Johann Sebastian Bach/Bibliography

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A list of key readings about Johann Sebastian Bach.
Please sort and annotate in a user-friendly manner. For formatting, consider using automated reference wikification.

Modern scholarship

  • Butt J (ed), The Cambridge companion to Bach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997 (ISBN 0-521-58780-8)
A collection of writings on the historical context (society, beliefs and world view), profiles of his music, and influence and reception.
  • David HT, Mendel A (eds), revised and expanded by C Wolff, The new Bach reader, 2nd ed, New York, Norton, 1999 (ISBN 0-393-31956-3)
A significant repository of documentary evidence, including contemporary documents, some by Bach himself. This book includes an English translation of the biography of Bach, by the early 19th-century German musicologist Forkel.
A comprehensive and engaging account of Bach's life.
  • Williams P, The life of Bach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004 (ISBN 0-521-53374-0)
A shorter expose of the composer's life, using his obituary as the starting point; a valuable complement to Wolff's biography.
  • Stauffer G, J. S. Bach as organist: his instruments, music, and performance practices, Indiana University Press, 1999 (ISBN 0-253-21386-X) (paperback reprint of hardcover, 1986, ISBN 0-253-33181-1)
  • Boyd, Malcolm. Bach, Oxford University Press; 3rd ed. (2000) ISBN 0-19-514222-5
  • Wilhelm Otto Deutsch, Gesten der Annahme, der Verwandlung, der Verwandtschft: Ein Beitrag zur musikalischen Hermeneutik J. S. Bachs in der h-moll-Messe, MKirche lxii/6 (1992), 321-327. (article in German)

Earlier scholarship

  • Schweitzer A, J. S. Bach, 2 vol, Dover, 1966, translated by Ernest Newman (ISBN 0-486-21631-4) (reprint of New York, Macmillan, 1955-1958)
  • Spitta P, Johann Sebastian Bach, his work and influence on the music of Germany, 1685-1750, London, Novello, 1884-85
An early, groundbreaking, three-volume study of Bach's life and music.
  • Forkel, Johann Nicolaus; On Johann Sebastian Bach's Life, Genius, and Works, (1802), translated by A. C. F. Kollmann (1820)

Other reading

Explores cognition, formal methods, logic and mathematics—particularly Gödel's incompleteness theorem—in the music of Bach, the art of MC Escher and other sources.