Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Johann Sebastian Bach holds a singular position in the history of music. A uniquely gifted musician, he combined outstanding performing virtuosity with supreme creative powers and remarkable intellectual discipline. More than two centuries after his lifetime, Bach's work continues to set musical standards.

The noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers in this book new perspectives on the composer's life and remarkable career. Uncovering important historical evidence, the author demonstrates significant influences on Bach's artistic development and brings fresh insight on his work habits, compositional intent, and the musical traditions that shaped Bach's thought. Wolff reveals a composer devoted to an ambitious and highly individual creative approach, one characterized by constant self-criticism and self-challenge, the absorption of new skills and techniques, and the rethinking of riches from the musical past.

Readers will find illuminating analyses of some of Bach's greatest music, including the B Minor Mass, important cantatas, keyboard and chamber compositions, the Musical Offering , and the Art of Fugue . Discussion of how these pieces "work" will be helpful to performers--singers, players, conductors--and to everyone interested in exploring the conceptual and contextual aspects of Bach's music. All readers will find especially interesting those essays in which Wolff elaborates on his celebrated discoveries of previously unknown works: notably the fourteen "Goldberg" canons and a collection of thirty-three chorale preludes.

Representing twenty-five years of scholarship, these essays--half of which appear here in English for the first time--have established Christoph Wolff as one of the world's preeminent authorities on J. S. Bach. All students, performers, and lovers of Bach's music will find this an engaging and enlightening book.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Outlines of a Musical Portrait
• New Perspectives on Bach Biography
• The Family Decisive Career Steps Employers and Patrons Buxtehude, Bach, and Seventeenth-Century Music in Retrospect Bach and Johann Adam
• Reinken: A Context for the Early Works Vivaldi's Compositional Art, Bach, and the Process of ""Musical Thinking"" Bach and the Tradition of the Palestrina Style
• New Sources: Broadened Perspectives
• The Neumeister Collection of Chorale Preludes from the Bach Circle Bach's Auditi

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Bach's life and work has been of interest to musicians and scholars for over 200 years. This collection of essays by Wolff ( The New Grove Bach Family , Norton, 1983) illuminates aspects of Bach's life through his music. Written over a 25-year period, the essays are documented in an extensive bibliography and have been updated with postscripts when necessary. Whenever possible, Wolff has gone directly to Bach's manuscripts to form his theses. For example, the question of the final ``unfinished'' fugue in the ``Art of the Fugue'' is resolved by notes in Bach's own hand that were revealed by infra-red photography. The book is illustrated with facsimiles, tables, and musical examples. Although it contains considerable technical material, it is largely accessible to the knowledgeable layperson and will be welcomed by serious students and performers. Essential for music libraries and a valuable addition to larger serious music collections.-- Sherry Feintuch, Dauphin Cty . Lib. System, Harrisburg, Pa. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Although it has been six years since the tercentenary, there is still no contemporary major consideration of the life and works of Bach. In the absence of such a work, essay collections from scholars such as Wolff or Robert Marshall (The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, CH, Nov'89) and collective volumes like Bach Studies, ed. by Don O. Franklin (CH, Feb'90) serve to present the current state of research. As a Bach scholar, Wolff is unsurpassed. This collection, representing 25 years of work, summarizes the many aspects of his Bach studies--historical, philological, and intuitive. Half of these essays appear in English (in excellent translation by Alfred Mann) for the first time. As several were published in fairly obscure journals and festschrifts, it would be difficult to assemble them on one's own. Because they were written for different audiences, there is some repetition and a variety of levels of sophistication, but each essay is stimulating and focused. Especially interesting are the several essays dealing with the late works and the essay on Bach's own copy of the "Goldberg Variations." An essential addition to undergraduate, university, and larger public libraries while we wait for the major study. -J. P. Ambrose, University of Vermont

Author notes provided by Syndetics

He is a William Powell Mason Professor of Music at Harvard University, is coauthor of the Bach Compendium.

(Bowker Author Biography)