We read about the influence of Bach’s first teachers and his early aspirations to become a virtuoso organist. Bach that was also used to a brilliant effect in such films as The English Patient and Silence of the Lambs. The Goldberg Variations is one of the better known compositions of J. Bach’s cousin, Christoph Bach, was one of the biggest influences on Bach as a child, demonstrating to young Bach that music can be “a receptacle in which to pour all of his life’s anguishes, one’s faith…and one’s passion and act as a…vehicle for self-expression”. This resilience, but also strict discipline, faith and belief in his own abilities, played a role in his later professional success. This trauma probably contributed to him becoming so withdrawn, but also resilient later in life. Like Mozart, he was born into a musical family, but had a strict Lutheran upbringing and lost both of his parents when he was still young. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach in the heart of the Thuringian forest, southern Germany. Gardiner presents a non-linear narrative of Bach’s life, which, though at times confusing, is still insightful. Numerous factors influenced Bach and made him into a musician we know today – familial, historic, socio-economic, cultural, educational – and without knowing these we cannot even begin to fathom the workings of Bach’s mind. Music in the Castle of Heaven is an illuminating account of Bach’s life and music that starts from the premise that to understand Bach’s art, we have to first immerse ourselves in the very essence of his time and place of birth. But, who was Johann Sebastian Bach really and how it came about that a cantor operating in a small region of Germany managed to compose music of such brilliant contours, imaginative force and spiritual depth? In this non-fiction, British conductor John Eliot Gardiner aims to shed light on these puzzling questions. The man behind it appears equally stern and unapproachable. The music of Bach is complex, inventive, awe-inspiring and brimming with mathematical precision and religious fervour. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well“. Bach’s genius, presenting to us a complex and sometimes contradictory musician who was also a very empathetic man. In this biography, Gardiner strikes at the very heart of J. Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach – ★★★★

Bach by john eliot gardiner