Journal of Musicological Research

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Szymon Paczkowski, Polish Style in the Music of

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bobby Rue

To cite this article: Bobby Rue (2018) Szymon Paczkowski, Polish�Style�in�the�Music

of�Johann�Sebastian�Bach, Journal of Musicological Research, 37:2, 185-187, DOI:
10.1080/01411896.2017.1379821

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2017.1379821

Published online: 24 Oct 2017.

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JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH
2018, VOL. 37, NO. 2, 185–187

Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, by Szymon Paczkowski; Piotr
Szymczak, translator; Contextual Bach Studies, Robin A. Leaver, editor; Lanham,
MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, xvi, 402 pp., $100.00 (hardback), ISBN-13 978-
0-8108-8893-7

Szymon Paczkowski’s Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach comprises the
first in-depth study of what constitutes the Polish style in the Baroque period, illustrated
with examples from Bach’s instrumental and vocal music as case studies. As Paczkowski
points out, the first commonly known discussion on national style was by Athanasius
Kircher in the seventeenth century. Although subsequent music theorists, including
Scheibe, Mattheson, and Quantz, took up the subject in the eighteenth century, their
characterizations of what constituted a Polish style—as well as the Italian gusto, French
goût, and German Geschmack—are plagued by vagueness and generalizations. Similarly
problematic, as Paczkowski notes, nearly all contemporaneous writings on the Polish
style are through a German lens. By presenting the challenges faced by past scholars,
Paczkowski set out to examine the historical, cultural, and intellectual environments that
influenced Bach’s use of the Polish style, relying on period texts and musical examples to
inform his conclusions.
Paczkowski’s book is divided into four sections. The first two involve historical and
theoretical problems in concepts of Polish music of the Baroque, with a study of Bach’s
use of the Polish style in his instrumental music. The final two sections review select
vocal works of Bach that contain the Polish style, most notably, the Mass in B minor and
several of his secular cantatas. The introduction comprises an overview of how eight-
eenth-century treatises identify French, Italian, German, and Polish styles in Bach’s
music. Here Paczkowski problematizes concepts of the Polish style: more precisely,
that most of what we understand of this style was conceived by eighteenth-century
German scholars. This observation is easily palpable given canon-based historiography
that has, until recently, driven the musicological narrative. Additionally, Paczkowski
makes the broad claim that German composers’ exposure was mostly limited to itinerant
Polish folk musicians and their dances, resulting in a limited and inaccurate portrayal
within art music. More importantly, Paczkowski outlines the current state of research on
Polish style in the Baroque, with a thorough overview of the subject since the early
twentieth century—not holding back to show where some scholars have fallen short and
others have made advances.
Presenting and then moving beyond ideas on national style by Scheibe, Quantz, and
Mattheson (that have received the most musicological attention and repetition),
Paczkowski uses German theorists Philipp Kirnberger (1721–1783) and Friedrich
Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795) to inform his subsequent analyses. Despite the writings
of Kirnberger and Marpurg not appearing until the second half of the eighteenth
century, and therefore not immediately influential on J. S. Bach, their concepts of the
Polish style are shown to be clear syntheses of their predecessors. These two composer-
theorists include extensive musical examples to support their analyses (replicated by
Paczkowski). They are shown to comprise primary contemporary theories on the subject,
especially in relation to the German vocal polonaise: its exact rhythmic, melodic, and
cadential characteristics; the differentiation between it, the German-named Polish vocal
186 BOOK REVIEW

polonaise, and other Polish dances; and the tempo and character of the polonaise. These
concepts form the basis of Paczkowski’s theoretical analysis of the Polish style in J. S.
Bach’s music.
Examining the historical and intellectual context of the Polish style in Bach’s music
are the other goals of Paczkowski’s study. The proximity of Saxony with Poland and the
Polish-Saxon courts of August II and August III invited ample opportunity for cultural
musical exchange. The polonaise was used at the Dresden court as early as the sixteenth
century. Paczkowski notes its affective perception as one of chivalry and majesty, citing
its function to open every court ball in Dresden between 1719–1918. Paczkowski con-
nects most of the examples of the polonaise to implications at court or on an intellectual
level as paying homage to the dedicatee of a piece. Thus, Bach’s uses of the polonaise
carried contextual meanings.
Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein Neues Lied BWV 225 is shown to contain striking
examples of what Paczkowski describes as multiple “metaphorical” meanings. Several
theories have been presented regarding the performance date of the motet, beginning in
the nineteenth century by Philipp Spitta and later by Arnold Schering, Alfred Dürr,
Konrad Ameln, and Robin A. Leaver. As Paczkowski describes, Singet dem Herrn could
be what he classifies as an occasional piece. This assertion is based on the performance
date and historical events surrounding it, a thorough analysis of the meaning of the
scriptural text, and the connotation of the Polonaise in court culture, ideas all set forth
by earlier musicologists. Plausible events include: a New Year’s Day performance in
celebration of the Peace of Dresden after the second Silesian War; the festivities for
August II’s visit to Leipzig after his miraculous recovery from an infection; and
Reformation Day celebrations. All of these occasions involve textual connections to
celebrations of renewal, observable at the surface level. However, Paczkowski’s deeper
reading of several scripture passages can be seen to further justify the use of the
polonaise and the double-choir texture. The passages are from: Psalms 103, 149, and
150, and quotes contained in the motet from earlier sacred cantatas that utilize texts
from Exodus 15:20, 1 Chronicles 25, and 2 Chronicles 5:12–13. The texts from Exodus
and Chronicles are related to music, likely interpreted by Bach through Luther and
Abraham Calov’s popular translation of the Bible that included Calov’s expository notes.
Paczkowski supplements this and his other analyses of the text and music with several
clear examples of the score, leaving little double of his hypothesis.
Paczkowski states the particular importance that his book is written from a Polish
perspective. The recent contributions on the Polish style by Polish musicologists Alina
Żórawska-Witowska, Karol Hławiczka, and Zofia Stȩszewska are called to attention, yet
these works are not on the scale required for a full understanding of the style. One might
expect, especially with the claim of Polish perspective and the problematization of the
German lens, that Paczkowski would have placed less emphasis on theories regarding the
Polish style by Germans. While his introductory claim is reasonable—that “Indeed there
were no Polish composers, or even individual works by Polish composers, available as a
model in the opening decades of the eighteenth century that would have been in any way
comparable to the French or Italian achievements shaping the goût/gusto of those
musical cultures” (p. 3)—a quick internet search of seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Polish composers yields one example of a Polish composer employing a polo-
naise: Marcin Mielczewski’s Mass O gloriosa domina, and an instrumental canzona that
is said to quote contemporary Polish tunes, notably the first known use of a mazurka in
classical art music. Unfortunately, the only mention of Mielczewski is found in a
footnote regarding Franz Rost’s (ca. 1640–1688) Codex-Rost (ca. 1680–1688) of over
150 instrumental works, mostly trio sonatas. It seems to me that Mielczewski warrants at
 BOOK REVIEW 187

least some mention in a book about Polish style from a Polish perspective, even if a
connection to Bach is unknown. Mielczewski’s exclusion can be added to a helpful list of
topics of further study presented by Paczkowski, including musical allusion in musical
borrowing among Bach brothers (“andante con tenerezza”; p. 43), especially more work
on French and Italian style in Bach, and Polish style in the works of other composers.
The prose of this translation by Piotr Szymczak of Paczkowski’s original 2011 book
(Styl polski w muzyce Johanna Sebastiana Bacha) flows remarkably well, with very few
exceptions. One oddity is the spelling of Handel’s name as George Frederick Handel
(p. 42), which is practically never used in current scholarly writing in English, or from
my findings, in Polish. The organization of the book is clear and the chapters and
subsections can be read as self-contained expositions on the subject matter at hand.
Frequent reiterations of the thesis bookend sections and unify the text. Chapters and
subsections are ideal for use in upper-level seminars on performance practice, especially
relating to Baroque national style. Overall, Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian
Bach is indeed an important work, contributing both to a better understanding of the
Polish style in general and its use by J. S. Bach in particular.

Bobby Rue
Lourdes University
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
https://doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2017.1379821