Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?In this remarkable book, John Eliot Gardiner distils the fruits of a lifetime's immersion as one of Bach's greatest living interpreters. Explaining in wonderful detail how Bach worked and how his music achieves its effects, he also takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.

An unconventional, brilliant new biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi – from the bestselling biographer and acclaimed conductor John Eliot Gardiner. This book positions Claudio Monteverdi amidst seven leading lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Rubens, Shakespeare and Caravaggio.Using Monteverdi as the sun, centre of those six other greats, this book argues that across these tumultuous centuries when science was reconfiguring man’s entire relation with the cosmos, and many were arguing for the ‘science of music’, Monteverdi became a key to understanding and bringing together all of this knowledge. As it became believed that art and music could, like nothing else, reflect the human soul, Monteverdi’s music represented and unlocked the shift in human thought and the attitude toward modernity encapsulated by a sudden prizing of subjectivity and self-reflection.This book will reintroduce Monteverdi in a new light, with a new significance, but it’s also a wider study of these centuries and the speed at which thought and art were changing.

An unconventional, brilliant new biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi – from the bestselling biographer and acclaimed conductor John Eliot Gardiner. This book positions Claudio Monteverdi amidst seven leading lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Rubens, Shakespeare and Caravaggio.Using Monteverdi as the sun, centre of those six other greats, this book argues that across these tumultuous centuries when science was reconfiguring man’s entire relation with the cosmos, and many were arguing for the ‘science of music’, Monteverdi became a key to understanding and bringing together all of this knowledge. As it became believed that art and music could, like nothing else, reflect the human soul, Monteverdi’s music represented and unlocked the shift in human thought and the attitude toward modernity encapsulated by a sudden prizing of subjectivity and self-reflection.This book will reintroduce Monteverdi in a new light, with a new significance, but it’s also a wider study of these centuries and the speed at which thought and art were changing.

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents' house, where it hung for safety during the Second World War. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, which explains in wonderful detail the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects - and what it can tell us about Bach the man.Gardiner's background as a historian has encouraged him to search for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few biographical shards, scrutinising the music, and watching for those instances when Bach's personality seems to penetrate the fabric of his notation. Gardiner's aim is 'to give the reader a sense of inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related processes of composing and performing his music.'It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER is one of the world's leading conductors, not only of Baroque music but across the whole repertoire. He founded the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. He has conducted most of the world's great orchestras and in many of the leading opera houses. He lives and farms in Dorset.

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?In this remarkable book, John Eliot Gardiner distils the fruits of a lifetime's immersion as one of Bach's greatest living interpreters. Explaining in wonderful detail how Bach worked and how his music achieves its effects, he also takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.

An unconventional, brilliant new biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi – from the bestselling biographer and acclaimed conductor John Eliot Gardiner. This book positions Claudio Monteverdi amidst seven leading lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Rubens, Shakespeare and Caravaggio.Using Monteverdi as the sun, centre of those six other greats, this book argues that across these tumultuous centuries when science was reconfiguring man’s entire relation with the cosmos, and many were arguing for the ‘science of music’, Monteverdi became a key to understanding and bringing together all of this knowledge. As it became believed that art and music could, like nothing else, reflect the human soul, Monteverdi’s music represented and unlocked the shift in human thought and the attitude toward modernity encapsulated by a sudden prizing of subjectivity and self-reflection.This book will reintroduce Monteverdi in a new light, with a new significance, but it’s also a wider study of these centuries and the speed at which thought and art were changing.

An unconventional, brilliant new biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi – from the bestselling biographer and acclaimed conductor John Eliot Gardiner. This book positions Claudio Monteverdi amidst seven leading lights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Bacon, Kepler, Rubens, Shakespeare and Caravaggio.Using Monteverdi as the sun, centre of those six other greats, this book argues that across these tumultuous centuries when science was reconfiguring man’s entire relation with the cosmos, and many were arguing for the ‘science of music’, Monteverdi became a key to understanding and bringing together all of this knowledge. As it became believed that art and music could, like nothing else, reflect the human soul, Monteverdi’s music represented and unlocked the shift in human thought and the attitude toward modernity encapsulated by a sudden prizing of subjectivity and self-reflection.This book will reintroduce Monteverdi in a new light, with a new significance, but it’s also a wider study of these centuries and the speed at which thought and art were changing.

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most unfathomable composers in the history of music. How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque - and occasionally so intemperate?John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents' house, where it hung for safety during the Second World War. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, which explains in wonderful detail the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects - and what it can tell us about Bach the man.Gardiner's background as a historian has encouraged him to search for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few biographical shards, scrutinising the music, and watching for those instances when Bach's personality seems to penetrate the fabric of his notation. Gardiner's aim is 'to give the reader a sense of inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related processes of composing and performing his music.'It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach's works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.SIR JOHN ELIOT GARDINER is one of the world's leading conductors, not only of Baroque music but across the whole repertoire. He founded the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. He has conducted most of the world's great orchestras and in many of the leading opera houses. He lives and farms in Dorset.