Lusus Poeticus vel Musicus : Johann Sebastian Bach, the Baroque Paragram and Friedrich Smend's Number Alphabet Theory

Sammanfattning: The starting point of this investigation was Friedrich Smend's number alphabet theory. Contrary to current trends in the analysis of Bach's music, Friedrich Smend used an eighteenth-century technique to understand eighteenth century music. This thesis presents a critical examination of Smend's theory, a history of number alphabets and their use in the eighteenth century, a history of the poetical paragram and a consideration of which, if any, of these forms Johann Sebastian Bach would have encountered, and whether he might have used the natural order number alphabet when composing.