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The New Bach Reader
"Just reading these documents brings this great composer to life in a most exciting and vivid way. I love this book!" ―Yo-Yo Ma Through hundreds of letters, family papers, anecdotes, and records, the Bach Reader established a new approach to biography by offering original documents in impeccable translations. In The New Bach Reader , Christoph Wolff has incorporated numerous facsimiles and added many newly discovered items, reflecting the current state of scholarship about the composer's life and music. The readings in this volume provide an accurate and vivid picture of Bach's world and of his far-reaching influence.
610 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 22, 2016
A wonderful book! 2 full biographies of Bach, plus all his letters and contracts, appraisals by his contemporaries and the history of his resurrection in the 19th cnetury.
September 8, 2018
This book is a compendium of original documents by or relating to Johann Sebastian Bach. It is very complete and full of often interesting details. The editors have compiled everything to salary agreements, receipts for payment, and all sorts of correspondence. Admittedly, some of it can be a little tedious, but most of it is pretty interesting. At its best, this book provides lots of cool insights into the events of Bach's life, spanning both his routine work and his major milestones. I especially enjoyed all the recommendation letters Bach wrote for his students; some things haven't changed.
December 28, 2013
Simply the basic resource for any Bachian scholar - contains over five hundred pages of mostly authentic material, drawing an accurate picture of what the Baroque Master experienced during his hard yet fruitful musical journey. Includes also an extensive report of various accounts of Bachs contemporaries and followers concerning his legacy. Surely a volume to which I shall be returning to very often, and not only for the sake of my lectures. Indispensable by all means.
February 10, 2019
Loved the primary documentation included in this book. Lots of interesting details about Bach and the musical world around him.
July 2, 2026
The original authors, Hans David and Arthur Mendel, hit on a brilliant idea for this book - simply presenting all the available primary sources about Bach's life with minimal commentary. Updated by Christoph Wolff in the late 1990s, it is hard to get hold of these days except in an expensive second-hand copy, which is a shame - it deserves to be republished.
This approach to biography requires the reader to do a bit more work, piecing together Bach's life from letters, reports, receipts and testimonials, but has several advantages. It allows us to make our own judgments without the intermediation of a narrator, it brings a feeling of immediacy and intimacy, and it uncovers a lot of incidental but fascinating detail that a conventional biography would have to leave out. For example, we read several testimonials written by Bach about his students - each of them fairly stiff and formal, yet after a while we can read between the lines to see what Bach really thought of each individual. Then there are Bach's reports on various organs he was paid to examine - full of inscrutable technical details but also imbued with a sense of his rigour, fairness and absolute mastery of these complex pieces of 18th century technology. Or the inventory of Bach's estate, which tells us that in addition to a miscellany of musical instruments and 15 volumes of Luther's works he owned three brass coffee pots of various sizes, one share in "a mine called Ursula Erbstolln at Klein Vogtsberg", 11 shirts and a silver dagger.
The primary sources also capture the numerous practical difficulties Bach had to contend with during his career, from feuds with the church authorities to a lack of skill and commitment on the part of his musicians. Not all the sources present him in the most flattering light - he can come across as cantankerous and occasionally even disingenuous - but oddly, it was at these moments I felt most sympathetic towards him. He seems very human, flawed and under pressure. It often feels as if he is fighting a one-man crusade against mediocrity (albeit amply supported by his wife, family and social circle). He could have been internationally renowned, like Handel, but chose a different, perhaps harder path.
In addition to primary sources from Bach's own time, the book contains samples of Bach's musical manuscripts, the 1754 obituary by CPE Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola, Forkel's 1804 biography of Bach, and a fascinating section on "Bach in the Romantic era", the jewel of which is Eduard Devrient's highly engaging account of Felix Mendelssohn's revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1823 - from which Mendelssohn emerges, as he always seems to, as an utterly likeable character, someone you wouldn’t mind going to the bierkeller with. Though there was never a time since Bach’s death that his genius was utterly unappreciated, these later sources allow you to trace the gradual spreading of this realisation beyond a mostly German-speaking musical elite through to the wider world.
It's probably true that only a real Bach aficionado will want to wade through 500-odd pages of this, but I found it endlessly fascinating and I am sure I will return to it many times.
This approach to biography requires the reader to do a bit more work, piecing together Bach's life from letters, reports, receipts and testimonials, but has several advantages. It allows us to make our own judgments without the intermediation of a narrator, it brings a feeling of immediacy and intimacy, and it uncovers a lot of incidental but fascinating detail that a conventional biography would have to leave out. For example, we read several testimonials written by Bach about his students - each of them fairly stiff and formal, yet after a while we can read between the lines to see what Bach really thought of each individual. Then there are Bach's reports on various organs he was paid to examine - full of inscrutable technical details but also imbued with a sense of his rigour, fairness and absolute mastery of these complex pieces of 18th century technology. Or the inventory of Bach's estate, which tells us that in addition to a miscellany of musical instruments and 15 volumes of Luther's works he owned three brass coffee pots of various sizes, one share in "a mine called Ursula Erbstolln at Klein Vogtsberg", 11 shirts and a silver dagger.
The primary sources also capture the numerous practical difficulties Bach had to contend with during his career, from feuds with the church authorities to a lack of skill and commitment on the part of his musicians. Not all the sources present him in the most flattering light - he can come across as cantankerous and occasionally even disingenuous - but oddly, it was at these moments I felt most sympathetic towards him. He seems very human, flawed and under pressure. It often feels as if he is fighting a one-man crusade against mediocrity (albeit amply supported by his wife, family and social circle). He could have been internationally renowned, like Handel, but chose a different, perhaps harder path.
In addition to primary sources from Bach's own time, the book contains samples of Bach's musical manuscripts, the 1754 obituary by CPE Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola, Forkel's 1804 biography of Bach, and a fascinating section on "Bach in the Romantic era", the jewel of which is Eduard Devrient's highly engaging account of Felix Mendelssohn's revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1823 - from which Mendelssohn emerges, as he always seems to, as an utterly likeable character, someone you wouldn’t mind going to the bierkeller with. Though there was never a time since Bach’s death that his genius was utterly unappreciated, these later sources allow you to trace the gradual spreading of this realisation beyond a mostly German-speaking musical elite through to the wider world.
It's probably true that only a real Bach aficionado will want to wade through 500-odd pages of this, but I found it endlessly fascinating and I am sure I will return to it many times.
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December 1, 2018Finally started and finished a book that I received from John years back. Not exactly the most exciting collection of writings and documents (editors really weren't joking when they said that most of the stuff found were pretty much related to working out jobs and stuff…), but it's an interesting look into Bach's life.
Conclusion: I don't think I would ever want Bach as a teacher.
Conclusion: I don't think I would ever want Bach as a teacher.
September 2, 2010
Fascinating to read the actual documents. I do need the editors' notes, however to understand some of this. And perhaps I'd better make up a score card to keep all the Bachs and all the Johanns straight. Ayayay! Did everyone name one or more of their children Johann in 17th century Germany?
December 29, 2012
Like a printed Bach wikipedia but with more personality.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews