Now available in paperback, this landmark biography was first published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of J. S. Bach's death. Written by a leading Bach scholar, this book presents a new picture of the composer. Christoph Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between Bach's life and his music, showing how the composer's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher.

All 48 preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys. Authoritative Bach-Gesellschaft edition. Explanation of ornaments in English, tempo indications, music corrections.

With The Archive of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Catalogue a complete catalogue of the music archive of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin is now available for the first time since the archive, which disappeared during World War II, was rediscovered in 1999. (The whole work is complete in English and German). Since 2001 the more than 260,000 pages of music manuscripts, copies and first prints (from 17th to early 19th cent.) were revised by two musicologists which compiled an index of shelf marks and an index of composers. Thus detailed searches in the holdings of the archive (which were filmed since 2002 in severeal parts on microfiche at K. G. Saur) are possible for the first time. The Catalogue lists 9,735 works of 1.008 different composers. It provides also a concordance signature – microfiche and therefore serves as a cumulated guide to the microfiche editions, all the more the registers have been revised and improved. The unique collection is introduced by a number of articles by the following musicologists: Axel Fischer (Archive of the Sing-Akademie, Berlin), Christoph Henzel (Hochschule für Musik, Würzburg), Klaus Hortschansky (University of Münster), Matthias Kornemann (Archive of the Sing-Akademie, Berlin), Ulrich Leisinger (Mozarteum, Salzburg), Mary Oleskiewicz (University of Massachusetts Boston), Ralph-J. Reipsch (Zentrum für Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung, Magdeburg), Tobias Schwinger (Berlin).

In the obituary that appeared soon after his death, Johann Sebastian Bach was described as "the world-famous organist" and "the greatest organist...we have ever had." In Hamburg, Dresden, and other big cities, Bach dazzled audiences with his organ playing, performing passages with his feet that many thought impossible for the hands. One eyewitness declared that he had never seen anything like it. His extant organ works--more than 250 chorale settings and free pieces--are filled with bold, dramatic passages and fully independent pedal parts. They represent the most important body of music in the organ repertoire and the only genre that Bach turned to continuously throughout his life, from his earliest efforts as a teenager in Ohrdruf to his final deathbed revisions as a cantor in Leipzig. In this new survey, leading musicologist George B. Stauffer traces the evolution of Bach's organ works within the broad spectrum of his development as a composer. With detailed discussions of the individual pieces, the book shows how Bach initially drew on contemporary models from Germany and France before evolving a personal idiom based on the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi. In Leipzig, he went still further, synthesizing national and historical styles to produce cosmopolitan masterpieces that exude sophistication and elegance. Serving as a backdrop to this growth was the emergence of the Central German pre-Romantic organ, which inspired Bach to write pieces with unique chamber-music, choral, and orchestral qualities. Stauffer follows these developments step-by-step, showing how Bach's unending quest for novelty, innovation, and refinement resulted in organ works that continue to reward and awe listeners today.

Matthew Dirst examines the leading role of Bach's keyboard works in the creation of his historical legacy.