What do you think?
Rate this book
Johann Sebastian Bach: Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Rowohlts Monographien)
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.
- GenresMusicBiographyNonfiction
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Martin Geck
40 books3 followersMartin Geck ist ein deutscher Musikwissenschaftler.
Martin Geck wuchs in einem evangelischen Pfarrhaus in Recklinghausen auf. Sein Vater Wilhelm (1892–1989) war Mitglied der Bekennenden Kirche, Pfarrer der Gustav-Adolf-Kirche in Recklinghausen und von 1949 bis 1961 Superintendent des Kirchenkreises Recklinghausen. Martin Geck legte 1955 am Gymnasium Petrinum in Recklinghausen das Abitur ab. Anschließend studierte er Musikwissenschaft, Theologie und Philosophie in Münster, Berlin und Kiel. 1962 folgte die Promotion. 1966 wurde er Gründungsredakteur der Richard-Wagner-Gesamtausgabe. 1970 war er als Lektor in einem Schulbuchverlag tätig, nachfolgend als Autor zahlreicher Musiklehrwerke. 1974 wurde er Privatdozent, 1976 schließlich ordentlicher Professor für Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Dortmund, wo er 2001 emeritiert wurde.
Geck verfasste viele Arbeiten zur Geschichte der deutschen Musik im 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert; aber auch der Musikpädagogik und Musiktherapie galt sein Interesse. Derzeit ist Geck vor allem in der Bachforschung tätig und Initiator der Dortmunder Bach-Symposien.
Martin Geck wuchs in einem evangelischen Pfarrhaus in Recklinghausen auf. Sein Vater Wilhelm (1892–1989) war Mitglied der Bekennenden Kirche, Pfarrer der Gustav-Adolf-Kirche in Recklinghausen und von 1949 bis 1961 Superintendent des Kirchenkreises Recklinghausen. Martin Geck legte 1955 am Gymnasium Petrinum in Recklinghausen das Abitur ab. Anschließend studierte er Musikwissenschaft, Theologie und Philosophie in Münster, Berlin und Kiel. 1962 folgte die Promotion. 1966 wurde er Gründungsredakteur der Richard-Wagner-Gesamtausgabe. 1970 war er als Lektor in einem Schulbuchverlag tätig, nachfolgend als Autor zahlreicher Musiklehrwerke. 1974 wurde er Privatdozent, 1976 schließlich ordentlicher Professor für Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Dortmund, wo er 2001 emeritiert wurde.
Geck verfasste viele Arbeiten zur Geschichte der deutschen Musik im 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert; aber auch der Musikpädagogik und Musiktherapie galt sein Interesse. Derzeit ist Geck vor allem in der Bachforschung tätig und Initiator der Dortmunder Bach-Symposien.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Read
October 27, 2020A likeable brief biography of J.S. Bach, occasionally droll - when working in Weimar and his first wife is regularly giving birth one of Bach's principal tasks Geck tells us is finding godparents. A nightmare task, I think, once you get up to twenty children.
Unusually for my reading this book left me with a film recommendation the 1968 The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, which sounds wayward if somewhat lacking in high speed car chases.
The book is broadly a chronological biography, though the middle chapters tend to broaden out to consider Bach's music more generally.
A point that Geck makes is that it is difficult, maybe even pointless, to date Bach's compositions since he reworked them as needed to suit the different musicians available to play pieces.
It's not too musically technical which is an advantage for a musical illiterate like myself and I do wonder if I would be able to cope with a longer study of Bach on that score. But it does leave me with new questions that presumably only a longer biography will have the space to potentially address.
For instance Bach is described as somebody making his own musical path yet the book makes clear he was drawing upon and incorporating the music of others into his own style. On the other hand I suppose the disappearance of many of his works from the repertoire suggests that despite teaching, publishing and producing various musically talented sons he didn't produce anything like a school or a distinct musical tradition.
I should have liked to read more about the works he had published in his life time - what impact did this have, what was the music publishing world like? Or the spread of musical reputations - why was it that the City Council of Leipzig thought that Bach was a second rate candidate for the St. Thomas' job? What did they want? But there's a limit to what can be squeezed into a short book.
There's a nice sense of how luck shaped the works that he composed. Had he got the job in Hamburg or a position in Dresden his opus would have been more operatic. It's not the composer as a genius driven by their creativity but the craftsman working within the requirements of his employers.
Of course even the freedom to be a craftsman was something to be treasured. The response of the Duke of Weimar to Bach's resignation in order to take up the post of Kapellmeister at Koethen was to have him imprisoned for just over a month.
This is not a book of Bach legends. It strives to be factual. There is no story of Bach feasting on abandoned herrings on his long journey to Lueneburg. We are reminded that the Bach Haus in Eisenach was not the house that Bach was born and grew up in (there's a plaque by the door now explaining that it is only the house in which for many years it was believed that Bach lived in). There's a fair attempt to balance and discuss sources.
Bach remains always an elusive figure, concrete and insubstantial. We can see his wine bills but can make inferences about his personal life or his music. In the end we are left with the words of his son W.F. Bach "Mein Vater war kein Narr" - my father was no fool. The work has meaning, however obscure.
Unusually for my reading this book left me with a film recommendation the 1968 The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, which sounds wayward if somewhat lacking in high speed car chases.
The book is broadly a chronological biography, though the middle chapters tend to broaden out to consider Bach's music more generally.
A point that Geck makes is that it is difficult, maybe even pointless, to date Bach's compositions since he reworked them as needed to suit the different musicians available to play pieces.
It's not too musically technical which is an advantage for a musical illiterate like myself and I do wonder if I would be able to cope with a longer study of Bach on that score. But it does leave me with new questions that presumably only a longer biography will have the space to potentially address.
For instance Bach is described as somebody making his own musical path yet the book makes clear he was drawing upon and incorporating the music of others into his own style. On the other hand I suppose the disappearance of many of his works from the repertoire suggests that despite teaching, publishing and producing various musically talented sons he didn't produce anything like a school or a distinct musical tradition.
I should have liked to read more about the works he had published in his life time - what impact did this have, what was the music publishing world like? Or the spread of musical reputations - why was it that the City Council of Leipzig thought that Bach was a second rate candidate for the St. Thomas' job? What did they want? But there's a limit to what can be squeezed into a short book.
There's a nice sense of how luck shaped the works that he composed. Had he got the job in Hamburg or a position in Dresden his opus would have been more operatic. It's not the composer as a genius driven by their creativity but the craftsman working within the requirements of his employers.
Of course even the freedom to be a craftsman was something to be treasured. The response of the Duke of Weimar to Bach's resignation in order to take up the post of Kapellmeister at Koethen was to have him imprisoned for just over a month.
This is not a book of Bach legends. It strives to be factual. There is no story of Bach feasting on abandoned herrings on his long journey to Lueneburg. We are reminded that the Bach Haus in Eisenach was not the house that Bach was born and grew up in (there's a plaque by the door now explaining that it is only the house in which for many years it was believed that Bach lived in). There's a fair attempt to balance and discuss sources.
Bach remains always an elusive figure, concrete and insubstantial. We can see his wine bills but can make inferences about his personal life or his music. In the end we are left with the words of his son W.F. Bach "Mein Vater war kein Narr" - my father was no fool. The work has meaning, however obscure.
October 29, 2018
"[...] a modern composer who wanted to explore the realm of music in every direction must make his own laws and be ready, instead of using the simple numerical series denoting the oscillating relationships of the overtone series 1:2:3:4:5, and so on, to turn to the irrational number √2 in order to divide the octave, with strict rationality, into 12 equal but no longer 'natural' semitones."
This year we are celebrating the 333rd anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. As a matter of fact, when I was reading Martin Geck's book Bach it has been almost exactly 333.33 years since the most eminent composer of all times was born. Exactly a third of a millennium! Bach's music today is as relevant and as contemporary as it was 300 years ago. To me, a quasi-mathematician, the timeless nature of Bach's music, the fact that it always sounds fresh and not dated, is the result of it having deep mathematical structure. Bach's music transcends the conventions of the times when it was written and - again, to me - is abstract rather than figurative. Exactly like mathematics, which abstracts from limitations imposed by the real world.
Geck's book is a rather standard-style biography: it outlines the major events in Bach's life and intersperses the chronology with analysis of the music composed in the corresponding periods. The biography's volume is very modest, just about 170 pages, including various appendices, yet readers unfamiliar with Bach's life will learn a lot from it. We read about the composer's schooling, his first professional post in the Neukirche in Arnstadt, and the following sequence of gradually more important and prestigious jobs - court organist and Konzertmeister in Weimar, Kapellmeister and Director of Chamber Music on Prince Leopold's court in Köthen, and Kantor at St Thomas's in Leipzig.
The reader may be amused by tidbits about Bach's presumed insubordination "at the office": one time he was reprimanded for playing too long, the other for overstaying his leave. In Weimar he was in fact confined to detention "for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal." I found the syllabus of his prima class in Lüneburg the most interesting: the boy had to study: Latin grammar, theology, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, and versification. No wonder the students were better educated in 1700 than in today's high schools.
As a total layperson in music I will not attempt to analyze the author's discussion of various compositions by J.S. Bach but it certainly felt great to read about some of my most beloved music like Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (to me some of the most "abstract", in mathematical sense, art ever created), preludes and fugues from Well-Tempered Clavier, violin concertos, and both Passions (St Matthew and St John).
I actively disliked the author's commentary to his own text, where - instead of traditional footnotes - he uses text boxes, which the publisher printed in annoying red. The inserts break continuity of the text and often obscure the main points. Not to mention that two of the inserts were misplaced (not the author's fault, I suppose).
Three stars.
This year we are celebrating the 333rd anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. As a matter of fact, when I was reading Martin Geck's book Bach it has been almost exactly 333.33 years since the most eminent composer of all times was born. Exactly a third of a millennium! Bach's music today is as relevant and as contemporary as it was 300 years ago. To me, a quasi-mathematician, the timeless nature of Bach's music, the fact that it always sounds fresh and not dated, is the result of it having deep mathematical structure. Bach's music transcends the conventions of the times when it was written and - again, to me - is abstract rather than figurative. Exactly like mathematics, which abstracts from limitations imposed by the real world.
Geck's book is a rather standard-style biography: it outlines the major events in Bach's life and intersperses the chronology with analysis of the music composed in the corresponding periods. The biography's volume is very modest, just about 170 pages, including various appendices, yet readers unfamiliar with Bach's life will learn a lot from it. We read about the composer's schooling, his first professional post in the Neukirche in Arnstadt, and the following sequence of gradually more important and prestigious jobs - court organist and Konzertmeister in Weimar, Kapellmeister and Director of Chamber Music on Prince Leopold's court in Köthen, and Kantor at St Thomas's in Leipzig.
The reader may be amused by tidbits about Bach's presumed insubordination "at the office": one time he was reprimanded for playing too long, the other for overstaying his leave. In Weimar he was in fact confined to detention "for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal." I found the syllabus of his prima class in Lüneburg the most interesting: the boy had to study: Latin grammar, theology, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, and versification. No wonder the students were better educated in 1700 than in today's high schools.
As a total layperson in music I will not attempt to analyze the author's discussion of various compositions by J.S. Bach but it certainly felt great to read about some of my most beloved music like Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (to me some of the most "abstract", in mathematical sense, art ever created), preludes and fugues from Well-Tempered Clavier, violin concertos, and both Passions (St Matthew and St John).
I actively disliked the author's commentary to his own text, where - instead of traditional footnotes - he uses text boxes, which the publisher printed in annoying red. The inserts break continuity of the text and often obscure the main points. Not to mention that two of the inserts were misplaced (not the author's fault, I suppose).
Three stars.
May 4, 2012
A great overview of a musical genius and perhaps my greatest musical hero. Very well written.
August 10, 2018
This was okay. Very succinct and obviously by someone very familiar with German sources and music theory. Unfortunately succinctness + familiarity = high expectations that the reader understands all kinds of background, especially in terms of German regional music history, etc. etc. I don't. I have an 'I played an instrument in school and sing in the choir' background. It really wasn't enough at times.
Still, Bach was a fascinating figure, a man completely in control of his music and fascinated by the editorial ability to rework themes. Despite this, I don't get the feeling that the author loves Bach. Bach is the cranky perfectionist uncle who is very good at his job, not necessarily beloved or emotionally striking.
Still, Bach was a fascinating figure, a man completely in control of his music and fascinated by the editorial ability to rework themes. Despite this, I don't get the feeling that the author loves Bach. Bach is the cranky perfectionist uncle who is very good at his job, not necessarily beloved or emotionally striking.
April 24, 2024
Ein sehr interessanter Überblick über das Leben von Bach. Er hatte viele Interessante Stationen in seinem Leben und auch manche Kontroverse.
January 30, 2019
The narrative sections are good, but the format of the book could have been better. The inserts interrupted the flow of the book. I also found the musical analyses to be a bit much.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews