Customer Reviews

Oxford Composer Companions: J.S. Bach

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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.