in sound and luminance in vision. No significant sound to visual relationships
were found regarding timbre. Even though our results are specific to this case, this paper can serve as one more stone in the path to a different kind of filmic analysis.

J.S Bach’s Triple Concerto in A Minor is one of the composer’s least known and least appraised instrumental works. In this vastly expanded and updated study revised in 2021 from an original 1984 Oxford University thesis, Graham Dwyer looks at the work’s structure, sources, and comparators to shed some light on its murky origins.

The track record of composition that defines Bach’s notoriety has raised him to the pinnacle of composers in terms of western music. It was true that he is celebrated for how renowned he is, but much of his work is subject to contextual circumstances that would have affected him, for better or for worse. In his later life, these circumstances were perhaps the most tolling years of his compositional career. Read as I discuss the compositions of Bach during his time in Leipzig, examining the context of his compositional duties before analysing, to a certain degree, his methods of composition, specifically in relation to his Church Cantatas and, to a lesser degree, his B minor mass structure and Easter Passions.

Bach fue, ante todo, un poeta. Sus maravillosos trabajos musicales revelan una fuerte intención de hacer vivir, expresar y “escenificar” aquellas emociones y pasiones que se derivan del texto. El verdadero talento de Bach no reside únicamente en sus intrincadas y vigorosas construcciones musicales, repletas de un precioso y cuidado detallismo contrapuntístico y armónico, sino en su constante lucha por transmitir un amplísimo abanico de emociones que nos llevan desde el más absoluto dolor o la más cruda lamentación hasta la más gozosa y radiante alegría, pasando por un sinfín de sutiles gradaciones que expresan y exploran el total del espectro anímico humano. Esto se deriva, sin duda alguna, del profundo carácter espiritual de Bach y de sus grandes conocimientos de las Escrituras. La relación entre teología y música se eleva en Bach a la categoría de lenguaje .
Tras la música de Bach intuimos un hombre que no se limita a describir hechos narrativos de la manera más literal u onomatopéyica posible, como en algunos músicos de generaciones anteriores . La virtud de Bach radica en hacer audible una suerte de “subtexto” poético escondido bajo la superficie textual (a veces escondida en unos textos de dudosa calidad poética, como algunos de su libretista más cercano, Picander), en hacer audibles –casi “visibles”– las pasiones, temores y emociones más profundamente humanas. Para este fin, se valió de procesos derivados de la retórica, o el “arte de bien decir, de dar al lenguaje escrito o hablado eficacia bastante para deleitar, persuadir o conmover” . El auge del estudio de esta disciplina que propició el luteranismo y las corrientes humanistas renacentistas llevaron a los compositores luteranos a adoptar técnicas musicales derivadas de los principios de la retórica. Estos trataron de expresar, por encima de todo, aquellas emociones y pasiones derivadas de los textos sagrados. Tal vez sea por esta razón que la música de Bach es tan universal, porque apela directamente a lo más genuinamente humano, bucea en el “inconsciente colectivo” del que hablará Jung dos siglos más tarde. Nos muestra la música no solo como experiencia sonora sino como revelación espiritual, como íntima confesión entre individuos que lloran, ríen y se asombran frente al mundo.

En este trabajo pretendo estudiar la cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4) desde el punto de vista de la retórica musical, tratando de revelar e identificar algunos procesos compositivos utilizados con el fin de transmitir y subrayar pasiones y emociones derivadas del texto, las llamadas figuras retóricas. Se trata de una cantata escrita a partir del himno homónimo compuesto por Lutero basado, a su vez, en la secuencia gregoriana Victimæ paschali laudes. Este himno revive de manera dramática los hechos de la Pasión y Resurección de Cristo. En palabras de John Eliot Gardiner “el modo en que Lutero despliega esta apasionante historia tiene algo de saga tribal, llena de imágenes y episodios muy gráficos” . Se trata de una cantata, pues, idónea para un análisis de este tipo, por la gran cantidad y diversidad de recursos y procedimientos.

Durante los siglos XVII y XVIII, las figuras retóricas musicales constituían uno de los componentes esenciales de numerosos tratados, y es impensable desvincular este interés de los contemporáneos de Bach por el uso y estudio de estos procesos y la música del maestro alemán. Un análisis que profundice en la identificación y estudio de estos temas es, pienso, fundamental para cualquier músico, y esencial particularmente para cualquier director. Muchas veces el análisis de una partitura se limita a la identificación de los elementos musicales per se (forma, armonía, instrumentación…) y se obvia un análisis que aborde la obra desde la vertiente del significado, de la retórica. Dicho de otro modo, se estudia el continente pero no el contenido. Un estudio de los afectos y pasiones implícitos en el texto musical fija unos objetivos concretos en la interpretación, nos ayuda a perfilar la “interpretación ideal” de cualquier obra. Mediante este estudio pretendo, pues, poner en valor este tipo de análisis y reivindicar su importancia capital.

Propuesta de análisis siguiendo los presupuestos teóricos de la retórica musical
aplicados a la sonata BWV 1030 para flauta y clave. Escrita por un gran conocedor de
la Retórica, disciplina que estudió en la escuela, J.S. Bach emplea numerosas figuras extramusicales para conseguir suscitar determinados efectos en el oyente. En la Retórica se encuentra la clave para dar explicación a figuras que en algunos casos transgreden las reglas tradicionales del contrapunto.

Based on the musical rhetorical principles, this paper provides new perspectives
of analysis on J.S. Bach Sonate BWV 1030 for flute and harpsichord. This composer
was an expert on Rhetoric, a subject which he studied during his school years. That is why Bach realizes its value raising feelings in the listener and uses consciously a lot of extramusical ornaments and figures. Rhetoric is the key in order to understand the meaning of figures which trespass usual counterpoint rules.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach was introduced into the guitar repertoire by the spaniard Francisco de Asís Tárrega Eixea in 1907. Since then, Bach’s music has remained a central part of the traditional guitar repertoire, and great interpreters of this
instrument such as Llobet, Pujol and Segovia have produced transcriptions of this music, also exploring new works of the Baroque master. In this thesis, we have analyzed two re-elaborations for guitar of the Fuga BWV1001, made at an interval of about 100 years, by Tarrega and the Argentine Pablo Marquez (1967). We are a theoretical framework that uses as parameters concepts presented by Flavia Pereira which are related to the practice of musical re-elaboration, also borrowing from diverse approaches of Philip Hii, Nicolas Goluses, Stanley Yates and Pedro Rodrigues. Our goal is to highlight the differing techniques of re-elaboration on the guitar used by arrangers, and also to answer the following questions: Which techniques of reelaboration were used in the different versions? What are the main influences that defined the paths that they took in their versions? What were the resources that they made use of? Are their basic assumptions about the nature of re-elaboration different? What lesson can be inferred from the results? Finally, within the parameters presented by Pereira, we conclude that the musical re-elaboration of Tárrega may be classified as 'transcription', while preferring to classify Marquez’s re-elaboration as a process of “idiomatization”, which we define as a practice that seeks not only to adjust the work technically, but also to transform the work`s musical textures according to the
possibilities of the new instrument.

Siguiendo las investigaciones iniciadas en anteriores estudios, el presente trabajo aporta una posible metodología de análisis enfocada a la lectura de las voces estructurales en la polifonía implícita. Para ejemplificar dicha metodologia se aplica de manera sistemática sobre la primera suite para violonchelo solo (BWV 1007) de J. S. Bach.

A part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical duties in Leipzig was to present an annual setting of the passion for Good Friday Vespers. One such work was the Markuspassion, performed in 1731. Although the score of this companion work to the Matthäuspassion and Johannespassion has been lost, the original text of the Markuspassion is extant. Bach frequently made use of the parody technique in his compositions. This practice consisted of adapting existing music to a new text that was based on the rhyme scheme of the original one, resulting in two compositions essentially sung to the same music, barring a number of enforced changes. This particular feature of Bach’s compositional technique makes it possible that the lost music originally contained in the Markuspassion could be discovered within his oeuvre.

In the late 19th century, Bach scholars began to research the possibility of reconstructing the Markuspassion, recognizing that it may have contained music parodied from other compositions, basing, to a large extent, their research on textual comparison. Several attempts at reconstruction have been made between 1964 and 2009, resulting in at least 18 different versions of the Markuspassion. Some reconstructors abandon the original structure of this work, others re-use music that Bach could not plausibly have chosen as a parody base for this work, while still others include large amounts of music composed by contemporaries of Bach. This has lead to the question: To what extent are the existing reconstructions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Markuspassion historically justified, and what sources have reconstructors utilized in order to achieve performable editions? Five of the reconstructions have been carefully studied in this regard, leading to the conclusion that they are all worthwhile scholarly endeavours with their own merits, but that none of them can be performed as the definitive Bach Markuspassion. This study also contains recommendations to musicologists interested in this project, conductors wanting to perform one of these works and suggestions for a theoretical reconstruction combining material from existing attempts.

Concentrandosi sull’esame di una delle edizioni musicali più commercializzate in Italia, i 23 Pezzi facili di J. S. Bach raccolti da Bruno Mugellini e pubblicati per la prima volta da Ricordi nel 1897, lo studio procede su tre direttrici parallele. Da una parte, impiegando strumenti propri alla bibliografia testuale, si ricostruisce la storia editoriale della revisione di Mugellini, evidenziando in che modo la casa editrice milanese abbia adeguato progressivamente il prodotto a nuove istanze di carattere tecnico, culturale, musicale e commerciale. Parallelamente, si fa luce sul lavoro di selezione, raccolta e revisione svolto da Mugellini, individuandone le edizioni di riferimento. Infine, dopo aver chiarito il ruolo dei 23 Pezzi facili nel più ampio programma didattico del pianista bolognese, si guarda alla fortuna di successive raccolte bachiane pubblicate in Italia sul modello del lavoro di Mugellini.

One of Italy’s most widely sold music editions, the Twenty-Three Easy Pieces by J. S. Bach edited  by Bruno Mugellini, was originally issued by Ricordi in 1897. Here, its editorial history is reconstructed, by means of textual bibliography tools, thus showing how Ricordi gradually adapted it to new technical, cultural, musical, and commercial demands. Mugellini’s choices and editorial work are highlighted, his reference sources identified, as it is the role of such collection in his teaching method. Finally, the fortune of later Italian Bach collections, shaped after Mugellini's, is discussed.

The mathematical nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Comments about the supposed numerical bases of his compositions date back to his lifetime and were perpetuated in the obituary and later biographies. Theorists contemporary with Bach strongly imply that numerical ordering, or at least the use of proportions, was very important. The much-published Johann Mattheson frequently praises the virtues of the well-balanced composition, and goes so far as to encourage the composer to plan the proportions of a whole work before composing.
[The composer] should outline his complete project on a sheet, sketch it roughly and arrange it in an orderly manner before he proceeds to the elaboration. In my humble opinion this is the best way of all to ensure that each part will demonstrate a specific proportion (Verhältniß), uniformity (Gleichförmigkeit) and agreement (Übereinstimmung): for nothing in the world is more pleasing to the ear.
But how should the composer obey Mattheson’s exhortation without more detailed directions? Was there a well-tried and tested numerical method underlying these general guidelines? Did Bach use proportions to organise his works? And if so would it be possible to find them in his scores? Conventional analytical methods would not answer these questions. What should the analyst do when the treatises are silent? Was it foolhardy to try to make the composer and his scores speak on subjects only alluded to in a treatise?
This paper describes a long-term search for a historically-consistent theory of mathematical procedures in Bach’s works. Working from historical sources and autograph scores the initial negative results were overturned by an unexpected breakthrough which led to an unlooked-for conclusion.