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.

Ein literarisches Lesebuch, das Texte aus der deutschen, aber auch der schweizerischen und österreichischen Literatur besonders des 20. Jahrhunderts enthält. Es greift ein großes Thema unserer Zeit auf: gegenseitiges Verstehen, seien es Erwachsene und Jugendliche, Männer und Frauen, Deutsche im Ausland, Ausländer in Deutschland, Ossis und Wessis, Fremde, Andere. Kurze Angaben zum jeweiligen Schriftsteller, Wort- und Sacherklärungen, Aufgaben zum Text, vor allem aber Anregungen zur Diskussion und zum kreativen Schreiben empfehlen dieses Lesebuch für den Einsatz im Unterricht 'Deutsch als Fremdsprache'.

Written: in draft by Marx 1863-1878, edited for publication by Engels; First published: in German in 1885, authoritative revised edition in 1893; Source: First English edition of 1907; Published: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1956, USSR.