Product Description

Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. A landmark biography of Bach on the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, written by the leading Bach scholar of our age. Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography. 42 b/w illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62285 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Amazon.com
The Learned Musician is an apt subtitle for this intellectual biography, which assesses the career of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) with the scholarly rigor one would expect from a Harvard professor. Opening with a 1737 attack by a critic who labeled Bach a pedant who spoiled the natural beauty of his creations with "an excess of art," Christoph Wolff cogently compares the German composer to English scientist Isaac Newton. Both men "brought about fundamental changes and established new principles" in their chosen fields, he argues; both sought to reveal God's harmonious ordering of their world. While Wolff conscientiously covers the basics of Bach's life, including his two marriages and the musical achievements of his gifted family, the author's primary focus is on his performing (Bach was an unrivaled organist) and composing. From the Goldberg Variations through the Brandenburg Concertos to Art of the Fugue, Wolff carefully analyzes Bach's innovations in harmony and counterpoint, placing them in the context of European musical and social history rendered in nicely atmospheric detail. Casual readers may find this dense tome a bit daunting, but serious music lovers will relish the deeper understanding it conveys of a genius who transformed Western music. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Since this year is the 250th anniversary of the death of the composer now widely regarded as perhaps the most consummate musician who ever lived, it is an opportune moment for a major study of the man and his work by one of the leading authorities on both. While shedding no new light on Bach's life, Wolff, a Harvard professor of music, does offer the lay reader a thorough picture of the composer as both a technician and a surpassing artist. He describes how Bach (1685-1750) made a living in his early years traveling around testing and repairing church organs. Wolff devotes a great deal of space to examining how Bach was viewed by his contemporaries, to whom, of course, the idea of a musician as an artist--as opposed to a sort of scientist of sound (there are valuable comparisons of Bach's achievement to that of his contemporary, Isaac Newton)--was quite foreign. Wolff has excavated contemporary documents, giving remarkable detail on Bach's earnings and on the disposition of his manuscripts after his death to the various members of his multitudinous family; also included are charming examples of the musician's youthful zeal, such as his journey, 250 miles on foot, to see and hear the admired organist/composer Buxtehude. So much of the composer's life is shrouded in mystery--what exactly caused the death of the remarkably healthy Bach in his 66th year, and just where is he buried? (no tombstone marks the spot)--that although this study is certainly the last word in current Bach scholarship, the man behind the music remains infuriatingly elusive. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A leading Bach scholar, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, offers a comprehensive biography in time for the 250th anniversary of Bach's death.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Belly-Button's Radius from Winning the Prize Pulizer

Brilliant book written on the life and works of JS Bach, a Pulitzer Prize finalist owning a close reading of his compositions and a sensitive examination of the man himself, and his progenic plethora of talents tiny Bachs - CPE, JC, and the rest of the bunch. A work wished for by any student of Baroque or Classical music wishing to move beyond the "mere" listening. Twice the size, and indeed, there IS, twice the material, would have nudge a fifth star from this Chestertonian curmudgeon.

"Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician" by Christoph Wolff . . . a grand and sound work upon God's greatest gift to composition and the aural sense.

Detailed, historical, factual but lacking insight
Very complete factual account of Bach's life and musical production. So many facts and such little insight into the man behind the facts. What good are all the facts if we come away from this book without a enlightening vision of the man. The books provides a complete catalogue of Bach's works, which is very handy.

Lifetime accumulation of knowledge by a great scholar
We should all thank Christoph Wolff for putting his thoughts and knowledge of Johann Sebastian Bach in print. Christoph Wolff is the world's leading authority on Bach. He is currently Director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, an appointment given to the person who presumably knows Bach best. He is University Professor at Harvard Univesity, a title given to those of retirement age that Harvard wishes to keep. A previous example of a University Professor is Paul Tillich. Christoph Wolff himself is a repository of knowledge about Johann Sebastian Bach that is unmatched in the world.

Christoph Wolff still teaches the course on Bach at Harvard that I audited during the 1975 academic year, except that now it is taught every other year. What a great intellectual experience that course was, to learn what Bach was trying to do, while contending with multiple personal and situational problems without a mentor, coping with the changing situation in Leipzig and the Thomaskirche and Thomasschule, all the while developing the intricacies of his music! I have experienced nothing intellectually to match his course.

Sometime after I audited his course, Christoph Wolff became Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, and upon achieving retirement age, was made University Professor.

In the course, Christoph Wolff discussed Die Kunst der Fuge. He emphasized that, to write a fugue one must resolve its closure or ending first. In his book, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Christoph Wolff described Bach's early skills in German tablature, an early form of music notation used in north and central Germany in the 17th century. A musical score, written by Bach in tablature during his stay in Weimar, has recently been found. This finding emphasizes Bach's mastery of this form of music notation. A thought has gradually come to me, based upon information gathered from the writings and lectures of Christoph Wolff. When Bach resolved the ending of Die Kunst der Fugue, he may have written it down in tablature. It was a sort of shorthand for him, and, most importantly, it was beyond the scrutiny of the casual observer. Upon Bach's death, his sons may have recognized the resolution of the ending of Die Kunst der Fugue as tablature, but they did not recognize that bit of tablature as the resolution of the ending of Die Kunst der Fugue. I shared these ideas with Christoph Wolff during a visit with him with my wife, Julie Moll, at the Bach-Archiv Leipzig in May, 2007. It would be a most rewarding experience to hear the end of Die Kunst der Fugue. If the end of Die Kunst der Fugue is found, I strongly expect that Christoph Wolff will play a pivotal role in it.

There is no other book to match this one on Bach. I enjoyed it thoroughly.I found it refreshing and stimulating and had difficulty putting it down. This book represents the lifetime accumulaton of knowledge about an important topic, Johann Sebastian Bach, by a world-class scholar, Christoph Wolff. That is enough for five stars for me any day.