March 29, 2024

Kuykendall Links Shakespeare and Bach at Society for Textual Scholarship Conference

Kuykendall found that these two works borrow interludes from Bach settings, as indicated.

Music Department Chair Dr. Brooks Kuykendall combined text-critical theories about Shakespeare with Bach sources at the interdisciplinary Society for Textual Scholarship conference in New York City, March 20-22.  His paper, entitled “The sources of Bach’s passaggio chorales:  all ‘bad quartos’?” reconsidered traditional views of copyists’ manuscripts of Bach organ works in light of theories which have developed around the early editions of some of Shakespeare’s plays–editions which are markedly different from the standard texts as performed today.  Early Bach sources reveal that his works were similarly contested from the start.