Recently in News

Latest news

 

Bizet’s Carmen Uncovered

https://boydellandbrewer.com/bizet-s-i-carmen-i-uncovered.html

The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev

https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-sergei-prokofiev.html

Incoming Artistic Director Rosetta Cucchi announces her 2020 programme inspired by William Shakespeare and the launch of the Wexford Factory Academy for young Irish singers

https://www.wexfordopera.com/media/news/incoming-artistic-director-rosetta-cucchi-announces-her-2020-programme

Music In The Present Tense: Rossini’s Italian Operas in Their Time

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo43988096.html

The Last Opera: The Rake’s Progress in the Life of Stravinsky and Sung Drama

http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=809636

Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/prokofievs-soviet-operas?format=HB

The Operas of Benjamin Britten – Expression and Evasion by Claire Seymour

https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-benjamin-britten.html

The Opera Singer’s Acting Toolkit

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-opera-singers-acting-toolkit-9781350006454/

The real Traviata. The Song of Marie Duplessis

https://h-france.net/vol18reviews/vol18no52palidda.pdf

Glyndebourne announces new Artistic Director

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2018/08/glyndebourne_an.php

BLACK OPERA: HISTORY, POWER, ENGAGEMENT

A musical challenge to our view of the past

Die schöne Müllerin by Mark Padmore

Opera Rara - How to Rescue a Lost Opera

https://vimeo.com/operarara/how-to-rescue-an-opera

Welsh National Opera explores Madness for autumn season

 

New Releases from Opera Rara

 

A Time-Out With Isabel Leonard: In 'L'Heure Espagnole' at San Francisco Symphony

 

On Site Opera Presents 'Barber of Seville' at Fabbri Mansion on New York’s Upper East Side

 

Il Trittico: Puccini's most underrated opera

 

Bizet's Carmen | English National Opera

 

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

News

18 Oct 2005

Bach's Algebraic Purity

http://www.nysun.com/article/21637

By Fred Kirshnit [NY Sun, 18 October 2005]

If Johann Sebastian Bach could be resurrected 255 years after his death and walk the streets of Leipzig today, what would impress him most would not be airplanes or computers but rather that his music is still being performed. Highly influenced by the laws of mathematics, Old Bach plied his formulas with the care of a researcher but did not think that the finished product was anything special. He didn't even bother to preserve much of his immense output, and tossed off a brilliant sacred cantata every Sunday for his boys to perform as part of their general duties at St. Thomas's Church (he was also in charge of bussing tables there). There were well over 300 of these isochronous assignments and not a bad one in the bunch, judging from the approximately 200 that are extant.

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):