Beyond Bach: Music and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century

by Andrew Talle

Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public. Eschewing the great composer style of music history, Andrew Talle takes us on a journey that looks at how ordinary people made music in Bach's Germany. Talle focuses in particular on the culture of keyboard playing as lived in public and private. As he ranges through a wealth of documents, instruments, diaries, account ledgers, and works of art, Talle brings a fascinating cast of characters to life. These individuals--amateur and professional performers, patrons, instrument builders, and listeners--inhabited a lost world, and Talle's deft expertise teases out the diverse roles music played in their lives and in their relationships with one another. At the same time, his nuanced re-creation of keyboard playing's social milieu illuminates the era's reception of Bach's immortal works.

Genres: Music

376 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2017

Reviews

[Richard Marney]

Andrew Talle’s Beyond Bach asks what music meant to the people who lived in Bach’s Germany.
Drawing on diaries, letters and accounts, he brings players, teachers, instrument makers and listeners into view.
The keyboard is his main thread, connecting music in the home with work, education and social standing.
One of the book’s pleasures is seeing how differently people heard the music we now regard as canonical.
Bach was admired, but his works could also seem difficult, while other composers appealed more readily.
Talle makes these lives vivid without losing the depth of his research.
The focus on keyboard culture gives the book coherence, though readers seeking a broad history of eighteenth-century music should bear that scope in mind.
It is a rewarding way to understand the world around Bach, and to hear his music in a less familiar setting.