Appel à contributions de la revue Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute.

« Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute invites submissions for a special issue in September 2027 on “Bach and the ‘New Theory,’” co-edited by Vasili Byros and Christina Fuhrmann. The phrase is Giorgio Sanguinetti’s, used to describe the concurrent arrival of studies in phrase-level schemata (Satzmodelle in Germany) and Italian and Austrian partimento. “[N]ot unified,” nor a theoretical system, this “multifaceted ‘new theory’” is rather a common set of beliefs and methods shared by three other recent developments in the analytic study of music from the long eighteenth century: extensions of topic theory, the new Formenlehre, and solfeggi. All share the same microtheoretic impulse that underlies Robert Gjerdingen’s Music in the Galant Style: a common goal of reconstructing a “historically informed” perspective, without succumbing to grand narratives of macrotheories, as exemplified by the formerly dominant paradigm of Schenkerian analysis.

Having shed bright light on the “building blocks” of musical style available to Bach and his contemporaries alike, the new theory nonetheless remains absent of a cohering principle (apart from considerations of method) while at times outright questioning the work concept, which has left lasting questions for Bach’s music, long extolled both for its musical expression and compositional logic—its exemplification of art as rational contemplation.

This special issue seeks to open and define a space for understanding Bach’s relationship to these recent developments: how, on the one hand, the “new theory” can shed light on Bach’s music and creativity, but also how, in the very matters of art and aesthetics which took hold in the eighteenth century, Bach’s example may present unique challenges to these microtheories. »

Date limite de soumission : 15 décembre 2025.

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