Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician Audiobook (Free)

Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, this landmark book was revised in 2013 to add new understanding discovered following its initial publication.

Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still results in just as an enigmatic figure in one familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s loss of life, writer Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that provides alive this towering amount of the Baroque period. This engaging brand-new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect individual that he was, while bringing to bear all of the advances from the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the close connection between your composer’s lifestyle and his music, displaying how Bach’s outstanding inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we observe Bach in the broader framework of his time: its establishments, traditions, and affects. With this highly readable reserve, Wolff sets a new regular for Bach biography.