The famous 1829 revival of the St Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie was a result of the joint efforts of Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the singer Eduard Devrient, and a number of other musicians. The intellectual atmosphere of the time, with its awareness of national and spiritual values, and with a new kind of Christian/religious feeling, promoted the event. The break-through, however, was only possible through Mendelssohn's profound and sympathetic understanding of the spirit of Bach's music. A comparison of the conditions of the first performance (1729) and of the Berlin revival (1829) reveal fundamental differences, of course; the most dramatic of these is the size of the performing forces, and the fact that at the revival nearly one-third of the work was cut. Still, even today, in the time of historically informed performances, Mendelssohn's personal identification with the substance of the work remains an ideal approach.

Clavierübung, a term coined in 1689 by Johann Kuhnau, indicates keyboard music, in which the various compositional techniques of the period are put into practice. Between 1731 and 1742 Bach published four collections under this title. Clavierübung III (1739) is a compendium of the art of the various polyphonic setting of the chorale. Within the framework of the great E flat major St Anne Prelude and Fugue, there are 21 chorales, plus four free 2-part compositions (Duets). The chorale-settings follow each other in Lutheran order: Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie (2 settings each), Gloria (3), Ten Commandments (2), Credo (2), Lord's Prayer (2), Baptism (2), Penitence (2), Communion (2). Each chorale appears in two versions: a longer setting, complete with pedal; and a shorter, manualiter version. Clavierübung III is rich in musical and number symbolism: in addition to the central importance of the number 3 (representing the Holy Trinity), the text of several chorales inspired word painting, and less obvious devices in the music.

The Bach fugue is the complex, but economic and concentrated unfolding of the contrapuntal combinations of the exposed themes and counter-subjects. In Contrapunctus 14 the possibilities of the contrapuntal combinations are so determined, that the musical material almost “develops itself”, in a self-governing way.
The organic unity of the Bach fugues is at its highest in Contrapunctus 14: this extremely dense structure is the final summary of the entire cycle. At the same time, it brings many novel contrapuntal/structural devices as well.
This completion opens possibilities - proving thus its validity to a non-negligible degree - for construing Bach's apocryphal oral testimony, the much-disputed Mizler's obituary relating to the final fugue.
With 78 diagrams and musical examples, plus the score of the reconstructed Contrapunctus 14.

J. S. Bach's acquaintance with the French manner of musical performance was mostly indirect. He copied down music by such French composers as Lully, Grigny, and Dieupart. His most important compositions in the French style, the four orchestral ouvertures, can not be dated precisely. Among the performance issues regarding the genre of the ouverture the individual tempo of the two sections, and the relationship of these two tempos are equally important. The 1696 chronometer of Loulié, and the descriptions of Quantz and Couperin are of little help in this. The meter used in the slow and the fast section gives more indication towards character. (The tempos applied in various recent, historical performances are summarized here in a table.) The other crucial aspect of performance concerns accents, lengths of notes, and rhythmic patterns. The great emphasis on the difference between accented and unaccented notes in the French style accounts for the practice of notes inégales, and for the overdotting of certain dotted rhythms. All these questions appear in a complex form in Bach's music, for his works rarely represent one single national idiom, but they rather include elements of different traditions, integrated into his own individual art.

Time-signatures have their own history, and were associated with certain genres. A fairly new “invention”, 2/4 started to appear in Italian arias of a stately character. This character is likely to apply to the instrumental movements of 2/4 meter as well, including those of Bach (solo or concerto). Movements in 2/4 time, but with various tempo rubrics (andante, allegro, vivace). E.g. those of Bach's trio sonatas for organ, hardly differ in terms of absolute tempo: The tempo rubric only indicates style and character. In Bach, 2/4 time usually conveys short breathed phraseology, and two strong beats to the bar. The tempo of such movements in modern performances often seems too fast. Among several examples (keyboard partitas, Brandenburg concertos), a typical Bach movement of this character is the opening movement of the Italian Concerto for harpsichord.

Hand-distribution is a practical matter for composers, copyists, and players. It occurs typically 1) in free style (preludes or toccatas), and 2) as a means to produce an articulated line. Sources vary in their modes of divisions (some written originally in tabulatures), but, since composers and copyists belonged to a similar context, the “authenticity” of any early hand-distribution is seldom a crucial problem, for what matter is that the composer did intend free passages to be played articulately, not in too regular or clockwork a manner. How far a line was cut up must also be a question of its period - the earlier, the more so. Hand-distribution, like the frequent changes of manuals in organ music, aims at the rhetoric of discontinuity.

In 1985 the Slovak music journal Hudobny zivot published a letter of the “Jena” Bach (Johann Nikolaus), discovered recently in the records of the Príleský family, preserved in the Bratislava National Archives, The addressee of the letter, Nikolaus Alexis Príleský, was the son of the lawyer Pavel Príleský. The aristocratic Príleský family had lived in Trencsén (Western Slovakia), a Hungarian territory before 1918. The young Príleský, as a student at the Jena University, had studies music with Johann Nikolaus Bach. After his return to Trencsén, apparently, he asked Bach to become his tutor there. In the newly services of his discovered letter Johann Nikolaus Bach declines the request, but offers the son instead. The crucial sentence of the letter is: “The Bachs come from Hungary, thus perhaps it is Providence that a Bach from Germany should go to Hungary again.”

Bach himself considered the regular service of church music to be his vocation. The central genre, the cantata, through the biblical content of the text, was understood by the contemporary congregation better than it is today. In today's performances, we find basically 3 ways of interpretation: 1) continuation of 19th-century practice; 2) historical performance; 3) church performances, in liturgical context. Historical performances, although they aim to reconstruct original sounds, can not reconstruct the minds and the expectations of contemporary listeners. The most natural and “functional” performances are in the church, within the framework of the service. But this music is too important just to remain in the church. My ideal is the communication of Bach's music to as many people as possible, without either symphonical or historical alienation. I wish to bridge the chronological distance through a direct transmission of the spiritual/emotional content of the music.

Can we rely on Forkel's story, according to which Bach wrote his “Aria mit verschiedenen Veraenderungen” (BWV 988) upon the request of count Keyserlingk, to relieve his insomnia through the playing of the young harpsichordist J. G. Goldberg? Is the famous theme of the composition by Bach? The variations, this most systematic edifice of contrapuntal art, at any rate, represent the Bachian Clavierübung at its highest.

In case-study concerning the early period of historical performances, the author analyses and compares 29 different interpretations of Bach's Goldberg Variations, based on recordings from the years 1945-81. The fewer piano, and more numerous harpsichord performances are examined in respects of tempo, tone/dynamics, articulations, rhythm, and ornamentation. The general conclusion is that in this period the best piano interpretations reflect a more “authentic” approach than the ones
on harpsichord. Gustav Leonhardt's 1965 recording seems a watershed; nevertheless, neither the use of original instruments) or the copies of thereof), nor the “historically informed” style of playing became a general norm before the second half of the 1970s. Contemporary reviews confirm this tendency: in interpretations, colored with lively registrations, as opposed to the articulated/rhetorical manner of playing.

The B-minor Mass as “Missa tota” (complete mass), like the last encyclopedic works of J. S. Bach (Kunst der Fuge; Musikalisches Opfer), is the fulfilment of an inner urge. In the case of the Mass, this inner obligation concerns the fundamental text of the Christian faith. The Nicene Creed contains the essence of the theological theses, therefore the setting of the Credo was of principal importance for Bach. Beyond various manifestations of number symbolism, the musical macro-structure is the main factor in the interpretation of the text. A comparison of Bach's preliminary and final plan for the structure of the Credo shows his ultimate decision. In this arrangement, the very centre of the Credo section is the Crucifixus movement: this corresponds to the central significance of the holy Cross in Medieval theology as well as in the doctrines of Martin Luther.

The paper examines c 25 cantatas in detail; tables offer a clear survey of the first Leipzig set. Formal analysis of the chorus movements is complemented with the discussion of the general expression of the text. Biblical and chorale words inspire particular settings, with particular Affekte: the basic character of each movement is determined by the content of the text.

“Fantasia”, the written version of improvisation or free composition, is a typical manifestation of the art of the Baroque musician. For organ or harpsichord, the fantasia was always paired with a fugue in the Baroque period. It became an independent piece only after 1750, in the workshop of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. “Die freie Fantasie”, special genre of Philipp Emanuel's keyboard music, remained a particular area for North German composers. Inspired by the clavichord and the fortepiano, the idiosyncratic language of the fantasias of C. P. E. Bach must reflect the manner of his celebrated keyboard improvisations.

Earlier generations of musicians exaggerated the Hungarianlike elements in Bach's music; today, on the other hand, we are at the other end of the scale, yet, musicologists like Ervin Major and Bence Szabolcsi, provided valuable research on that area.
Folk influences, though less important then in Telemann, are not alien to some of Bach's music. Polish-Slavonic elements occur (Polonaise movements), and there is resemblance between a motif of the Scherzo movement of BWV 827, and that of a “Hungarian menuet” from the 18th-century Linus MS. The possible channels of the East-European influence require further investigations in Bach-research.

Since J. S. Bach’s music is deeply rooted in the Lutheran faith, for its better understanding a proper point of departure is the examination of Luther’s conception of music. For detailed analysis, the essay presents Cantata 4 (’Christ lag in Todesbanden’); Aria No. 13 from the St John Passion (’Ich folge dir’); Recitativo No.16 from the Christmas Oratorio; and the structure of the Credo int he B-minor Mass. (The latter is partially based on the con¬cept of Prof. Dr. Martin Petzoldt: see his ’Musical Doctrine of Faith in the Credo Movement of Bach’s B-minor Mass’, in Bach Studies 7.).
The text is illustrated with several autograph facsimile pages. The epilogue of the article emphasizes the omnipresence of God in Bach’s music.

Bach’s church cantatas include 292 solo movements for bass, and 30 duets or trios with bass. The author, himself a bass singer, considers the relationship of text and music, and the performer’s task in the interpretation of this reper¬tory. Certain features (e.g. vocal range), typical in the works of a particular year or period (Weimar, Leipzig), suggest certain singers for whom the arias must have been written.
In his advice for singers, the author stresses the importance of seeing each movement in the context of the entire cantata, also the knowledge of the complex texture of the music, in which the vocal part is only one line among the instrumental parts.

The article is a short summary of Magdolna Friedler’s doctoral dissertation on the Orgelbüchlein. It traces the genesis of the collection, surveys the chorales that constitute the content, and describes the autograph. One of the major questions regarding the Orgelbüchlein is: what motivated Bach to compile such a collection? Magdolna Friedler offers the hypothetical answers of approximately 130 years of Bach research; the problem includes the incomplete realization of the composer's original overall plan as weil. The musical analysis addresses the compositional variety of the chorales, and their place in the liturgical year. The essay is enriched with valuable illustrations and facsimiles.

In the ”Musical lives” series of Cambridge University Press The life of Bach, written by Peter Williams, was published in 2004. The author, organ¬ist/harpsichordist as weil as musicologist, had enlarged the biography in sub¬sequent years, and the result, a work of considerably wider scope (J. S. Bach: A Life in Music), appeared in 2007 (Cambridge Univ. Press). The short résumé reads as follows, on the cover of the book:
”In considering that the works of a composer are his biography, the book’s tide A Life in Music means both a life spent making music and one revealed in the music as we know it. A distinguished scholar and performer, Williams re-examines Bach1s life as an orphan and a family man, as an extraordinari¬ly gifted composer and player, and as an energetic and ambitious artist who never suffered fools gladly.”