Bach's Keyboard Music: A Listener's Guide (Unlocking the Masters)

Along with Beethoven's sonatas and the purely idiomatic works for piano of Chopin and Debussy, the solo keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach represents the heart of the pianist's repertory; in the more specialized field of music for the organ, Bach's primacy seems beyond challenge. This listener's guide to Bach's music for the keyboard provides the interested amateur with a close but non-technical look at these two crucial parts of the master's oeuvre. The composer's tendency to work exhaustively in tightly structured formats – such as the 48 preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier – provides a natural framework for this study; but the power, beauty, high polish, and occasionally the sheer strangeness of Bach's imagination are carefully examined as well.

Victor Lederer (New York, NY) is a New York-based writer on music and urban history. His books include Chopin: A Listener's Guide to the Master of the Piano and Debussy: The Quiet Revolutionary for Amadeus Press's Unlocking the Masters series, and a study of Bach's St. Matthew Passion for Continuum Books.