Oxford Composer Companions: J.S. Bach [Paperback]

Malcolm Boyd (Editor), John Butt (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 2003 | Series: Oxford Composer Companion

This superb reference work on Johann Sebastian Bach is the first volume in a new species of Oxford Companion that will focus on major composers.
Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white plates, this volume boasts over a thousand alphabetically arranged entries that cover Bach's music, his life and times, scholarship on Bach, and the performance of his music. Readers will find entries on the various genres that Bach worked in (including chorales, fantasia, sonata, concerto, missa), his many individual works (such as St. John's Passion, The Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concertos, Passacaglia, Well-Tempered Clavier, The Christmas Oratorio, and The Art of Fugue), places important to his career (such as Muhlhausen, Weimar, and Leipzig), and important contemporaries (Handel, Rameau, Vivaldi, Telemann, among others). There are also entries on instruments (harpsichord, organ, clavier, and so on), Bach performance practice, stylistic influences on his work, and other biographical details. The book concludes with a family tree, a chronology of Bach's life, a list of his works, and a glossary of terms.
Bach was one of the giants of classical music, a composer of astonishing powers of invention. In The Oxford Composer Companion: J.S. Bach, music aficionados will have at their fingertips a treasure chest of information on this major figure.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As a resource for students, scholars, and lovers of music, Boyd's volume offers succinct, incisive information about Bach's life and works in a volume of signed articles...Volumes in the composer companion series published by Cambridge, which comprises collections of essays, do not compare with this title."--Choice

"This is an excellent first volume of a new series of extensive composer-based reference books from Oxford."--Library Journal

"Black-and-white illustrations of Bach, his sons, places important in his life, a family tree, manuscripts of his works, and a map of his Germany enhance the text.... A significant resource on one of the most amazing performers who ever lived."--Booklist

"A vast storehouse of information on almost everything you could want to know about this most universally revered of composers. Up to date with recent scholarship and research, it deals very readably with an immense field of subjects--Bach's life, family, friends, pupils and contemporaries, places connected with him, sources of his works, instruments (with specifications of organs he played), musical forms, publishers, scholars, and much more. Every single one of the cantatas is examined in considerable detail, as well as the Passions and many other works, such as the Brandenburg Concertos, the Art of the Fugue or the Clavier-Ubung."--Gramophone

"As a resource for students, scholars, and lovers of music, Boyd's volume offers succinct, incisive information about Bach's life and works in a volume of signed articles.... Volumes in the composer companion series published by Cambridge, which comprises collections of essays, do not compare with this title."--Choice

About the Author

Malcolm Boyd is the author of numerous books on music, particularly on Bach. He was a member of the editorial team for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and is a frequent contributor to periodicals and reviews. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198606206
• ISBN-13: 978-0198606208
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,707,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best reference book on Bach, December 5, 2005

By 

Kirk McElhearn "Freelance writer and translator" (A town in the French Alps) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Oxford Composer Companions: J.S. Bach (Paperback)

For those curious about the life and context behind the music, there are two ways to approach a composer with such a rich life and a diverse musical output such as Bach: the first is through a biography, which tells a linear story of the man, his music, his family and his times. We can follow his life through the different cities in which he lived, and look at his music chronologically, seeing how he built on each stage of his life to create increasingly complex and beautiful music.

The other way, which is apparent in a book like the Oxford Composer Companion to Bach, is the artificial, yet none the less useful method of providing information in encyclopedic form. Here, there is no chronology, but each name, each work, each city and episode in his life is listed in alphabetical order. Granted, for readers approaching Bach's life for the first time, a biography would likely be more useful and efficient. Yet browsing a book like this, allowing chance to take over as you flip from page to page, yields a unique glimpse of Bach's life and music.

I must confess to being a book-lover, and, especially, a dictionary lover. I enjoy browsing encyclopedias and dictionaries, and have bookcases full of them. (I can trace this back to when I was about 8 years old, and my mother won an encyclopedia on the television game show, Jeopardy. I recall with great pleasure the afternoons spend leafing through the 20 volumes of that storehouse of knowledge.) While not all people may share this passion, those who do, and who are interested in Bach, will find this book to be ideal.

With entries on people, places, instruments, and, of course, all of Bach's works, this book contains everything you could want to know about Bach's life and music, and then some. Leaping from entry to entry, one can wander through an explanation of Suites to read about Minuets, how they are played Alternativement, questions of rhythm, and how Bach treats these questions. Each place Bach lived incites the reader to explore the entries for the works he composed there and the musicians he met and worked with. With more than 600 pages, this encyclopedia of all things Bach, with entries by more than thirty of the world's most esteemed Bach scholars, will delight all true lovers of his music.

Bach's key works are treated in longer articles, but there are many entries that deal with general musical questions and instruments. The book also has entries for each of Bach's cantatas (something no other currently available book has) as well as a full listing of Bach's works in an appendix.

I cannot praise this book too highly - it is the book I refer to the most when curious about any aspect of Bach's life and works, and it belongs on the shelves of all Bach-lovers.