Authority as performance: the love of Bach in nineteenth-century France (original) (raw)

Bach was not a 'modem composer author of the BWV and of the Cantatas Complete Works' before musicology, the record industry and the modem amateurs. This paper traces the long transformation of what became 'music' and how it produced our taste for Bach as a musician, giving him the strange ability of being both the object and the standard of our love for music. Through a study of the use of Bach in a country other than Germany, and from 1800, when Bach's work begins to be published in France, to 1885, the year of his birth Bicentennial, we follow Bach's grandeur as it originates in the zeal of a small circle of his 'early adopters', from Chopin to Alkan, from Gounod to Saint-&ens, from Liszt to Franck.

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact