Bach's Passion: The Life of Johann Sebastian Bach

by Ruthann Ridley

Book Overview

Fourteen-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach worked late into the night. The notes in front of him sang. Little did he know that he was preparing to make history. This is the untold story of the man whom... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579211704
• ISBN13: 9781579211707
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Winepress Publishing
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

This book "rescues" Bach

What you have done is to rescue Bach from the rationalists, even as you show him to be the greatest man of reason that the musical world has ever known. It is this apparent anomaly - the idea that this supremely reasonable man was also a man of faith - that infuses your writing and lends tension to it. This is also the Mystery that the seeking Christian must grapple with and come to terms with. It recalls Einstein's unshakable faith in God, and Aquinas's proof of God's existence based on the design of the Universe. -William A. Kromer Organist, St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Downsville, NY

Inspirational / Educational

Here's a review from Andrea Ivanov-Craig, in Christianity and the Arts Magazine ---"If you love God," says J. S. Bach in Bach's Passion, "you do everything at the highest level of competency." And so should we all, if we all weren't so profoundly fallible.RuthAnn Ridley's fictionalized life of "the greatest composer of church music" fleshes out many of the central conflicts faced by Christian artists and creators of all kinds. It is a novel of great inspirational value and good educational and historical interest.Readers should be prepared for a long but engaging read, and, at the end, an excellent introductory glossary of terms, footnotes, a bibliography, and a "Word from the Author" regarding the novel's historical accuracy.Ridley narrates Bach's life (1685-1750) basing each chapter and major character on true incidents and people. However, scholarship suggests that interpretation of Bach's personal life and motives is highly controversial. Although legends and anecdotes exist in abundance, personal correspondence and other acceptable documentation is scarce.One recent source plainly states that there is no evidence that Bach's church music was especially important to him (Jan Koster, "Biography,").Another source points out that even listening to the approximately 1,120 pieces Bach composed would still not reveal who Bach was (Sandberger, Bach 2000, Teldec Classics International 1999, p. 2).Yet it is precisely Ridley's willingness to map out Bach's artistic and spiritual journey according to a faith in a personal God that affords this novel value. As a young man, Bach receives his summons while listening to a scriptural aria in a cathedral: "He would write a new and deeply personal music for the Lutheran liturgy, one that would woo a person into the love of the Divine Bridegroom" ( p. 50). We discover that the dark and eerie "Toccata and fugue in D minor" was an "effort . . . to deal with the heartbreak of losing their twins" (pp, 17-18).Throughout his life, Bach encounters conflicts so common to many of us: professional jealousy; recognition of self disguised as the need for the recognition of God's glory; and perhaps, above all, the responsibility of vocation versus family. Bach is absent enjoying the intellectual heights of conversations with artists and philosophers while his first wife, Barbara, undergoes a miscarriage. Even more poignantly, Bach lingers on another such trip and misses her death and burial by two days.Through this portrayal, Ridley also researches and gives us a snapshot of the lives of middle-class women in seventeenth-century Germany. Though she deeply loves him, Barbara grows estranged from Bach when he discounts her own spiritual struggles. Anna, the second wife, is encouraged by Bach because he recognizes her as a person and an artist in her own right, unlike the other male figures of her day.As well researched and inspirational as the novel is, its still greater value is that it leaves readers wanting to learn more.

Exceptional Research

In RuthAnn Ridley's "Bach's Passion," the reader meets Bach, his family and his compatriots as living people. The characterizations and the descriptions of dress, customs and music of the time reflect exceptional research of Bach's life and times. An excellent glossary and bibliography relating to Bach are an added bonus. - Herbert Colvin, Professor Emeritus of Music Theory: Baylor University

Fills a need for creative persons who are also Christians...

Few books explore the unique struggles of artists attempting to integrate the demands of talent with their Christian faith. In fact, much writing about historically important artists simply ignores their faith; deeming it irrelevant to their art. Ridley¹s book doesn¹t. The author takes both spiritual committment and creativity seriously and, using Bach¹s life as her medium, explores the challenges of integrating passion for art with passion for God. Bach¹s Passion, presents the author¹s fictionalized portrait of the life of Johann Sebastian Bach from young manhood in 1701 to his death in July of 1750 at the age of 65. This period includes two marriages which undergirded his great musical outpouring and his constant determination, for God¹s sake, ³to leave nothing mediocre behind². A writer, musician, and Christian herself, Ridley aims to maintain historical accuracy while offering the reader well-grounded speculation on Bach¹s concrete dilemmas with creativity, career, and family. She grapples with Bach¹s struggles over his desire for recognition versus servanthood through his music; his attempts to comprehend God¹s plan for his life and work, his deep frustration with the politics of the music world, and his final question: had his life counted? These themes are woven with personal issues like Bach¹s desire for happy family life; his search for understanding companionship, and his heartbreak over the problems of his children. She also includes a poignant postlude on the ultimate fate of Bach¹s work. I deeply appreciate Ridley¹s honesty in not iconizing Bach as an untouchable, irreproachable saint. She writes as one who has lived the tension between faith and art, and her constructions of Bach¹s life events and his responses to them ring true. Bach¹s Passion will be prized by anyone facing the challenges, agonies, ecstasies, uncertainties, and appeals to God, which Bach underwent while seeking to realize the full potential of the talent God gave him. For such as these, Bach¹s Passion is a much needed companion for the journey.