Reviews (6)

This book "rescues" Bach
What you have done is to rescue Bach from the rationalists, even as you show him to be the greatest man of reason that the musical world has ever known. It is this apparent anomaly - the idea that this supremely reasonable man was also a man of faith - that infuses your writing and lends tension to it. This is also the Mystery that the seeking Christian must grapple with and come to terms with. It recalls Einstein's unshakable faith in God, and Aquinas's proof of God's existence based on the design of the Universe.

-William A. Kromer

Organist, St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Downsville, NY

Inspirational / Educational
Here's a review from Andrea Ivanov-Craig, in Christianity and the Arts Magazine

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"If you love God," says J. S. Bach in Bach's Passion, "you do everything at the highest level of competency." And so should we all, if we all weren't so profoundly fallible.

RuthAnn Ridley's fictionalized life of "the greatest composer of church music" fleshes out many of the central conflicts faced by Christian artists and creators of all kinds. It is a novel of great inspirational value and good educational and historical interest.

Readers should be prepared for a long but engaging read, and, at the end, an excellent introductory glossary of terms, footnotes, a bibliography, and a "Word from the Author" regarding the novel's historical accuracy.

Ridley narrates Bach's life (1685-1750) basing each chapter and major character on true incidents and people. However, scholarship suggests that interpretation of Bach's personal life and motives is highly controversial. Although legends and anecdotes exist in abundance, personal correspondence and other acceptable documentation is scarce.

One recent source plainly states that there is no evidence that Bach's church music was especially important to him (Jan Koster, "Biography,").

Another source points out that even listening to the approximately 1,120 pieces Bach composed would still not reveal who Bach was (Sandberger, Bach 2000, Teldec Classics International 1999, p. 2).

Yet it is precisely Ridley's willingness to map out Bach's artistic and spiritual journey according to a faith in a personal God that affords this novel value. As a young man, Bach receives his summons while listening to a scriptural aria in a cathedral: "He would write a new and deeply personal music for the Lutheran liturgy, one that would woo a person into the love of the Divine Bridegroom" ( p. 50). We discover that the dark and eerie "Toccata and fugue in D minor" was an "effort . . . to deal with the heartbreak of losing their twins" (pp, 17-18).

Throughout his life, Bach encounters conflicts so common to many of us: professional jealousy; recognition of self disguised as the need for the recognition of God's glory; and perhaps, above all, the responsibility of vocation versus family. Bach is absent enjoying the intellectual heights of conversations with artists and philosophers while his first wife, Barbara, undergoes a miscarriage. Even more poignantly, Bach lingers on another such trip and misses her death and burial by two days.

Through this portrayal, Ridley also researches and gives us a snapshot of the lives of middle-class women in seventeenth-century Germany. Though she deeply loves him, Barbara grows estranged from Bach when he discounts her own spiritual struggles. Anna, the second wife, is encouraged by Bach because he recognizes her as a person and an artist in her own right, unlike the other male figures of her day.

As well researched and inspirational as the novel is, its still greater value is that it leaves readers wanting to learn more. Interested readers should thus consult recent biographies and scholarship, and certainly, listen to more of the music "that compels people to become involved, that raises them up into the God who became man" (p. 249).

- Andrea Ivanov-Craig, Christianity and the Arts Magazine

Exceptional Research
In RuthAnn Ridley's "Bach's Passion," the reader meets Bach, his family and his compatriots as living people. The characterizations and the descriptions of dress, customs and music of the time reflect exceptional research of Bach's life and times. An excellent glossary and bibliography relating to Bach are an added bonus.

- Herbert Colvin, Professor Emeritus of Music Theory: Baylor University

Intro for young readers
I enjoyed the attempt to bring Bach alive - Ridley shows creativity and passion for her subject. I rated only 2 stars because it read more like an introductory or children's book than a serious bio. Some problems I'd raise in a musicology class: Bach worked from texts, rather than texts being set to already-composed music; harpsichords are not curved like a piano; it's anachronistic to imagine Bach composing with a modern piano in mind. Young readers however should enjoy getting an empathetic portrait of Bach's surroundings and the major events of his life.

Fills a need for creative persons who are also Christians...
Few books explore the unique struggles of artists attempting to integrate the demands of talent with their Christian faith. In fact, much writing about historically important artists simply ignores their faith; deeming it irrelevant to their art. Ridley¹s book doesn¹t. The author takes both spiritual committment and creativity seriously and, using Bach¹s life as her medium, explores the challenges of integrating passion for art with passion for God. Bach¹s Passion, presents the author¹s fictionalized portrait of the life of Johann Sebastian Bach from young manhood in 1701 to his death in July of 1750 at the age of 65. This period includes two marriages which undergirded his great musical outpouring and his constant determination, for God¹s sake, ³to leave nothing mediocre behind². A writer, musician, and Christian herself, Ridley aims to maintain historical accuracy while offering the reader well-grounded speculation on Bach¹s concrete dilemmas with creativity, career, and family. She grapples with Bach¹s struggles over his desire for recognition versus servanthood through his music; his attempts to comprehend God¹s plan for his life and work, his deep frustration with the politics of the music world, and his final question: had his life counted? These themes are woven with personal issues like Bach¹s desire for happy family life; his search for understanding companionship, and his heartbreak over the problems of his children. She also includes a poignant postlude on the ultimate fate of Bach¹s work. I deeply appreciate Ridley¹s honesty in not iconizing Bach as an untouchable, irreproachable saint. She writes as one who has lived the tension between faith and art, and her constructions of Bach¹s life events and his responses to them ring true. Bach¹s Passion will be prized by anyone facing the challenges, agonies, ecstasies, uncertainties, and appeals to God, which Bach underwent while seeking to realize the full potential of the talent God gave him. For such as these, Bach¹s Passion is a much needed companion for the journey. ... Read more

Book Description

The monumental work of J. S. Bach—some 250 cantatas, 280 organ compositions, the great Passions, oratorios and masses, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Art of the Fugue—stands as a high-water mark of Western civilization. Yet that work is understandable only in light of Bach's profound Christian faith, asserts Hans Conrad Fischer. Born under the shadow of Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther in seclusion had translated the New Testament into German, Bach saw his work as a daily engagement with Christian mysteries, often signing his manuscripts SDG–soli deo gratia or for God's glory alone.

This lavish volume celebrates Bach unabashedly. The engrossing text, enhanced with dozens of portraits, photos of locales and artifacts, maps and manuscripts, brings Bach, his faith, and his achievements directly to the reader. So too does the accompanying CD-ROM, including 17 key selections sampling Bach's best-known pieces from each genre and period of his life. It conclusively presents J. S. Bach's genius as not only musical but also religious, one that still effectively presents Christian faith to today's largely secular public. ... Read more

Book Description

This superb reference work on Johann Sebastian Bach is the first volume in a new species of Oxford Companion that will focus on major composers.

Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white plates, this volume boasts over a thousand alphabetically arranged entries that cover Bach's music, his life and times, scholarship on Bach, and the performance of his music. Readers will find entries on the various genres that Bach worked in (including chorales, fantasia, sonata, concerto, missa), his many individual works (such as St. John's Passion, The Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concertos, Passacaglia, Well-Tempered Clavier, The Christmas Oratorio, andThe Art of Fugue), places important to his career (such as Muhlhausen, Weimar, and Leipzig), and important contemporaries (Handel, Rameau, Vivaldi, Telemann, among others).There are also entries on instruments (harpsichord, organ, clavier, and so on), Bach performance practice, stylistic influences on his work, and other biographical details. The book concludes with a family tree, a chronology of Bach's life, a list of his works, and a glossary of terms.

Bach was one of the giants of classical music, a composer of astonishing powers of invention. In The Oxford Composer Companion: J.S. Bach, music aficionados will have at their fingertips a treasure chest of information on this major figure. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Essential for Bach lovers
The title and the alphabetical format of this book seems uninspiring, but actually it is a veritable treasure. It has an excellent article or entry on almost anything you might wonder about Bach, and the format lets you just to look up the issue alphabetically. The appendices also ease the effort-- there is a thematic list of all entries, a BWV list with years, a text list of the first lines of all arias/choruses, first performance dates of cantatas... The tone of the book is scholarly but very readable.

So if you have ever wondered what was the trumpet like in Bach's day, the real meaning of well-tempered, who P.D.Q. Bach is, what did Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg do with the concertos, you need to get this book. Indispensable for anyone who has been bitten by the Bach bug; it will appeal to the starter and the expert alike. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Bio for Bach breaks barriers.
Pardon me I was overcome with alliteration. This book is a brief but detailed synopsis of Bach's life and experiences. Good book for those who just want to learn about "The Man", but don't want to read a 300 page book. :) Has a complete BWV listing of his works! ... Read more

Book Description

For more than 100 years now, the name of Johann Sebastian Bach has been considered among the most highly regarded of all composers. The "holy cantor" church musician has been written about in many books. So, it might be difficult for some of us to imagine, but for several generations after his death, Bach had been forgotten. What remained of his vast number of works gathered dust in private collections of distant archives. Many of his works were discarded; in fact, some found their way to a butcher shop and are reported to have been used as wrapping paper.

It took a twenty-year-old musician, who would become as well known as Bach, to bring about an interest in his works. In 1829, Felix Mendelssohn performed the St. Matthew Passion, and revived interest in the long-forgotten composer. The genius of Bach was finally recognized by the world.

In this delightful story, young adults are introduced to one of the greatest composers of all time. Combining music, history, and culture with biography, this story is as entertaining as it is educational--a musical journey back through time. ... Read more

Book Description

This series of biographies presents the great composers against the background of their times. Each draws on personal letters and recollections, engravings, paintings and, when they exist, photographs, to present a complete picture of the composer’s life. ... Read more