Overview

Reverence for J. S. Bach's music and its towering presence in our cultural memory have long affected how people hear his works. In his own time, however, Bach stood as just another figure among a number of composers, many of them more popular with the music-loving public. Eschewing the great composer style of music history, Andrew Talle takes us on a journey that looks at how ordinary people made music in Bach's Germany. Talle focuses in particular on the culture of keyboard playing as lived in public and private. As he ranges through a wealth of documents, instruments, diaries, account ledgers, and works of art, Talle brings a fascinating cast of characters to life. These individuals--amateur and professional performers, patrons, instrument builders, and listeners--inhabited a lost world, and Talle's deft expertise teases out the diverse roles music played in their lives and in their relationships with one another. At the same time, his nuanced re-creation of keyboard playing's social milieu illuminates the era's reception of Bach's immortal works.

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9780252083891

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Reviews

This book is an outstanding contribution to and expansion of our factual knowledge base regarding eighteenth-century German musical life, with emphasis on the keyboard. --BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute Beyond Bach is a treasure trove of information about the place of music making in the daily lives of ordinary people in J.S. Bach's Germany. Andrew Talle's careful selection of citations from his fascinating source materials is woven together by easy-to-read prose, resulting in an entertaining and enjoyable read. . . . [Beyond Bach] deserves a place among the classics. --Swedish Journal of Music Research This is a fascinating, readable, and well-documented book. . . . Recommended. --Choice Talle's Beyond Bach is rich in tales of those living and working within a vibrant but largely forgotten musical culture who loved this music by Bach and others, and who then recreated it by means of a box of taut strings and ingenious levers. --Limelight Magazine This is a book whose chief strength lies not in the conclusions it draws but in the sheer documentary richness which it delivers, and in bringing vividly to life dimensions of music and music-making which have often been neglected. --British Clavichord Society Newsletter Andrew Talle provides a richly textured discussion of the roles music played in the everyday. --Journal of the American Musicology Society Beyond Bach is a treasure trove of information about the place of music making in the daily lives of ordinary people in J.S. Bach's Germany. Andrew Talle's careful selection of citations from his fascinating source materials is woven together by easy-to-read prose, resulting in an entertaining and enjoyable read. . . . [Beyond Bach] deserves a place among the classics. --Swedish Journal of Music Research Talle's Beyond Bach is rich in tales of those living and working within a vibrant but largely forgotten musical culture who loved this music by Bach and others, and who then recreated it by means of a box of taut strings and ingenious levers. --Limelight Magazine

Talle's study is meticulously researched and documented, making excellent use of an impressively large number of primary and secondary sources. There is currently nothing like it in any language, and its significance goes well beyond Bach studies. --Steven Zohn, author of Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann's Instrumental Works Excellently researched and well-presented and engaging. Little has been done in approaching musicians of J. S. Bach's time in Germany through the lens of social history. As one of the first books to do this and to do it very well, Talle's volume marks a major contribution to the field. --Mark Peters, author of A Woman's Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane von Ziegler and J. S. Bach

Beyond Bach is a treasure trove of information about the place of music making in the daily lives of ordinary people in J.S. Bach's Germany. Andrew Talle's careful selection of citations from his fascinating source materials is woven together by easy-to-read prose, resulting in an entertaining and enjoyable read. . . . [Beyond Bach] deserves a place among the classics. --Swedish Journal of Music Research Talle's Beyond Bach is rich in tales of those living and working within a vibrant but largely forgotten musical culture who loved this music by Bach and others, and who then recreated it by means of a box of taut strings and ingenious levers. --Limelight Magazine This is a book whose chief strength lies not in the conclusions it draws but in the sheer documentary richness which it delivers, and in bringing vividly to life dimensions of music and music-making which have often been neglected. --British Clavichord Society Newsletter Andrew Talle provides a richly textured discussion of the roles music played in the everyday. --Journal of the American Musicology Society This is a fascinating, readable, and well-documented book. . . . Recommended. --Choice Talle's Beyond Bach is rich in tales of those living and working within a vibrant but largely forgotten musical culture who loved this music by Bach and others, and who then recreated it by means of a box of taut strings and ingenious levers. --Limelight Magazine This book is an outstanding contribution to and expansion of our factual knowledge base regarding eighteenth-century German musical life, with emphasis on the keyboard. --BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute Beyond Bach is a treasure trove of information about the place of music making in the daily lives of ordinary people in J.S. Bach's Germany. Andrew Talle's careful selection of citations from his fascinating source materials is woven together by easy-to-read prose, resulting in an entertaining and enjoyable read. . . . [Beyond Bach] deserves a place among the classics. --Swedish Journal of Music Research

Author Information

Andrew Talle is Associate Professor of Music Studies at the Bienen School of Music of Northwestern University. He is the editor of Bach Perspectives, Volume Nine: Bach and His German Contemporaries.

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