J. S. Bach’s 'Well-Tempered Clavier' in TV Commercial Advertisement

Authors

  • Maria Borghesi Conservatorio di musica “A. Pedrollo”, Vicenza

Abstract

Recently, academia has renewed interest in the role of music in the complex interaction between narration, image, text, and sound in creating an advertising message (Graakjær and Jantzen 2017; 5, Deaville-Tan-Rodman 2021). In this context, Peter Kupfer has investigated the presence of classical music in US television advertising (Kupfer 2017), also focusing on Bach (Kupfer 2019).

Starting from these premises, in this contribution, I focus on a corpus of television advertisements that include excerpts from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and have been broadcast in Europe and the United States since 2000. First, I propose a taxonomy of brands that choose Bach, investigating their respective target audiences from a sociological perspective. Then, I examine how Bach’s music is used, concentrating particularly on a series of advertisements by Poltronesofà. Finally, we discuss the reasons why Bach's music continues to be used in advertisements and the values it aims to convey.

Author Biography

Maria Borghesi, Conservatorio di musica “A. Pedrollo”, Vicenza

Maria Borghesi teaches History of Music at the “A. Pedrollo” Conservatory of Music in Vicenza and is a co-founder, vice-president, and head of the research area of the Società Bachiana Italiana. Focusing on Bach, she explores phenomena of cultural reception, the relationships between teaching, textual bibliography, performance, and the history of the music industry in Italy. She co-organized the roundtable "Bach across Borders - Interdisciplinary Investigations on Global Cultural Reception" for the IMS Conference (Athens, 2022). Her publications include the monograph Italian Reception of J. S. Bach: 1950-2000 (Dohr Verlag, Köln 2021, awarded the First Prize “Giovanni Morelli”), and the curatorship (with Chiara Bertoglio) of Bach e l’Italia: Scambi, sguardi e convergenze. Her contributions on Bach have appeared in «Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute», «Musica Docta», «Studi Musicali», and «Rivista Italiana di Musicologia».

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Published

2025-03-13

How to Cite

Borghesi, M. (2025). J. S. Bach’s ’Well-Tempered Clavier’ in TV Commercial Advertisement. Gli Spazi Della Musica, 12, 216–236. Retrieved from https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/spazidellamusica/article/view/11757

Issue

Vol. 12 (2023): Il Clavicembalo ben temperato. Un’eredità lunga tre secoli

Section

Essays

License

Licenza Creative Commons
This work is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons license Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported. The authors maintains all the the rights of the articles published in «Gli spazi della musica», included the publication rights.