Page 112 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
Johann Sebastian Bach, Organ Fugue in G minor (c. 1710)
Form: Fugue Texture: Polyphonic
Download 20
what to listen for: After all voices appear in the exposition (0:00–1:14), a succession of episodes and subject statements follows. Can you identify which is which?
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. LiSTeN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. WATCH . . . a special animation of this selection online.
DO . . . Listening Exercise 6.1, Bach, Organ Fugue in G minor, online.
Figure 6.5
Leipzig, Saint Thomas’s Church (center) and choir school (left) from an engraving of 1723, the year in which Bach moved to the city. Bach’s large family occupied 900 square feet of the second f loor of the choir school.
The Church Cantata
In 1723 Bach moved to the central German city of Leipzig, population then about 30,000, to assume the coveted position of cantor of Saint Thomas’s church and choir school (Figure 6.5). Here he stayed until he died at age sixty-five in 1750. Although his new post was prestigious, it was also demanding. As an employee of
the town council of Leipzig, the composer was charged with superintending the music of the four principal churches of that city. He also played organ for all funerals, composed any music needed for ceremonies at the University of Leipzig, and sometimes taught Latin grammar to the boys at the choir school of Saint Thomas. But by far the most burdensome part of his job was composing new music for the church each Sunday and every religious holiday. How would you like to be responsible for composing, rehearsing, and performing a half hour of new music every week? But Bach did it, and in so doing, he brought an important genre of music, the
church cantata, to the highest point of its development. Like opera, the cantata (recall that it means “a sung thing”) first appeared in Italy during the seventeenth century in the form we call chamber cantata (see Chapter 5), a genre in which a soloist sang about some aspect of love or a topic drawn from classical mythology. During the early eighteenth century, however, composers in Germany increasingly came to see the cantata as a useful vehicle for religious
90 chapter six late baroque music: bach and handel
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