Overview
The year 2000 has been declared a "Bach Year," marking the 250th anniversary of the great composer's death. Around the world, there will be major celebrations in honor of his astonishing body of work. This major biography of Bach, now completely revised and boasting 25% more material, is published to coincide with these events.
In the new edition of this widely acclaimed study, biographical chapters alternate with commentary on the works, to demonstrate how the circumstances of Bach's life helped to shape the music he wrote at various periods. We follow Bach as he travels from Arnstadt and Muhlhausen to Weimar, Cothen, and finally Leipzig, these journeys alternating with insightful discussions of the great composer's organ and orchestral compositions. As well as presenting a rounded picture of Bach, his music, and his posthumous reputation and influence, Malcolm Boyd considers the sometimes controversial topics of "parody" and arrangement, number symbolism, and the style and meaning of Bach's late works. Recent theories on the constitution of Bach's performing forces at Leipzig are also present. The text and the appendixes (which include a chronology, personalia, bibliography, and a complete catalogue of Bach's works) have been thoroughly revised to take account of the research undertaken by Bach scholars, including the gold mine of new information recently uncovered in the former USSR.
An authoritative account of the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach, this volume will be essential reading for everyone interested in the classical composers.
"It is probably the best and, without much doubt the most constructive and fascinating book of this length on J.S. Bach..."--London Times.
Editorials
Library Journal
Forty pages longer than its predecessor, this edition of a standard work on J.S. Bach, first published in England in 1983, includes information obtained from Eastern European sources inaccessible to scholars a decade ago. In some cases, whole chapters have been recast, and Bach scholar Boyd (The Oxford Composer's Companion: Johann Sebastian Bach) embraces the current emphasis in Bach scholarship on the interplay between Bach's social setting and his music. This 250th-anniversary year of Bach's death is producing many Bach works, including Christoph Wolff"s singular Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (LJ 3/15/00). Boyd's work is authoritative and provides commentary on a wide body of Bach scholarship. This edition supersedes the other editions, though libraries owning the 1997 American second edition may cringe at having to replace it so soon.--Bonnie Jo Dopp, Univ. of Maryland Libs. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Susan Miron
Boyd's book acts as a useful corrective, dispelling long-held misconceptions about the dating of many of Bach's compositions...Unabashedly scholarly yet very readable, Boyd's Bach with its array of illuminating musiclal illustrations and insights will doubtless be of great interest both to musicians and to those who find in Bach the "refreshment of the spirit" promised on the title pages of his music, and delivered with prodigious frequency.—Christian Science Monitor