Focuses on the life and music of the Baroque organist and composer who wrote "The Well-Tempered Clavier," the "Brandenburg Concertos," and many other works[...]

Many listeners and players are fascinated by Bach?s Goldberg Variations. In this wideranging and searching study, Professor Williams, one of the leading Bach scholars of our time, helps them probe its depths and understand its uniqueness. He considers the work's historical origins, especially in rel[...]

This 1995 volume brings together essays on J. S. Bach and members of his family by a distinguished group of scholars. The essays address Bach's compositions, his knowledge of the musical past, his study of contemporaries, and the cultivation of his own music by later generations. The studies draw on[...]

This volume of essays reflects the increasing breadth and scope of Bach research. The fifteen essays by American and European scholars address a wide range of topics and issues: Magnificat, Cantata, and Passion; Parody and Genre; The Well-Tempered Clavier; and Transmission and Reception. Many of the[...]

C. P. E. Bach Studies collects together nine wide-ranging essays by leading scholars of eighteenth-century music. Offering fresh perspectives on one of the towering figures of the period, the authors explore Bach's music in its cultural contexts, and show in diverse and complementary ways the recipr[...]

In this 2006 text, Peter Williams examines the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

This book, first published in 1984, is the third volume of Peter Williams' important reference work, The Organ Music of J. S. Bach. In this volume, Peter Williams lays before the reader the salient points that serve as an appropriate bckground to the pieces: notes on the church services of the area [...]

Bach, like Shakespeare, is known largely by his works, exceptional in quantity as well as quality, and only a few original documents convey any idea of his life and character. Peter Williams?s thoroughly new look at Bach?s biography asks many questions about the so-called evidence. What was he like [...]

The motets of J. S. Bach are probably the most sophisticated works ever composed in the genre. Nevertheless, Daniel Melamed maintains, the view that they constitute a body of work quite separate from the German motet tradition is mistaken. He starts by considering the eighteenth-century understandin[...]

This is a completely revised 2003 edition of volumes I and II of The Organ Music of J. S. Bach (1980), a bestselling title, which has subsequently become a classic text. This edition takes account of Bach scholarship of the 25 years prior to publication. Peter Williams's piece-by-piece commentary pu[...]

The music of J.S.Bach has a unique power and attraction some 300 years after it was written. From annual performances of the great Passions and BBC Radio 3's hugely successful Bach Christmas, to its use in adverts, films and popular arrangements, the imaginative strength of Bach's music continues to[...]