The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
(This volume represents the proceedings of an internationa...)
This volume represents the proceedings of an international musicological colloquium held at Harvard in March 1979. The broad spectrum of papers and extensive scholarly debate focuses on a quintessential repertoire of musical works from the classical era. The autograph sketches, drafts, and scores of various kinds are shown to be central sources for our understanding of the genesis and history, as well as for the analysis and performance, of the compositions.
(The noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers in this boo...)
The noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers in this book new perspectives on the composer's life and remarkable career. Uncovering important historical evidence, the author demonstrates significant influences on Bach's artistic development and brings fresh insight on his work habits, compositional intent, and the musical traditions that shaped Bach's thought. Wolff reveals a composer devoted to an ambitious and highly individual creative approach, one characterized by constant self-criticism and self-challenge, the absorption of new skills and techniques, and the rethinking of riches from the musical past.
(Christoph Wolff provides a critical introduction to the R...)
Christoph Wolff provides a critical introduction to the Requiem in its many facets. Part I of his study focuses on the tangled genesis and completion of the work and its fascinating early reception history until Constanze's death. Wolff summarizes the current state of research on the subject, provides new perspectives on Mozart's conception of the whole work, and surveys his contributions to the movements composed posthumously by his assistant, Süssmayr. Part II provides a musical analysis of Mozart's composition, including contextual, structural, and interpretive aspects. Part III consists of an annotated collection of the principal literary documents (1791-1839) that illuminate the fascinating early history of the Requiem.
(The book engaged new biography portrays Bach as the livin...)
The book engaged new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.
Music of My Future: The Schoenberg Quartets and Trio
(The first part of the book provides a historical context ...)
The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern's reception of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Schoenberg's view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg's First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg's quartets and trio.
(The author discusses the major biographical and musical i...)
The author discusses the major biographical and musical implications of the royal appointment and explores Mozart's "imperial style" on the basis of his major compositions—keyboard, chamber, orchestral, operatic, and sacred—and focuses on the large, unfamiliar works he left incomplete.
(The Organs of J. S. Bach is a comprehensive and fascinati...)
The Organs of J. S. Bach is a comprehensive and fascinating guide to the organs encountered by Bach throughout Germany in his roles as organist, concert artist, examiner, teacher, and visitor.
Christoph Johannes Wolff is a German music historian, educator and author. He is known for his works on music and the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. Christoph has been a professor at Harvard University since 1976 and director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig since 2001.
Background
Christoph Johannes Wolff was born on May 24, 1940 in Solingen, Germany; the son of Hans Walter, theologian, and Annemarie (Halstenbach) Wolff. His brother is the philosopher Michael Wolff. Christoph immigrated to the United States in 1970.
Education
Wolff studied at the University of Freiburg and the University of Berlin in his native Germany and earned his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Erlangen.
Christoph is a recipient of a Doctor of Music from New England Conservatory, a Doctor of Humane Letters from Valparaiso University and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Jena.
After teaching at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 1970, Wolff came to the United States to accept a post at Columbia University as an assistant professor of musicology. He became a professor at Columbia in 1973, and joined the Harvard faculty in 1976. At Harvard he served as chair of the music department, acting director of the University Library, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He has made several important archival discoveries, including Bach’s “Neumeister Chorales” at Yale in 1985, and a trove of Bach manuscripts in Kiev, Ukraine in 1999. Among his most respected works is The New Bach Reader, a revision and enlargement of Hans David’s and Arthur Mendel’s classic, The Bach Reader. Considered the fundamental source for Bach scholarship, the original book contained extensive primary source material that made it, according to Edward Mclrvine in Notes, “the most significant portrait of a composer up to that time to be drawn primarily from letters and contemporary documents.” To the original book Wolff adds over a hundred new documents; he also reorganizes material, provides a detailed chronology and map of Germany, and expands headings and references. The result is a compendium of letters and documents by Bach as well as town council minutes, court records, performance and payment inventories, and title pages from music manuscripts.
Bach: Essays on His Life and Music, which contains material Wolff published over a twenty-five-year period, was hailed as an “essential” resource for both interested laypersons and specialists.
In Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Wolff synthesizes the scholarship of his career to present a comprehensive, intellectually rigorous, but readable portrait of the composer.
Wolff has also written on Mozart, including The String Quartets of Hayden, Mozart, and Beethoven and Mozart's Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score. The latter book attempts to discover how much of the Requiem Mozart was able to complete by himself, and how much was the work of other composers after Mozart’s death.