Multimedia Lecture on Bach Counterpoint Added to Fest Schedule

June 27, 2007

The Oregon Bach Festival has added a free lecture that will use a unique new web-based tool that brings music scores to life.

In “Structure, Meaning, and Bach’s Rosetta Stone of Counterpoint,” Tim Smith of Northern Arizona University, a Festival alumnus, will demonstrate BinAural Collaborative Hypertext (BACH), which integrates musical scores with audio and commentary on the web.

The lecture takes place Friday, July 6 at 10 am in the Soreng Theatre.

In Smith’s BACH software, which is based on the Shockwave platform, music notation moves along the screen in time with playback of the score, with analysis of figures and techniques available to click and follow as they occur in the score. It was developed by Smith and his colleague David Korevaar, with funding from the Hinkle Charitable Foundation.

The tool will help illustrate key concepts in a fugue from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier; his “Rosetta Stone” canon BWV 1077; excerpts from the St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass, and many others.

To see Smith’s software in action, visit the BACH website, http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/wtc.html