Bach: Essays on His Life and Music - Hardcover

Wolff, Christoph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674059255 ISBN 13: 9780674059252

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Step into the classroom with Christoph Wolff

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.

About this title

Reviews

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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674059255
• ISBN 13: 9780674059252
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480