Bach Books
Bach Biographies

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Bach's World: Pictorial Biographies, Other Studies

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 15, 2022):
Various Bach biographical books using the term "Bach's World" have been published since the Bach scholarly revival began in the 1950s with the publication of the Neue Bach Ausgabe Bach works second edition and the vocal works dating of Alfred Dürr (Wikipedia) and Georg von Dadelsen (Wikipedia), providing a range of contrasting perspectives. These books include a biographical study with pictorial materials, topical illustrations of key Bach life encounters, Bach's cantorate in Leipzig, a contextual pluralistic illustrated view, the communities where Bach lived or visited, and a historically-informed musical universe. And this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The term "Bach's World" has generated interactive websites and concert seasons emphasizing the proliferation of Bach memorabilia such as documentary visuals, personal writings, and fictional narratives as well as learned studies accompanying performances with an emerging interest in pre-Bachian influences and his engagement in the realm of his musical colleagues. No other composer has achieved a plethora of worldly insights beyond his "world" to package recordings and books while there are the imaginary commercial films of several Johann Strauss movies (Google Search Reults, Franz Liszt's Song Without End, Mozart's Vienna in Peter Shaffer's quasi-fictional Amadeus, Beethoven's imagined Immortal Beloved, Richard Burton's Wagner, and Ken Russell's psychedelic Mahler.

Two Early Pictorial, Interpretive Biographies

A historical summary of profile books with the term "Bach's World" begins with two near-mid 20th century monographs creating treasuries of Bach pictorial representations and source-critical materials. Werner Neumann's Bach and His World ¹ appears to be the first comprehensive account of Bach's life through pictorial representations (with extensive text!). Prolific writer and founder of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig and the Neue Bach Ausgabe in 1950, Neumann originally published this in 1951 as "Bach - eine Bildbiographie" (Munich: Kindler-Verlag) and Bach: A Pictorial Biography (London: Thames and Hudson) and published his revised edition in 1970. In 1979, Bärenreiter published as Bach-Dokumente, Vol. 4, Neumann's Bilddokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs.^1a This Bach iconography uses a wealth of authentic historical drawings, portraits, engravings, photographs, facsimiles, documents, manuscripts, and handwriting to record every stage of Bach's career, showing his abundant, varied musical life of determinant conditions and circumstances. Future Bach's World editions would selectively use these and other visual resources such as sketches, illustrations, and maps to tell specific, thematic narratives. The pioneering pictorial (black and white) effort was Charles S. Terry's Bach, a Biography, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), with the back section devoted to 73 mostly photographs of Bach homes, churches, communities, and organs (taken by Terry himself), with selective portraits, drawings, and illustrations. The other early monograph is Jan Chiapusso's pioneering 1968 Bach's World,² with 11 key illustrations, supporting a biographical portrait of Bach's homeland with studies of Bach influences from culture, education, theology, philosophers and writers, literature and science against the backdrop of Bach's static, traditional worldview. What a refreshing breath of air in the midst of Bach early musical-biographical publications that blend narrative with music yet with scant pictorial resources. Although historical musicology is yielding important insight into these influences, Chiapusso's book remains a neglected model for thought-provoking, challenging, satisfying reading.

Topics & Graphics, Bach's Leipzig

Interestingly, while the Bach 1985 tricentenary generated considerable "complete" Bach recordings, biographies, and essays, publications that examine Bach's World took a back (?rumble) seat until near the turn of the century when Bach scholars began to consider a contemporary, 21st century perspective on him following two centuries of national-romantic (re)vival in the concert hall and publication, followed by the convergence of the baroque music revival, the ascendence of academia, and electronic multi-media. Another interesting and neglected study is Otto L. Bettmann's 1995 Johann Sebastian Bach: As His World Knew Him,³ a skillful, complementary blend of two formats of an alphabetical compendium of 83 one-page topical and biographical entries from Abendmusik to Daughters to Zeitgeist, with pertinent accompanying graphics from his archive. Bettmann also reveals, as Chiapusso did, a wealth of Bachiana, here from trivial to significant, with little to excite the Bach scholar but much to stir the Bach enthusiasts of a new generation. A decade later came a most-welcomed scholarly study filling major gaps, Carol K. Baron's 2006 Bach's Changing Word: Voices in the [Leipzig] Community,⁴ following the significant city studies of Friedrich Smend's 1985 Bach in Köthen and Günther Stiller's 1984 Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig (both St. Louis MO: Concordia). Baron is the editor of the essays and provides two of her own, Chapter 1 (1-34), "Transitions, Transformations, Reversals: Rethinking Bach’s World," and Chapter 2 (35-85), "Tumultuous Philosophers, Pious Rebels, Revolutionary Teachers, Pedantic Clerics, Vengeful Bureaucrats, Threatened Tyrants, Worldly Mystics: The Religious World Bach Inherited." She also introduced the 1710 document of Johann Kuhnau's "A Treatise on Liturgical Text Settings" (299-226). The other essays are cited in Footnote 4. Other monographs on Bach's Leipzig were published subsequently.⁵

Bach's Contextual Worlds, Communities

Two recent publications cover the context for Bach and Bach in context while the other covers the communities where Bach lived or visited, both filling major gaps in Bach research. Raymond Erickson edited 11 extended, contextual essays of various noted Bach scholars with illustrations in The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach. <<Erickson's carefully edited work on Bach brings to light further discoveries about one of Western music's most central figures. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, increasing amounts of scholarship have been undertaken regarding Bach's personal and family life. Information and images not seen even as recently as 2000 are included in this volume, as well as an exploration of the composer's social, political, and artistic environment. [Erickson begins with his Introduction: "The Legacies of J. S. Bach" (1-64, Google Books).] Following scholars of religion (Robin A. Leaver, Robert L. Marshall), architecture (Christian F. Otto), literature (Stephen Rose), theatre (Simon Williams), and other fields of study (dance, Meredith Little; Bach and the big city [Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden], George B. Stauffer, Bach in Leipzig, Christoph Wolff offer reflections on how these disciplines relate to Bach's environs. A final essay, Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Afterward: Bach in the Early Twenty-First Century," looks at the challenges and limitations of modern research on the composer>> (source, CUNY Graduate Center). At the coming biennial conference of the American Bach Society (ABS on "Bach and Authority," October 8, Erickson will present a paper, "Bach and the False Authority of Tradition: The Case of the Violin Ciaccona BWV 1004/5," which dispels the 1th century romantic notion of tragedy associated wit this dance work (American Bach Sonciety: Meetings 2022). Another monograph also fills a major, topical gap in Bach research, Robert L. Marshall & Traute M. Marshall, Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide,⁷ commissioned by the ABS. Inside cover flap: "This singular resource puts Bach aficionados and classical music lovers in the shoes of the master composer. Bach scholar Robert L. Marshall and veteran writer-translator Traute M. Marshall lead readers on a Baroque Era odyssey through fifty towns where Bach resided, visited, and of course created his works. Drawing on established sources as well as newly available East German archives, the authors describe each site in Bach's time and the present, linking the sites to the biographical information, artistic and historic landmarks, and musical activities associated with each. A wealth of historical illustrations, color photographs, and maps supplement the text, whetting the appetite of the visitor and the armchair traveler alike."

Christoph Wolff: 3 Pictorial Musical Books

The leading Bach authority, Christoph Wolff, has recently published three extensive monographs involving three musical books with insightful texts and extensive illustrations: 1. In the late 1990s, Wolff published the three-volume study, Die Welt der Bach-Kantaten,⁸ with only the first volume in English, The World of the Bach Cantatas: Early Sacred Cantatas, from Arnstadt to Cöthen time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995; Amazon.com). The essays by noted Bach scholars are divided into two sections: "The Composer in His World" history and "The Works and Their World" music (Bärenreiter: Inhalt). The publication accompanied Ton Koopman's Erato recordings of the sacred and secular cantatas in chronological order (BCW) with the three-volume Forewords by Koopman and Prefatory Notes of Wolff (source/details, BCW). 2. In 2017, Wolff published Bach: Eine Lebensgeschichte in Bildern⁹ (A life-story in pictures) as Bärenreiter Bach-Dokumente, Vol. 9. [Previously, in 1979 an earlier version, Werner Neumann's Bilddokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs (Bärenreiter) was published in the Bach Dokumente series (Bärenreiter) as Vol. 4.]. Wolff's Vol. 9 includes in Bach's life chronologically many of the pictorials previously found in Vol. 4, as well iconography recently found along with bilingual translations in English of Wolff, not found in previous Bach Dokumente texts, as well as the new BWV3 cataloguing. 3. Wolff expands Bach's World in his third recent publication, Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and his Work.¹⁰ It is another magisterial Bach book (all published by W. W. Norton), as well as the Bach biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, 2000 (Update 2013), and The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, 1999 (see Amazon.com: Christoph Wolff Bach Books). Bach's Musical Universe explores most of Bach's music as found in collections compiled chronologically by Bach and fully revealed from this perspective for the first time. The eight chapters with prologue and epilogue focus on the introductory "On the Primacy and Pervasiveness of Polyphony," Bach's compositional calling card; eight chapters on the music: 1. "Revealing the Narrative of a Musical Universe" (Works List 1750), 2. "Transformative Approaches to Composition and Performance" (Three Unique Keyboard Works), 3. "In Search of the Autonomous Instrumental Design" (Toccata, Suite, Sonata, Concerto), 4. "The Most Ambitious of All Projects" (sacred Chorale Cantata Cycle), 5. "Proclaiming the State of the Art in Keyboard Music" (Clavier-Übung, four published keyboard exercises), 6. "A Grand Liturgical Messiah Cycle" (oratorios: John, Matthew and Mark Passions; Christmas, Easter, Ascension), 7. "In Critical Survey and Review Mode" (Late Revisions, Transcriptions, Reworkings: "Great 18" and Six "Schübler" Chorales for Organ, Harpsichord Concertos, Kyrie-Gloria Masses, Well-Tempered Clavier Book II), and 8. "Instrumental and Vocal Polyphony at Its Peak" (Art of Fugue, Canons and Musical Offering, B-Minor Mass), and closing "Praxis cum theoria" (Maxim of the Learned Musician). About the only music lacking in Wolff's new Bach book are the organ works and various sacred and secular cantatas, motets, and individual instrumental works.

Other Bach's World Pictorial Books

Just published in a coffee-table format is Michael Maul's Bach: Eine Bildbiographie (Pictorial Biography).¹¹ with 141 current, bilingual (German-English), chronological essays, most dated and referring to significant works with appropriate illustrations or photographs. Contents are: Images of Bach, "Portraits in the 18th Century"; Issues of Bach Iconography: Origin: Eisenach-Ohrdruf-Lüneburg 1685-1702; Organist in Weimar-Arnstadt-Mühlhausen 1703-1708; Court Organist and Concertmaster in Weimar 1708-1717; Court Capellmeister in Köthen 1717-1723; Thomaskantor in Leipzig I, The 1720s, Masterpieces Every Week; Thomaskantor in Leipzig II, music director in many fields, 1729-1750; Leipzig; Afterward. Meanwhile, many Bach pictorial biographies were produced, beginning after Werner Neumann. Subsequently came several in color from a variety of sources, many as large, coffee table books. Bärenreiter in Kassel in 1977 published Johann Sebastian Bach: Life, Times, Influence.¹² It has three sections: "Central and Northern Germany at the Time of Bach, Bach's Life and Work, and Bach's influence on posterity, with a closing Index of Illustrations. The English version was published by Yale University Press of New Haven in 1985. It has a plethora of Bach portraits, illustrations, maps, engravings, book title pages, landscapes, portraits, churches, and sculpture. Hannsdieter Wohlfarth published Johann Sebastian Bach¹³ in two German and English small editions (1984/85), in Bach chronological order, with portraits, engravings, photographs and illustrations on Bach venues (48, Ibid.: 16-28, 52-64,82-88, 96-104). With an introduction by Alfred Dürr (German edition only), it covers Bach's social environment, life in cities, and cultural environment, and concluding with a chronological table and a welcomed Index of Illustrations. The Bach Tricentenary of 1985 yielded various pictorial books. Bach scholar Hans Conrad Fischer published Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life in Pictures and Documents.¹⁴ Contents are: Background and childhood, Youth and first year Muhlhausen, Weimar, Cothen, Bach becomes cantor of St. Thomas, Life in Leipzig, Bach's family, School and everyday life, Bach and the kings, Bach's service in the church, SDG: Soli Deo Gloria. It has some of the same pictorials as the Bärenreiter edition, as well as extensive drawings and illustrations, and was developed to accompany Hänssler's Helmut Riling Bachakademie edition of all Bach's music (Amazon.com) with a CD of extracts. Fischer also produced a Bach documentary (Virtuoso Channel). Subsequently, writer Tim Dowley published three versions of Bach pictorial books:¹⁵ Great Composers: Bach (1990), Bach: The Illustrated Lives of the GrComposers (2011), and New Illustrated Lives Of Great Composers: Bach (2014). The first edition of 95 pages featured considerable color portraits and photographs as well as illustrations. The next two, expanded editions had much more texts and chapters. In the 21st century, only a few commercial market pictorial Bach books have been published, replaced by scholarly publications (see above). Claudia Maria Knispel's Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben und Zeit im Bild ¹⁶ was published in 2001 by Bach publisher Laaber but appears to be out of print, with no details. Finally, about 2006, Detmar Huchting published Bach. Ein biografischer Bilderbogen. (A Biographical Kaleidoscope) with 4 music CDS in 114 pages (Hamburg: Edle Classics, 2006), Abe Books.

Postscript

A website about Bach, Bach on Bach, has a variety of media resources to explore the World of Bach (Bach on Bach). Two most impressive categories are Bach movies with many documentaries (Bach on Bach: Bach Movies), and Bach books in a variety of sub-categories (biography, travel guide, genealogy, novels); browse and enjoy.

END NOTES

¹ Werner Neumann, Bach and His World, rev. ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1970), with Neumann Postscript (Ibid.: 129), orig. trans, Stefan de Haan; Neumann biography, Wikipedia; Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliographie.
^1a Neumann's Bilddokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs (Sheet Music Plus); Bärenreiter Bach-Dokumente, Bärenreiter.
² Jan Chiapusso, Bach's World (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968), front flap, contents (Indiana University Press); Chiapusso biographies, Wikipedia, BCW.
³ Otto L. Bettmann's 1995 Johann Sebastian Bach: As His World Knew Him (New York: Carol Publishing, 1995), front flap, Good Reads); biography, Wikipedia.
⁴ Carol K. Baron's Bach's Changing Word: Voices in the Community (Rochester: Univ. of Rochester Press, 2006); contents Project Muse: 3. John Van Cleve, "Family Values and Dysfunctional Families: Home Life in the Moral Weeklies and Comedies of Bach’s Leipzig (86-107); 4. Joyce Irwin, "Bach in the Midst of Religious Transition" (108-126); 5. Ulrich Siegele, "Bach’s Situation in the Cultural Politics of Contemporary Leipzig" (127-173); 6. Tanya Kevorkian, "The Reception of the Cantata during Leipzig Church Services, 1700–1750" (174-189); 7. Katherine R. Goodman, "From Salon to Kaffeekranz: Gender Wars and the Coffee Cantata in Bach’s Leipzig" (190-218); 9. Gottfried Ephraim Scheibel Introduced and translated by Joyce Irwin, "Random Thoughts About Church Music in Our Day (1721) (227-250); review Academia.edu.
⁵ Bach Leipzig mongraphs: 1. Tanya Kavorkian, Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650–1750 (London: Routledge 2007, Amazon.com); 2. Jeffrey Sposato, Leipzig After Bach: Church and Concert Life in a German City (New York: Oxford Univ. Press 2018, Amazon.com); and 3. Michael Maul, Bach's Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212-1804, Eng. trans. Richard Howe (Woodbridge GB: Boydell Press, 2018, Amazon.com).
⁶ Raymond Erickson, The Worlds of Johann Sebastian Bach, Aston Magna Academy Book (New York: Amadeus Press, 2008; contents (Google Books); review (Academia.edu); Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliographie.
⁷ Robert L. Marshall & Traute M. Marshall, Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2016), Amazon.com; review, BCW.
⁸ Christoph Wolff, Die Welt der Bach-Kantaten (The World of the Bach Cantatas), the last two volumes only in German and Dutch (Stuttgart: Metzger: 1997) are: vol. 2, Johann Sebastian Bachs weltliche Kantaten (secular cantatas); and vol. 3, Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenkantaten (Leipzig church cantatas).
⁹ Christoph Wolff, Eine Lebensgeschichte in Bildern (Kassel: Bärenreiter 2017), Bärenreiter, Presto Music.
¹⁰ Christoph Wolff, Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and his Work ((New York: W. W. Norton, 2020), amazon.com; contents, Google Books; review, The Strad; critique, BCW; detailed contents, GBV|VZG: Table of Contents Wolff biography, Wikipedia; Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliographie.
¹¹ Michael Maul, Bach: Eine Bildbiographie (Pictorial Biography; Leipzig: Lehmstedt 2022, Amazon.de), insight, DW; review, Lehmstedt; Chinese edition, Bach Festival Malasya.
¹² Johann Sebastian Bach: Life, Times, Influence, eds. Barbara Schwendowius, Wolfgang Dömling German (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1977), English contents, translations (WorldCat Libraries).
¹³ Hannsdieter Wohlfarth, Johann Sebastian Bach German (Freiburg: Herder, 1984), and English trans. Albert L. Blackwell (Philadelphia: Fortress), 1985); description, Abe Books; contents, Digitale Objekte.
¹⁴ Hans Conrad Fischer, Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life in Pictures and Documents, Eng. trans. Silvia Lutz (Holzgerlin: Hänssler, 1985; redesigned ed. 2000); descriptions, Amazon.com, Internet Archive).
¹⁵ Tim Dowley, Bach Pictorial Books: 1. Great Composers: Bach (London: Chartwell Books, 1990, 95 pages), contents: Bach and the Bachs, Weimar and Cöthen, Leipzig, Final Years, Bach's Music; 2. Bach: The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers (London: Omnibus Press, 2011, 150 pages), Google Books; 3. New Illustrated Lives Of Great Composers: Bach (London: Omnibus Press, 2014, 144 pages), Amazon.com.
¹⁶ Claudia Maria Knispel, Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben und Zeit im Bild (Regensburg: Laaber, 2001), Amazon.de; Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliographie; contents, Digital Objeckte.

Aryeh Oron wrote (August 16, 2022):
[To William L. Hoffman] Thanks for your review of Bach's pictorial biographies.
Members of BML might find interest also in:
Sebastian - The animated series about the life of J.S. Bach:
https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Memo/Art-1978.htm
created and contributed by Peter Fielding.

Jeffrey Sollow wrote (August 16, 2022):
[To William L. Hoffman] Not a pictorial biography but related as it gives a sense of Bach's world is Andrew Talle's Beyond Bach.
Beyond Bach: Music and Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century – Illustrated, April 7, 2017
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.

This is from an Amazon review:

Beyond Bach is replete with fascinating stories of musical people who lived around Bach during his lifetime. For us looking backward, Bach is a musical mammoth of immense proportions, but Andrew Talle deftly illustrates how he was more musically mundane to many of the music lovers around him. He tells tales of musicians, of course, but also craftsmen, families, and lovers, clearly narrated as much for their emotional impact as their support for his thesis.

Talle is also brilliant at giving enough context to give the reader a better understanding of what might motivate his historical figures but not too much historical minutiae that might bog down his storytelling. He lithely gets the reader understanding and empathizing with his common folk protagonists, which makes his detailed narratives that much more gripping.

Interspersed among the stories, Talle does present an impressive amount of data, including tables of costs, inventories, and other things. As a non-musicologist, I must leave formal assessment of his academic thesis to other reviewers. I just loved reading the evidence!

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 16, 2022):
Here are many Bach children's books: Table Life Blog

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 16, 2022):
[To Jeffrey Sollow] Thank you for Andrew Talle's Book.

Marc Boss wrote (August 17, 2022):
Gilles Cantagrel French musicologist has writen around 10 books on Bach in French over 50 years, also teacher at the Paris conservatory and member of the NBG and Bach Archives’
His works should be mentioned

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 17, 2022):
[To Marc Boss] Here is Gilles Cantegrel's Bach Bibliography, Bach-Bibliographie. Another is Alberto Basso, Bach-Bibliographie, biography Wikipedia

S.K. Lewicki wrote (August 17, 2022):
Biography

Has anyone else seen this slim volume of sepia photos? I came across my secondhand copy 30 years ago.

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 16, 2022):
[To S.K. Lewicki] Richard Petzoldt published a whole series on many composers, Abe Books.

Jeffrey Sollow wrote (August 16, 2022):
[To S.K. Lewicki] Here is his Handel book on Amazon: Amazon.com