- 383 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology, Poetry, Music identifies the cultural and devotional conventions underlying expressions of mystical love in poetry and music of the German baroque. It sheds new light on the seemingly erotic overtones in settings of the Song of Songs and dialogues between Christ and the faithful soul in late 17th- and early 18th-century cantatas by Heinrich Schütz, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Sebastian Bach. While these compositions have been interpreted solely as a secularizing tendency within devotional music of the baroque period, Isabella van Elferen demonstrates that they need to be viewed instead as intensifications of the sacred.
Based on a wide selection of previously unedited or translated 17th- and 18th-century sources, van Elferen describes the history and development of baroque poetic and musical love discourses, from Schütz's early works through Buxtehude's cantatas and Bach's cantatas and Passions. This long and multilayered discursive history of these compositions considers the love poetry of Petrarch, European reception of petrarchan imagery and traditions, its effect on the madrigal in Germany, and the role of Catholic medieval mystics in baroque Lutheranism. Van Elferen shows that Bach's compositional technique, based on the emotional characteristics of text and music rather than on the depiction of single words, allows the musical expression of mystical love to correspond closely to contemporary literary and theological conceptions of this affect.
Based on a wide selection of previously unedited or translated 17th- and 18th-century sources, van Elferen describes the history and development of baroque poetic and musical love discourses, from Schütz's early works through Buxtehude's cantatas and Bach's cantatas and Passions. This long and multilayered discursive history of these compositions considers the love poetry of Petrarch, European reception of petrarchan imagery and traditions, its effect on the madrigal in Germany, and the role of Catholic medieval mystics in baroque Lutheranism. Van Elferen shows that Bach's compositional technique, based on the emotional characteristics of text and music rather than on the depiction of single words, allows the musical expression of mystical love to correspond closely to contemporary literary and theological conceptions of this affect.
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Yes, you can access Mystical Love in the German Baroque by Isabella van Elferen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Music. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Abbreviations
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One: Petrarchism
- Chapter Two: Petrarchan Poetry and the Madrigal in Seventeenth-Century Germany
- Chapter Three: Affective Expression in Poetry and Music
- Chapter Four: Affect and Discourse of Love
- Chapter Five: Mystical Love in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Lutheran Poetry and Theology
- Chapter Six: Spiritual and Mystical Love in Seventeenth-Century Vocal Music
- Chapter Seven: Mystical Love in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Vocal Works
- Summary and Perspectives
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author