Johann Sebastian Bach/Bibliography

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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.

• Wolff C, Johann Sebastian Bach: the learned musician, New York, Norton, 2001 (ISBN 0-393-32256-4)

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

• Rasmussen, Michelle (August, 2001) "Bach, Mozart, and the 'Musical Midwife'", The New Federalist
• Hofstadter D, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid

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.