Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach - Softcover

Gardiner, John Eliot

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141977590 ISBN 13: 9780141977591

Publisher: Penguin, 2014

Synopsis

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?

In this remarkable book, John Eliot Gardiner distils the fruits of a lifetime's immersion as one of Bach's greatest living interpreters. Explaining in wonderful detail how Bach worked and how his music achieves its effects, he also takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.

About this title

Review:

Gardiner has joined the select ranks of luminary musicians articulating their experience, with this long, sumptuously illustrated survey of Bach's life and times. The result is dazzling (Iain Burnside Observer)

There could be no better-qualified guide to the mysteries behind Bach's music than the conductor who has breathed new life into its performance . . . As an exploration of Bach's labyrinthine thought-processes, and as an analysis of his music's overwhelming power, this book will now be required reading . . . for listeners and performers alike (Michael Church Independent)

Gardiner weaves industrial-strength scholarship, musical analysis and performing insight into a highly readable narrative ... extraordinary (Richard Morrison The Times)

From the Back Cover:

'John Eliot Gardiner's book is, apart from anything else, a tremendous feat of narrative: he has the rare gift of always putting the camera in the right place. He tells this long and richly involved story in a way that makes everything clear, and sets the life and the music in a historical perspective where every detail is relevant and every comment illuminating. Simply as a biography this is splendid, but the fact that it comes with such a wealth of musical understanding and experience makes it invaluable. I learned an enormous amount, and I know I'll return to it again and again' - Philip Pullman

'How typical of John Eliot Gardiner to combine such great erudition with equal passion and enthusiasm. His book made me want to rush and listen to all the music he writes about, whether familiar or unfamiliar. A wonderful treasure chest' - Sir Simon Rattle

'There is something awesome about John Eliot Gardiner's achievement in this book: the interpretation of what to most of us can appear a great and mysterious force by a man whose entire life has prepared him for the task. Stunning' - Tom Holland

'A most impressive book. Not only does it contain an accessible guide to many of the major works of JS Bach, it also presents a well-considered portrait of the composer and his creative character. John Eliot Gardiner's observations from his own experience in conducting Bach's music give a convincing and authentic authority to his writing. It draws on all the most recent research on Bach, and remarkably presents much new material. This book is going to be as indispensible to Bach scholars as it is to general readers' - John Butt

'Music in the Castle of Heaven is a unique portrait of one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time by one of the greatest musical geniuses of our own age. John Eliot Gardiner uses his extraordinary immersion in Bach's music to illuminate Bach the man more brilliantly than in any previous work, and has created his own deeply moving work of art' - Amanda Foreman

'A superb achievement, scholarly, lively, controversial and judicious. Like all great biographies of creative artists it builds a bridge from the past to the present and brings the work to new life' - Ian Bostridge

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0141977590
• ISBN 13: 9780141977591
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672