Eine Untersuchung zum »Bach-Choral«

The subject of the present study are the mostly four-part chorales from original works of Johann Sebastian Bach, along with partially corresponding movements found in the collections of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Ludwig Dietel, Christian Friedrich Penzel, Georg Christian Schemelli and others. Using software developed particularly for this purpose, a total of 896 scores were digitized and analyzed according to different criteria. Using the computer allowed the extensive material to be explored in a much shorter time. Of course this method also has some disadvantages. Computers are generally unable to “understand” musical structure in an advanced manner, let alone their extra-musical implications. Therefore, a consistent “division of labour” between the machine and the user was incorporated from the beginning: The task of the computer consisted mainly of searching for predefined structures in the musical notation, while all perceptual, cognitional or hermeneutical activities fell into the domain of the user. (However, musical notation itself contains – in contrast to the acoustical substrate – “interpretative” components to a certain extent.) During the data acquisition, a number of misprints in the complete edition (Neue Bach-Ausgabe) were detected and – after an inspection of the available sources – eliminated. A list of these misprints is contained in the appendix of the contribution. The results of the style analyses (some of them are already introduced in this article) will be presented in a series of forthcoming publications.