Johann Sebastian Bach

The Learned Musician

De: Christoph Wolff

Narrado por: John Pruden

Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, this landmark book was revised in 2013 to include new knowledge discovered after its initial publication.

Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. With this highly listenable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2000, 2013 Christoph Wolff (P)2019 Tantor

No pdf

There is supposed to be a PDF in the library with the book, but there is no PDF to be found.

Tiring

I love long biographies, but this book seems to be an exposition of the authors exactitude and ability in looking up minor details and fact checking suspicions. I understand this is a challenging element to telling Bach’s story, but leave them in a footnote somewhere for the footnote guys! A biography is see the story strained from the mud of details! I don’t recommend this as an audio book, it’s almost like listening to a phone book.

A must have for Bach scholars and enthusiasts.

An incredibly thorough essay. I believe that this book will continue to be the go-to volume in scholarly studies of the greatest composer of all time. Very clear and thoughtful narration.

Exhausting

Certainly comprehensive and no wonder it is 21 hours plus in length.
Unfortunately, in many parts and for mind numbing periods it is a collection of statistics being read out to the listener.
And then there is the pronunciation of the frequent essential german names, towns, etc., - just awful.
I am fluent in german but could not understand what the narrator was trying to articulate.
Gave up after 2 hours of listening.

In Awe

Magnificent in many ways. Most germaine to me is the understanding that Bach and Newton stand unopposed as initial beacons of their separate but related arenas.

Has all the boring details...

If you want to know all the boring details of Bach's life, this is the biography for you. I will say it is very well researched and written and the reader is one of the best I've heard, but I found it at times difficult to listen to because it was quite often just uninteresting. For example. the author details the textbooks that Bach's school teachers likely used when he was a schoolboy, talks about possible numbers of chorus members at the church where Bach directed based on the number of chairs ordered (and possibly re-upholstered) by the church, analysis of the delivery paper to Bach's home, a run down of every recorded instance of every groschen, thaler, and pfennig Bach earned in his entire life, etc., etc. I suppose this information is valuable in some way, but to me it is just extraneous details that don't need to be shared for the reader to understand Bach's life. I'd rather hear the "meat" of his life and significant moments rather than the details of his firewood allowance.

Bach Deserves Better

An online search of studies of J.S. Bach’s life and works reveals a consensus that this is the definitive biography. It’s sad that such an arid text is the best that music scholars can come up with. I don’t know if this speaks to the pedantry endemic to academia or the difficulty of accounting for Bach’s unique musical genius.

Wolff is a skilled researcher, but he’s a timid thinker. He will tiptoe up to an idea, only to retreat to the comfort and safety of hard data. For example, he launches this book by making a comparison between Newton and Bach. We expect this to develop into a framework for thinking about Bach’s compositional practice, but most of the ways that Newton’s science parallels Bach’s art are left unexplored. All too soon Wolff has withdrawn to the terra firma of factual recitation. This approach isn’t just dull: it confuses facts for truth and in doing so obscures more than it illuminates. Wolff spends more time cataloguing the town councilors of Köthen or the manuals and stops of each organ in Potsdam than he does examining the theology that undergirded Bach’s vast canon of religious compositions. The problem isn’t just that Wolff misses the forest for the trees; despite his compulsion for documentation, he still manages to miss some very tall trees.

In print, this book runs to nearly 600 pages. Its insights can be summarized in a paragraph. Here goes: Bach came of age at a liminal time in music history. During his lifetime, he saw musical traditions such as regional notation systems and specific concert tunings give way to standardized practices. Bach was open to musical innovation, particularly in respect to instruments. He wrote music for newfangled and experimental instruments, and he maintained a lucrative side hustle as a consultant on pipe organs, the synthesizers of his day. Bach did not travel widely, but he was very aware of musical developments throughout the western world. Though prodigiously industrious, he did not lead a life of cloistered concentration. He devoted much time and energy to his large family and to cajoling or battling with the religious and civic bureaucracies that supported his career. As a composer, Bach brought a scientific mindset to in his exploration of musical ideas. The twenty-four musical keys were his periodic table. Though regarded as a master of improvisation at the keyboard, Bach’s analytical approach to composition allowed him to write most of his music at a desk. At the heart of his practice was the theory of counterpoint, the tension and release achieved by the interplay of the various notes in a scale.

Though I may not be an admirer, I acknowledge that this is a widely consulted biography of an important figure. It therefore boggles the mind that a major publisher and audiobook producer would allow this text to be read by such an incompetent narrator. Hundreds of German titles and place names are pronounced as if they are all towns in Kansas. Bach was a native German speaker, but he operated in a cosmopolitan circle in which several other languages were commonly used. Things do not improve when the narrator is required to switch to other tongues. To take just one example, the “Souci” in “Sans Souci” is pronounced to rhyme with “grouchy.” Speaking of grouchy, this performance is bad enough to make me want a refund for this title.