Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Music Honours

School

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA)

Faculty

Faculty of Education and Arts

First Supervisor

Stewart Smith

Abstract

This dissertation investigates changing tastes in the performance practice of Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred music from the second decade of the Twentieth Century to the present day. In particular I focus on the 'rhetorical style', and offer a comparative study of four recordings of Bach's Weihnachtsoratoritmt (Christmas Oratorio) BWV 248 by Harnoncourt (1973), Gardiner (1987), Jacobs (1997), and Suzuki (1998). Though all of these interpretations would be categorised as being in the 'rhetorical style', I attempt to show that within this classification there exists a multiplicity of performance approaches.

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