John Eliot Gardiner

Johann Sebastian Bach is regarded as one of the most enigmatic composers in music history. How could such beautiful work be produced by a man who appears so ordinary, so obscure - and oftentimes so intemperate (when we can distinguish his personality at all)?
Every morning and evening, John Eliot Gardiner passed one of the only two original paintings of Bach on the stairs of his parents' house, where it hung for safety during WWII. Since then, he has been studying and interpreting Bach, and show more is currently considered one of the composer's best living interpreters. This amazing book distills the fruits of a lifetime of immersion, founded in the most recent Bach study but pushing far beyond it. The breadth and depth of music analysis is astounding and sometimes difficult to decipher, but worthy of the genius on whom the book focuses. show less

This delivers exactly what we would expect : a clear, passionate and intellectually demanding account of J.S. Bach's vocal music. How it came to be written, how it fits into the development of 18th century music, Lutheran theology, and Saxon local politics, how it might have been performed, and what makes it special for modern listeners.
It isn't excessively technical: You're not very likely to want to read a book like this unless you already have quite some background knowledge of the show more passions and cantatas either as a listener or a performer, and I think anyone who has got that far will already be familiar enough with musical terminology to be able to follow what Gardiner is saying. But I certainly felt when I got to the end of the book that I would have to come back to some of the chapters and work through them slowly again with a score or a CD to get the full benefit. show less

Four months to read this book! Some brilliant things here, but also very frustrating. Gardiner strongly believes that Bach's religious music, specifically the prodigious cantata cycles, the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, and the B minor Mass, are at the absolute center of Bach's accomplishment and identity. Fine, but he neglects Bach's stupendous "abstract" music, and really fails to address how those not attached to Bach's Lutheran variant of Christianity - how those who may not be show more religious at all - may find Bach's work to be the most important musical accomplishment of the last millennium.

This is not a standard biography; again that is fine, but if you want to know the basic data of Bach's life, this is not the place to start. (In spite of the book's 560 pages of text, Gardiner really does not touch upon J.S. Bach's family life at home, which is a little peculiar for a man whose wives went through twenty full-term pregnancies.)

Gardiner is an important and extremely accomplished musician, and it is very valuable to read this appreciation of the great composer written by someone who approaches him from that angle, from someone who understands how Bach's genius is expressed through performance. Just be aware that this should not be the first, and definitely not the last, book about Bach that you read. show less

Excellent book, hard going for a non-musician, though he does his darnedest to be non-technical . i listen to and love Bach's music a lot, but found it hard to know which bit was under discussion. Would be more accessible as a radio series with musical examples/quotations. What i did get was a sense of Bach's originality and creative force. Also how he fits into the context of his time (JEG, we discover, is a historian by training, not a musician).
Points of interest: JSB already being hired show more as consultant on new organ design at age 18; how slight musical alterations can express difference between Catholic & Lutheran beliefs; that JSB also wrote for Catholics though a passionate Protestant; how much documentation there is on the details of his activities, even though some whole works are lost; pettifogging beastliness of so many minor officials, bureaucrats, teachers, priest - no wonder he had a temper! show less