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Bach's Choral Music: Unlocking the Masters Series, No. 20 Pap/Com Edition
Author(s): Gordon Jones (Author)
- Publisher: Amadeus Press
- Publication Date: November 1, 2009
- Edition: Pap/Com
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 1574671804
- ISBN-13: 9781574671803
Book Description
(Unlocking the Masters). Includes full-length CD from the Bach Collegium Japan. J.S. Bach A Listener’s Guide to His Choral Music introduces the general listener to a genre of music that is mistakenly supposed to be “difficult.” A vivid biographical sketch of Bach’s life and times provides the necessary background. The book then takes on the question “What is a cantata?” and guides the listener systematically through fugue, recitative, and aria. The author chooses 30 of Bach’s 200 church cantatas that are especially likely to be performed live, and explores them in detail. Studies of the two great oratorios, the “St John Passion” and the “St. Matthew Passion,” follow, together with a detailed analysis of what Bach himself probably thought to be his finest work, the “Mass in B Minor.” The book is accompanied by a 75-minute CD featuring complete tracks from five of the finest cantatas, as well as several tracks from the two Passions, the Mass, and “Magnifcat.”
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Gordon Jones (Vermont) has been a lifelong student of the keyboard works of Bach, which he has performed on piano, harpsichord, clavichord, and organ. He studied music at the University of York in England. He studied composition and keyboard with Douglas Steele, and Bach performance with the harpsichordist Edith Kilbuck. Gordon is a member of the Fine Art Department at the Putney School in Vermont.
