Bach’s Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work by Christoph Wolff

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bach’s Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work by Christoph Wolff Zoltán Szabó (bio) Christoph Wolff. Bach’s Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020). 432 pp. Christoph Wolff’s pivotal research in Bach scholarship, spanning over many decades, hardly needs extensive introduction. The list of his influential publications extends from articles in academic journals, through editorial work in several annual volumes of the Bach-Jahrbuch, to his role of revising and expanding the fundamental scholarly source The New Bach Reader (1998). He is also the author of two sizable tomes on this topic, Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (1991), a collection of thirty-two articles on specific aspects of the composer’s life and works, and the comprehensive biography Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000). His latest book, Bach’s Musical Universe (2020), broadens the scope of scholarly knowledge offered in his previous two books even further, while connecting with them in such an organic manner that it almost makes one wonder: why did we not miss the last part of this scholarly triptych before? Indeed, the author’s meticulously detailed work on Bach research is best appreciated with all three volumes at hand. Regular cross-referencing among them is needed, as numerous footnotes in this book refer the reader to the findings in the other two. The look and touch of a new book can add to the positive experience of using it, and there is almost no disappointment here. The feel of the book is pleasant, it is well bound, it stays open easily, and the font is large enough to read it without straining the eyes (sadly, this is not always the case with academic publications). Unfortunately, though, at least in my copy, there seems to be a color run on the cover page, printed in yellow and white letters, where within the white line of “The Composer and His Work,” the last three letters of the word “composer” are inexplicably yellow. The structure of the book is clear, as it arrives to its focus from two different directions. With evident respect, in chapter 1, Wolff presents and later relies on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s summary catalogue of his father’s compositions, compiled shortly after Johann Sebastian’s death in 1750 and significantly amended in 1774. Concurrently, from a different approach, the author draws attention to those compositions that are “matching pieces of a certain kind or genre” (21). These have an “opus character” or represent an “opus collection”—a reference to the grouped instrumental compositions of [End Page 98] Corelli, Vivaldi, and others—indicating that Bach prepared these compositions with remarkable care. The Italian composers followed the traditions of collecting compositions in multiples of three, the “holy number,” representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Bach did compose a number of cycles in groups of six, for example the toccatas, suites, and partitas for keyboard, but often had other organizational means in mind, such as all the major and minor keys, as in the twice twenty-four movements of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Wolff’s examination of the unifying concepts of these thematically defined works is as valuable as his distinction between what constitutes an opus collection of instrumental works versus choral works. The two approaches should not necessarily lead to the investigation of the same Bach compositions, but, fascinatingly, they almost completely coincide—or perhaps, that is not a coincidence? It is also worth considering that another Bach scholar, Ruth Tatlow, following the lead of her own, very different investigation of proportional parallelisms, also focuses on almost exactly the same set of compositions.1 Intriguingly, some masterworks, such as the four orchestral suites, the sonatas for viola da gamba or traverso flute, and the motets, are missing from both scholars’ list of analyzed compositions, although the reason for this is not necessarily that they would not pass the opus-style benchmark. Bach’s Musical Universe is divided into eight chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, scrutinizing the composer’s opus collections in roughly chronological order. Wolff’s selection of Bach compositions with an opus character...