Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and liturgical music at the Hamburg principal churches from 1768 to 1788 [electronic resource]

9780493438375

2001

1 online resource (316 p.)

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach served as Hamburg Town Music Director and Cantor at the city's Latin School, the Johanneum, from the spring of 1768 until his death in December of 1788. His liturgical responsibilities centered around performances of figural music on approximately 130 annual occasions. These performances were divided evenly among the five principal churches according to a procedure established in the 1657 Ordnung der Musik and occurred within the three most important weekend/feast services---the Saturday/feast eve vesper service and the Sunday/feast principal and vesper services. Assisting Bach at these performances was a standing professional ensemble whose origins, like those of the Ordnung der Musik, date from the middle of the seventeenth century. The eight Town Musicians formed the core of Bach's instrumental forces, which numbered fourteen for performances on regular Sundays and feasts and approximately nineteen for performances of the Quartalsmusiken on Easter, Pentecost, St. Michael's, and Christmas. Bach's vocal forces consisted of eight (sometimes a few more) male singers, including adolescent sopranos. Bach tended to compose his own music, or assemble pastiches that included his music, only to serve as the Quartalsmusiken. On regular Sundays and feasts he generally performed the music of other composers whose sacred pieces formed a part of his personal music collection. Bach was the last Hamburg Cantor to follow the tradition of church music established in the mid-seventeenth century. The church music reforms of 1789 established new procedures that drastically reduced the number of annual performances and began the disintegration of the standing ensemble.

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English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2001.

Yale University.