Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, this landmark publication was revised in 2013 to include new knowledge discovered following its initial publication.

Although we’ve heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic amount in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th wedding anniversary of Bach’s loss of life, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that provides to life this towering number of the Baroque era. This engaging brand-new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and occasionally imperfect individual that he was, while getting to bear all of the advances from the last half-century of Bach scholarship or grant. Wolff shows the romantic connection between your composer’s lifestyle and his music, showing how Bach’s superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its establishments, traditions, and affects. With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a fresh regular for Bach biography.