Bach Music in the Castle of Heaven [Paperback]

One of the Best Books of the Year
* The Economist * The Christian Science Monitor * Financial Times*

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?

John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every day on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer’s greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime’s immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, and explaining in wonderful detail the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects—and what it can tell us about Bach the man.

“Lively, argumentative and passionate. . . . In performance and now in print, Mr. Gardiner is Bach's most eloquent champion.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Fresh, persuasive. . . . As eloquent a writer as he is a musician, Gardiner brings to his study the invaluable perspective of the practitioner.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“So thoughtful, well-researched, and beautifully written that it should satisfy both the well-informed enthusiast and readers simply seeking to become better acquainted with a musical giant. . . . It never happens often enough, but now and then, a subject gets the book it deserves. So it is with John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach.”
—The Daily Beast
 
“A nuanced account. . . . [Gardiner] writes with the care of a scholar, the knowledge of an expert musician, and the passion of a believer.&ló›