xv + 186 pp.

Bach's life was "a searching for all that was best in his art to refine it in the fire of his genius." -- Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians Bach's mastery of rhythm and harmony, inventiveness, and genius for composition produced some of the richest and most beautiful music of all time. Those qualities are strikingly evident in his early concerti, which are among the most recorded and performed works in the baroque repertoire. This easy-to-read volume reprints, complete and unabridged, the master's seven complete concerti for solo keyboard and orchestra from the renowned Bach-Gesellschaft edition, still considered the primary source for Bach's music. Composed in Leipzig (c. 1735), these elegant works are almost completely based on earlier extant or lost concerti by Bach for violin and wind instruments. The concerti reproduced here in full score include Concerto in D Minor (BWV1052), Concerto in E Major (BWV 1053), Concerto in D Major (BWV 1054), Concerto in A Major (BWV 1055), Concerto in F Minor (BWV 1056), Concerto in F Major (BWV 1057), and Concerto in G Minor (BWV 1058). Musicians, students, and Bach devotees will applaud this clearly printed, wonderfully affordable playing edition of classic compositions by the supreme master of the baroque.

Volume one contains essays by David Schulenberg, Russell Stinson, Michael Marissen, Eric Chafe, Stephen Crist, and James Brokaw.

This new investigation of the Brandenburg Concertos explores musical, social, and religious implications of Bach's treatment of eighteenth-century musical hierarchies. By reference to contemporary music theory, to alternate notions of the meaning of "concerto," and to various eighteenth-century conventions of form and instrumentation, the book argues that the Brandenburg Concertos are better understood not as an arbitrary collection of unrelated examples of "pure" instrumental music, but rather as a carefully compiled and meaningfully organized set. It shows how Bach's concertos challenge (as opposed to reflect) existing musical and social hierarchies. Careful consideration of Lutheran theology and Bach's documented understanding of it reveals, however, that his music should not be understood to call for progressive political action. One important message of Lutheranism, and, in this interpretation, of Bach's concertos, is that in the next world, the heavenly one, the hierarchies of the present world will no longer be necessary. Bach's music more likely instructs its listeners how to think about and spiritually cope with contemporary hierarchies than how to act upon them. In this sense, contrary to currently accepted views, Bach's concertos share with his extensive output of vocal music for the Lutheran liturgy an essentially religious character.