This page contains links to a number of papers and talks that either have not yet been published or that have been published in other forms. They are included here to make them available to those who might not have access to them in other ways. Most of these papers are in pdf format. Clicking on the link will lead you to a "download" page; right-click on the word download to save the file to your local computer.
Partes feminarum: Gender Representations in Baroque Music
This paper, presented at a conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1997, remains, surprisingly, one of very few feminist discussions of the music of Barbara Strozzi, as opposed to biographical studies. Moreover, I am unaware of any published discussions of Bach's Coffee Cantata that take up what seem to me the work's obvious points of interest from the perspective of feminist theory or gender studies. Click here to read the paper.
Recent Editions and Recordings of Froberger and Other Seventeenth-Century Composers
This review-article, commissioned in 2004, takes a detailed look at questions of attribution, chronology, and other issues in the keyboard music of Froberger and some of his contemporaries, primarily in Germany. It also considers a number of recordings of Froberger's keyboard music and related questions of performance practice. Publication has been repeatedly promised but delayed, which has at least given me the opportunity to include considerations of a recently revealed autograph manuscript that surfaced in 2006 only to be purchased at auction and immediately disappear from sight. Click here for a pdf file containing a preliminary version of the complete review-article.
Crossing the Rhine With Froberger, Part 2: His Programmatic Keyboard Pieces in the Light of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
This the second of two papers that I presented at conferences during 2006 on the authorship and “meaning” of a number of keyboard works attributed to Froberger. Material from the first paper, which dealt primarily with authorship or attribution, is incorporated in the review-article listed above. The matter concerning “meaning” and other expressive aspects of this music was the main subject of the present paper, a revised version of which is planned for publication in a Festschrift now in the preliminary stages of preparation. Click here for the text of the version read at the 2006 convention of the American Musicological Society in Los Angeles. Click here for the accompanying tables and musical examples.
Fugues and Fingering: Scales and Other Technical Devices in Bach's Contrapuntal Works
This presentation offers various examples of keyboard pieces in which sophisticated contrapuntal devices are integrated with virtuoso techniques such as hand crossing, showing that Bach drew inspiration simultaneously from intellectual and technical types of musical thought. Scales seem to have had particular significance, for several possible reasons considered in the paper, which I presented at a meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society at Providence College on Sept. 30, 2006. A rather different paper with a similar title will appear in a forthcoming Festschrift for a well-known pianist and writer on music. Click here for the paper (large file due to embedded grahpics).
A Bach Manuscript Recovered:
Berlin, Bibliothek der Hochschule der Künste, Spitta Ms. 1491
Many manuscripts containing early copies of works by J. S. Bach and other composers disappeared during World War II from the European archives in which they were preserved. Some of these have emerged in subsequent years, to be returned to their rightful owners. In 1998 I had the good fortune to play a role in the retrieval of one such manuscript, especially important as the unique source for a collection of organ chorales attributed to Johann Christoph Bach, an older relative of Johann Sebastian. A short version of the paper was published that year in the newsletter of the American Bach Society; click here for the complete paper.
When Did the Clavichord Become C.P.E. Bach's Favorite Instrument? An Inquiry into Expression, Style, and Medium in Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music
This paper, written for a symposium on the clavichord that took place in 1999, was subsequently published in modified form in De clavicordio IV: Proceedings of the IV International Clavichord Symposium, Magnano, 8–11 September 1999 (Magnano: Musica Antica a Magnano, 2000), pp. 37–53. A French translation by Jean-Claude Teboul appears in Ostinato rigore 23 (2004): 139–57. Click here to read the paper in its original form. The recordings can be heard by clicking on the following links, then right-clicking on the word "download" and saving to your local computer. I made the recordings on the Swedish clavichord of circa 1770 at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota (more information here).
1. Sonata in E minor (W. deest), second movement (Andante)
2. Sonatina in G, W. 64/2 (H. 8), second movement (Largo)
3. Sonata in B minor, W. 65/13 (H. 32.5), first movement (Poco allegro)
4. Sonata in C, W. 90/3 (H. 524), first movement (Allegro di molto)
The Last Bach-Family Engraved Print: The Musical Supplement to C.P.E. Bach's Versuch
This paper discusses the compositional and publication history of C.P.E. Bach's Probestücke, a set of eighteen pieces, each in a different key, that accompanied his well-known Versuch (in English, the Essay on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments). I presented versions of this material at a number of public fora during 2003, including the Clavichord Symposium sponsored by the Boston Clavichord Society during the Boston Early Music Festival . A portion of it was published as part of my edition of the Probestücke in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, volume I/3 (Los Altos: Packard Humanities Institute, 2005). The present paper includes otherwise unavailable material on the continuing use of Bach's Probestücke into the nineteenth century and their possible influence on Beethoven. Click here for the paper (large file due to embedded grahpics).
Critical Editions of C. P. E. Bach's Concertos for Keyboard and Strings W. 4, 5, 6, and 24
During the 1980s I prepared editions of two concertos by C. P. E. Bach (W. 6 and 24) for publication in The Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Edition. The project was halted after issuing just four volumes, and my editions of those two concertos were never published. Since then I have revised those two editions and prepared new editions as well of two additional works, W. 4 and 5. Abbreviated versions of my work are to be published in altered format in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works. Click here for the complete version of each edition, incorporating the full musical text and audio files for early and late forms of each concerto, with comprehensive historical and textual commentary.
