Title: Mystical love in the German Baroque : theology, poetry, music /
Authors: Elferen, Isabella van
Publisher: Scarecrow Press,
Year: 2009
Subjects: Petrarca, Francesco, Influence.; Music and literature History; Music and literature History; Music Religious aspects; Songs, German History and criticism.; Cantatas Germany History and criticism.; Cantatas Germany History and criticism.
Abstract: "Mystical Love in the German Baroque: Theology, Poetry, Music identifies the cultural and devotional conventions underlying expressions of mystical love in poetry and music of the German baroque. It sheds new light on the seemingly erotic overtones in settings of the Song of Songs and dialogues between Christ and the faithful soul in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century cantatas by Heinrich Schiltz, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Sebastian Bach. While these compositions have been interpreted solely as a secularizing tendency within devotional music of the baroque period, Isabella van Elferen demonstrates that they should instead be viewed as intensifications of the sacred." "Based on a wide selection of previously unedited or untranslated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, van Elferen describes the history and development of baroque poetic and musical love discourses, from Schiltz's early works through Buxtehude's cantatas and Bach's cantatas and Passions. This long and multilayered discursive history considers the love poetry of Petrarch and its effect on the madrigal in Germany, European reception of petrarchan imagery and tradition, and the role of Catholic medieval mystics in baroque Lutheranism. Van Elferen shows that Bach's compositional technique, focusing on the emotional characteristics of text and music rather than the depiction of single words, allows the musical expression of mystical love to correspond closely to contemporary literary and theological concepts."--Jacket.
Contents: Petrarchism -- Petrarchan poetry and the madrigal in seventeenth-century Germany -- Affective expression in poetry and music -- Affect and discourse of love -- Mystical love in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lutheran poetry and theology -- Spiritual and mystical love in seventeenth-century vocal music -- Mystical love in Johann Sebastian Bach's vocal works.