Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work

This is the book that saved Bach from oblivion. Written in 1802, just fifty-two years after the composer's death, Forkel's biography was the first substantial portrait of Bach ever published, and it arrived at a moment when the greatest architect of Western music had nearly vanished from cultural memory. Forkel, a pioneering music historian who had access to Bach's sons and original manuscripts, set out to rekindle appreciation for a genius he believed Germany had too quickly forgotten. The biography traces the Bach family's extraordinary musical lineage, Bach's rigorous education and formative influences, and the circumstances of his life as a court and church musician. Forkel writes not merely as a chronicler but as an advocate, constructing a case for Bach's immortality through detailed analysis of his art and working methods. The book that made us remember Bach remains essential reading for anyone interested in how great artists are rescued from forgetting, and in the birth of musicology as a discipline.