The True Life Of Johann Sebastian Bach

The True Life Of Johann Sebastian Bach

In this new biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, Klaus Eidam brings the icon of Baroque music into focus as never before.Amazon.com ReviewThis engagingly eccentric biography by German playwright and television scriptwriter Klaus Eidam performs the valuable service of knocking off the dust accumulated around Bach (1685-1750) by generations of writers more concerned with their own musical, religious, or political theories than the particulars of the composer's life. Eidam has as little use for Marxist scholars declaring Bach "the musician of the Enlightenment" as he does for their precursors who declared the composer to be so devout that he viewed his art only as a means to praise God. His aim is to restore Bach to the general public as a musician first and foremost, well versed in the techniques and instruments of his day, deeply immersed in his artistic goals. To this end, Eidam spends a good deal of time quarreling with previous biographers about everything from whether or not Bach's second marriage was a love match to the precise circumstances under which he departed his post at Weimar. Although it's accessibly written and thorough, this is not really the book for readers seeking a recital of the accepted facts about Bach's life. Biography connoisseurs, however, will relish Eidam's marvelous bluntness, as when he comments of an alleged Bach authority's ideas, "Such claims provoke me to so much head-shaking they make me suspect I suffer from Parkinson's disease," and his valuable reality checks on predecessors' insufficiently documented speculations. (Translator Hoyt Rogers has maintained the author's contentious tone in English.) Locating Bach firmly in the context of the gritty intrigues by which composers got and kept musical positions in 18th-century Germany, Eidam also manages to convey appreciation for his timeless genius. --Wendy SmithFrom Publishers WeeklyMunich-based TV documentary scriptwriter Eidam offers a new interpretation of the great organist and composer, Bach. His writing can be clunky, such as when he refers to his own change of interest: "I had long since distanced myself from the organ as thoroughly as Offenbach had distanced himself from the synagogue." Such pretentious stretches aside, this new book provides a plainspoken reexamination of basic conditions of the composer' s life. Eidam reminds readers repeatedly that Bach, considered today to be a divinely inspired and peerless composer, did not make enough money to pay for his own gravestone. Treated as a lackey by noble employers, Bach was also saddled with lazy and inept musicians who were uninterested in his perfectionist goals: he got into a street brawl with one whom he termed "a prick bassoonist." As an organist, Eidam offers a particularly interesting account of Bach's most famous organ work, the mighty Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, pointing out that it was most likely written for an organ inspection, which explains the work's great instrumental range, and how the very title of the piece is a misnomer, "since the fugue is seamlessly integrated with the toccata." He also praises Bach for controlling his anger on many occasions, while other biographers have found the composer too hot-tempered. A provocative, if sometimes flawed, alternative to standard studies by scholars like Malcolm Boyd and John Butt.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorKlaus Eidam has written TV plays about Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Weber and is the author of a four-part Bach TV series that has been broadcast in forty countries.Hoyt Rogers translations from the French, German, and Spanish have appeared in numerous periodicals.