Ruth Tatlow | University of Gothenburg (original) (raw)

Books by Ruth Tatlow

In the two centuries since Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three... more In the two centuries since Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three centuries since Metastasio created the libretto, many rumours, myths and prejudiced opinions have gathered around the work, creating a narrative that Mozart, Mazzolà and their contemporaries would scarcely recognise.

The essays in this book contribute ideas, facts and images that will draw the twenty-first-century reader closer to the events of Central Europe in the late eighteenth century, and these new facts and ideas will help peel off some of the transmitted accretions that may hinder a modern listener from enjoying and understanding the opera in all its fullness. In this sense the essays present the reappraisal promised in the title.

The book is a product of the Performing Premodernity research project, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and based at the department of theatre studies of Stockholm University. Envisioned and edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider and Ruth Tatlow, the five essays by internationally renowned Mozart scholars are preceded by a chronology and a selection of original documents presented in new and revised parallel translations.

Praise for Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal

“[The monograph] supplies a wealth of information and thoughts about this opera, which has seldom been treated in such detail. It is a very welcome complement to John A. Rice’s 1991 monograph and to Emanuele Senici’s 1997 dissertation on the reception of La clemenza di Tito.”

“The idea of starting the volume with a documented critical chronology of sources relating to the genesis and reception of the opera is brilliant.”

— Lorenzo Bianconi, Università di Bologna

Bach's Numbers:Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Aug 13, 2015

"2015 Best-selling Music Title" In eighteenth-century Germany the universal harmony of God's crea... more "2015 Best-selling Music Title"
In eighteenth-century Germany the universal harmony of God's creation and the perfection of its proportions still held philosophical, moral and devotional significance. Reproducing proportions close to the unity (1 : 1) across compositions could render them beautiful, perfect and even eternal. Using the principles of her groundbreaking theory of proportional parallelism and the latest source study research, Ruth Tatlow reveals how Bach used the number of bars to create numerical perfection across his published collections, and explains why he did so. The first part of the book illustrates the wide-ranging application of belief in the unity, showing how planning a well-proportioned structure was a normal compositional procedure in Bach's time. In the second part Tatlow presents practical demonstrations of this in Bach's works, illustrating the layers of proportion that appear within a movement,within a work, between two works in a collection, across a collection or between collections.

In 1947 the theologian and musicologist Friedrich Smend published a study which claimed that J. S... more In 1947 the theologian and musicologist Friedrich Smend published a study which claimed that J. S. Bach regularly employed the natural-order number alphabet (A=1 to Z=24) in his works. Smend provided historical evidence and music examples to support his theory which demonstrated that by this means Bach incorporated significant words into his music and provided himself with a symbolic compositional scheme. Since then many people have taken up Smend's theory, interpreting numbers of bars and notes in Bach scores according to the natural-order alphabet. By presenting a thorough survey of different number alphabets and their uses in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany, Dr Tatlow investigates the plausibility of Smend's claims. Her new evidence fundamentally challenges Smend's conclusions and the book sounds a note of caution to all who continue to use his number-alphabet theory. Dr Tatlow's painstaking research will fascinate all those with an interest in the music of J. S. Bach and German Baroque Culture, and will be of particular importance for music historians and analysts

Papers by Ruth Tatlow

Did Bach draw up a detailed ground plan when composing church cantatas, stipulating the number of... more Did Bach draw up a detailed ground plan when composing church cantatas, stipulating the number of bars in the work, and did it bear any relationship to the numerical value of the biblical text? In ...

The mathematical nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Comments about... more The mathematical nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Comments about the supposed numerical bases of his compositions date back to his lifetime and were perpetuated in the obituary and later biographies. Theorists contemporary with Bach strongly imply that numerical ordering, or at least the use of proportions, was very important. The much-published Johann Mattheson frequently praises the virtues of the well-balanced composition, and goes so far as to encourage the composer to plan the proportions of a whole work before composing. [The composer] should outline his complete project on a sheet, sketch it roughly and arrange it in an orderly manner before he proceeds to the elaboration. In my humble opinion this is the best way of all to ensure that each part will demonstrate a specific proportion (Verhaltniβ), uniformity (Gleichformigkeit) and agreement (Ubereinstimmung): for nothing in the world is more pleasing to the ear. But how should the composer obey Mattheson’s exhortation without more detailed directions? Was there a well-tried and tested numerical method underlying these general guidelines? Did Bach use proportions to organise his works? And if so would it be possible to find them in his scores? Conventional analytical methods would not answer these questions. What should the analyst do when the treatises are silent? Was it foolhardy to try to make the composer and his scores speak on subjects only alluded to in a treatise? This paper describes a long-term search for a historically-consistent theory of mathematical procedures in Bach’s works. Working from historical sources and autograph scores the initial negative results were overturned by an unexpected breakthrough which led to an unlooked-for conclusion

Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, 2020

A 50-minute lecture given at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study on 31 March 2020, simultane... more A 50-minute lecture given at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study on 31 March 2020, simultaneously transmitted by Zoom due to CoViD-19.
The ancient belief system of Universal Harmony, based on the proportions of musical acoustics, was generally thought to have died out by 1699. I was therefore surprised to discover that J. S. Bach used the old proportional principles in the structures of his publications until his death in 1750. Music treatises of his time show that the belief system had become intertwined with the Lutheran view of music. But what happened after Bach? I thought that even if the proportional ideals were transmitted by his sons and students, the transmission would stop there, not least because of the increasing secularisation of society. But the reality turned out to be far more complex.

In this illustrated exploration I demonstrate how structural ordering can tell us about a composer’s philosophy and choices, and why this is important. Musical examples include Bach’s Prelude in C major, BWV 846 (1721) and Chopin’s 24 Préludes, Opus 28 (1839).

An original article containing hitherto unpublished materials, commissioned by Scherzo and trans... more An original article containing hitherto unpublished materials, commissioned by Scherzo and translated into Spanish by Nacho Rodríguez. Published in Scherzo, April 2017, in Dossier devoted to the Luther 500 celebration.

The peer-reviewed, open access web journal of Bach Network UK. Volume 12 edited by Richard D. P. ... more The peer-reviewed, open access web journal of Bach Network UK. Volume 12 edited by Richard D. P. Jones with co-editors Barbara M. Reul, Ruth Tatlow and Yo Tomita. Articles by Stephen A. Crist, Gergely Fazekas, Michael Maul (translated by Barbara M. Reul), Stacey Davis, Harry White, Noelle Heber and Hannah French.

Guest: Dr. Ruth Tatlow, Independent Scholar (Sweden): co-founder of Bach Network UK, designer and... more Guest: Dr. Ruth Tatlow, Independent Scholar (Sweden): co-founder of Bach Network UK, designer and founder of the open-access journal Understanding Bach, and frequent visiting researcher at the Leipzig Bach Archive.
Every year in January, many people attribute deep importance to the notion of a fresh start, triggered by the first day of the first month of a new year—an example of how some cultures still impute psychological significance to numbers. It’s a good time to think about the role that numbers can play in human society, a topic that certainly occupied the scientific, artistic, and theological minds of J.S. Bach’s time. Hear Dr. Tatlow discuss these themes in her book, Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance, recently released in paperback. In January 2017, the book was given a prestigious CHOICE award by the American Libraries Association.
To order the book, visit http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/eighteenth-century-music/bachs-numbers-compositional-proportion-and-significance.

A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press on 2 November 2016... more A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press on 2 November 2016, describing a thirty year research path.

A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press

Published as chapter 14, pages 354–69, of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significan... more Published as chapter 14, pages 354–69, of
Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015)
https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

In the two centuries since Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three... more In the two centuries since Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three centuries since Metastasio created the libretto, many rumours, myths and prejudiced opinions have gathered around the work, creating a narrative that Mozart, Mazzolà and their contemporaries would scarcely recognise.

The essays in this book contribute ideas, facts and images that will draw the twenty-first-century reader closer to the events of Central Europe in the late eighteenth century, and these new facts and ideas will help peel off some of the transmitted accretions that may hinder a modern listener from enjoying and understanding the opera in all its fullness. In this sense the essays present the reappraisal promised in the title.

The book is a product of the Performing Premodernity research project, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and based at the department of theatre studies of Stockholm University. Envisioned and edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider and Ruth Tatlow, the five essays by internationally renowned Mozart scholars are preceded by a chronology and a selection of original documents presented in new and revised parallel translations.

Praise for Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal

“[The monograph] supplies a wealth of information and thoughts about this opera, which has seldom been treated in such detail. It is a very welcome complement to John A. Rice’s 1991 monograph and to Emanuele Senici’s 1997 dissertation on the reception of La clemenza di Tito.”

“The idea of starting the volume with a documented critical chronology of sources relating to the genesis and reception of the opera is brilliant.”

— Lorenzo Bianconi, Università di Bologna

Bach's Numbers:Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Aug 13, 2015

"2015 Best-selling Music Title" In eighteenth-century Germany the universal harmony of God's crea... more "2015 Best-selling Music Title"
In eighteenth-century Germany the universal harmony of God's creation and the perfection of its proportions still held philosophical, moral and devotional significance. Reproducing proportions close to the unity (1 : 1) across compositions could render them beautiful, perfect and even eternal. Using the principles of her groundbreaking theory of proportional parallelism and the latest source study research, Ruth Tatlow reveals how Bach used the number of bars to create numerical perfection across his published collections, and explains why he did so. The first part of the book illustrates the wide-ranging application of belief in the unity, showing how planning a well-proportioned structure was a normal compositional procedure in Bach's time. In the second part Tatlow presents practical demonstrations of this in Bach's works, illustrating the layers of proportion that appear within a movement,within a work, between two works in a collection, across a collection or between collections.

In 1947 the theologian and musicologist Friedrich Smend published a study which claimed that J. S... more In 1947 the theologian and musicologist Friedrich Smend published a study which claimed that J. S. Bach regularly employed the natural-order number alphabet (A=1 to Z=24) in his works. Smend provided historical evidence and music examples to support his theory which demonstrated that by this means Bach incorporated significant words into his music and provided himself with a symbolic compositional scheme. Since then many people have taken up Smend's theory, interpreting numbers of bars and notes in Bach scores according to the natural-order alphabet. By presenting a thorough survey of different number alphabets and their uses in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany, Dr Tatlow investigates the plausibility of Smend's claims. Her new evidence fundamentally challenges Smend's conclusions and the book sounds a note of caution to all who continue to use his number-alphabet theory. Dr Tatlow's painstaking research will fascinate all those with an interest in the music of J. S. Bach and German Baroque Culture, and will be of particular importance for music historians and analysts

Did Bach draw up a detailed ground plan when composing church cantatas, stipulating the number of... more Did Bach draw up a detailed ground plan when composing church cantatas, stipulating the number of bars in the work, and did it bear any relationship to the numerical value of the biblical text? In ...

The mathematical nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Comments about... more The mathematical nature of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Comments about the supposed numerical bases of his compositions date back to his lifetime and were perpetuated in the obituary and later biographies. Theorists contemporary with Bach strongly imply that numerical ordering, or at least the use of proportions, was very important. The much-published Johann Mattheson frequently praises the virtues of the well-balanced composition, and goes so far as to encourage the composer to plan the proportions of a whole work before composing. [The composer] should outline his complete project on a sheet, sketch it roughly and arrange it in an orderly manner before he proceeds to the elaboration. In my humble opinion this is the best way of all to ensure that each part will demonstrate a specific proportion (Verhaltniβ), uniformity (Gleichformigkeit) and agreement (Ubereinstimmung): for nothing in the world is more pleasing to the ear. But how should the composer obey Mattheson’s exhortation without more detailed directions? Was there a well-tried and tested numerical method underlying these general guidelines? Did Bach use proportions to organise his works? And if so would it be possible to find them in his scores? Conventional analytical methods would not answer these questions. What should the analyst do when the treatises are silent? Was it foolhardy to try to make the composer and his scores speak on subjects only alluded to in a treatise? This paper describes a long-term search for a historically-consistent theory of mathematical procedures in Bach’s works. Working from historical sources and autograph scores the initial negative results were overturned by an unexpected breakthrough which led to an unlooked-for conclusion

Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, 2020

A 50-minute lecture given at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study on 31 March 2020, simultane... more A 50-minute lecture given at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study on 31 March 2020, simultaneously transmitted by Zoom due to CoViD-19.
The ancient belief system of Universal Harmony, based on the proportions of musical acoustics, was generally thought to have died out by 1699. I was therefore surprised to discover that J. S. Bach used the old proportional principles in the structures of his publications until his death in 1750. Music treatises of his time show that the belief system had become intertwined with the Lutheran view of music. But what happened after Bach? I thought that even if the proportional ideals were transmitted by his sons and students, the transmission would stop there, not least because of the increasing secularisation of society. But the reality turned out to be far more complex.

In this illustrated exploration I demonstrate how structural ordering can tell us about a composer’s philosophy and choices, and why this is important. Musical examples include Bach’s Prelude in C major, BWV 846 (1721) and Chopin’s 24 Préludes, Opus 28 (1839).

An original article containing hitherto unpublished materials, commissioned by Scherzo and trans... more An original article containing hitherto unpublished materials, commissioned by Scherzo and translated into Spanish by Nacho Rodríguez. Published in Scherzo, April 2017, in Dossier devoted to the Luther 500 celebration.

The peer-reviewed, open access web journal of Bach Network UK. Volume 12 edited by Richard D. P. ... more The peer-reviewed, open access web journal of Bach Network UK. Volume 12 edited by Richard D. P. Jones with co-editors Barbara M. Reul, Ruth Tatlow and Yo Tomita. Articles by Stephen A. Crist, Gergely Fazekas, Michael Maul (translated by Barbara M. Reul), Stacey Davis, Harry White, Noelle Heber and Hannah French.

Guest: Dr. Ruth Tatlow, Independent Scholar (Sweden): co-founder of Bach Network UK, designer and... more Guest: Dr. Ruth Tatlow, Independent Scholar (Sweden): co-founder of Bach Network UK, designer and founder of the open-access journal Understanding Bach, and frequent visiting researcher at the Leipzig Bach Archive.
Every year in January, many people attribute deep importance to the notion of a fresh start, triggered by the first day of the first month of a new year—an example of how some cultures still impute psychological significance to numbers. It’s a good time to think about the role that numbers can play in human society, a topic that certainly occupied the scientific, artistic, and theological minds of J.S. Bach’s time. Hear Dr. Tatlow discuss these themes in her book, Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance, recently released in paperback. In January 2017, the book was given a prestigious CHOICE award by the American Libraries Association.
To order the book, visit http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/eighteenth-century-music/bachs-numbers-compositional-proportion-and-significance.

A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press on 2 November 2016... more A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press on 2 November 2016, describing a thirty year research path.

A short blog post published in FifteenEightyFour by Cambridge University Press

Published as chapter 14, pages 354–69, of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significan... more Published as chapter 14, pages 354–69, of
Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015)
https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

Published as chapter 13, pages 326–53 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significanc... more Published as chapter 13, pages 326–53 of
Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015)
https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

Published as chapter 12, pages 294–325 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significan... more Published as chapter 12, pages 294–325 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015)
https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

Published as chapter 11, pages 275–293 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significan... more Published as chapter 11, pages 275–293 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015)
https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

Published as chapter 10, pages 255–274 of Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significan... more Published as chapter 10, pages 255–274 of
Bach’s Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (Cambridge, 2015) https://youtu.be/TtjHD9zB6bg

A ten-minute radio programme focussing on my latest research, in the series Interplay, intersecti... more A ten-minute radio programme focussing on my latest research, in the series Interplay, intersections between music and science, produced for Sveriges Radio by Berit Nygren.

A reflection on the Leipzig celebration of Advent as opposed to that in Weimar and how the differ... more A reflection on the Leipzig celebration of Advent as opposed to that in Weimar and how the differences affected the selection of texts and Bach's compositional choices in three Advent cantatas.

The mathematical nature of Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Theorists contemporary with Bac... more The mathematical nature of Bach’s works has entered popular myth. Theorists contemporary with Bach strongly imply that numerical ordering was an important compositional principle, but none say how. Working from historical sources and the autograph scores to find the answer, my research took an unexpected turn in 2004 that led to the formulation of the theory of proportional parallelism. In this talk I will present an overview of the evidence illustrating the new theory with results from many of Bach’s works, including the Six violin solos (BWV 1001-1006), the Musical Offering (BWV 1079), and the Leipzig organ chorale.
A full explanation of the theory and results for all of Bach’s publications and fair copies will be presented in Bach’s Numbers? A Riddle Unravelled (in preparation)

Numbers, alphabets, mysticism and symbols combined with Bach’s music make a heady brew that has i... more Numbers, alphabets, mysticism and symbols combined with Bach’s music make a heady brew that has intoxicated many music lovers, but how much of it is truth and how much popular myth? Come and hear the latest by the author of Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet in an illustrated lecture and open question time.

Rör ihop tal, bokstäver, mystik och symboler med Bachs musik så får du en bedårande brygd, som berusade många musikälskare, men hur mycket av det är sanning och hur mycket popular myt? Kom och lyssna till det senaste från författaren till Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet i en illustrerad föreläsning och offentlig frågestund.