leventmolla 's review for:

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff

3.0

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This is a book by a Harvard Professor and it really shows, in the painstakingly described details of the effort to reconstruct Bach's life in many towns in Protestant Germany in the early 18th century. However, the book does not go into an analysis or evaluation of the genius of Bach in the music world except when it's trying to explain how or why he did or did not get a particular job in his career. It does not describe any details of his personal life or his character. This could of course be due to the fact that the man has not given away any hints in any correspondence and there is very little evidence survibing, except for church records describing official transactions or payments to him. This reduces the value of the book for me (as compared to something like "Gödel, Escher, Bach" which looks into the genius behind the man. Still mildly interesting in understanding the 18th century music establishment of Germanic city-states.