Bach against Modernity

Michael Marissen is Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College, where he taught from 1989 to 2014. He has also been a visiting professor on the graduate faculties at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos; Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion; An Introduction to Bach Studies (co-author Daniel R. Melamed); Tainted Glory in Handel's Messiah; Bach & God; and essays in The Huffington Post and The New York Times.

Preface
Credits

Part I - Constraints of History on Interpretation
1. Bach Against Modernity
2. Bach's Handwritten Entries in his Bible

Part II - Brief Commentaries
3. Fractal Gavottes and the Ephemeral World in Bach's Cantata 64
4. Time and Eternities in Bach's Cantata 23
5. Bach's Christmas Oratorio and a Blessed End
6. Bach and Art and Mammon

Part III - Texts
7. Historically Informed Renderings of the Librettos from Bach's Cantatas (co-author, Daniel R. Melamed)

Part IV - Jews and Judaism
8. On the Jews and their So-Called Lies in the Fourth Gospel and Bach's St. John Passion
9. Bach and Sons in the Jewish Salon Culture of 19th-Century Berlin

Part V - Theological Character of Secular Instrumental Music
10. Bach's Sacred Brandenburg Concertos
11. The Serious Nature of the Quodlibet in Bach's Goldberg Variations

Works Cited
Index of Bach's Works
Index of Names and Subjects