Bach

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, Bachs work continues to set musical standards. The noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers in this book new perspectives on the composers life and remarkable career. Uncovering important historical evidence, the author demonstrates significant influences on Bachs artistic development and brings fresh insight on his work habits, compositional intent, and the musical traditions that shaped Bachs 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 Bachs 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 performerssingers, players, conductorsand to everyone interested in exploring the conceptual and contextual aspects of Bachs 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 essayshalf of which appear here in English for the first timehave established Christoph Wolff as one of the worlds preeminent authorities on J. S. Bach. All students, performers, and lovers of Bachs music will find this an engaging and enlightening book.