Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Works [Hardcover]

This is a very thorough biography that does a good job of tracking the evolution of this composer's creative genius. It has a lot of biographical detail and this is both a plus and minus. There is so much material that unless you are a very serious music person with a strong interest in Bach, you may drown in detail. A lot of the content is not new and one wouldn't say this is a revisionist biography.

If you are looking for musical details this book delivers. It analyzes many compositions and does so in-depth. Casual readers will most likely find this a problem, musicians with an interest in music theory will most likely love it. What is a potential problem, however, is paralysis by analysis. I don't think Bach's genius can be fully understand by analyzing his music just as the beauty of a sunset can not be fully understood by graphing the intensity and wavelength of the various colors in it.

This could be a great book or a dud depending upon what you are looking for in a biography. If you are a non-musician with a casual interest in Bach, you might be better off with something else. If you are doing a thesis on Bach, you probably don't want to miss this one. Ditto if you are a serious musician who wants to understand his music more deeply on a theoretical level.

I am a big Bach fan and a musician and I found the detail overwhelming. For my purposes, this is a good reference to augment what I already know about the composer, but it's a bit too detailed for me as a thoroughly enjoyable read. That is not to say the book is bad, just that it seems to be trying to appeal to two different audiences and that is a difficult task to pull off.

It's strange that with someone as famous as Bach that we really know very little about his personal life. In this book Martin Geck has written as much as we know, and has had to expand that with some of the generally accepted rumors. He has done a very good job in this area. That takes about a third of this book.

The other two thirds of the book is on Bach's music. In this area, the book is absolutely supurb. Mr. Geck has been a professor of musicology at Dormund University. He has written about the other German major composers and now has produced this masterpiece on Bach.

He covers every aspect of Bach's music from technique, to the impact on the listener. Surprisingly his analysis is not too technical so the average enthusiast can understant what he is saying. The last section of the book is called Horizons, and while fairly short (30 pages or so) he offers some opinions on Back's art, theology, symbolism and other aspects of his work that are seldom covered.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is given an expansive and detailed treatment in Geck's 2000 book. It is filled with details, ranging from the minor (e.g., according to a cousin of his, Bach "has a taste for hard cider and 'yeast brandy'") to the major ("The Lutheran faith is of the utmost significance for Bach's creative work").

Bach was unappreciated, and "Few of Bach's works appeared in print during his lifetime." Geck sheds some signficant insight as to why Bach was only given the position as Cantor of the Thomaskirche at Leipzig after it had first been offered to Telemann, Graupner, and Fasch (and turned down): "he does not come from Leipzig and, unlike the others, has no university training. What matters here is Bach's own plan for his life: although he chooses advanced schooling and an education over an apprenticeship, thereby keeping important doors open, he is, to a much greater degree than the three other kapellmeisters, a self-made man, one who set his sights high early on and is willing to work hard to achieve his goal. This ethos grows out of the craftsman's approach and will inform that of the educated artist."

Still, as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar, "When Bach performed his music for religious services at court, he could count on an alert and knowledgeable audience---rather than narrow-minded, frivolous aristocrats interested only in hunting." Yet later on he fell out of favor, and was actually imprisoned for a month, composing "The Well-Tempered Clavier" in "a place where dismay, boredom, and the lack of any sort of musical instrument made this way of passing the time essential."

Geck notes that Bach's later position as Cantor of St. Thomas' Lutheran Church obliged him to perform the teaching of a number of academic subjects (e.g., Latin, grammar)---which he could pay someone else to do for him---but "Buying his way out of teaching the academic subjects does not free the cantor of his responsibility for teaching music classes, giving individual lessons, or meeting his many other pedagogical obligations at this school with fifty-five boarding students."

Geck argues that "The Bach of the last phase (of Leipzig) is no old man gathering his waning strength to bring in a last harvest." "As we can recognize today, with the premiere of the (St. Matthew Passion) on 11 APril 1727, the great period in which Bach concentrated on composing Lutheran church music comes to an end." Concerning Bach's being a Lutheran and yet composing his famous B Minor Mass, Geck suggests that "He is not cozying up to Catholicism. The term 'Catholic mass' should be understood ecumenically..."

Was Bach a "conservative" composer? Geck responds that "there may be musical standards that, once he established them, became a Rubicon he did not want to cross again." He also makes the significant observation, "Insisting that Bach was unappreciated during his lifetime has become part of the Bach hagiography." Nevertheless "More than once he was deemed to be one of the most important composers of his time."

This is an excellent study of the man, and his music. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!