This Institute, “Johann Sebastian Bach and the Music of the Reformation Churches,” will focus on the intersections of religion, music, and social and economic change, creating an interdisciplinary approach to topics usually taught discretely.
We will focus on the music of J. S. Bach, but also include the music of other Reformation churches. Luther saw music as a crucial element in religious worship and authored numerous hymns himself, and Bach too was infused with religious intent. Bach’s music resonates in the 21st century with secularists and religious Christians alike, so we will also explore the remarkable interplay of secular and religious elements in Bach’s music and the way they are understood in our society. J.S. Bach is arguably one of the greatest musical geniuses in the entire Western tradition, and many consider him the greatest that has ever lived. His mastery of the craft of musical composition was so profound and his musical imagination so fertile that his works are considered the culmination of almost every musical form of his time. That alone makes him a worthy subject of an Institute for music teachers. However, as in 2 previous years, we propose an Institute on Bach for teachers of history, art, English, religion, German and other disciplines. Bach serves as a perfect vehicle for an analysis of the social, cultural, intellectual and religious changes in Europe and the United States in the 18th century. Bethlehem provides an ideal location for the Institute because of its long association with Bach. It was settled in 1741, nine years before Bach died, by the Moravians (also known as Unitas Fratrum), emigrants from Germany and a religious sect known to Bach. The Moravians were highly musical and cultivated music as a direct route to God. Bach knew their hymns and owned one of their hymnals. The American premiere of Bach’s B Minor Mass in 1900 was sung by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, and launched the American Bach Revival Movement. Other Pietist and Anabaptist sects likely known to Bach also found a home in Pennsylvania, including the Schwenkfelders, Mennonites, and Old Order Amish. The Mennonites and Moravians both worshipped in Brandenburg at the time of Bach’s visit with Frederick the Great. Bach was born in 1685 and died in 1750. Over the course of his life, the world around him was changing rapidly and profoundly from the certainties of the late Baroque era (1700-1750) to the skeptical and investigative attitudes of the Enlightenment (1725-1825). At the same time, he was greatly influenced by the spirit of the Reformation. Bach was a committed Christian and an orthodox Lutheran. His library was filled with theological works, including the writings of Martin Luther, and Bach’s personal ‘Calov’ Bible with extensive notations was found in the United States. For Bach, the great doctrines of the Reformation were not dry formulas, but living truths. Called by many “the supreme religious composer,” his works have been described by historians as “Reformation put to music.” But Bach was also a man of his time, a successful businessman in the musical world, a clever commentator on contemporary issues [as explored, for example, in the Coffee Cantata], and open to new ideas about composition, to new instruments such as the piano, and to societal concerns in Leipzig, a major market town in eastern Germany and a crossroads of trade and ideas.
Bach’s work explored the intellectual and artistic traditions of the Baroque era and the Enlightenment as he faced the challenges of new ideas about the nature and purposes of musical composition and the growing importance of princely courts as patrons. The transition from polyphony to homophony, the transfer from church to court as the center of musical life, the development of new secular genres of and subjects for composition, and the increasingly public role of the composer, all reflect the social and political developments of the age. At the same time, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment were transforming the worlds of thought and encouraging the growth of secularism and materialism. Bach was at the confluence of all these currents. The musical, social, and political developments of the age are reflected in his long and prolific career as a composer. Bach remained rooted in the Baroque, an emblem of the intense religiosity and elaborate, even incessant, musical ornamentation. Yet Bach’s compositions also reflected the social transformations and the rational, intensely mathematical worldview of the Scientific Revolution. Bach’s life and work were dependent on the wealth and power of microstates and their ruling elites, both secular and religious. Near the end of Bach’s life, Frederick the Great summoned him to visit his palace in Potsdam, where Frederick laid down the 3 musical challenge that resulted in A Musical Offering. This general context is crucial for not only understanding Bach, but also for gaining an understanding of a princely world that was soon to disappear from Europe, a world that in its time was a main source of artistic patronage and the center of cultural energy. In the 19th century, unified national states and the rise of the middle class were to create new patrons and new conditions for musical composition and performance.
Our examination of Bach’s life and works will provide teachers with a rare opportunity to explore how political and cultural ideas and changes were reflected in music. This is something their students understand about contemporary music, but have almost no knowledge about with respect to classical music. Virtually all students are taught about the Reformation, but few teachers have had the opportunity to study Lutheran texts and to understand how music, liturgy and religious ideas were intimately entwined. Bach’s Passions, particularly the St. John Passion, will be a focus for the summer scholars. These large and complex compositions are performed regularly throughout the Western world and are loved by people of various faiths and non-faiths, so an exploration of the texts to the music will enrich understanding of the music and Bach’s intentionality. Bach reworked the St. John Passion three times over 25 years, largely in reaction to changes of religious expression in his congregations. Eighteenthcentury Lutheran Pietism will also be examined, as these were currents that Bach dealt with in his work as a church musician. Teachers of religion, history and literature will find opportunities to enrich their classes with an examination of the texts of Bach set to music and help students see the connections between music, words, and changing ideas about both music and religious and social issues. There is an additional rationale behind our choice to focus the Institute on a composer. It is our intention to have teachers, and by extension their students, become more familiar with the traditions of classical music and to encourage them to add music into curricula. The visual arts are often incorporated into the curricula of other disciplines, but music is less often incorporated into a richly informed humanities context. When it is, it is usually limited to Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, or Tchaikovsky, whose works can be tied to nation-state development. Baroque (and earlier) music is virtually absent. Oftentimes, the reason for this is a lack of familiarity, by both the teachers and students. Yet the rich music Bach created and the historic circumstances in which he worked lend themselves to arts-integrated instruction. Participants from our previous five Institutes transformed at least one unit of their courses by adding Bach, and we’re deeply gratified with what many of them have reported to us as the success of these new curricula units.
Related Institute Activities
Listening to Music: Reading the music Bach wrote is essential to a deeper appreciation of Bach’s music because his notation makes the formal organization as well as the thoughts and emotions he wants to arouse graphically explicit. Therefore, most sessions will include notated examples. Those unfamiliar with musical notation will learn to follow the notation easily.
Curriculum Projects:
Meeting in groups and individually, NEH Summer Scholars will be continually challenged to relate the lectures to their future teaching. Every effort will be made to ensure the active participation of every Summer Scholar in idea-sharing sessions, presentations, and written proposals and plans. These activities will continue throughout the Institute.
Pedagogical Application:
Elementary, middle school, and high school teachers find that the interdisciplinary lesson plans developed from the Institute become a critical component of their students’ classroom experience, as is demonstrated by the remarkable projects in several disciplines by past summer scholars. One teacher of eight to ten year-olds with severe autism has developed a year-long curriculum with Bach’s music, which was recorded in a seven-minute documentary. A teacher of English as a Second Language has written a book about Bach for her students, which is being used in all of the schools in her district, while another directed the play Bach in Leipzig to good reviews. One participant’s coloring book designed for second-graders has been published and is used for family concerts by The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, and an elementary school librarian’s book on Bach with its contemporary refrain “Yo, Johann” has been submitted for publication. A math teacher used Bach’s music to illustrate graphing techniques and functions; a social studies teacher created a curriculum which presented Bach’s music as a central element of Baroque art and culture. Another elementary music teacher developed over 30 interactive projects related to Bach for SmartBoard, and an AP European History teacher used Bach for a pivot point to wrap up her discussion about the Protestant Reformation and transition to the Age of Absolutism. Music teachers have added Bach to their teaching of musical forms, such as the canon and the fugue, and have found students highly responsive to Bach’s rhythms and melodies. And, of course, there have been countless performances of Bach’s music in the summer scholars’ home schools, with arrangements for choirs, orchestras and bands. Each Summer Scholar will develop lesson plans or a set of materials that relate the music and world of J. S. Bach to his or her respective discipline. NEH Summer Scholars will present their preliminary lesson plans to the group during the last days of the Institute and prepare them for reproduction by December 1, 2017.
Accommodations and Budget
The Institute will take place at Moravian College on the campus located on the site of the original Moravian settlement in the city’s historic district. Moravian College was founded in 1742 and is recognized as the nation’s sixth oldest college. Eleven of the College’s buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Church Street has been identified as one of the 10 most distinctive historic streets in America, with the College’s Single Brethren’s House (1748) considered to be one of the best examples of Colonial Germanic architecture in the country. Participants will step back in time as they assemble each day in these historic buildings, all of which have been in continuous use since their construction and are now home to the departments of music and art. Most of the Institute, as noted above, will be held in the Single Brethren’s House, which was originally built as the single men’s dwelling and work building for the Moravian community, and served as a hospital for George Washington’s army during the winters of 1776-77 and 1777-78. One of the classrooms contains both a clavichord and harpsichord made during the life of Bach. Directly across the street from the Single Brethren’s House is Central Moravian Church, completed in 1806, where Bach’s B Minor Mass was premiered in the United States in 1900. For one week of the institute, the lectures will be held in the convenient HILL (Hurd Integrated Living Learning) center, where classrooms and dorm rooms are located in the same building. The college provides free internet, and the music library will be open to the summer scholars in the afternoons. The city of Bethlehem is located in the Lehigh Valley, an area rich in cultural institutions and historic monuments. Bethlehem is within driving distance to New York City (90 miles) with its cultural wealth, and Philadelphia (60 miles) with its numerous historical monuments of national importance. The nearby Lancaster region (75 miles) is home to the Ephrata Cloister and communities of Old Order Amish and Mennonites.
We expect that summer scholars will spend no more than $600 on airfare. Accommodations will cost approximately $1,300 (single dorm room with shared facilities in suites). Meals and weekend travel will be an additional cost, but most should be covered by the participant’s stipend. As in previous Institutes, the director will help find suitable accommodations for couples or families, and summer scholars are free to find their own lodgings. There are two hotels (Hyatt, Hotel Bethlehem) within walking distance of the college and numerous others within a 10-mile radius. A typical budget will be as follows:
- Airfare/Travel: $600
- Single Dorm: $1,300
- Meals ($30 per diem): $800
- Weekend Travel: $600
Application Information
The Institute will include 25 NEH Summer Scholars chosen from K-12 teachers and graduate students throughout the United States. If you have any questions about the application, please contact me at the following address: Hilde Binford, Moravian College 1200 Main Street, Bethlehem, PA 18018. (hbinford@moravian.edu). Your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 1, 2017. As mentioned above, each Institute member will receive a stipend of $3,300 towards the costs of transportation, living expenses, and books/scores. One-half of the stipend (less any prepaid housing) will be provided upon arrival. The second payment will be issued by check at the beginning of the third week. NEH Summer Scholars may earn up to three units of graduate credit through Moravian College's Master of Education program by registering for EDUC 698: Special Topics in Music Education, at the special NEH reduced rate of $250 per credit. Recognizing the high caliber of participants, all Summer Scholars are automatically accepted into the Moravian College Master of Education program, should they wish to pursue a graduate degree. Summer scholars who wish to pursue this opportunity are responsible for this cost, as it is not included as part of the stipend. For more information, contact Dr. Joseph Shosh, Chair, Department of Education, at 610- 861-1482.
Perhaps the most important part of the application is the essay that must be submitted as part of the complete application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant; reasons for applying for this particular project; your interest, both intellectual and personal, in the topic; qualifications to do the work of the project and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by participation, including any individual research and writing projects or community or school activities planned; and the relation of the study to your teaching. If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail or write. You can email Hilde Binford at hbinford@moravian.edu or call her at 610-861-1691.
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below the announcement.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
http://home.moravian.edu/public/music/bach/ProgramDescription.pdf