Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Mass in B Minor is arguably Bach's greatest single work. In this short guide John Butt considers the work from many angles offering the reader basic information in a concise and accessible form. The Mass in B Minor is fraught with difficulties regarding its origin, and ambiguities concerning its function. John Butt looks again at the historical sources and provides an up-to-date summary of existing research and opinions together with new insights of his own. He gives a vivid account of the work's genesis, its historical context, and its reception by later generations. One chapter considers the work movement by movement providing the text in both Latin and English. The final group of chapters on the music itself suggests some new approaches to the work - its forms, style and overall structure - which are both critically and historically based. This is an informative and lucid guide, valuable for student and music lover alike.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 The musical genre of the mass ordinary
• 2 Genesis and purpose
• 3 Reception history
• 4 Text and music: the process of adaptation and composition
• 5 Ritornello forms
• 6 The influence of the dance
• 7 Counterpoint
• 8 Figurae and the motivic texture
• 9 Patterns and proportions: large-scale structuring and continuity in the Mass in B Minor
• Afterword.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

These three handbooks on individual choral masterworks are all " studies written by recognized experts reporting the current state of knowledge about each work. They are aimed, courageously, at " but are especially valuable to practising musicologists not au courant with the cutting edge of recent research. Burrows has published extensively on Handel's autographs, performing materials, and performances themselves (five citations in his " plus six articles listed in RILM). His handbook is a highly readable overview of Handel's work in Germany and Italy, of the oratorios from 1732 to 1741, " of Messiah, with particular emphasis on Handel's collaboration with Charles Jennens including quotations from pertinent letters, and the subsequent history of Messiah to the present day. It will help readers who want to understand essential distinctions among the different versions of the work cherished by modern-day conductors, though the volume's use to US performers would be enhanced by critical comments on the G. Schirmer and Carl Fischer/Coopersmith editions along the lines of those provided for the Tobin and Watkins Shaw editions. Burrows's comments on " (13 pages) and " (7 pages) should be read by all performers of Messiah, and his comments on Handel's word-setting should discourage anyone from tampering with Handel's linguistic idiosyncracies. Burrows has succeeded in updating Jens Peter Larsen's seminal Handel's Messiah: Origins, Composition, Sources (2nd ed., 1972) without one-upping or superseding it. Butt, (University of California, Berkeley), one of the younger generation of Bach scholars, brings impressive credentials to his task. An organist, he is also author of Bach Interpretation (CH, Feb'91) and a 1991 article: " His handbook demonstrates an ability to relate solid musical analysis to theology and rhetoric in ways easily grasped. This skill is most clearly demonstrated in the sections " and " Other sections deal with topics covered in all three handbooks: genesis and purpose, reception history, text and music. Surprisingly, Butt does not deal in detail with Smend's edition of the Mass in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe. An appendix comparing it to the old Bach-Ausgabe, spinoffs currently in use, and with the edition (as yet unpublished) prepared by Joshua Rifkin for his revolutionary recording of 1982 would have enhanced the practical use of a volume that, in any event, is " reading for performers and scholars alike. Temperley brings a mature viewpoint to his undertaking; he was already an expert on 19th-century English instrumental music and church music before 1983, when he began publishing articles on The Creation. Noting that the work " Temperley develops an unusually rich discussion of the libretto, growing out of his own research and that of Edward Olleson, concluding that the English text in Haydn's published score " Given Temperley's expertise, his edition of the piano/vocal score (Peters, 1988) should be a boon to any one performing The Creation in English. Likewise, the appendix on performance practice, based on A. Peter Brown's recent seminal study, is an invaluable introduction. Unlike Burrows and Butts, Temperley includes excerpts from critical essays (evoking the now-defunct " series), including Schenker's technical, illuminating explication of Haydn's representation of " (1926). Temperley also provides an annotated list of editions currently available, another boon to performers. Like Burrows and Butts he writes lucidly in a style accessible to generalists yet without dilution of content. All three volumes are highly recommended to public and academic libraries at all levels. P. G. Swing emeritus, Swarthmore College