The New Bach Reader

Gathered in this volume are all the letters, reports, testimonials, complaints, thank-you notes, and other writings of J. S. Bach, together with a generous helping of performance and payment inventories, town council proceedings, court and archival records, letters of appointment, and other papers that document the fabric of the composer's daily life. Here, in English translations that preserve the full flavor of the originals, we encounter more than four hundred items. The book also presents a complete translation of J. N. Forkel's landmark 1802 biography, On Johann Sebastian Bach's Life,…