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Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, by John Eliot Gardiner
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Review
“[I]t is hard to imagine what the English maestro John Eliot Gardiner. . . might do to surpass Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven in its commitment, scope and comprehensiveness. . . . [He] has done a masterly, monumental job of taking the measure of Bach the man and the musician.” –The New York Times “With Bach we seek the elusive man hiding, perhaps, under the dense, spectacular music. . . .As eloquent a writer as he is a musician, Gardiner brings to his study the invaluable perspective of the practitioner. . . . One of the stars of the revolution over the past 50 years that has brought period instruments into the mainstream of early-music performance. . . . [Gardiner’s] depth of knowledge permeates his writing.” –The New York Times Book Review “Mr. Gardiner writes in the refreshing voice of a man who has studied and performed Bach's music for decades. . . . Like his conducting, the author's writing is lively, argumentative and passionate. He believes deeply in Bach's music and wants to understand each aspect of its construction. . . . Bach's music is one of mankind's greatest achievements, and his genius touches upon matters eternal and profound. His choral music is less well-known than it should be—especially the cantatas, which Gardiner lauds as "gripping musical works of exceptional worth." Spurred by Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, many listeners will discover them for the first time. In performance and now in print, Mr. Gardiner is Bach's most eloquent champion…” –The Wall Street Journal “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: Music in the Castle of Heaven, a biography 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.” –The Daily BeastBach: Music in the Castle of Heaven is an inspiring book. . . . [it] is a superb, timely, thought-provoking, authoritative and extremely useful and readable book. It should find its way onto any serious music-lover’s shelves. From there it must often and regularly be taken off and read.” –Classical.Net “[I]t is Gardiner’s experience as a conductor that informs so much of this book. Not only does he explain the harmonic, contrapuntal and polyphonic underpinnings of Bach’s music. . . he also comments on these scores from practical experience, having spent countless hours working out instrumental balances and sonorities, textures and dynamics, in concert halls and churches alike.” –The Washington Post“Gardiner presents a nuanced account of the constellation of personal, musical, religious, and cultural forces that shaped Bach’s astonishing body of compositions. He writes with the care of a scholar, the knowledge of an expert musician, and the passion of a believer (in Bach if nothing else).” –The Christian Science Monitor“An erudite work resting on prodigious research and experience and deep affection and admiration.” –Kirkus “Typical John Eliot to combine so much erudition with even more passion and enthusiasm. It made me want to rush and listen to all the pieces whether familiar or unfamiliar. A treasure chest.” –Simon Rattle, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic“Bach: 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, author of A World on Fire “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 “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
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About the Author
John Eliot Gardiner is one of the world’s leading conductors, not only of Baroque music but across the whole repertoire. He founded the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Lyon, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He has conducted most of the world’s great orchestras and in many of the leading opera houses. He lives and farms in Dorset, England.
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Product details
Hardcover: 672 pages
Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (October 29, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375415297
ISBN-13: 978-0375415296
Product Dimensions:
6.7 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
193 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#272,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Well, its taken me a very long time to read this book and its not a fault of the book. This is part biography of Bach (though not as much as many may like), part biography of various pieces of his church music and the imagination that birthed it, and in large part evocative description of Bach's sacred music itself. There is much to commend here. Gardiner is one of the foremost experts on Bach today, and not because he has read nearly everything there is to read about Bach, although he has probably done so judging from the footnotes and endnotes (the former are all worth reading as they are full of gems, the latter are typically only citation details). Gardiner is himself a musician and conductor and has undertaken one of the most interesting and unique feats of musical exploration ever conducted (pardon the pun, and see below).Gardiner is a leader in the recent trend (since the '70s) in musical exploration which attempts to play the music of a particular composer or era (for Bach, the Baroque) in the way its original hearers would have experienced it. As such, performances will be played on period instruments (ie. gut strings rather than steel, instruments crafted using original techniques rather than modern, etc.) and played in the way they likely would have been originally played (ie. in churches rather than concert halls, unamplified, and often at a much quicker pace than modern sensibilities usually gravitate toward). Gardiner's "insider" perspective on Bach's music as interpreted through Bach's life and religious convictions as well as through having stood in Bach's place as conductor throughout a full church calendar cycle is really what makes this book special.Gardiner is at his best as an author when he is at his best as a conductor. The book describes at great length not only the musicology and the performance but also the psychology and theology of some of Bach's most well known works. These descriptions often sore along verbally, mirroring the score itself as it is playing back in the mind of the author. I have to admit that prior to reading this book, Bach was already my favourite composer. However, while reading this book, I purchased (or was given by a friend who himself masterfully plays Baroque music on period instruments) several CDs of Bach's music, as many as possible of which were conducted by Gardiner, performed by his famous Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists and recorded in churches or cathedrals. I have to advocate for this way of reading this book. Listening to the very work, performed (or as Bach might have preferred to think of it, offered) as close as possible to the way it would have originally been sung and played, while reading Gardiner's often emotional and spiritual descriptions of the works is among the closest experiences I've ever come to reading in four dimensions. Many will classify this as a biographical/historical work, but there are profound observations of psychology, theology, philosophy, liturgics and worship here as well. I did not always agree with Gardiner's rendering of Bach's Lutheran psychology or of Bach's own spiritual struggles. I thought perhaps where Gardiner sometimes detected doubt in Bach's scoring of a particular portion of the gospels or other Scripture, one could just as easily interpret a tried but steady faith or a determination to believe the promises of God despite the upheavals of this earthly life (Bach lost an uncle and both parents by the time he was 10, and he lost his first wife and several of his children - 10 if I recall). Or perhaps as is more likely, it is a combination of all of the above. But even where I wondered if Gardiner was misinterpreting the inspiration behind some of Bach's scores or some of his margin notes in his favourite Bible commentaries, I know that I am far richer for having had someone like Gardiner lead me into the inner world of Bach's mind and his music.Gardiner is somewhat uniquely qualified to write this book. Not only has Bach been in the forefront of his consciousness since he was a child and his family had a famous original portrait of Bach hanging in their stairwell, "overseeing" the home, but Gardiner set out on a unique and mind-blowing "Bach cantata pilgrimage" in 2000 with his orchestra and choir, playing all (yes, ALL) of Bach's sacred cantatas in a 52 week period in churches around Europe and the US. This meant that they performed nearly everyday for a year, sometimes more than once a day, something that Bach himself would have done in his post as Thomascantor in Leipzig. When one does this, one really get's inside the head and heart of the great master even as he himself was inhabiting the seasons of the church year, recounting and witnessing as they do to the history of redemption through the life and work of Christ.If someone wants a basic and general introduction to Bach, I highly recommend not this. If you want an in depth biography of the life of Bach this is also not your book. However, if you want to begin to understand Bach's sense of sacred mission, his motivations, and above all the tapestry of his sacred music itself in all its variation, complexity, energy and beauty, this deep-dive is your guide.
This is, and I am sure it will continue to be, one of the most interesting, well researched and valuable of books written on J.S. Bach and his times to date. I began it the day it arrived and have barely put it down. That is saying a lot as I have been buying and listening to and reading about Bach for the past 50+ years.Just a quarter of the way into its more than 600 pages, I can report that this book should prove to be invaluable to anyone interested in Bach, the Baroque, and the musicians of that era and before. It is Gardiner's clear and compelling writing, the depth of his research, and his emphasis on Bach's life that is so very compelling. Who was Bach? Why was he that way? And how did his life shape his music? Answering these questions are the objectives of the book. He does it better than anyone I have read. There is much new information discovered only in the last decade or more.I will revise this review when I've finished reading, but I wanted to send a dispatch that in the first four chapters, this is proving to be a wonderful and instructive read. And a last note: the footnotes are terrific.
Because of my long-held fascination with, and love for, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, it only seemed natural that I would eventually begin seeking out biographies of the great composer. Many years ago, I read Christoph Wolff’s masterful “Bach: The Learned Musician.†Now I have just completed another fascinating study of Bach’s life: “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven†by John Eliot Gardiner.Gardiner is, of course, the famed British conductor who specializes in “historically informed performances†of early music. As his marvelous book attests, he is both an excellent Bach scholar and a formidably talented writer. Gardiner faces the same limitations of other writers seeking to tell Johann Sebastian Bach’s story in any kind of lucid and detailed manner: there is precious little in the way of empirical historical data about Bach to guide biographers. Bach wrote almost nothing about himself, his surviving children left very little in writing about him, and the letters he wrote (that still exist) only reveal something of his curmudgeonly personality, but not much else.What Gardiner attempts to do in “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven†is to explore Bach’s life primarily through his music – more specifically, his cantatas, passions, and other vocal works. In this, I think Gardiner succeeds very well. He includes as much biographical information as he can find, and then turns to an analysis of many of Bach’s most important works to give readers a glimpse of not only Bach’s innate musical genius, but of his humanity as well.I have two concerns about “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.†It is quite challenging to read, assuming (as it does) that readers have more than a passing knowledge of European history and of music (both of which I have). Gardiner also tends to interject anecdotes about himself and his own experiences on occasion, a habit that I find detracted slightly from my overall enjoyment of the book.Now that I am finished reading “Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven,†I feel that I have come to know the enigmatic Johann Sebastian Bach better through John Eliot Gardiner’s writing. Bach seems more “human†somehow – not only the colossal musical genius who has been a major influence on all genres of music for nearly three centuries now, but also an ordinary and flawed man who suffered much grief during his lifetime, and who persevered through a deep and abiding Christian faith that was the driving force behind everything he composed. Despite my minor criticisms of it, I think this is an excellent biography that I can easily recommend. (4½ Stars ^ 5)
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