Andrew Talle Livres

Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public. Eschewing the great composer style of music history, Andrew Talle takes us on a journey that looks at how ordinary people made music in Bach's Germany. Talle focuses in particular on the culture of keyboard playing as lived in public and private. As he ranges through a wealth of documents, instruments, diaries, account ledgers, and works of art, Talle brings a fascinating cast of characters to life. These individuals--amateur and professional performers, patrons, instrument builders, and listeners--inhabited a lost world, and Talle's deft expertise teases out the diverse roles music played in their lives and in their relationships with one another. At the same time, his nuanced recreation of keyboard playing's social milieu illuminates the era's reception of Bach's immortal works.

This provocative addition to the Bach Perspectives series challenges the notion of J.S. Bach as an isolated genius by examining the works and reputations of his contemporaries in Germany, such as Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Gottlieb Muffat, and Johann Adolf Scheibe. Contributors contextualize Bach's music alongside that of his peers, exploring different compositional approaches and the resulting legacies. By analyzing how Bach's contemporaries addressed the challenges of their time, the volume offers a nuanced view of the musical landscape during Bach's era and sheds light on why his music remains compelling today. Wolfgang Hirschmann proposes an ethnographic approach to Bach's works, highlighting aesthetic paths he explored and those he did not. Steven Zohn discusses Telemann's contributions to the orchestral Ouverture genre and his unique integration of national styles. Andrew Talle compares the settings of Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust by Bach and Graupner, while Alison Dunlop provides primary research on Muffat, a prominent keyboard composer in Vienna during Bach's lifetime. Lastly, Michael Maul examines the Scheibe-Birnbaum controversy, offering context to the critique of Bach's style by discussing other composers targeted by Scheibe.