Bach by Martin Geck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] a modern composer who wanted to explore the realm of music in every direction must make his own laws and be ready, instead of using the simple numerical series denoting the oscillating relationships of the overtone series 1:2:3:4:5, and so on, to turn to the irrational number √2 in order to divide the octave, with strict rationality, into 12 equal but no longer 'natural' semitones."

This year we are celebrating the 333rd anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. As a matter of fact, when I was reading Martin Geck's book Bach it has been almost exactly 333.33 years since the most eminent composer of all times was born. Exactly a third of a millennium! Bach's music today is as relevant and as contemporary as it was 300 years ago. To me, a quasi-mathematician, the timeless nature of Bach's music, the fact that it always sounds fresh and not dated, is the result of it having deep mathematical structure. Bach's music transcends the conventions of the times when it was written and - again, to me - is abstract rather than figurative. Exactly like mathematics, which abstracts from limitations imposed by the real world.

Geck's book is a rather standard-style biography: it outlines the major events in Bach's life and intersperses the chronology with analysis of the music composed in the corresponding periods. The biography's volume is very modest, just about 170 pages, including various appendices, yet readers unfamiliar with Bach's life will learn a lot from it. We read about the composer's schooling, his first professional post in the Neukirche in Arnstadt, and the following sequence of gradually more important and prestigious jobs - court organist and Konzertmeister in Weimar, Kapellmeister and Director of Chamber Music on Prince Leopold's court in Köthen, and Kantor at St Thomas's in Leipzig.

The reader may be amused by tidbits about Bach's presumed insubordination "at the office": one time he was reprimanded for playing too long, the other for overstaying his leave. In Weimar he was in fact confined to detention "for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal." I found the syllabus of his prima class in Lüneburg the most interesting: the boy had to study: Latin grammar, theology, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, and versification. No wonder the students were better educated in 1700 than in today's high schools.

As a total layperson in music I will not attempt to analyze the author's discussion of various compositions by J.S. Bach but it certainly felt great to read about some of my most beloved music like Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (to me some of the most "abstract", in mathematical sense, art ever created), preludes and fugues from Well-Tempered Clavier, violin concertos, and both Passions (St Matthew and St John).

I actively disliked the author's commentary to his own text, where - instead of traditional footnotes - he uses text boxes, which the publisher printed in annoying red. The inserts break continuity of the text and often obscure the main points. Not to mention that two of the inserts were misplaced (not the author's fault, I suppose).

Three stars.


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