Bach's architecture of gratitude : on the genius of the Mass in B minor / James Crooks.
2024
MT115.B33 C76 2024
On loan from New Bookshelf - 2nd (Main) Floor, due 21. Mar 2025
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Details
Title
Bach's architecture of gratitude : on the genius of the Mass in B minor / James Crooks.
Author
ISBN
9780228020622 (cloth)
9780228020639 (paper)
022802062X (cloth)
0228020638 (paper)
9780228020639 (paper)
022802062X (cloth)
0228020638 (paper)
Published
Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2024]
Copyright
©2024
Language
English
Description
xx, 189 pages ; 24 cm
Call Number
MT115.B33 C76 2024
System Control No.
(OCoLC)1401757216
Summary
Virtually every music-lover has experienced musical ecstasy - a kind of ecstatic certainty that piece of music has captured an incontrovertible truth. In Bach's Architecture of Gratitude James Crooks explores this profound aesthetic experience of listening to music through a case study of J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor - widely considered to be one of the most monumental and beloved works in the history of Western music. Asking why the Mass has been perceived for centuries as monumental, the book investigates how the compositional principles of the work offer a detailed map of our spiritual journey through it. Crooks centers his study in the idea of gratitude as a mode of knowing; through gratitude, the experience of musical ecstasy teaches us something crucial about the genuine nature of our own identity, our relations with others, and the character of the things around us. The Mass is a trigger of musical ecstasy and its attendant gratitude because it models, in its cathedral-like architecture, a structure that synthesizes all things into a coherent, unified whole. Crooks describes this musical structure as genius in the etymological sense where genius is the power of a work to generate coherent form in an experience so complex and massive that it seems impossible to be sensible, perceivable, or knowable. This capacity of the Mass is a gift that inspires profound gratitude. Spotlighting the wisdom embedded in gratitude, Bach's Architecture of Gratitude celebrates music as a pathway to understanding our deepest selves and our intimacy with the world."-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-186) and index.
Formatted Contents Note
Preface
A note from the author on the Mass in B minor : a brief primer and some suggestions for listening
Introduction
Part one : The Mass as aesthetic object. Liturgy ; Parody ; Measure ; Counterpoint
Part two : The Mass as aesthetic event. Reading ; Dancing ; Repeating ; Thanking
Appendix I. Suggestions for musicological reading
Appendix II. Suggestions for philosophical reading.
A note from the author on the Mass in B minor : a brief primer and some suggestions for listening
Introduction
Part one : The Mass as aesthetic object. Liturgy ; Parody ; Measure ; Counterpoint
Part two : The Mass as aesthetic event. Reading ; Dancing ; Repeating ; Thanking
Appendix I. Suggestions for musicological reading
Appendix II. Suggestions for philosophical reading.
Available Note
Issued also in electronic format.
Available in Other Form
Online version: Crooks, James, 1959- Bach's architecture of gratitude. Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024
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