J.S. Bach

J.S. Bach
Author: Malcolm Boyd
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2003
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780198606208

This Composer Companion is a unique and definitive guide to the life, music, and legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach. Now available in paperback, it will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, performers, and all Bach and Baroque-music enthusiasts. With more than 900 entries, arranged in A-Z order for ease of reference, supplemented by illustrations and music examples, and written by more than 40 distinguished contributors, it brings together an unparalleled range of information onone of the greatest composers who has ever lived. It offers detailed information about Bach's life - his family, friends, colleagues, and pupils, his career as a performer, teacher, and composer - and about the historical, cultural, religious, and musical context in which he worked. Individual works are treated at length, as are the genres and conventions from which they grew, and scoring, instrumentation, and performance practice from Bach's day to the present. It also covers the impact Bach's music has had since his death - his growing reputation, famous interpreters of his music, the composers who have been influenced by him, and the festivals devoted to him. The main alphabetical text is supplemented by a map, a family tree, a chronology, a list of works, opening lines of vocal works, and a glossary of specialist terms.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach
Author: Christoph Wolff
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780199248841

Now available in paperback, this landmark biography was first published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death. Written by a leading Bach scholar, this book presents a new picture of the composer. Christoph Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between Bach's life and his music, showing how the composer's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher.

Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach (Illustrated)

Delphi Masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach (Illustrated)
Author: Peter Russell
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Total Pages: 957
Release: 2018-01-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1786561220

A German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist of the Baroque era, Johann Sebastian Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Celebrated as the creator of the ‘Brandenburg Concertos’, ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’, the ‘Mass in B Minor’ and countless other masterpieces of church and instrumental music, Bach’s sublime skill was his ability to adapt and perfect the principal styles and forms of previous generations. Delphi’s Great Composers Series offers concise illustrated guides to the life and works of our greatest composers. Analysing the masterworks of each composer, these interactive eBooks include links to popular streaming services, allowing you to listen to the pieces of music you are reading about. Evaluating the masterworks of each composer, you will explore the development of their works, tracing how they changed the course of music history. Whether a classical novice or a cultivated connoisseur, this series offers an intriguing overview of the world’s most famous and iconic compositions. This volume presents Bach’s masterworks in succinct detail, with informative introductions, accompanying illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus features. (Version 1) * Concise and informative overview of Bach’s masterworks * Learn about the classical pieces that made Bach a celebrated composer * Links to popular streaming services (free and paid), allowing you to listen to the masterpieces you are reading about * Features a special ‘Complete Compositions’ section, with an index of Bach’s complete works and links to popular streaming services * Includes six biographies - explore Bach's intriguing musical and personal life Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting eBooks CONTENTS: The Masterworks Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042 Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major, BWV 1046 The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, BWV 846 Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 Violin Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1041 Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225 St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244 Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140 Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248 Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C Minor, BWV 1060R Harpsichord Concerto No. 4, BWV 1055 Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes, BWV 651-668 Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 Complete Compositions Index of Bach’s Compositions The Biographies Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work by Johann Nikolaus Forkel Bach by Reginald Lane Poole Bach by C. F. Abdy Williams The Culmination of German Protestant Music: Johann Sebastian Bach by Edward Dickinson John Sebastian Bach by Harriette Brower Johann Sebastian Bach by Louis C. Elson Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of exciting titles

Inside Early Music

Inside Early Music
Author: Bernard D. Sherman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2003-10-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780195343656

The attempt to play music with the styles and instruments of its era--commonly referred to as the early music movement--has become immensely popular in recent years. For instance, Billboard's "Top Classical Albums" of 1993 and 1994 featured Anonymous 4, who sing medieval music, and the best-selling Beethoven recording of 1995 was a period-instruments symphony cycle led by John Eliot Gardiner, who is Deutsche Grammophon's top-selling living conductor. But the movement has generated as much controversy as it has best-selling records, not only about the merits of its results, but also about the validity of its approach. To what degree can we recreate long-lost performing styles? How important are historical period instruments for the performance of a piece? Why should musicians bother with historical information? Are they sacrificing art to scholarship? Now, in Inside Early Music, Bernard D. Sherman has invited many of the leading practitioners to speak out about their passion for early music--why they are attracted to this movement and how it shapes their work. Readers listen in on conversations with conductors Gardiner, William Christie, and Roger Norrington, Peter Phillips of the Tallis Scholars, vocalists Susan Hellauer of Anonymous 4, forte pianist Robert Levin, cellist Anner Bylsma, and many other leading artists. The book is divided into musical eras--Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classic and Romantic--with each interview focusing on particular composers or styles, touching on heated topics such as the debate over what is "authentic," the value of playing on period instruments, and how to interpret the composer's intentions. Whether debating how to perform Monteverdi's madrigals or comparing Andrew Lawrence-King's Renaissance harp playing to jazz, the performers convey not only a devotion to the spirit of period performance, but the joy of discovery as they struggle to bring the music most truthfully to life. Spurred on by Sherman's probing questions and immense knowledge of the subject, these conversations movingly document the aspirations, growing pains, and emerging maturity of the most exciting movement in contemporary classical performance, allowing each artist's personality and love for his or her craft to shine through. From medieval plainchant to Brahms' orchestral works, Inside Early Music takes readers-whether enthusiasts or detractors-behind the scenes to provide a masterful portrait of early music's controversies, challenges, and rewards.

Music in the Castle of Heaven

Music in the Castle of Heaven
Author: John Eliot Gardiner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780713996623

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the unfathomable composers in the history of music. This book explains the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects - and what it can tell us about Bach the man.

Johann Sebastian Bach His Life Art and Work

Johann Sebastian Bach His Life Art and Work
Author: Johann Forkel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2021-03-24
Genre:
ISBN:

Book Excerpt: scuss the first English version of Forkel's monograph, published in 1820, with the following title-page:LIFE OF JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH; with a Critical View of his Compositions. By J. N. Forkel, Author of The Complete History of Music, etc., etc. Translated from the German. London: Printed for T. Boosey and Co., Holles-Street, Cavendish-Square. 1820.The book was published in February 1820; it was announced, with a slightly differently worded title-page, in the New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register for March 1820 (p. 341), and the Scots Magazine for the same month ( vol. lxxxv. p. 263). The New Monthly states the price as 5s., the Quarterly Review (vol. xxiii. p. 281) as 6s. The book contains xi+116+3 pages of Music Figures, crown octavo, bound in dark unlettered cloth. It has neither Introduction, notes (other than Forkel's), nor indication of the translator's identity. Much of the translation is so bad as to suggest grave doubts of the translator's comprRead More

Schubert's Winter Journey

Schubert's Winter Journey
Author: Ian Bostridge
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307961648

An exploration of the world’s most famous and challenging song cycle, Schubert's Winter Journey (Winterreise), by a leading interpreter of the work, who teases out the themes—literary, historical, psychological—that weave through the twenty-four songs that make up this legendary masterpiece. Completed in the last months of the young Schubert’s life, Winterreise has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music in the history of Lieder. Deceptively laconic—these twenty-four short poems set to music for voice and piano are performed uninterrupted in little more than an hour—it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equaled. A young man, rejected by his beloved, leaves the house where he has been living and walks out into snow and darkness. As he wanders away from the village and into the empty countryside, he experiences a cascade of emotions—loss, grief, anger, and acute loneliness, shot through with only fleeting moments of hope—until the landscape he inhabits becomes one of alienation and despair. Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of Winterreise now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing equally on his vast experience performing this work (he has sung it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each of the twenty-four lyrics to explore for us the world Schubert inhabited, his biography and psychological makeup, the historical and political pressures within which he became one of the world’s greatest composers, and the continuing resonances and affinities that our ears still detect today, making Schubert’s wanderer our mirror.