Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide by Robert L. Marshall and Traute M. Marshall

Abstract

Reviewed by: Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide by Robert L. Marshall and Traute M. Marshall Jaime Carini Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide. By Robert L. Marshall and Traute M. Marshall. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. [xxx, 245 p. ISBN 9780252040313 (cloth), $95; ISBN 9780252081767 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN 9780252098574 (e-book), $26.96.] Maps, photographs, color illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index. The American Bach Society (ABS) and the University of Illinois Press (UIP) once again collaborate to create a special publication, Exploring the World of J. S. Bach: A Traveler's Guide by Robert L. Marshall and Traute M. [End Page 75] Marshall. The need for such a guide arose in 1989 after the collapse of the Socialist government and subsequent reunification of Germany, which prompted a surge in tourism to Bach's homeland and facilitated new discoveries in Bach scholarship and architectural renovations of Bach sites. The new guide simultaneously incorporates these developments and complements the first collaborative special publication of the ABS and UIP (Christoph Wolff and Markus Zepf, The Organs of J. S. Bach: A Handbook, trans. Lynn Edwards Butler [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012]), by blending academic research with tourism information. The result is this academically based travelogue of Bach sites, written in English, that serves both scholars and tourists. Rarely does one encounter a book whose authors address both the academic community and tourism populace with equal integrity. The Marshalls balance these seemingly disparate groups by focusing on the interest that unites them: the places that circumscribed the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. Working within these physical borders, they break out of literary confines—the book works as a "biography, a reference work, and a tour guide"—in order to create an appropriate intellectual space for their diverse audience (p. x). Readers will appreciate the clear organization of the book's core material, which is divided into two roughly equal parts. Part 1, "J. S. Bach's Principal Residences," contains eight chapters, each devoted to a town where Bach resided: Eisenach (1685–95), Ohrdruf (1695–1700), Lüneburg (1700–1702), Arnstadt (1703–7), Mühlhausen (1707–8), Weimar (1703, 1708–17), Köthen (1717–23), and Leipzig (1723–50). These chapters are organized chronologically and include accounts of Bach's personal and professional activities in each place. Part 2, "Towns Certainly or Presumably Visited by J. S. Bach," portrays forty-three additional towns that Bach may have had reasons to visit. Here, each entry, ordered alphabetically rather than chronologically, retains two familiar elements from part 1: a description of Bach's professional activities, and landmarks in the town. Part 2, then, increases what we know about Bach and his interactions with places outside of the towns where he resided. Perusing the pages of part 1, the reader learns about Bach's early "German school" education, his activities as a chorister in Ohrdruf and Lüneburg, his extended family in Arnstadt, and his various positions as court and church musician, in which he composed for both secular and sacred occasions. Descriptions of the various musical influences on his developing style permeate the chapter devoted to his Lüneburg period (1700–1702). The German, Italian, and French musical attributes that Bach absorbed here while a chorister at the St. Michaeliskloster school, and through his interactions with organist Georg Böhm, would continue to define his compositional style throughout his career as he moved to other locations. Information about other members of Bach's family and important personages enrich the biographical contents in part 1. In chapter 1, "Eisenach (1685–95)," for example, readers encounter a brief description of Georg Philipp Telemann's activities in Eisenach that alerts them to a stele (erected in 2012) with the inscription, "Here he created the new form of the Protestant church cantata" (p. 5). Travelers to Eisenach to visit the Bach sites might also be on the lookout for this Telemann monument. Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, figures prominently in chapter 7, "Köthen (1717–23)," as the "gracious Prince" who employed Bach as Kapellmeister of his court (p. 63). [End Page 76] Geographical location becomes a...