TY - THES ID - 135129088 TI - De Scheibe-Bach-controverse : Onpartijdige bemerkingen bij een passage in Johann Adolph Scheibes Critischer Musikus AU - Moonen, Marie AU - Burn, David AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Letteren. Opleiding Master in de musicologie PY - 2013 PB - Leuven : KU Leuven. Faculteit Letteren DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135129088 AB - Nearly every book on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach mentions Johann Adolph Scheibe's criticism of Bach's music in the sixth volume of Critischer Musikus. Scheibe's ideas have typically been interpreted in two ways: either psychologically, as an expression of professional jealousy; or historically, as a manifestation of the unbridgeable gap between the baroque and the classical periods. Both interpretations are based on the same short passage in Critischer Musikus in which Scheibe mentions Bach, and neither seems to take any account of the larger context. Scheibe's criticism caused a controversy in which such intellectuals as Birnbaum, Mizler and Schröter participated; many of the ideas that are to be found throughout the later volumes of Critischer Musikus and Scheibe's other theoretical writings may serve as landmarks defining Scheibe's position in the controversy; and these same ideas may have been the theoretical and aesthetic background of Scheibe's work as a composer. If Scheibe's criticism is to be interpreted in a fair and adequate way, all these elements must be taken into account. Scheibe's ideas on theory and the aesthetics of music are not easily understood, but there is plain evidence in his writings that his criticism of Bach was more than just jealousy. However, the other common interpretation, considering Scheibe as a classical thinker ahead of his time, turns out also to be untenable. Scheibe's aesthetic and theoretical position seems to be a continuation of baroque ideas rather than a radical break with these concepts. In his aesthetics Scheibe clearly sticks to the rationalist thinking that dominated German baroque music, although he tried to enrich this reason-based tradition by paying more attention to the senses. In his writings on musical theory he defends the contrapuntal mastery that characterises the great composers of baroque music, but on the other hand he tries to broaden this mastery by combining it with other styles, by cherishing melody as a core parameter, by using dissonance and ornamentation soberly and by integrating text and music meticulously in vocal works. These ideas are the musical genes of Scheibe's own compositions and they also seem to live in the works of such composers as Telemann, Hasse and Graun. Even the works that Bach wrote at the time of the controversy and afterwards seem to move in the direction Scheibe defended: he started introducing elements of different styles and he started treating melody as a more central category in his compositions to the extent that these works can be seen as a synthesis in which older characteristics of baroque music are combined with the kind of more modern elements Scheibe had in mind. In this way it becomes clear that Scheibe's criticism does not mark the gap between the baroque and the classical periods, but rather comprises the first attempt to bridge the gap between them. ER -