Andreas Werckmeister’s Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse: A Well-Tempered Universe(Contextual Bach Studies)

Andreas Werckmeister (1645 – 1706), a late seventeenth-century German Lutheran organist, composer, and music theorist, is the last great advocate and defender of the Great Tradition in music, with its assumptions that music is a divine gift to humanity, spiritually charged yet rationally accessible, the key being a complex of mathematical proportions which govern and are at the root of the entire universe and all which that embraces. Thus understood, music is the audible manifestation of the order of the universe, allowing glimpses, sound-bites of the very Creator of a well-tempered universe, and of our relationship to each other, our environment, and the divine powers which placed us here. This is the subject matter of the conversation which Werckmeister wishes to have with us, his readers, particularly in his last treatise, the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse. But he does not make it easy for today’s readers. He assumes certain proficiencies from his readers, including detailed biblical knowledge, a fluency in Latin, and a familiarity with treatises and publications concerning music, theology, and a number of related disciplines. He writes in a rather archaic German, riddled with obscure references which require a thorough explanation. With its extensive commentary and translation of the treatise, this book seeks to bridge Werckmeister’s world with that of the twenty-first century. Werckmeister wrote for novice and professional musicians alike, an author who wanted to consider with his readers the basic and existential questions and issues regarding the wondrous art of music, questions as relevant then as they are now.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Series Editor’s Foreword Preface Part I Introduction to the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse Werckmeister Biography Werckmeister Treatises Contents and Sources of the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse Part IITranslation of the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse Title page and dedicatory comments Preface Index and contents of the chapters Chapter 1An introduction to this work: the division of the musical proportions Chapter 2A testimonial through mathematics and Holy Scriptures themselves, that the course of the heavens are harmonic Chapter 3How the mortal body and soul are harmonically created, and furthermore, on the influence of the stars Chapter 4Why humans find such pleasure in music, and whence composers and musicians arise Chapter 5As the image of God, humans are to praise the Creator with music. Buildings and eras in scripture are also harmonic wonders of spiritual music. Chapter 6On the abuse of music, which the authorities could abolish Chapter 7How the inclination of a people determines its attitude towards music, and how the heathens were so scattered in their views on music Chapter 8On the music of the early Christians, and the subsequent changes Chapter 9The great difficulties arising out of solmization and the linear staff-system Chapter 10Proof that the linear staff system is accompanied by great difficulties Chapter 11Proof of how everything can be played or sung through the twelve note-names Chapter 12Further proof, that the linear staff system has many more variants than the twelve note-names Chapter 13How the temperaments can be examined, and on German tablature Chapter 14How the chromatic system is to be applied to the tempered keyboard Chapter 15On the disorder of hymn singing Chapter 16On the simplicity of old organs Chapter 17How the musical modes can be differentiated Chapter 18On the nature and property of the harmonic numerals Chapter 19On the hidden meaning of the numerals Chapter 20On the properties of the harmonic numerals, when they themselves are subdivided Chapter 21On the subdivision of the harmonic numerals Chapter 22On the properties of the dissonant musical numerals Chapter 23How the harmonic radical numerals are transformed into a tempered tuning, and of their hidden meaning Chapter 24A comparison of incorrect tempered tuning with false Christianity Chapter 25How the temperament can be perfect or imperfect, and how the same can be compared with Christianity Chapter 26The Lord’s Prayer in the musical proportional numerals Bibliography About the author

About the Author :
Dietrich Bartel is associate professor of music at Canadian Mennonite University.

Review :
Bartel’s English translation of Werckmeister’s German is both coherent and idiomatic and makes an important document from the German baroque available to a much wider audience. Bartel brings to this translation decades of teaching experience and research into German literature and culture. He does everything in his power to assist the reader of this book. . . . Bartel’s pedagogical heart is apparent throughout. From the first page one senses a caring mentor willing the student to understand. I have read Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse numerous times in the original German, but it was not until Bartel’s ‘tutoring’ through this book that I understood how blind I had been to some of Werckmeister’s unstated implications, one of which has propelled my research along an exciting new line of inquiry. In his last writing, Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse (1707), Andreas Werckmeister, one of the great minds of musical aesthetics and theory, confronts a series of paradoxes at the interfaces between faith and reason, mind and body, speculation and experience. The author, himself, presents us, today, with a further paradox: he was one the last exponents of an ancient cosmological understanding of music—a number-based conception in the tradition of Pythagoras and Plato—yet he was also one of the first to advocate for major-minor tonality, equal temperament, and a notation system that would treat each of the twelve pitch classes and all enharmonically equivalent intervals in a like manner. Dietrich Bartel’s translation renders Werckmeister’s notoriously difficult and often obscure German in clear and precise English, making it truly accessible to an international readership for the first time. Bartel’s magisterial introduction places this publication an illuminating context, and traces, with precision and nuance, the evolution of Werckmeister’s thinking about temperament.