Modern scholars have discovered that many accompanimental motives used by Bach in the Orgelbüchlein are the same as those codified in Baroque music treatises according to rhetorical terminology. Primarily for this reason, it has become fashionable to see in these organ chorales a rhetorical as well as expressive musical language. The rhetorical analogy raises intriguing but unanswerable questions. To consider one of the most interesting: was Bach consciously emulating rhetorical practice? He probably was at least aware of the parallels to rhetoric offered by his Weimar colleague Johann...

Modern scholars have discovered that many accompanimental motives used by Bach in the Orgelbüchlein are the same as those codified in Baroque music treatises according to rhetorical terminology. Primarily for this reason, it has become fashionable to see in these organ chorales a rhetorical as well as expressive musical language. The rhetorical analogy raises intriguing but unanswerable questions. To consider one of the most interesting: was Bach consciously emulating rhetorical practice? He probably was at least aware of the parallels to rhetoric offered by his Weimar colleague Johann Gottfried Walther in his Praecepta der musicalishen Composition, the composition treatise Walther wrote in 1708 for his pupil Prince Johann Ernst. In the Praecepta, Walter describes, through the use of rhetorical jargon, several of the accompanimental movies found in Orgelbüchlein.