Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Norton Paperback)

...I'll get my one major quibble out of the way immediately - you'll only get the best out of it if you have some musical knowledge, and I have only a little. Without some comprehension of his or her art, the life of a great artist, especially one untainted by scandals or crises, is in danger of becoming just a procession of dates, names and places. The whole appeal of J.S. Bach is bound up in his extraordinary musicianship, first as virtuoso keyboard player, then as composer of many different forms. It seems to me that, if you don't grasp this extraordinary art, you don't really grasp Bach.Professor Wolff naturally grasps it. He is a professor of music and director of the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig. He speaks learnedly and enthusiastically of "ritornellos" and the "Oberwerk" and "Brustpositiv" of an organ and the daring dissonance in BWV38 as a result of a third-inversion dominant-seventh chord, while the musically uneducated among us (such as myself) wonder, "What's THAT?" And of course his musical examples at the end are lost on us. Professor Wolff has sought to bring Johann Sebastian Bach to us, and has succeeded very well, but he is handicapped not by his inabilities, but by ours.Nevertheless, I think he could have done slightly better for those of us who love Bach but who lack his musical erudition - perhaps a glossary of the musical terms used therein, even a rudimentary explanation of some of the technicalities behind this extraordinary music, would have helped the reader (this one anyway) feel less at sea in parts. OK, this is not a "baroque music for dummies" book, but such additions would have helped.Shorn of musical technicalities, what's left, even for the ignorant, is the story of an extraordinary talent emerging from a family of musicians (there were so many of them that, in Thuringia, people commonly referred to a musician as a "bach"). It follows Sebastian Bach, tragically orphaned at 9, as he develops not only formidable keyboard technique but also outstanding compositional skills, ever keen to develop his art, never afraid to learn from others and from other countries (the famous trip to see and hear Buxtehude, where he was given release for four weeks and stayed for four months, is an example). It follows his ever-upwards trail from Lüneburg to Arnstadt to Weimar to Cöthen, and finally to Leipzig. Professor Wolff's profound research illuminates a world very different from ours, right down to salaries and expenses typical for the 18th century.I confess to having thought of Bach as an obscure figure in German country churches and small local courts, and perhaps even a bit of a musical fuddy-duddy. Professor Wolff makes it clear that, not only were Bach's extraordinary abilities indeed widely appreciated at the time, but also that he was a daring musical innovator. However, it seems to me that here there arises an odd disconnect. Brilliant, widely-appreciated musician he was, but his style fell completely out of fashion after his death, and by the time the young Felix Mendelssohn resurrected the St. Matthew Passion in Leipzig, the only memory left of Bach was that of a great organist.Why were Bach's compositions so completely forgotten for so long among the general public? One explanation was Albert Schweitzer's; Bach represented the apotheosis of contrapuntal composition - Bach had said everything there was to say, so music changed. Another was that the idea was that music was improving all the time, and that old stuff was irrelevant and unworthy of attention. I would have liked Professor Wolff's take on this.One of the sad aspects of this account is the indication of just how much of Bach's output has been tragically lost, largely because of the way the estate was split up after his death among his various offspring - Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach was a careful custodian of his father's work, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was not. For a cantata lover such as myself, his lists of the five annual cantata cycles and just how much of them we no longer have are especially saddening, but I guess we have to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty.In summary, apart from the minor problems for the musically uneducated, Professor Wolff has done us all a great service by making the great cantor of Leipzig so much more accessible, and enjoyably so.

The book is wonderful and the seller who I dealt with is even better. I will be doing much more business with them in future. Book is terrifically interesting and approaches Bach from a very human standpoint. There is a lot of musical info but it is not presented in such a technical way that only a musician could understand it. Bach himself comes to life and the times in which he lived form an interesting and informative backdrop to the story of this great man. Book is really, really good and though quite detailed it really move along well. Highest recommendation.

Reading this biography, I found out even more about the Master than I had ever read about before from other sources! Mr. Wolff is to be congratulated for his efforts in brining more facts to light about "old" Bach. His writing sets up the atmosphere in which Bach and his predecessors and descendants lived and worked in. You can almost see and hear all the activity of Bach's father's house when he was a child: musicians, students and instrument makers coming and going all day long. Bach himself was just totally immersed in this environment and besides his family heritage for being musicians, how else could have been anything else but a musician and one of the world's greatest composers of ALL time?The 17th Century and first half of the 18th was certainly a "golden age" for anyone who had definite talent and ability. IT seems in those times that people weren't interested so much in a person's "credentials" as they were in if they could simply carry out the duties of an organist/choir director or capellmeister. You can play and compose? You were hired. Unlike today when everyone is trying to impress the rest of us with how many "little letters" they have after their name and how many "institutions" that they've studied at.The author states, when he covers Bach's Leipzig years, states that he must have worked on the average of about 16 hours a day, or thereabouts. Composing, private music lessons for his own children and Thomas Schule students, rehearsals with the Collegium Musicum, drafting and composing a new cantata EVERY week, and then the general running of his domestic household. And STILL he found time to father 22 children by two wives. Enough said on that matter.The author also presents Bach and his life in a more positive light than other sources that I've read from. He shows that Bach wasn't so much the isolated mystic as some other authors have portrayed him. He was in constant contact and good friends with some of the leading composers of the day such as Weiss, Hasse, Zelenka, Telemann, not to mention his famously lengthy visit with Dietrich Buxtehude. Unfortunately, on three separate occasions, Bach missed meeting Handel.Long and short of it: buy this book and just enjoy reading it. It's lively and informative and really puts Bach life in perspective with his music.

I've been engrossed in this massive immersion by Christophe Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.What is truly remarkable about this work is the painstaking detail, filling out all parts of Bach's family and professional life on the unfortunate paucity of documents, of correspondence from Bach except in the most critical circumstances. Wolff weaves this tapestry of Bach's life based on civic news items, church records of performances, numbers of programs/libretti printed, able to whittle down reasonably when anecdotal sources corroborate and yet conflate encounters with Bach, suggestions of collegial fraternity by virtue of their appearing as godfathers to Bach's children. As with Shostakovich in Stalin's time, music was more prominent journalistic engagement. Bach similarly would respond to just criticism by his work and very rarely allowing surrogates to speak on his behalf.Wolff is able to reveal to us a man deeply devoted to working at the highest levels in the science of music, deeply devoted to family, to God. A man of humour, tenderness, but fiercely righteous in the face of injustice.As voluminous as is Bach's ouevre, we learn of the incalculable body of his work that has not survived.

This Biography is very elaborate with a great deal of information on every page. One is amazed as much by Bach's life as by his music. How could one man accomplish so much.

Readable, thorough, interesting. Recommended for music students and lovers of baroque period. I don't like being penalized for being brief, period.

I love kindle books. They make my reading in my second language so easily. Whenever I come cross a new word, I press on it and a dictionary starts to show the explanation. However words in the dictionary are light that I feel so difficult to read them. I know I may click the Full Definition to have a clearer version. Let's see how it works. You click a word to get the dictionary, then one click to get a readable full definition showed on full screen. Then You need one click to get those choices showing on screen, such as where to go or to do. Then you click Back to resume your reading. After this last click, you need to wait for a quick reloading. Is that a lot of trouble? Other ereaders have better solutions. I will give you both the photos for you to understand better.So please, please please change the dictionary printing, and give me a reason to stay with you. Thanks.

Sehr detailliert und ausführlich. Für Bqch fans genau das richtige

I liked everything