John Eliot Gardiner's Musical Masterpiece: Bach's Music in the Castle of Heaven

Amazon Customer: I am a pop music fan, and since quite a few recording artists have written songs based on Bach's music (Procul Harum with 'Whiter Shade Of Pale', Paul Simon and 'American Tune' etc.) I decided to take a closer look at Bach and his work via John Eliot Gardiner's biography: 'Music In The Castle Of Heaven'. I haven't delved into the book yet but I am looking forward to finding out more about this famous 17th century composer, who is still influencing popular music almost 400 years after his birth.

United Kingdom on Dec 07, 2023

Joseph L. Breckenridge: First, I'm grateful to the seller for providing an beautiful copy at a very reasonable price. Thank you for taking such care in packaging and protecting the book.

The book surveys the man, the times, and his music. I have only started the text, but I can say it is very well written by a musician for whom I have a deep respect.

United States on Sep 16, 2023

Patrick F: My grandfather was an organist. As a boy growing up in Slovenia, he practiced in every spare moment and in his teenage years was already directing music at his church. When communist forces showed up in his village to purge the ranks of able-bodied men my grandfather stood in line and watched men and boys loaded into the back of a military transport which would eventually deposit them in mass graves hidden in the woods and far from scrutiny.

When he was finally at the front of the line he was briefly interrogated at gunpoint. “And you, boy, what is your occupation?”

He answered confidently and honestly, “I am a musician. An organist. I play the music of God.”

His inquisitor lowered his rifle and gestured him away. “Go, then. Go and play God’s music as if it were for your life and salvation.”

This is precisely what my grandfather would do. He was hidden among the nuns at a local parish until he was able to escape Slovenia through miles-long crude tunnels in the mountains. Through displaced persons camps and further arduous travels, he continued to pursue his music however possible knowing that it not only granted a brief reprieve to those...

United States on Oct 15, 2020

D Glover: Well, its taken me a very long time to read this book and its not a fault of the book. This is part biography of Bach (though not as much as many may like), part biography of various pieces of his church music and the imagination that birthed it, and in large part evocative description of Bach's sacred music itself. There is much to commend here. Gardiner is one of the foremost experts on Bach today, and not because he has read nearly everything there is to read about Bach, although he has probably done so judging from the footnotes and endnotes (the former are all worth reading as they are full of gems, the latter are typically only citation details). Gardiner is himself a musician and conductor and has undertaken one of the most interesting and unique feats of musical exploration ever conducted (pardon the pun, and see below).

Gardiner is a leader in the recent trend (since the '70s) in musical exploration which attempts to play the music of a particular composer or era (for Bach, the Baroque) in the way its original hearers would have experienced it. As such, performances will be played on period instruments (ie. gut strings rather than steel, instruments crafted using...

United States on Feb 25, 2016

Dr. Keith Jones: This is a detailed account of Bach’s life and work, seen in the context of time and place, and of his sometimes chaotic and too often humdrum life as a poorly paid schoolmaster or kappellmeister, whose employers often seem to have had little inkling of his genius. Orphaned at the age of 9, as a hot-headed teenager he gets into a sword-fight over a girl; as obstinate perfectionist he gets into a dispute with his employer in Weimar, who responds by sending him to prison. On the other hand, we learn of Bach’s cordial relationships with contemporaries, including Telemann and Zelenka (who may have composed the theme on which the ‘Musical Offering’ is based – not stated in this book).

Gardiner describes a typical Sunday service at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, a long and somewhat chaotic affair that would not be tolerated in any place of worship nowadays. He takes us into the city’s coffee-houses which were of dubious reputation but apparently better organised, and into Bach’s family home, where noisy neighbours might have been a constant annoyance. Nowhere did he seem to have enjoyed the tranquillity that most composers would need to do their work, and he must have...

Canada on Sep 09, 2015

Delizia: Genau genommen, ist jenseits der Lebensdaten Johann Sebastian Bachs nicht viel über diesen Giganten der Musik bekannt. Wie hat er gedacht? Was hat ihn getrieben? Nur ein einziger persönlicher Brief (an einen alten Schulfreund) ist überliefert. Dort liest man von Bachs Klagen über die elende Bürokratie in Leipzig und seine schlechte Bezahlung. Aber es gibt ja Bachs Musik, die großen Messen, aber auch mehrere hundert Kantaten, auf die sich diese Biografie besonders stützt. Und wenn man glaubt, von dem Werk auf das Leben schließen zu können (wie es viele Biografen tun), dann kann ein so enthusiastischer Mann wie Gardiner daraus eine superbe Lebensbeschreibung machen.

Der kleine enge Schriftsatz strengt die Augen an, diese Unannehmlichkeit wird aber wettgemacht durch brillante Farbtafeln, siehe z.B. die „Himmelsburg“ auf Tafel 8, von der das Buch seinen Titel nimmt, oder die Abbildungen 12 und 13 der Calov-Bibel, einer opulenten Luther-Übersetzung, die Bach für seine Kantaten gründlich studiert und mit Randbemerkungen versehen hat. Eine dieser gekritzelten Bemerkungen ist denn auch zentral für Gardiner’s Bach. Wo in der Bibelstelle die Rede ist von Musik zum...

Germany on Apr 02, 2015

JDX: I have not yet read even half of this book. For this reader it is already life changing. As a listener Bach has been important to me for at least sixty years and probably nearer seventy. Since childhood I have never been able to understand comments about the intellectual nature of Bach's music. At least not where that has seemed to imply that his music is cerebral but not emotional. To me that parallels saying the same thing about Gerrard Manley Hopkins, or St John of the Cross, or that T S Eliot is not lyrical. I have read that Bach was deeply religious and I have read that he only paid lip service to religion. Some performances have brought William Blake's Newton to mind which has left me feeling uneasy. Intuitively I have felt Bach being played as if he had written etudes. Studies in sustained even tone. I recognise that Wanda Landowska's performances were all wrong by comparison with Glen Gould. Yet I heard a fire in her performances and an ennui in his which drew me to her as being closer to the source. She did not have access to satisfactory instruments for her purpose. Today that would not be a problem....

John Eliot Gardiner seems to me to be putting all this right....

United Kingdom on Feb 07, 2014

Anselm: Music in the Castle of Heaven - Amazon review

At the risk of being superficial, there are three kinds of book. The first you never finish because they're patent rubbish. The second is the kind you need to read again a couple of weeks, months or years later because, no matter how good they seemed at the time, you realise they had made no lasting impression on you. You also want to reread the third kind, but this time because one reading was manifestly insufficient to explore all their marvellous riches. In my view, "Music in the Castle of Heaven" definitely falls into the last category.

I'll start negatively. Two problems occurred to me as I was reading it. One is that it is full of the most erudite scholarship, but Gardiner appears not to be an academic of any kind. I can't find any articles by him in any scholarly journal, as opposed to ephemeral ones like "Gramophone" - and then only discussing his own recordings. Academic scholarship is a discipline acquired through years of intensive training in the minutiae of finding, using and referencing primary and secondary source material, usually involving the acquisition of some pieces of stiff paper with...

United Kingdom on Jan 27, 2014