All worshippers of JS Bach need to acquire this informative and satisfying journal dedicated to the absolutely most profoundly sublime genious in all of music. If having all of Bach's masterworks in your CD collection wasn't enough...you need to add this book for further intellectual stimulation because here Bach is presented in his OWN WORDS! Every example of written coorespondence by Bach and his contemporaries concerning him has been preserved and translated from the hand of Bach's penmanship and presented to the reader. As a result, we can glimpse into another facet of the mind behind the music. Although most of the letters were written to either one offical or another (and therefore embellished with the standard nomenclatures of the time), I was able to detect exasperation, sarcasm, fearlessness, austerity, humor, ridicule and sorrow in much of them. In the vast majority of the wordy, complex style of his coorespondence we begin to see that Bach composed his complaints in much the same vein he composed fugues; lavish phrases, requests and expostulations are intertwined in the most respectful manner to his superiors...and simultaneuosly he projects an attitude that if his needs are not met he will resort to higher means...usually meaning petitioning the King himself (which on one occasion he ultimately did!) His complaints ranged from objectional wages, unruly choirboys, the relegations of authority, and his delinquent son (in which the debtors were now pestoring Bach to compensate). It is true that not many personal references by Bach have come down to us, but there are a few morsels for us to dwell on; his declining a gift from a cousin stating that the tax required was much to high for the parcel itself, he mentions with regret a flask of wine that broke open (accidentally?) while on route in the mail and spilled out, and how not too many people were dying...so unfortunately he wasnt making out too well on funeral music composition. We begin to see that apart from his unsurpassable genious and intellect, he was very much a normal person...even a bit dull. He certainly had a dry sense of humor and had absolutely zero tolerance for people he thought were using him...and for those he thought were not taking him seriously. The is one instance where he got into a street fight at the marketplace, another instance where he was reprimanded for introducing "strange sounds and alterations in the harmonic structure" during mass at the organ (the buddings of his genious). He was interrogated for bringing a "strange maiden" up to the organ loft with him. He even spent some time in jail for being too stubborn when his leave was denied (he was looking for better work and his employers refused to let him go). He was reprimanded for overstaying leave time on another occasion (by like 2 months!) hanging out in Lubeck to see Buxtehude play. He had no qualms whatsoever in disqualifying students from his instruction if they showed any from of recalcitrance or inept musical talent. Buy this book! You can read all about these things and more from the REAL letters! There is plenty of praise and accolades to go along with it, both by his contemporaries and posthumurous composers. Read about Mendelsohn's debut of the St Matthew's Passion (100 years after Bach performed it last) written by the tenor who sang Christ's lines in the score during that performance! Look at the replicated facsimilies of Bach's letters in his own hand! The book is full of paintings of Bach...in all stages of his career. Read his letters and get some insight into the turmoil and altercations, of the humor and sarcasm of the greatest genious of music this world has ever known. His music is immortal and nothing can even come close; not even the greatest works of Mozart or Beethoven can overshadow the universal sublimity and unsurpassed ecstasy the world can find the the music of the Almighty Johann Sebastian Bach.

I have been studying this book for the last 2 months. The amount of information that is in this book, and not many others, is incredible. Actual letters from JS Bach showing how he feels. Descriptions of performances that were only available from PhD's in the past are available to you in this publication.

On the subject of J.S. Bach, this is one of the best resources I have found.

Comenius is the father of modern education. As a judge I see the end result of the ruinous ideas of Rousseau that man can be made good simply through education. DeToqueville in Democracy in America points out that this is not so as does Washington in his farewell address. Comenius points out that man must be taught good character while he is learning to read and that school should be fun. He was centuries ahead of Montessori.

This book, in bilingual English and Latin, translated from the Dutch, is the first book specifically written for children. The lineal ancestor of such works as Richard Scarry's Big Word Book, Diderot's Encyclopedia, and Duden, it comprises chapters on everything from Christian cosmology to household management (16th century style) each illustrated by a woodcut with numbered vignettes which each correspond to a word or phrase in the accompanying essay. Granted, it comprises moral lessons, but isn't quite as preachy as most of the books that followed it. Raw data is the main focus: what things are called, how things are done. It therefore has a broadbased appeal: plenty of pictures (it deserves to be redrawn, however), great historical interest (both in itself or for someone curious about "old-timey" things), students of literature, and of course, its original purpose, to teach Latin and English vocabulary.

One example of how clear it is: I used some of the ideas (by taping large sheets of paper on the walls and covering them with wall hangings) in the chapter "The Stove" (which refers to a specially insulated and heated room for use in the winter) to decorate a sitting room in a Depression-era Colonial house prone to drafts. They still work.

This slender volume stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from Christof Wolff's monumental "Bach, the Learned Musician," which I recently completed reading. The latter deals with learned and fascinating detail every aspect of Bach's life and work. Dr Butt's purpose, to "present an opportunity to learn many of the basics of Bach performance (for) those who direct choirs, and those who sing and play," is much more narrow in scope. As one who has sung Bach's B Minor Mass with a community chorus and orchestra, as well as having played in a (very) amateur way some of his works on piano and recorder in my younger days, I can testify that Dr Butt achieves his purpose very well.

He is the editor of the volume, and contributes an article on ornamentation. Dr James E. Jordan Jr. has one on the Lutheran Chorale, the heart of Bach's sacred choral music; and Fr. Martin Shannon one entitled "Soli Deo Gloria," which stresses Bach's oft repeated, and oft reported, determination that all of his music, whether for church or court, be written for the Glory of God. My copy of the book is already heavily underlined, showing that even after a lifetime of enjoying (and that is much too tepid a word) Bach's music there is always something new to be learned.

For instance Fr Shannon explication of the "tension" in Bach's choral works between Lutheran orthodoxy and Pietism, wherein he uses the example of the differenc betwen "Christ for us" or "Christ in us." Or Dr Butt's comments on ornamentation, which are particularly pertinent to me at present because lately I have been listening, with score in hand, and in open-mouthed astonishment, to Andras Schiff playing the English Suites. The lightness of Schiff's touch as he seamlessly fits each perfectly apt ornament into the melody line is beyond comprehension to one who once struggled to tack them on any old way, and Dr Butt explains the whys and wherefores. Dr Timberlake's article on singing Bach is perhaps the most technical, and includes several pages of musical examples from Bach's work for vocal exercises, but even that provided some appreciation of what is involved when an artist "effortlessly" glides thru a maze of notes. This is not a first book for someone just making Bach's acquaintance (unless of course they are singing it for the first time in choir or chorus), Malcon Boyd's "Bach" from Vintage Books makes a wonderful introduction, but it can take someone already familiar with it down a little explored pathway.

My favorite quote in the book, from Albert Schweitzer referring to the duet in the Credo of the B Minor, "Thus Bach proves that dogma can be expressed much more clearly and satisfactorily in music than in verbal formulae."

Amen

And make no mistake, skinny it is! A mere 66 pages. This pamphlet is directed primarily to music directors and singers. I am neither, have no musical training, and cannot read music (so subtract 11 pages of coloratura exercises...which reduces it to only 55 pages of actual text).

Since my church performs Bach cantatas frequently, I was looking for something that could give me a little background information on Bach and the musical forms he chose to work in. This book doesn't really provide that, but the carefully compiled Annotated Bibliography (of mostly English works) lists a number of titles that seem quite promising. Since I am primarily interested in Bach's choral works from the perspective of how they fit into the liturgy, I found Father Martin Shannon's chapter "Soli Deo Gloria" to be the most rewarding. That chapter alone was worth the price of the book.

As stated in the title, this book contains the complete score for all 6 Brandenburg Concerti and all 4 Orchestral Suites by Bach. Parts are not included nor are they available separately from Dover.

It is in modern notation with very clear, dark printing. It is a large-format (approx. 8 1/2 x 11) paperback book and is bound like most paperbacks.

As with all Dover Editions, it is very easy to read and follow the music, but it was not designed as a performing score. Because of the binding (it won't lie flat) and because no attention was given to page turns, it is very difficult to play from. But if you wish to study the music or follow the score while listening to your favorite recording, you can't beat this edition for the money.

I recall reading that when Messaien was captured by the Germans during World War II, one of the few musical references he had in the POW camp was a score to Bach's BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS. The POW camp, of course, was where Messaien wrote his masterpiece QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME. Owning this score won't guarantee the production of further masterpieces, but it is a valuable source of information. This edition also includes the ORCHESTRAL SUITES, as well as a preface that details the discrepancies between various editions of these works.

All of the stories in this collection are worth reading, and some of them are very fine. I didn't expect to become so involved by some of them, such as "The Padlock," about a young boy's experience of the shame of being impoverished, or another tale of a child, the title story, in which a lovely thing (a cheap toy) becomes the occasion of a bitter scuffle between siblings. "The Changing Earth," the long tale that opens the collection, will remain in my mind as, with Turgenev's "First Love," an evocation of youthful romance. Sigurdsson also writes well about someone late in life, in his story of Pastor Bodvar.

The short story "The Changing Earth" (which opens this collection by Olafur Johann Sigurdsson) is the most beautifully written story of which I'm aware in world literature. Alan Boucher translated this piece from the Icelandic many years ago, but his new effort is superior and captures the author's use of language amazingly well.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, probably the greatest of Germany's poets, was also an avid amateur scientist and displayed through his careful observations and his keen, what might now be called phenomenological, mind an ability to discern the depth of the phenomenon in question, in this case the origin of colours. In direct contradiction to Newton whose theory of colour formation, based on his earlier prism experiments and their interpretation, was the accepted theory of the time in all scientific circles and laymen alike, with one exception, that of painting and artistic use of colour.

Goethe, being fascinated by the colours generated from the prism conducted his own investigations and found to his great surprise that Newton's theory was, if not incorrect, but rather mechanical in nature and based on an "interpretation" of the phenomenon rather than the truth as it stands. Goethe through his investigations into natural phenomena gave rise to the idea of the archetypal phenomenon or Ur-phenomenon, in this case meaning the movement or active form present in the phenomenon which gives it its character rather than some static image such as a Darwinian ancestor. Goethe noted that it is possible to actually experience the fullness of the phenomenon ie the coming into being of the colours themselves and that the human being can not only theorise in the conventional sense of Kant but can in fact truly know the phenomenon as it is. Contemporary science as it also was then does not acknowledge such a possibility.

The book is basically a written account of experiments done by Goethe on the generation of colour in natural events and his own experiments to bring to the fore the ground of all colour generation. It displays great care in his observations and it gives a wide ranging explanation of colour in the sciences, the arts such as painting and also deals to some degree with the experience of colours in the physiological domain. It is all encompassing in its attempt to understand the colour phenomenon in all of its many incarnations. It is convincing in its comprehension of colours and yet at times leaves one dissatisfied because it lacks mathematical rigour or measurement that is characteristic of science today. This habitual way of thinking present in scientists is rather hard to dislodge even when the mind is open, the main reason for this being the hard edged practicality of such an approach.

I would think that Goethe's book can be looked at as an introduction to his way of doing science and as a first attempt to fathom the real depth of the phenomenon which is inherent in his approach and sorely lacking in "normal" science. Naturally, this does not mean scientists themselves haven't used similar approaches, the names of Faraday and his investigation of electromagnetism and Heisenberg in his description of the limitation induced by the scientific method to the investigation of natural processes, come to mind. It is the cutting down of the original "life" present in their investigations that is lacking today, perhaps a Goethean approach can lead back to the intensification of science that is needed.

This was a book for a class I'm taking. It's very interesting. I totally recommend it.

This book is a must for lovers of the cantatas, but I hope it's not whining to say that we deserve much better. The subjects of the various essays, by various scholars, are all exactly the ones I have been hoping for--most notably the chapters "Bible, hymnbook and worship service" by M. Petzoldt, and "Choruses and Chorales" by D. Melamed, but the book as a whole reads very much like a conference proceedings volume rather than an introduction to the "world of the cantatas." Some individual chapters are excellently written (esp. C. Wolff's, but that should go without saying), but many are at the very least poorly translated. What we really need is A. Duerr's magisterial introduction (available at fairly low cost from amazon.de, for the reader of German) in English translation (though I would hope not by those who translated this volume!).

this clear account of the early cantatas is a must for all lovers of Bach and his choral music. Written by acknowledged authorities in the field, this book complements Koopmans on going CD cycle of the cantatas but can be used with great benefit with other cycles as well. If you love the cantatas this is a must have book

Tom Standage investigates one of the 18th century's most interesting mysteries, the chess playing automaton "The Turk." Part detective story and part technological history, THE TURK combines a tale of man's fascination with the concept of "thinking machines" with the story of how the pursuit of that ideal led to the creation of one of the greatest ruses in history. By gradually (a bit too gradually) introducing the reader to the time period and the public's preoccupation with all things mechanical, Standage shows the reader a world waiting to be amazed; even if the amazement comes by way of an ingenious form of misdirection. With appearances by a number of figures who were intimately involved with The Turk's "performances to the interaction of such luminaries as Napoleon and Poe, Standage keeps the reader interested in each and every twist of The Turk's rather bizarre history. It is only when Standage takes on the philosophy of the "thinking machine" does the book make a wrong turn; it slows down the pace and interrupts the flow of what is otherwise an intriguing look this amazing example of man's ingenuity.
P.S. You will find out how it works!

This is a wonderful history of a chess playing automaton. The author weaves into the history the mechanical progress of the times as well as the public's yearning to view automatons and to be bamboozled.

The "Turk" had an interesting history unto itself which included meeting many important world figures during its long career, including Twain and Napoleon.

In addition to giving the reader what would be only a fairly interesting history, the author did not disclose how the Turk worked until the very end. He shared the many theories posed and the debunking of them. His self-control in holding back the secret kept reading the book as if it were an Ellery Queen novel rather than a piece of non-fiction.

The finishing touch was a chapter on a real chess-playing machine, Big Blue and its human opponent.

This was an interesting and thoroughly entertaining read.

This is a delightful book that takes one cultural artifact (a mechanical chess playing machine that looks like a human being and is dressed in oriental opulence, "The Turk") and follows its entire life, from its conceptualization and manufacture to its final demise in a fire in Philadelphia. The period of the Turk's life lasted 85 years, and the people who somehow met and interacted with it were such luminaries Napoleon, and Charles Babbage (inventor of the first computer, sort of), and P. T. Barnum. Edgar Allan Poe started an entire genre (the short detective story) by writing "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in part inspired by the mental exercise of trying to figure out how The Turk worked. Silas Wier Mitchell, the famous American Civil War physician and neurologist, actually owned The Turk before donating it to the Chinese museum in which it finally perished. Literally hundreds of Europe's intellectuals, and crowned heads, and glitterati of one sort or another played chess against the famous automaton, and usually (but not always) lost the game. And nobody except the operators knew the secret of the machine.

The Turk was the work of Wolfgang Kempelen, an engineer and an aid to the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, who called him to court so that he could explain to her the magic and the related magnetic games that were being demonstrated by a Frenchman by the name of Pelletier in the various courts of Europe. Maria Theresa, being of a scientific mind herself, wanted a respected official to uncover the trickery (if any) involved in Pelletier's performance. Mr. Kempelen explained each act as it was being performed, and was so unimpressed by the whole show that he boasted that if he had six months of free time he would be able to construct a really impressive automaton that would outclass anything then being shown in Europe. Maria Therese took him up on the challenge, and ordered him to go home, build his marvel in six months, and forget his duties to the state during that period.

Six months passed and in the Spring of 1770 Mr. Kempelen arrived in court with the Turk in tow. It was a life-size wood carving of a man wearing Turkish garb, seated at a table, with only one movable arm (the left)with dexterous fingers, and with a fixed gaze that stared down at a chess board. On the night of the first demonstration, Kempelen wheeled the figure before the audience, opened the various doors of the table, showing an impressive set of elaborate and mysterious clockwork and allowing the audience to look through the various openings, shining a candle for behind, so that they would see they were either empty or full of wheels and cogs, but free of any human being. When he convinced everyone that there was nothing hiding inside the machine, Kempelen invited one of the courtiers to sit at the table and play against the Turk. He used a large key to wind it up, and when he released a lever the Turk moved his head as if scanning the board, and suddenly reached out his arm and moved a piece. The game had began! Every ten moves or so, Kempelen would wind up the mechanism again, giving it the additional energy to proceed with the game. The Turk, of course, won the match that launched his famous career.

The author follows this career carefully and only after the Turk's life was ended does he reveal the method used by Kempelen (and others that owned the automaton). That is fair enough, giving the book the measure of suspense it should have in order to keep the reader excited and able to create his or her theory about how the machine operated and hold it until the end of the book.

The book does not end with the demise of the Turk, but it extends into the realm of the Kasparov - Deep Blue matches of 1996 (Kasparov won) and 1997 (D B won). It is a thoroughly delightful book to get into, and a hard one to put down. Even after the secrets of the machine are revealed, one is left in utter amazement about the Turk and its rambunctious life.

If you enjoy the prose of this book, you will no doubt enjoy the literary craftings of MFK Fisher as well. It is no cooincidence; passages from this text are lifted directly from the late Ms. Fisher's works, with no more than a name here or there altered to make it seem "original." Read the true original instead.

In the tiniest of vignettes, most only a page or two long, Olafsson creates a pointillist portrait of Disa, a middle-aged Icelandic woman, and the people and events from her past over which she still feels guilt and distress. She is on her way back to Iceland from England, where she and her friend Anthony have run a country hotel for many years, and where she has acquired a reputation as a fine chef. Her trip "home" is an attempt to find peace and to achieve the satisfaction of knowing her life has had meaning. This is an urgent quest--Disa has only twelve to eighteen months to live, and her life is full of unresolved traumas.

Olafsson uses the diary Disa keeps on her journey to intersperse sensitive, often powerful, memories from the past with her recollections from her more recent life in England. She is an intense and independent woman who sometimes reacts more sensitively toward the natural world around her than to the people with whom she has had relationships. We relive her estrangement from her mother and sister, her heartache in love, her love for her father and her secret life in Iceland, her protectiveness for her partner Anthony, her relationships with her employers and later with her employees, and her desperate romantic fling during a particularly vulnerable time. As in our own daydreams, we relive Disa's memories and the feelings they evoke in random order, not always knowing why they are important until later memories provide the keys to understanding. As her memories and nightmares intensify, the suspense grows. As Disa says, "The soul can take delight in small things if one's dreams only leave it in peace long enough."

Although Disa probably has enough traumas in her life for three novels, Olafsson avoids some of the usual pitfalls of romances by spacing out the details and requiring the reader to draw the conclusions. He tempers sensational revelations by including repeated images or symbols within them--apples, thrushes, storms, views from windows, music, the color red, the cold--to make us think. By the time the real reason for the trip to Iceland is revealed, most readers will have guessed it, but we sympathize with the unfortunate Disa and her journey, nevertheless. This is an emotion-packed rollercoaster of a novel, with a multitude of period details, sure to keep readers on edge.

I enjoyed reading this book. Very nicely written.

In the cold and dank corridors of power in the North, King Christian VII cannot escape his petite size or his madness, and his court is in chaos. But it is the Age of Enlightenment. In a futile search for his own enlightenment, Christian comes to the attention of a philosopher/physician, Dr. Struensee. Attracted to the pitiful King in a way he cannot fathom, Struensee steps into history, unsure of his part, save to comfort and aid the suffering mad King. During Strunsee's short attendance on the King, a mere four years, great reforms are begun: unrestricted freedom of the press, religious freedom, tariffs to the state instead of the royal household, a ban on torture during interrogations. Later the French Revolution would adapt some of the same reform measures enacted in Denmark during this period of social upheaval.

Strunsee's great failure is that he is drawn into a love affair with Christian's young Queen, Catherine Mathilde, sister of England's Charles III. She actually gives birth to Struensee's child, a girl, later claimed by the King as his own. As well, the physician lacks the ability to protect himself from his many foes at court. When Christian's mental illness, actually madness, creates a vacuum in the center of power, Strunsee fills the void, to the good of the kingdom. But when his enemies inevitably prevail, others are prepared to strike him down and assume the mantle, demanding Strunsee's execution.

The beauty of this novel is in the writing: people and events are presented in such a way as to give a glimpse into the insanity of Christian's reign, the vacuum in leadership and the strange aura of madness that permeates the court. There is a real sense of the unreality that infects everyone at the top, the secrecey and intrigue, illustrating with frightening clarity the true peril in having a puppet for a leader.

Insanity was a singular problem for the crowned heads of Europe during the 18th century. While the travails of the Hanoverian King George III are well-documented, there were other psychiatrically afflicted monarchs who, whether due to some unfortunate gene or to the infectious subversion of enlightenment philosophy, injected the politics of their courts with the logic of madness. One such monarch was Christian VII of Denmark.

Per Olav Enguist's historical novel documents a turbulent period in Danish history, a time when medeival institutions bumped up against modern free-thinking with transformative, and sometimes explosive, results. It's a well-crafted work, laying out the history with insight and clarity, all the while painting complex and realistic characters in shades of grey. The book chronicles the rise of the royal physician Struensee, a disciple of the enlightenment who finds himself, through almost random selection, at the center of Denmark's political maelstrom. Though his ultimate demise is revealed at the outset, Struensee's journey through the looking glass at the Danish court, and the price he pays for his part in bringing the world to enlightenment, make for an engrossing read.

Central to Struensee's tenure as the main adviser to Christian VII was his affair with Christian's queen, Caroline Mathilde of England. This unfortunate consort could never seem to escape from the madness of either her times or her family. She was the sister of George the III, and her marriage to Christian, which involved one conjugal experience and one baby, never rose above the infantile level at which the Danish king could operate.

At times sensual and desperate, at others filled with the weight of impossible expectations and hopeless risks, the story of Struensee and his increasingly forceful paramour spills off the pages of the book with resigned determination. Struensee uses his time in power to rewrite Denmark's social code, infuriating the powers of court, and makes himself, through his passion for justice and for Queen Caroline, an easier and easier target for destruction.

Enquist's style is somber and instructive, his language plain but filled with complexity. He makes people and events come alive with spare sentences that speak volumes about the inevitability of freedom and the costs in imposes. As for the nature of logic, insanity, and the sanctity of free throught, he leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion.

This book is based on an historical event. In 1766 Christian VII becomes king of Denmark. Christian is an anxious boy, made mad by the members of his court. Two years later Johann Friedrich Struensee becomes his personal physician. Very soon he gains the trust of the young king with his quiet behaviour. The king starts to give more and more power to Struensee, who, more or less against his own will, becomes the center of power. In a period of only a few years Struensee issues more than 600 decrees that improve the life of the ordinary Danes and make Denmark a frontrunner of the Enlightenment movement. However, Struensee does not realize how much resistance his actions cause in the surroundings of the king. In 1772 he is arrested and tried on the basis of his relationship with the queen.

We follow the events through the eyes of a number of people: Christians private teacher Reverdil, the young queen Caroline Mathilde, Struensees rival and successor Guldberg and Struensee himself.

Per Olov Enquist has succeeded in writing a monumental literary novel: the actors are real, full of doubt, passion and deceit. The description of the way in which the mind of the young Christian is broken is most impressive. A king has absolute power, but is not supposed to actually exercise it, so the whole court conspires to break his mind. What remains in the end of an intelligent, normal boy is a mental wreck who lives in a fantasy world.