Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician [Paperback]

Christoph Wolff (Author)

Book Description

Series: Norton Paperback | Publication Date: September 2001

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. "A monumental work that must find its way into the library of every musician and every dedicated lover of music."—Isaac Stern "It's unlikely that anyone will fashion a finer tribute to [Bach's] genius."—Los Angeles Times Book Review "A magisterial biographical portrait...necessarily learned, but also user-friendly, helpful and entertainingly informative."—Chicago Tribune "Likely to be the standard one-volume Bach biography for some time to come."—New York Review of Books "A work of clarity worthy of its subject and his music."—Wall Street Journal "Undoubtedly the most important Bach biography since Phillipp Spitta's life written over a century ago."—The New Republic 42 black and white illustrations

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393322564
• ISBN-13: 978-0393322569
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Bach, Johann Sebastian

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

173 of 176 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, April 5, 2000

By 

Richard Konzen (Mercer, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Hardcover)

Of all of the books on Bach that I have in my library, the new biography by Christoph Wolff is first rate. In addition to presenting a full biography of Bach's life, Wolff also gives us other interesting information such as tables showing the plan of the Orgelbüchlein or one of the annual cantata performance schedules. We are also given insight into what Bach's working day might have been like in Leipzig, balancing the duties at St. Thomas with the Collegium musicum and all of his private students. There are also some pictures of the churches where Bach was employed that are often not included in other sources, including a couple of computer enhanced pictures showing what the gallery of St. Thomas might have looked like in Bach's time. The book includes the latest research on recent Bach discoveries such as the Neumeister Chorales.

This is a book that deserves to be in every library and in the hands of everyone interested in J. S. Bach.

64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Biography Worthy of Bach, May 31, 2000

By 

Dennis W. Johnson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Hardcover)

For those who have read the many earlier works by Prof. Christoph Wolff on Bach, this is the long-anticipated culmination of the author's immense scholarship. Wolff, the dean of Bach scholars, gives us a detailed, sympathetic narrative, filled with interesting details. I now know how much a pint of beer costs in Arnstadt in the early 1700s, what Bach must have felt like when thrown into the clinker for youthful insubordination, and how disappointed Bach must have been when Louis Marchand failed to show up for the much-anticipated organ shoot-out. Wolff gives us many useful tables and charts, putting music, musicians, family history, and other complicated matters into context. Many of the stories familiar to students of Bach are richly and vividly retold: Bach's 250-mile trek to hear Buxtehude, his bouts with small-minded city bureacrats and smaller-minded princes and dukes, the desperate, but futile attempt to save his eyesight during the last months of Bach's life. What I came to appreciate most was the author's ability to put the corpus of Bach's work into persepctive. Wolff is most impressive in his final chapter, putting Bach rightly in his place: the creative genius, the foundation of Western music. If you love Bach, you will definitely cherish this book.

76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book on Bach's Life and Influence, May 14, 2002

By 

Gerald J. Nora - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Hardcover)

J.S. Bach has been my longtime favorite classical composer, but while I knew he was one of the most influential composers in history, I never quite knew why. Moreover, he always seemed to have a tacit reputation as being rule-bound and stern, unlike the more dynamic, perhaps more charismatic, figures of Mozart and Beethoven (the latter's horrible temper notwithstanding). Cristoph Wolff's book has at last provided me with a fuller picture of Bach and his influence.

The subtitle "The Learned Musician" sets a primary theme for the work, namely Bach as the scholar-musician, who was able to pass rigorous theology exams in Latin and whose mastery of organ building was a significant achievement of engineering, math and acoustics, to say nothing of raw musical genius. A motif that crops up in this book is the comparison between Bach and Newton (which was made in Bach's time). Bach thought that there were rules of causality in canons just like there is causality in Nature, and used other musical pieces to explore theological concepts. Musical science is no mere metaphor applied by Wolff to Bach, but is something that the composer himself took very serious, and this was realized even by some of his contemporaries. Likewise Wolff also points out that this does not mean that Bach was some soulless theoretician either. Rather, Bach's work worked within rules of composition, but also broke and surpassed them when necessary. Bach refused to divorce theory from practice, so his collections of music like the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Art of the Fugue served to show how a particular form of music (e.g., the keyboard or the fugue) could be applied in just about any combination imaginable. These compositions were theoretical statements, albeit ones without words. Wolff does not get too bogged down in musical terms: this layman did struggle periodically, and I would understand more if I were a musician, but a lack of music theory would not destroy this books value to you.

Throughout the book Wolff shows how Bach's methodical perfectionism formed a powerful combination when joined with Bach's surprisingly passionate, joyful life. Just as his music was rigorous, Wolff also points out the profound, genuine emotion that goes into them. He also writes about some of Bach's comic cantatas--one in particular was written for a coffeehouse, and was written on coffee addiction. This did much to endear Bach to this college graduate's heart!

Just as important, Wolff presents Bach's musical odysseys within the context of his personal life. Troubles and triumphs with jobs, Bach's family life and personal anecdotes appear throughout the book with a special chapter at the end also dedicated to Bach's later home life. We learn of a man who always entertained guests despite a brutal work schedule, and who also managed to find time to buy his wife singing birds and flowers. Much of his life would sound quite familiar in America (e.g., rebellious sons, moving to a city with a better-paying job, etc.), and does much to remind us that Bach is a man, not some musical force of nature.

In the end, we have a picture of a man who used his art to explore nature and God, but did so with joy and while surrounded with a family to support and superiors to placate in the workplace. Now I have a foundation for appreciating some of his works that I never studied before, namely Bach's Masses and cantatata, and my appreciation for other works. I had previously read and enjoyed Douglas Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach_ (which I also recommend), and now I can why Hofstadter chose Bach to help him explore the nature of intelligence in both man and computers. Bach was truly a sort of scientist or natural philosopher, and Wolff lets you appreciate how Bach was both a philosopher and composer of beautiful music.