"All members of a culture that practice music are expected to be abelt to engage with music in culturally appropriate ways" (1: Cross 2008)

"Introduction
In this paper I shall make a number of claims about music. I shall claim that music,
like language, is a fundamental part of the human communicative toolkit. It is
unique and specific to humans, but music is not "natural" while language is
symbolic; music and language are both equally symbolic and natural domains of
human thought and behaviour. I shall propose that music - musicality - underpins
the intellectual and social flexibility displayed by modern humans. As a corollary of
this, I shall claim that many of the most important abstract concepts that frame and
give meaning to human interaction - such as social justice, that aspect of morality
which is concerned with the achievement of equity in human relations - have their
roots in human musicality. I am not proposing that without music there can be no
social justice; I am simply submitting that without musicality the flexibility in
managing social relations that characterises modern humans and that constitutes the
matrix within which abstract conceptions such as social justice can take form is less
likely to have arisen."

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS (Management of) - a function performed by all music - "music's inability to express unambiguous meaning underwrites its powers to manage situations of social uncertainty" (2)

HONEST SIGNALLING- "revealing the the receiver qualities of the signaller that are relevant to the communicative situation" (3) " Music, as an expression of emotion, constitutes an 'honest signal' in revealing to a listener qualities of the music's producer that are necessarily concomitant on the nature of the signal" (3)

MOOD INDUCTION PROCEDURE - Music can affect and control moods more effectively than other methods.

MANAGEMENT-ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK - Animals make sounds to manage  "their physical and social envireonments rather than to transmit information" (4)

EXPRESSIVE SIZE SYMBOLISM -  A small animal transmits a low frequency to "broadcast an impression of large size" (4)

New issues at the heart of Bach studies

As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. In a series long known for its major essays by leading Bach scholars and performers, Bach Perspectives, Volume 6 is no exception.

This volume opens with Joshua Rifkin's seminal study of the early source history of the B-minor orchestral suite. It not only elaborates on Rifkin's discovery that the work in its present form for solo flute goes back to an earlier version in A minor, ostensibly for solo violin, but also takes this discovery as the point of departure for a wide-ranging discussion of the origins and extent of Bach's output in the area of concerted ensemble music.

Jeanne Swack presents an enlightening comparison of Georg Phillip Telemann's and Bach's approach to the French overture as concerted movements in their church cantatas, and Steven Zohn views the B-minor orchestral suite from the standpoint of the "concert en ouverture," responding to Rifkin by suggesting that the early version of the B-minor orchestral suite may also have been scored for flute.

"Joshua Rifkin, whose essay on Bach's Ouverture, BWV 1067 forms the major part of this volume, is one of the most virtuosic scholars in the positivist musicology."--Early Music History

"Anyone concerned with Bach or Telemann scholarship, or even merely with German late-Baroque music, will profit from this book."--Music and Letters

Gregory Butler is a professor of musicology at the University of British Columbia, and the author of Bach's Clavier-Übung III: The Making of a Print.

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Series:
Bach Perspectives

Subjects:
Music

• Bach, Telemann, and the Process of Transformative Imitation in BWV 1056/2 (156/1)
• Steven Zohn, Ian Payne
• The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 546-584
• Published by: University of California Press
• Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/763932

• Telemann Research Since 1975
• Author(s): Jeanne Swack
• Source: Acta Musicologica, Vol. 64, Fasc. 2 (Jul. - Dec., 1992), pp. 139-164
• Published by: International Musicological Society
• Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/932913

REVIEW OF:

Jeanne Swack (University of Wisconsin-Madison): the French ouverture as theological signifier in Telemann’s “Jesus sei mein erstes Wort” and “Christ ist erstanden von der Marter alle”

By the early eighteenth century, the French ouverture was well-established in German music as a signifier of both beginnings and of royalty.  Both meanings stemmed from its origin as the opening movement of the Lullian tragédie lyrique and ballet, and both translated well into the newly-established genre of the madrigalian cantata, where an opening French ouverture could serve to symbolize beginnings, such as the beginning of the Church year in settings of Neumeister’s “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” by both Bach, as well as the Kingship of God.

Telemann, however, goes beyond Bach’s use of the French ouverture by sometimes composing French ouvertures in unusual positions within his cantatas, and at times juxtaposing chorale tunes onto the French ouverture structure in different ways than Bach does.  In this paper, I will treat French ouverture movements from two cantatas by Telemann from his 1715 Neumeister cycle:  “Jesus sey mein erstes Wort” ( 5^th Sunday after Trinity), a cantata which concludes with a French ouverture as the last of ten movements;  and “Christ ist erstanden von der Marter alle” (Easter), a cantata which begins somewhat more expectedly as a French ouverture, but which juxtaposes its archaic chorale tune with the French ouverture structure in an unusual fashion.  The overriding consideration in Telemann’s unusual treatment of the French ouverture  in each of these cases is his concern with the text, and especially in the case of “Jesus sey mein erstes Wort”, with employing the connotations of the French ouverture as a kind of theological exegesis of the cantata text.

A review fo bach overtures metnioning the article

Review of music and meaning by Meyer, view brief overview of terms

Events that took palce around Dahlhaus's writing of Nineteenth Century Music in the late 1970s