Amazing! Brilliant! Such insights! Newman has once again outdone himself. As if his virtuoso recordings were not enough for the Bach enthusiast here comes the definitive tome on the master himself... from the master himself.

J. S. Bach would have been astounded by the amount of materialwritten on him since his death 250 years ago. And as the number ofbooks and articles on his life and works passes the 15,000 mark it becomes increasingly difficult to discover from among this morass the truly rewarding and insightful writing on Amazon's Composer of the Millenium. But there is one book that stands out: Laurence Dreyfus's Bach and the Patterns of Invention is a landmark both in the study of Bach's music and in music criticism more generally. This is certainly one of the best books on Bach ever written ... Dreyfus's book accomplishes the dual and seemingly paradoxical goal of removing Bach from his lofty pedestal while at the same time rendering his musical achievements all the more impressive. Dreyfus de-mythologizes Bach, and by humanizing him allows us to grasp in a new way the nature and meaning of his creative acts. The book examines, often in great detail, Bach's mental processes, the problems he posed for himself while composing and the solutions he chose, sometimes from among many options; the possibilities that Bach's musical ideas yielded and the methods he used in arriving at his ultimate choices from among these possibilities are the "patterns of inventions" of Dreyfus's title. Thus Dreyfus's first chapter on Bach's C Major Invention, a piece marvelled at and agonized over by generations of piano students young and old, lays out for our inspection the basic musical unit-the "invention"-Bach devised and then manipulated in order to craft this most engaging of miniatures. Dreyfus's real contribution comes in describing Bach's elegant and often demanding methods of constructing the piece; while elucidating Bach's creativity and the clarity of his thought, Dreyfus points out the repeated flashes of brilliance that make this seemingly disarming Invention the beloved masterpiece that it is. Given the complexity of much of Bach's music it is not surprising that the author's treatment of the subject is often exacting in its demands on the reader. Bach's music is rarely easy, and neither is this book. But like Bach music, it is both challenging and immensely enjoyable. And although a basic knowledge of music theory and the ability to read music is certainly helpful, the insights of the book are also available to all those interested in Bach. The book's welcoming attitude is achieved mainly by Dreyfus's enviable prose-some of the most beautiful and sensitive writing about music of any kind-and partly by the wide range of literary sources and aesthetic themes Dreyfus deals with, as in the final chapter which places Bach's work in the context of important philosophical debates of the early Enlightenment and concludes by relating this dynamic to our own historical perspective. Bach and the Patterns of Invention is a scholarly work- awarded the Best Book of the Year in 1997 by the American Musicological Society-but never a dryly academic one. Like his predecessors in the field of Bach studies, Dreyfus considers Bach a far greater composer than contemporaries such as his friend Telemann. However, Dreyfus elevates Bach not by clinging to the shibboleths of Bach criticism, but rather, by examining in depth the marvelous mechanisms of Bach's creative process and by comparing his unrelenting drive to get the most from his musical material with the less demanding standards of the wider musical culture. Thus while the book is not a biography we gain a much more intimate knowledge of the man behind the works, the artistic personality of the composer at his desk.

A compilation of stoplists of over 50 organs in Germany as Bach probably knew them. Each section includes biographical material and discussion of the instrument, including historical data, the stoplist, a description of the organ by divisions, technical details, and a sampling of critical commentary by various scholars.(Jean Morrow)

This is a must-have for the hobby pianist. It contains a varied selection of works of varying difficulty by three of the most famous piano composers of all time. My dad had a copy when I was growing up. I bought myself a copy long before I even bought a piano.

This book takes a balance view among music analysis, history as well as performance practice. For those who need only one definite study on Bach's greatest work could consider this as first choice!

Over the years many books have been written on the culture of fin-de-siecle Vienna, but no one had attempted a similar study of Basel, Switzerland, a city that blossomed as a cultural center during the Renaissance and then slowly faded over the centuries, as peace and prosperity teamed together to eliminate the tensions that make a city into a center of arts and literature. Vienna was done in by the war, Basel by peace.

Lionel Gossman has written an interesting and lively study of the city, choosing to focus on the four major thinkers that mark its last great period in intellectual history: Jacob Burckhardt, Johann Jacob Bachofen, Frans Overbeck, and Friedrich Nietzsche. and how their ideas were ultimately interwoven with the culture and tradition of Basel itself.

Recommended for anyone interested in the history of ideas and the question of not only whether liberty can co-exist with democracy, but can a culture keep alive in a setting that has escaped the tensions of its day, such as revolution, depression and war?

Any one who enjoys music knows who Johann Sebastian Bach is and knows he led an incredibly interesting life. Basically Bach includes everything you want or need to know about Bach and his life. In my opinion Herbert Kupferberg did a really good job covering all of the aspects of Bach's life. In it he went through Bach's life and also some other famous Johanns and Bachs. Bach wrote pieces of music for the clavier, church songs for the organ, and operas. He was married twice. His first wife was Maria Barbara and his second was Anna Magdalena. This is a good book for anyone who is interested in history, good music, and Bach. You'll definitely enjoy this wonderful book by Herbert Kupferberg.

This is incredibly detailed, and copyright free! I can hardly imagine conceiving of the alphabets used. Included are the names of the heads of Europe of the time, with their crowns, several alphabets, several animals, many different cherubs, and hundreds of frames and ornamentations of varying sizes, but all of fabulous complexity. The crown jewel is the title page, a two-page calligraphic temple. One problem I have with it is that no alphabet has the letter 'J.' 'J' only appears in a few of the names.

This is a book that will bring pleasure to polyglots and be a treasure trove of ideas for translators, linguists, and philosophers. Makkai's thesis is that poetry written in languages other than the original must be a creative reinterpretration, not merely a translation, analogous to a musical theme and variations. He calls this "anasemic writing" and in a series of clever,informal and often highly amusing hypothetical Platonic-type dialogues between himself, a 20th-century scholar, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (to whom the book is dedicated and whose poem "Ein Gleiches" and its ninety-six versions in eight different languages are used as examples), he explores the great 18th-century writer's theories of world literature. Following the dialogues is a more technical analysis of anasemic writing, a discussion of modern linguistics and its relation to literary translation, and more multilingual poetry, along with some really beautiful illustrations. Too bad this book is out of print!

This collection should get SIX stars. Having sampled one of Audio Connoisseur's other recordings, and being hugely impressed, I went out and purchased this one. I had always wanted to know a little about German literature, assuming that a nation that can build fabulous cars could also produce a few good authors. Before I say anything about the stories, let me just tell you that the narrator, Charlton Griffin, is probably the greatest reader now living. I say that in all honesty. Never have I encountered recorded literature in which ALL the characters, including women and children, have been performed with such utter believability and astonishing acumen. You will shake your head in disbelief that only one person is performing all these voices. I differ with the above AudioFile reviewer who castigates Griffin for his pacing. The pacing is perfect, almost stately. In the appropriate places it has a dreamlike quality. The stories are a very good cross section of German literature over a period of 150 years, beginning with Goethe and ending with Lampe. Every single one of these little masterpieces has a jewel-like quality and a sparkling intelligence behind them. I approached this subject with mild trepidation and came away astonished at the variety and depth of German writers. My favorites in this volume were the stories by Mann, von Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler. Not content with merely great stories, Audio Connoisseur has tastefully added music and sound effects...but only in perfectly suitable places and without distraction. They seem to fit in organically, as though a film were rolling in your head. If you are an educator, this would be an indispensable teaching tool. My admiration for Audio Connoisseur knows no bounds at this point. May they continue this level of quality forever.