
Johann Sebastian Bach
The Learned Musician
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Narrated by:
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John Pruden
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By:
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Christoph Wolff
About this listen
Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, this landmark book was revised in 2013 to include new knowledge discovered after its initial publication.
Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. With this highly listenable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Story
Although now beloved and revered by millions as the greatest composer who ever lived, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was best known in his lifetime as an organist, and was eclipsed in fame as a composer by two of his twenty children. For the last twenty-seven years of his life he was a schoolteacher and choir director whose duties extended to meal supervision and dormitory inspection. Yet throughout his career he composed a vast body of music which is amongst the most joyful, dancing and enrapturing ever written.
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A good introduction to Bach's Life and Work
- By Dr on 01-10-15
By: Jeremy Siepmann
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How Music Works
- The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond
- By: John Powell
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.
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Nearly everyone will get something out of this!
- By Tim on 02-18-11
By: John Powell
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Great Music of the 20th Century
- By: The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Professor Robert Greenberg PhD
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
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The 20th century was a hotbed of musical exploration, innovation, and transformation unlike any other epoch in history. Ranging across the century in its entirety, these 24 lectures present a musical cornucopia of astounding dimensions - a major presentation and exploration of the incredible brilliance and diversity of musical art across a turbulent century. Far more than simply a series of lectures, the program comprises a huge and many-sided resource for discovering the endless riches of 20th-century concert music across the globe.
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Disappointment
- By MAdison on 03-11-18
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Incompleteness
- The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
- By: Rebecca Goldstein
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Probing the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Incompleteness indelibly portrays the tortured genius whose vision rocked the stability of mathematical reasoning—and brought him to the edge of madness.
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drones on and on for hours!
- By Mark Pumphrey on 10-29-24
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Beethoven's Shadow
- By: Jonathan Biss
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The American pianist Jonathan Biss is known to audiences throughout the world for his artistry, musical intelligence and deeply felt interpretations. What is less known until now is that Jonathan Biss writes about music in a most compelling and engaging way. For anyone who has ever enjoyed a Beethoven concert or a Beethoven recording or one of the many films about Beethoven, this audiobook is an inspiring listening experience. For those of you who have heard Beethoven in concert or listened to a Beethoven recording, Jonathan Biss takes you behind the scenes of those performances.
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Without the music itself this makes no sense as an audiobook
- By Peter Arnberg on 02-08-18
By: Jonathan Biss
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Language of the Spirit
- An Introduction to Classical Music
- By: Jan Swafford
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In Language of the Spirit, renowned music scholar Jan Swafford argues that we have it all wrong: classical music has something for everyone and is accessible to all. Ranging from Gregorian chant to Handel's Messiah, from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons to the postmodern work of Philip Glass, Swafford is an affable and expert guide to the genre. He traces the history of Western music, introduces listeners to the most important composers and compositions, and explains the underlying structure and logic of their music.
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Great intro to various important composers & works
- By Jay G on 06-14-18
By: Jan Swafford
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Journey to the Edge of Reason
- The Life of Kurt Gödel
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.
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Interesting story of a great mathematician
- By James Orlin on 04-28-22
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Listen to This
- By: Alex Ross
- Narrated by: Alex Ross
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively.
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Educational!
- By Jason Anschutz on 07-10-15
By: Alex Ross
No pdf
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Tiring
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A must have for Bach scholars and enthusiasts.
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Unfortunately, in many parts and for mind numbing periods it is a collection of statistics being read out to the listener.
And then there is the pronunciation of the frequent essential german names, towns, etc., - just awful.
I am fluent in german but could not understand what the narrator was trying to articulate.
Gave up after 2 hours of listening.
Exhausting
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In Awe
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Has all the boring details...
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Wolff is a skilled researcher, but he’s a timid thinker. He will tiptoe up to an idea, only to retreat to the comfort and safety of hard data. For example, he launches this book by making a comparison between Newton and Bach. We expect this to develop into a framework for thinking about Bach’s compositional practice, but most of the ways that Newton’s science parallels Bach’s art are left unexplored. All too soon Wolff has withdrawn to the terra firma of factual recitation. This approach isn’t just dull: it confuses facts for truth and in doing so obscures more than it illuminates. Wolff spends more time cataloguing the town councilors of Köthen or the manuals and stops of each organ in Potsdam than he does examining the theology that undergirded Bach’s vast canon of religious compositions. The problem isn’t just that Wolff misses the forest for the trees; despite his compulsion for documentation, he still manages to miss some very tall trees.
In print, this book runs to nearly 600 pages. Its insights can be summarized in a paragraph. Here goes: Bach came of age at a liminal time in music history. During his lifetime, he saw musical traditions such as regional notation systems and specific concert tunings give way to standardized practices. Bach was open to musical innovation, particularly in respect to instruments. He wrote music for newfangled and experimental instruments, and he maintained a lucrative side hustle as a consultant on pipe organs, the synthesizers of his day. Bach did not travel widely, but he was very aware of musical developments throughout the western world. Though prodigiously industrious, he did not lead a life of cloistered concentration. He devoted much time and energy to his large family and to cajoling or battling with the religious and civic bureaucracies that supported his career. As a composer, Bach brought a scientific mindset to in his exploration of musical ideas. The twenty-four musical keys were his periodic table. Though regarded as a master of improvisation at the keyboard, Bach’s analytical approach to composition allowed him to write most of his music at a desk. At the heart of his practice was the theory of counterpoint, the tension and release achieved by the interplay of the various notes in a scale.
Though I may not be an admirer, I acknowledge that this is a widely consulted biography of an important figure. It therefore boggles the mind that a major publisher and audiobook producer would allow this text to be read by such an incompetent narrator. Hundreds of German titles and place names are pronounced as if they are all towns in Kansas. Bach was a native German speaker, but he operated in a cosmopolitan circle in which several other languages were commonly used. Things do not improve when the narrator is required to switch to other tongues. To take just one example, the “Souci” in “Sans Souci” is pronounced to rhyme with “grouchy.” Speaking of grouchy, this performance is bad enough to make me want a refund for this title.
Bach Deserves Better
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