Analytical Studies of Selected Cantatas by J.S. Bach

Book excerpt: Johann Sebastian Bach is considered by music historians, music theorists, performers, and audiences among the most significant composers of the Western world. Yet, the genre in which he was most prolific--the church cantata--has received little attention from the music-theoretical community beyond corpus studies of aria forms.\, listener's guides, and listings of madrigalisms. Crucially, there is very little detailed musical analysis of cantatas, other than chorale harmonizations abstracted from cantatas and passions. After speculating about some reasons for the discrepancy between Bach's priviledged position in the Western canon and the lack of analyses of arguably his most important works, my dissertation will develop a framework for analyzing Bach's cantatas, drawing primarily on the analytical philosophy of David Lewin, enriched by the literary theories of Northrop Frye and Frederic Jameson.