Kamatani, Pamela M. (Author)
University of California, Berkeley
Crocker, Richard L.
Edition Details: Advisor: Crocker, Richard L.
Physical Details: 305 pp.
Language: English
During the last decade of his life, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685--1750) increasingly turned to the composition of large-scale canonic and fugal variation sets built on architectonic principles. For the Society of Musical Sciences (founded by his pupil Lorenz Christoph Mizler), which Bach joined in 1747, he submitted the _Canon triplex_, the _Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch_, and the _Musical Offering_, and probably would have submitted the _Art of Fugue_ had he lived longer. This unprecedented focus on canon and fugue has long been understood as Bach's reaction to attacks on his music by Johann Adolph Scheibe that began in 1737. Scheibe's criticism of Bach's music as ``unnatural'' turned the polemic into a philosophical debate on the representation of nature. But Bach's music appears to correspond accurately to the conception of nature held by the pre-eminent philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646--1716). An investigation of the actual influence of Leibniz on eighteenth-century musical thought has not been made, however, nor has a relationship between Leibniz and Bach been established. Such a relationship can be established through the Society of Musical Sciences, which was modeled after the Berlin Society, founded in 1700 by Leibniz himself. Mizler's Society, which required that members be ``well-versed in philosophy and mathematics'' and instructed them to study the works of Leibniz, aspired to carry out Leibniz' unfulfilled wish to investigate music as both a mathematical and metaphysical science. Leibniz' metaphysics held that the universe was a complex, yet orderly and architectonic construct comprising multiple, overlapping perfections in continuous transformation. Leibniz' own metaphor for this conception was contrapuntal music. This view was adopted by some members of Mizler's Society who regarded canon as the summit of composition for its ability to represent the Leibnizian universe. On a broader level, the rationalist and scientific views of the Society provide a window onto the intellectual climate of the mid- eighteenth-century and illuminate the views that Bach apparently shared.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/03 (2005): 812. UMI pub. no. 3167202.
Similar Citations
Book
Wolff, Christoph;
(2000)
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
(/isis/citation/CBB000320288/)
Thesis
Peeters, Jonathan;
(2009)
The Building Blocks of Reality: Atomism in the 17th and 18th Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001562855/)
Article
Rey, Anne-Lise;
(2007)
Diffusion et Réception de la Dynamique La Correspondance Entre Leibniz et Wolff
(/isis/citation/CBB001252095/)
Book
Arthur, Richard;
(2014)
Leibniz
(/isis/citation/CBB001510059/)
Article
Paola Rumore;
(2016)
Mechanism and Materialism in Early Modern German Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB613435200/)
Book
Lefèvre, Wolfgang;
(2001)
Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000100782/)
Article
Ahnert, Thomas J.;
(2004)
Newtonianism in Early Enlightenment Germany, ca. 1720 to 1750: Metaphysics and the Critique of Dogmatic Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB000471141/)
Thesis
Stan, Marius;
(2009)
Kant's Theory of Motion: Metaphysical Foundations of Leibnizian Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001561094/)
Article
Park, Jeongwoo;
(2007)
Le Débat Wolffien Sur L'Idéalisme de Leibniz Lors de la Première Diffusion de la Monadologie Latine
(/isis/citation/CBB001252097/)
Book
Rescher, Nicholas;
(2003)
On Leibniz
(/isis/citation/CBB000500909/)
Article
Jeremy Dunham;
(2015)
From Habit to Monads: Félix Ravaisson's Theory of Substance
(/isis/citation/CBB734477521/)
Book
Garber, Daniel;
(2009)
Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad
(/isis/citation/CBB001032997/)
Article
Paul Lodge;
(2015)
Heidegger on the Being of Monads: Lessons in Leibniz and in the Practice of Reading the History of Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB417681968/)
Chapter
Garber, Daniel;
(2007)
Leibniz's Critique of Descartes: Leibniz on Body, Matter, and Extension
(/isis/citation/CBB001035323/)
Article
Pierfrancesco Basile;
(2015)
Learning from Leibniz: Whitehead (and Russell) on Mind, Matter and Monads
(/isis/citation/CBB635051687/)
Book
Mercer, Christia;
(2002)
Leibniz's Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development
(/isis/citation/CBB000610201/)
Book
Sascha Salatowsky;
(2015)
Die Philosophie der Sozinianer: Transformationen zwischen Renaissance-Aristotelismus und Frühaufklärung
(/isis/citation/CBB261034484/)
Article
Carlin, Laurence;
(2006)
Leibniz on Final Causes
(/isis/citation/CBB000670337/)
Article
Stephen Howard;
(2017)
Why Did Leibniz Fail to Complete His Dynamics?
(/isis/citation/CBB448929987/)
Book
Perkins, Franklin;
(2004)
Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light
(/isis/citation/CBB000410696/)
Be the first to comment!