With the 21st century audience in mind, the scholarship in this book focuses on how Johann Sebastian Bach used his compositional creativity to interpret the message of the Johannine passion narrative from a Lutheran perspective. The book begins by introducing St. John Passion in terms of its ongoing importance and relevance by providing a brief historical context as well as exploring its enduring legacy. It provides an update on important points of biblical and theological scholarship for the libretto itself. The book then focuses on the performance history of the work, featuring fresh translations of the libretto along with musical and theological commentary for each of the forty movements and highlighting Bach’s compositional creativity. The book also deals with important questions regarding the Gospel of John, Martin Luther’s theology, and questions about anti-Judaism and antisemitism in the libretto.

In this companion volume to Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Christoph Wolff contextualises his famous subject by delving deeply into the composer's rich collection of music. Emerging from this complex and massive oeuvre, Bach's Musical Universe is a focused discussion of a meaningful selection of compositions. Unlike any previous study, this book details Bach's creative process across the various instrumental and vocal genres, and centres on what the composer himself judiciously presented in carefully designed benchmark collections and individual works-all consequential to Bach's musical art. Tracing Bach's evolution as a composer, Wolff compellingly illuminates the ideals and legacy of this giant of classical music in a new, refreshing light for everyone, from the amateur to the virtuoso.

Glücklich am kaiserlichen Hof und mit neuen Plänen. Der renommierte Mozartforscher Christoph Wolff verwirft das weit verbreitete Bild von Mozarts letzten Lebensjahren voller Finanzsorgen und Todesahnungen. vor der Pforte meines Glückes , schrieb Mozart in einem Brief von 1790, zwei Jahre nach seiner Ernennung zum Komponisten der kaiserlich-königlichen Kammermusik . Aus dieser Sicht heraus, beginnend mit den drei Sinfonien des Sommers 1788, zeigt Wolff in Mozarts Werken und Fragmenten neue Ansätze und schlägt einen neuen Blick auf den Komponisten vor.

This Catalogue provides scholars and performers with a survey of the breadth and variety of the repertoire of the composer whom Christoph Wolff describes as "one of the most seminal and influential musicians of the pre-Bach generation in Germany." Pachelbel composed the majority of his 527 works for keyboard instruments, as well as choral, vocal, and chamber music. The Catalogue presents incipits for each that can be identified. The list of works is intended to determine the totality of the corpus and knowledge about it, to determine the best means of identifying each work, and to settle problems of identity among similarly titled works. An essay on authorities examines the controversies of authenticity of Pachelbel manuscripts. Liberally footnoted and meticulously compiled, the Catalogue is invaluable to those familiar with Pachelbel's compositions and will create new interest.

Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

A landmark biography of Bach on the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, written by the leading Bach scholar of our age.

Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography. 42 b/w illustrations.

"A monumental work that must find its way into the library of every musician and every dedicated lover of music."—Isaac Stern

"It's unlikely that anyone will fashion a finer tribute to [Bach's] genius."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A magisterial biographical portrait...necessarily learned, but also user-friendly, helpful and entertainingly informative."—Chicago Tribune

"Likely to be the standard one-volume Bach biography for some time to come."—New York Review of Books

"A work of clarity worthy of its subject and his music."—Wall Street Journal

"Undoubtedly the most important Bach biography since Phillipp Spitta's life written over a century ago."—The New Republic

Through hundreds of letters, family papers, anecdotes, and records, the Bach Reader established a new approach to biography by offering original documents in impeccable translations. In The New Bach Reader, Christoph Wolff has incorporated numerous facsimiles and added many newly discovered items, reflecting the current state of scholarship about the composer's life and music. The readings in this volume provide an accurate and vivid picture of Bach's world and of his far-reaching influence.

"I now stand at the gateway to my fortune," Mozart wrote in a letter of 1790. He had entered into the service of Emperor Joseph II of Austria two years earlier as Imperial-Royal Chamber Composer a salaried appointment with a distinguished title and few obligations. His extraordinary subsequent output, beginning with the three final great symphonies from the summer of 1788, invites a reassessment of this entire period of his life. Readers will gain a new appreciation and understanding of the composer's works from that time without the usual emphasis on his imminent death. The author discusses the major biographical and musical implications of the royal appointment and explores Mozart's "imperial style" on the basis of his major compositions keyboard, chamber, orchestral, operatic, and sacred and focuses on the large, unfamiliar works he left incomplete. This new perspective points to an energetic, fresh beginning for the composer and a promising creative and financial future."

Essays dealing with the controversial concept of the "work", and how far social and cultural practices are integral to it. The linking theme of the essays collected here is the intersection of musical work with social and cultural practice. Inspired by Professor Strohm's ideas, as is fitting in a volume in his honour, leading scholars in the field explore diverse conceptualizations of the "work" within the contexts of a specific repertory, over four main sections. Music in Theory and Practice studies the link between treatises and musical practice, and analyses how historicalwritings can reveal period views on the "work" in music before 1800. Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies looks at the social and cultural practices informing composition from the late Renaissance until the mid-eighteenth century, and interrogates current notions of canon formation and the exchange between local and foreign traditions. Creating an Opera Industry focuses on how genre and artistic autonomy were defined in operas from diverse eras and countries, explaining the role of literature and politics in this process. Finally, The Crisis of Modernity treats nineteenth-century music, offering new models for "work" and "context" to challenge reigning theories of the meaning of these terms. CONTRIBUTORS: AMNON SHILOAH, ANNA MARIA BUSSE BERGER, MARGARET BENT, EDWARD WICKHAM, BONNIE J. BLACKBURN, DAVID BRYANT, ELENA QUARANTA, OWEN REES, ALINA ZORAWSKA-WITKOWSKA, ELLEN T. HARRIS, CHRISTOPH WOLFF, NORBERT DUBOWY, MICHAEL TALBOT, MELANIA BUCCIARELLI, FRANCESCA MENCHELLI-BUTTINI, BERTA JONCUS, MICHEL NOIRAY, MICHAEL FEND, EMANUELE SENICI, FEDERICO CELESTINI, PAMELA POTTER, GIOVANNI MORELLI, JANET SMITH

Although we have heard of the music of J.S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. Written to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author and Bach scholar, Christoph Wolff presents a picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences.

Was bleibt? Johann Sebastian Bach gestaltete und verfeinerte sein reiches musikalisches Erbe sehr bewusst: UEber Jahrzehnte hinweg trug er sorgfaltig angelegte Sammlungen, Originaldrucke und reinschriftliche Partituren zusammen, mit denen er Massstabe setzen und der Nachwelt im Gedachtnis bleiben wollte - wie eine musikalische Autobiografie. Christoph Wolff portratiert in seinem neuen Buch anhand dieser Referenzwerke Bachs bahnbrechende kunstlerische Leistungen quer durch die verschiedenen Gattungen der Instrumental- und Vokalmusik: Praludien, Fugen und Orgelchorale, Suiten, Sonaten und Konzerte sowie Kantaten, Passionen, Oratorien und Messen. Auf dieser imponierenden Strecke trieb Bach mit seiner musikalischen Logik und ausdrucksvollen Tonsprache die Kompositionsgeschichte voran.

Mozart's unfinished Requiem has long been shrouded in mystery. Mozart undertook the commission for an Austrian nobleman, little knowing that he was to write a requiem for himself. Inevitably, the secrecy surrounding the anonymous commission, the circumstances of Mozart's death, the unfinished state of the work, and its completion under the direction of Mozart's widow, Constanze, have precipitated two centuries of romantic speculation and scholarly controversy.
Christoph Wolff provides a critical introduction to the Requiem in its many facets. Part I of his study focuses on the tangled genesis and completion of the work and its fascinating early reception history until Constanze's death. Wolff summarizes the current state of research on the subject, provides new perspectives on Mozart's conception of the whole work, and surveys his contributions to the movements composed posthumously by his assistant, Sussmayr. Part II provides a musical analysis of Mozart's composition, including contextual, structural, and interpretive aspects. Part III consists of an annotated collection of the principal literary documents (1791-1839) that illuminate the fascinating early history of the Requiem.
The book concludes with a complete edition of the work that is at the center of Wolff's study, the authentic score of the Requiem--Mozart's fragment--supplemented by crucial excerpts from Sussmayr's 1792 Requiem completion.

Schoenberg's quartets and trio, composed over a nearly forty-year period, occupy a central position among twentieth-century chamber music. This volume, based on papers presented at a conference in honor of David Lewin, collects a wide range of approaches to Schoenberg's pieces.

The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern's reception of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Schoenberg's view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg's First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg's quartets and trio.

The forced migration of artists and scholars from Nazi Germany is a compelling and often wrenching story. The story is twofold, of impoverishment for the countries the musicians left behind and enrichment for the United States. The latter is the focus of this eminent collection, which approaches the subject from diverse perspectives, including documentary-style newspaper accounts and an exploration of Walt Whitman's poetry in the work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.
The flood of musical migration from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1944 had a lasting impact. Hundreds of musicians and musicologists came to the United States and remained here, and the shaping power of their talents is incalculable. Several essays provide firsthand insights into aspects of American cultural history to which these emigres made essential contributions as conductors, professors, and composers; other essays tell of the traumatic experience of being exiled and the difficulties of finding one's way in a foreign country. While the migration infused the U.S. with a distinctly European musical awareness, at the same time the status and authority of its participants tended to intervene in the development of a genuinely American cultural voice. The story of the unprecedented migration that resulted from Nazism has many dimensions, and "Driven Into Paradise" illuminates them in deeply human terms.

Such questions concern the role of the cantatas in Bach's compositional development, musical models for the works, and performance practice during the composer's lifetime. In this book, Bach scholars place the works in their historical and biographical context, guiding the reader through their literary, musical, aesthetic and theological features. This volume--the first of three which complement a recording project by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and incorporating the complete Bach cantatas--covers the sacred cantatas he wrote during the first 28 years of his life, before his move to Leipzig in 1723.

The official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. In Volume 10 of the series, Matthew Dirst edits a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring various aspects of Bach's organ-related activities. Lynn Edwards Butler reconsiders Bach's report on Johann Scheibe's organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig. Robin Leaver clarifies the likely provenance and purpose of a collection of chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden. George Stauffer investigates the ways various independent trio movements served Bach as an artist and teacher. In separate contributions, Christoph Wolff and Gregory Butler seek the origins of concerted Bach cantata movements spotlighting the organ and propose family trees of both parent works and offspring. Finally, Matthew Cron provides a broad cultural frame for such pieces and notes how their components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ's intimation of heaven.

As the official publication of the American Bach Society, Bach Perspectives has pioneered new areas of research in the life, times, and music of Bach since its first appearance in 1995. Volume 8 of Bach Perspectives emphasizes the place of Bach's oratorios in their repertorial context. These essays consider Bach's oratorios from a variety of perspectives: in relation to models, antecedents, and contemporary trends; from the point of view of musical and textual types; and from analytical vantage points including links with instrumental music and theology. Christoph Wolff suggests the possibility that Bach's three festive works for Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Day form a coherent group linked by liturgy, chronology, and genre. Daniel R. Melamed considers the many ways in which Bach's passion music was influenced by the famous poetic passion of Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Markus Rathey examines the construction and role of oratorio movements that combine chorales and poetic texts (chorale tropes). Kerala Snyder shows the connections between Bach's Christmas Oratorio and one of its models, Buxtehude's Abendmusiken spread over many evenings. Laurence Dreyfus argues that Bach thought instrumentally in the composition of his passions at the expense of certain aspects of the text. And Eric Chafe demonstrates the contemporary theological background of Bach's Ascension Oratorio and its musical realization

In Bach in America, volume 5 of Bach Perspectives, nine scholars track Johann Sebastian Bach's reputation in America from an artist of relative obscurity to a cultural mainstay whose music has spread to all parts of the population, inspired a wealth of scholarship, captivated listeners, and inspired musicians.

More than a hundred years passed after Bach's death in 1750 before his music began to be known and appreciated in the United States. Barbara Owen surveys Bach's early reception in America and Matthew Dirst focuses on John Sullivan Dwight's role in advocating Bach's work. Michael Broyles considers the ways Bach's music came to be known in Boston and Mary J. Greer offers a counterpoint in her study of Bach's reception in New York.

The volume continues with Hans-Joachim Schulze's essay linking the American descendants of August Reinhold Bach to J. S. Bach through a common sixteenth-century ancestor. Christoph Wolff focuses on Bach's descendants in America, particularly Friederica Sophia Bach, the daughter of Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Peter Wollny evaluates several manuscripts not included in Gerhard Herz's study of Bach Sources in America. The book concludes with examinations of Bach's considerable influence on American composers. Carol K. Baron compares the music of Bach and Charles Ives and Stephen A. Crist measures Bach's influence on the jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck.

Step into the classroom with Christoph Wolff

Johann Sebastian Bach holds a singular position in the history of music. A uniquely gifted musician, he combined outstanding performing virtuosity with supreme creative powers and remarkable intellectual discipline. More than two centuries after his lifetime, Bach's work continues to set musical standards.

The noted Bach scholar Christoph Wolff offers in this book new perspectives on the composer's life and remarkable career. Uncovering important historical evidence, the author demonstrates significant influences on Bach's artistic development and brings fresh insight on his work habits, compositional intent, and the musical traditions that shaped Bach's thought. Wolff reveals a composer devoted to an ambitious and highly individual creative approach, one characterized by constant self-criticism and self-challenge, the absorption of new skills and techniques, and the rethinking of riches from the musical past.

Readers will find illuminating analyses of some of Bach's greatest music, including the B Minor Mass, important cantatas, keyboard and chamber compositions, the Musical Offering, and the Art of Fugue. Discussion of how these pieces "work" will be helpful to performers--singers, players, conductors--and to everyone interested in exploring the conceptual and contextual aspects of Bach's music. All readers will find especially interesting those essays in which Wolff elaborates on his celebrated discoveries of previously unknown works: notably the fourteen "Goldberg" canons and a collection of thirty-three chorale preludes.

Representing twenty-five years of scholarship, these essays--half of which appear here in English forthe first time--have established Christoph Wolff as one of the world's preeminent authorities on J. S. Bach. All students, performers, and lovers of Bach's music will find this an engaging and enlightening book.