The Cambridge Companion to Bach

by John Butt (Editor)

The Cambridge Companion to Bach goes beyond a basic life-and-works study to provide a late-twentieth-century perspective on J. S. Bach the man and composer. Benefiting from the insights and research of some of the most distinguished Bach scholars, this Companion covers cultural, social and religious contexts, surveys and analyzes Bach's compositional style, traces his influence, and considers the performance and reception of his music through the succeeding generations.

Genres: Music, Biography

344 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1997

About the author

John Butt is Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow and musical director of Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, he held the office of organ scholar at King’s College. Continuing as a graduate student working on the music of Bach he received his PhD in 1987. He was subsequently a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge, joining the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1989 as University Organist and Professor of Music.
In autumn 1997 he returned to Cambridge as a University Lecturer and Fellow of King’s College, and in October 2001 he took up his current post at Glasgow.

Reviews

[Richard Pohl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect supplement to Wolff books for any Bach researcher, I made a lot of use of this material in my lectures :) Parts dealing with the Lutheran teology and philosophical issues related to Bach were especially interesting, as well as an overview of Bachian composition method.

[Carlos]

How did the best musician in history emerge?

"Here we have a fact of great importance for the understanding of Bach’s early development as a composer: unlike his great contemporary G. F. Handel, he seems to have received no formal tuition in the rudiments of composition. His early compositions, most of which are for keyboard, had dual roots: in his own rapidly growing skill as an organist and harpsichordist (‘In a short time he had fully mastered all the pieces his brother had voluntarily given him to learn’ ); and in his ‘observation of the works of the most famous and proficient composers of his day and . . . the fruits of his own reflection upon them"