Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach, Expanded Edition

The original edition of this book addressed Bach’s stylized dance pieces that actually bear the names of dances - a considerable corpus. In this expanded version of their study, Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne apply the same principles to the study of a great number of Bach’s works that exhibit identifiable dance rhythms but do not bear dance-specific titles. Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach first surveys French dance practices in the cities and courts most familiar to Bach. The authors then present the individual dance forms that Bach used, annotating all of his named dances. The discussion draws on choreographies, theorists writings, and the music of other 17th- and 18th-century composers in order to arrive at a model for each dance type. New chapters add more information on the giga and on dance rhythms in larger works.