Bach

by Martin Geck, Anthea Bell

Overview

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was the father of modern music, a supreme craftsman able to bridge the gap between the music of the Renaissance and the glories of Mozart, Hayden, and Beethoven. Bach expert Martin Geck shows us Bach in his time, offering a portrait of the personal, political and social circumstances that shaped some of the greatest music ever written. It analyses Bach's musical achievement and considers why music such as the "Brandenburg Concertos" and the "St. Matthew Passion" continues to hold its appeal centuries later.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781904341161
Publisher:	Haus Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Series:	Life&Times Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Martin Geck studied musicology, theology and philosophy at Münster, Berlin and Kiel. He took his doctorate in 1962 and in 1966 became the founding editor of the Gesamtausgabe of the works of Richard Wagner. He wrote a number of musicological textbooks and was appointed full professor of musicology at Dortmund University in 1976. He has edited and written many books, articles and entries into encyclopaedic works on the history of German music in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, concentrating on the work of Schütz, Buxtehude, Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, E T A Hoffmann, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Wagner. He is also the author of Beethoven (Haus Publishing, 2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction by John Butt

The early years: youth and early experiences as an organist (1685-1708)

Court organist and Konzertmeister: Bach in Weimar (1708-1717)

Court Kapellmeister in Köthen (1717-1723)

Kantor of St Thomas’s: Bach’s early Leipzig period (1723-1729)

The ‘court composer’: Bach’s middle Leipzig period (from 1729)

The universalist: the late Leipzig period (to 1750)

Epilogue: Bach’s place in the history of music

Bach and the Violin

Notes

Chronology

Select Discography

Further Reading

Picture Sources

Index