Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach

<p>Stylized dance music and music based on dance rhythms pervade Bach's compositions. Although the music of this very special genre has long been a part of every serious musician's repertoire little has been written about it.<br /><br />The original edition of this addressed works that bore the names of dances--a considerable corpus. In this expanded version of their practical and insightful study Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne apply the same principals to the study of a great number of Bach's works that use identifiable dance rhythms but do not bear dance-specific titles.<br /><br />Part I describes French dance practices in the cities and courts most familiar to Bach. The terminology and analytical tools necessary for discussing dance music of Bach's time are laid out. <br /><br />Part II presents the dance forms that Bach used annotating all of his named dances. Little and Jenne draw on choreographies harmony theorists' writings and the music of many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century<br />composers in order to arrive at a model for each dance type.<br /><br />In Appendix A all of Bach's named dances are listed in convenient tabular form; included are the BWV number for each piece the date of composition the larger work in which it appears the instrumentation and the meter.<br />Appendix B supplies the same data for pieces recognizable as dance types but not named as such.<br /><br />More than ever this book will stimulate both the musical scholar and the performer with a new perspective at the rhythmic workings of Bach's remarkable repertoire of dance-based music.</p>