Footnote:
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 391-407
Hier auch später erschienene, unveränderte Nachdrucke
Description:
In the last decades of the 17th century, the feast of Christmas in Lutheran Germany underwent a major transformation. Theologians and local governments waged an early modern "war on Christmas," discouraging pageants and carnivalesque rituals in favor of more personal and internalized expressions of piety. Markus Rathey's book is the first thorough study of this popular masterpiece in English. While giving a comprehensive overview of the Christmas Oratorio as a whole, the book focuses on two themes in particular. the cultural and theological understanding of Christmas in Bach's time and the compositional process that led Bach from the earliest concepts to the completed piece. The cultural and religious context of the oratorio provides the backdrop for Rathey's detailedanalysis of the composition, in which he explores Bach's compositional practices , for example, his reuseand parodiesof movements that had originally been composed for secular cantatas. The book analyzes Bach`s original score and sheds new light on the way Bach wrote the piece, how he shaped musical themes, and how he revised his initial ideas into the final composition.