Analysis, Creativity and Musical Rhetoric in Performances of the Duet Et in Unum from Bach’s B-minor Mass, BWV 2321 

Authors

  • Uri Golomb  Author

Keywords:

Musical rhetoric, J. S. Bach, B-Minor Mass

Abstract

The conductor and musicologist Joshua Rifkin distinguishes between two modes of musical performance—“reading” and “interpretation” (Sherman 1997, 379; Rifkin 2008, 33).2 He defines “reading” as a relatively “straight” realization of the musical notation (understood, to the highest degree possible, as the composer and his contemporaries would have understood it) “on a high level of execution and thoughtfulness” (Rifkin 2008, 33). An interpretation involves more blatant performative interventions, avoiding the pretense of “letting the music speak for itself” and seeking, instead, to communicate the performer’s own artistic vision. 

Author Biography

  • Uri Golomb 

    Uri Golomb studied at Tel Aviv University (BA), King’s College London (MMus) and Cambridge University (PhD). He wrote his doctoral dissertation, Expression and Meaning in Bach Performance and Reception: An Examination of  the B-minor Mass on Record, under the supervision of Prof. John Butt (now at Glasgow University) and Dr. Geoffrey Webber; part of his doctoral research was supported by the British Library Sound Archive’s Edison Fellowship. He later returned to Cambridge under the auspices of a British Academy Visiting Fellowship, hosted by Prof. Nicholas Cook, to commence a research project currently titled The Fifth Evangelist, the Abstract Mathematician and the Compleat Musician: Re-Creating Bach’s Vocal Music in the Age of Recordings. He is now a Teaching Associate at Tel Aviv University.  

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Published

2025-01-23

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Articles