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 Audition for the St. Thomas Cantorate: The Cantata "Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn" Origins of the Kyrie of the B Minor Mass The Reformation Cantata "Em feste Burg" The Handexemplar of the Goldberg Variations Bach's Personal Copy of the Schubler Chorales The Clavier-Ubung Series Text-Critical Comments on the Original Print of the Partitas Bach's Leipzig Chamber Music New Research on the Musical Offering Bach's Last Fugue: Unfinished? The Compositional History of the Art of Fugue The Deathbed Chorale: Exposing a Myth CONCEPTS, STYLE, AND CHRONOLOGY Chronology and Style in the Early Works: A Background for the Orgel-Buchlein The Architecture of the Passacaglia The Organ in Bach's Cantatas Apropos the Musical Offering: The Thema Regium and the Term Ricercar The Agnus Dei of the B Minor Mass: Parody and New Composition Reconciled Principles of Design and Order in Bach's Original Editions Toward a Definition of the Last Period of Bach's Work EARLY RECEPTION AND ARTISTIC LEGACY On the Original Editions of Bach's Works Bach's Vocal Music and Early Music Criticism On the Recognition of Bach and "the Bach Chorale": Eighteenth-Century Perspectives "The Extraordinary Perfections of the Hon. Court Composer": An Inquiry into the Individuality of Bach's Music Notes and Postscripts Acknowledgments Index of Works by Johann Sebastian Bach Individual Compositions Collections Index of Archival Sources General Index
This volume will be useful not only to conductors, performers, and scholars, but to other listeners, myself included, who will be stimulated by it to find ever deeper levels of meaning in Bach's many-splendored genius...Christoph Wolff functions here as a philologist and palaeographer deciphering a complex manuscript, as a biographer contemplating the mysteries of continuity and change in the composer's long and productive career, as a demythologizer reviewing the legends about Bach with which we all grew up, as a social and intellectual historian placing the musical oeuvre into its total context, as a sensitive listener who even after all these years of research has not lost the capacity to hear and admire the miracle that is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. -- Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, author of Bach Among the Theologians
Christoph Wolff is Adams University Research Professor at Harvard University.
A fascinating and eminently readable account of many of the issues
that have been uppermost in Bach research in recent years.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Wolff has [produced] fundamental work about the composer, from his
earliest music (‘newly discovered chorales’) to his last (Art of
Fugue, parts of the B Minor Mass), sacred and secular, vocal and
instrumental, all represented in this book… Every one of these
essays…has the knack of presenting new information that triggers
further thought… One does constantly sense a fresh conception of
the composer.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Not since Spitta’s monumental Johann Sebastian Bach has there been
as refreshing a look at Bach’s work as in this collection of essays
by one of the world’s preeminent authorities… Wolff’s essays on
Bach are a must for every musician, whether layman, performer, or
composer. For the latter the essays will provide especially
valuable insights into the process of composition.
*Antioch Review*
What there is to know about Bach, Christoph Wolff knows. And
everything Wolff…knows about Bach’s life, he has poured into this
new and magisterial biographical portrait… [Bach] is user-friendly,
helpful, and entertainingly informative. Direct and illuminating
commentary on Bach’s major works, and on the major musical issues
that Bach confronted, fill the book… [Wolff’s] main text surrounds
the facts of Bach’s life with an invaluable sense of
context—additional facts about musical life, courts, patronage,
church doctrine, ecclesiastical and municipal politics… Wolff has
provided every lover of Bach with a book to learn from.
*Boston Globe*
This volume will be useful not only to conductors, performers, and
scholars, but to other listeners, myself included, who will be
stimulated by it to find ever deeper levels of meaning in Bach’s
many-splendored genius… Christoph Wolff functions here as a
philologist and palaeographer deciphering a complex manuscript, as
a biographer contemplating the mysteries of continuity and change
in the composer’s long and productive career, as a demythologizer
reviewing the legends about Bach with which we all grew up, as a
social and intellectual historian placing the musical oeuvre into
its total context, as a sensitive listener who even after all these
years of research has not lost the capacity to hear and admire the
miracle that is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
*Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University,
author of Bach among the Theologians*
A fascinating and eminently readable account of many of the issues
that have been uppermost in Bach research in recent years. -- Barry
Cooper * Times Higher Education Supplement *
Wolff has [produced] fundamental work about the composer, from his
earliest music ('newly discovered chorales') to his last (Art of
Fugue, parts of the B Minor Mass), sacred and secular, vocal
and instrumental, all represented in this book... Every one of
these essays...has the knack of presenting new information that
triggers further thought... One does constantly sense a fresh
conception of the composer. -- Peter Williams * Times Literary
Supplement *
Not since Spitta's monumental Johann Sebastian Bach has
there been as refreshing a look at Bach's work as in this
collection of essays by one of the world's preeminent
authorities... Wolff's essays on Bach are a must for every
musician, whether layman, performer, or composer. For the latter
the essays will provide especially valuable insights into the
process of composition. -- John Rinehart * Antioch Review *
What there is to know about Bach, Christoph Wolff knows. And
everything Wolff...knows about Bach's life, he has poured into this
new and magisterial biographical portrait... [Bach] is
user-friendly, helpful, and entertainingly informative. Direct and
illuminating commentary on Bach's major works, and on the major
musical issues that Bach confronted, fill the book... [Wolff's]
main text surrounds the facts of Bach's life with an invaluable
sense of context-additional facts about musical life, courts,
patronage, church doctrine, ecclesiastical and municipal
politics... Wolff has provided every lover of Bach with a book to
learn from. -- Richard Dyer * Boston Globe *
This volume will be useful not only to conductors, performers, and
scholars, but to other listeners, myself included, who will be
stimulated by it to find ever deeper levels of meaning in Bach's
many-splendored genius... Christoph Wolff functions here as a
philologist and palaeographer deciphering a complex manuscript, as
a biographer contemplating the mysteries of continuity and change
in the composer's long and productive career, as a demythologizer
reviewing the legends about Bach with which we all grew up, as a
social and intellectual historian placing the musical oeuvre into
its total context, as a sensitive listener who even after all these
years of research has not lost the capacity to hear and admire the
miracle that is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. -- Jaroslav
Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, author of
Bach among the Theologians
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