Choosing an Influence, or Bach the Inexhaustible: The Heterophony of the Voices of Twentieth-Century Composers 

Authors

  • Yulia Kreinin Hebrew University, Jerusalem Author

Keywords:

Rorschach test, Bach’s influence, twentieth century composers

Abstract

The famous theory of the “anxiety of influence” (Harold Bloom) seems to be insufficient to explain the admiration and reverence for Bach which highly different composers such as Mahler and Reger, Schoenberg and Shostakovich, and Webern and Schnittke have expressed through their work. Despite all their differences and possible anxieties, each of these composers consciously and specifically chose Bach as his desired partner in an imaginary dialogue with the past. At the same time, the image of Bach that each composer created was very different, as is typical in interpreting the abstract drawings of a Rorschach test; therefore, each ‘portrait’ of Bach was also, in a way, a self-reflection of the composer. The main question to be investigated in this article is the reason(s) for the unique persistence of Bach’s influence into the 20th century, incomparable even to that of other major composers of the past. Several crucial points connected with this Bach-renaissance will be examined in an attempt to understand why. 

Author Biography

  • Yulia Kreinin, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

    Prof. Yulia Kreinin (Krejnina) graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, and holds a Ph.D. from the Russian Art Research Institute (Moscow), where she worked from 1979-1993 as a senior research fellow. Prof Kreinin has lived in Israel since 1994, and since 1996 has been a lecturer in the Department of Musicology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof Kreinin has published two monographs (“Max Reger: His Life and Work”, Moscow, 1991; “The Music of Mark Kopytman: Echoes of Imaginary Lines”, Berlin, 2008) and two collections of essays (“György Ligeti: His Work and Personality”, Moscow, 1993; and “Mark Kopytman: Voices of Memories”, Tel Aviv, 2004), as well as numerous articles on 20th century music in Russian, English, German and Hebrew.  

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Published

2024-04-23

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Section

Articles