Description: More than any other part of Bach's output, his keyboard works conveyed the essence of his inimitable art to generations of admirers. The varied responses to this repertory - in scholarly and popular writing, public lectures, musical composition and transcription, performances and editions - ensured its place in the canon and broadened its creator's appeal. The early reception of Bach's keyboard music also continues to affect how we understand and value it, though we rarely recognize that historical continuity. Here, Matthew Dirst investigates how Bach's music intersects with cultural, social and music history, focusing on a repertory which is often overshadowed in scholarly and popular literature on Bach reception. Organized around the most productive ideas generated by Bach's keyboard works from his own day to the middle of the nineteenth century, this study shows how Bach's remarkable and long-lasting legacy took shape amid critical changes in European musical thought and practice.
Brief description: Matthew Dirst is Associate Professor of Music at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston, and also serves as Artistic Director of the period-instrument group Ars Lyrica Houston. An acclaimed harpsichordist and organist, he is the first American musician to win major international prizes in both instruments. Winner of the William H. Scheide Prize (2004) from the American Bach Society for an essay on the reception of Bach's music in America, he pursues research and performance in more or less equal measure. His publications address the music of Bach and its reception, while his recordings feature music of François and Armand-Louis Couperin, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Adolf Hasse and J. S. Bach.
Review Quotes: "This concise volume is a welcome and valuable addition to the burgeoning genre of Bach reception literature, as well as to the numerous recent studies concerned with German musical aesthetics in the 18th and 19th centuries."
--Early Music America