Bach and Material Culture

Abstract

Bach’s music is often interpreted as transcending the material conditions of everyday life. This chapter, by contrast, argues that Bach scholarship could be enriched via approaches taken from the study of material culture. It places Bach within the vibrant consumer culture of early-eighteenth-century Leipzig, exploring his postmortem inventory and his keyboard publications in the context of how the town’s bourgeoisie used material goods to show their status and identity. It investigates Bach’s printed and manuscript music in terms of the social practices surrounding these material artifacts. Finally, the chapter relates Bach’s working practices to debates about the interplay of human and material agency. It discusses how he experimented with the material characteristics of instruments such as organs, and analyzes his compositional practice as an interaction between player-composer and contrapuntal materials.