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Title details for Bach by John Eliot Gardiner - Available

Bach

Music in the Castle of Heaven

by John Eliot Gardiner
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Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque—and occasionally so intemperate?
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer’s greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime’s immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, and explaining in wonderful detail 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.
Gardiner’s background as a historian has encouraged him to search for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few biographical shards, scrutinizing the music, and watching for those instances when Bach’s personality seems to penetrate the fabric of his notation. Gardiner’s aim is “to give the reader a sense of inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related processes of composing and performing his music.”
It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach’s works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists. 

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    October 29, 2013

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780385351980

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780385351980
      • File size: 47945 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from October 15, 2013
      A celebrated conductor of baroque music debuts with an examination of Bach's compositions, descriptions of various works and some inferences about the genius who created them. Although Gardiner celebrates Bach's accomplishments through this dense, demanding but rewarding work, he reminds readers continually that the composer was no saint--"a thoroughly imperfect being," he calls him near the end. But the author's focus is not so much on the man but on the music. Gardiner does explain the various geographical moves Bach made in his career, his duties in the various venues where he worked, the amazing demands from his employers--and from his own work ethic; the author writes about Bach's coevals, his marriages, and his children and extended family. But all is in service to the principal item on his agenda: the music. Gardiner is an unabashed Bach fan, praising the composer throughout, even comparing his music to the voice of God. However, he recognizes human weaknesses, as well--for example, his contentious relationship with authority. Gardiner takes us through the major types of works--the cantatas (including some interesting passages about the Coffee Cantata), the St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion, the motets and the Mass in B Minor. Some of his detailed analysis will leave behind his general readers but will surely animate musicians and musicologists. Although he occasionally alludes to extramusical worlds (mentioning Uncle Remus stories, Philip Pullman, Shakespeare, cake-baking and a variety of famous painters), Gardiner's textual world is principally a musical one. He also examines Bach's Lutheranism and how he revealed his religious ideas in the music--and in the interactions between the music and the words. He speculates that near the end of Bach's life, the composer seemed to express some doubts about life beyond the grave. An erudite work resting on prodigious research and experience and deep affection and admiration.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      June 15, 2013

      Founder of the Monteverdi Choir, renowned conductor Gardiner knows--and loves--his Bach. He's been communing with the great composer since World War II, when one of only two authenticated portraits of Bach hung in his parents' home during World War II for safekeeping. Here he gets inside Bach's music to tell us how it works its magic.

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

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  • EPUB ebook

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Languages

  • English

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