J. S. Bach's Chorales: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century German Figured-Bass Pedagogy in Light of a New Source.

In a recent study by Robin A. Leaver, the Sibley Choralbuch (Rochester, NY) was re-identified as likely stemming from J. S. Bach's students in Dresden from around 1730-40 (2016). The manuscript contains 227 figured-bass chorales--melodies with single figured basses--and thus matches the first part of C. P. E. Bach's description of his father's teaching method, where students first received a figured-bass chorale and added two inner voices. Later, students composed their own basses and figures. Here, the plural "basses" is significant, because several "multiple-bass" chorale sources have also come to light in recent years, many stemming from J. S. Bach's students, Kittel and Kirnberger, who discuss this technique in their treatises. These sources suggest that a little-known, keyboard chorale tradition also played an important role in Bach's pedagogy. The present article attempts to reconstruct this pedagogical process using contemporaneous German sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]