ENLIGHTED ENDEAVOUR

IT is new source material like this which goes a long way towards justifying the publisher's blurb that this is "the most important biography of Bach for more than a century".

Not only has Wolff amassed more information about his subject than anyone before him, but he has set out to show that Bach, far from being a provincial artisan following the family trade in an obscure place, was so learned that he was held even in his lifetime to be the most impressive musician the world had so far seen.

In particular, it was his mastery of the "science" of music which caused one of his pupils to extend him the ultimate accolade of being on a par with Isaac Newton.

The choir surprised Mozart with the performance of the double chorus motet Singet dem Herrn by Sebastian Bach. Mozart knew this master more by hearsay than by his works, which had become quite rare; at least his motets, which had never been printed, were completely unknown to him. Hardly had the choir sung a few bars when Mozart sat up, startled; a few bars more and he called out "What is this?" And now his whole soul seemed to be in his ears.

When the singing was finished he cried out, full of joy: "Now there is something one can learn from!"

And it is this rather unexpected comparison which gave Wolff his central theme: "It appears utterly appropriate to see Bach's musical advances in the light of Newton's philosophical achievements. The two men reached pinnacles of a very different kind, but they lived, thought, and worked in the same intellectual climate of scientific discovery and empirical testing of fundamental principles. The sheer scope and breadth of Newton's intellectual endeavours find their analogy in the enormous and unparalleled range of interests and enterprises that characterize Bach: the complete, the learned, the perfect musician".

It is a noble theme, exhaustively researched, and put into narrative order by the man who has written more about Bach than anyone else alive today.

It is important to emphasise that this is a biography.

For analysis of Bach's music one must look elsewhere: the story in these pages is unde-layed by musical examples (there are a handful in an appendix).

Individual compositions are only given Jumping around space when Wolff has something original to say about their genesis: in this way he is free to highlight his perceptions without losing sight of them in a thicket of musical references. Particularly interesting to me was the section on The Art of Fugue where Wolff, with calm authority, revisits the evidence for the unfinished final tour de force, and concludes that "at the time of Bach's death [it] was less incomplete than what has come down to us ...

Before composing the quadruple fugue Bach would have had to test the combinatorial possibilities of the four themes."

The draft of this test hasn't survived; but of course it must have existed, it's just that in the substantial corpus of writing on the subject no one has so far thought to say so.

WOLFF has set new standards for Bach scholarship, but he has not set new standards for writing them down.

Too often he hardly progresses beyond the humdrum language of the so-familiar student textbooks: "The Mass offers a full panoply of the art of musical composition, with a breadth and depth betraying not only theoretical perspicacity but also a comprehensive grasp of music history, particularly in its use of old around in

and new styles." Tired old words expressing tired old concepts. Will thinkers about music forever sound like this? And it doesn't help this reader that words like "flunk" and "skeptical" and phrases like "most everything" (apparently this is not mistake) are printed. Is this really a publication from Oxford University Press? (I would make no comment if they had been published by an American press).

Even the epilogue - entitled Bach and the Idea of "Musical Perfection", a subject which promises well is rendered unmemorable by convolutions and repetitions. The central idea is clear enough: "God is a harmonic being. All harmony originates from his wise order and organization ...

Where there is no conformity, there is also no order, no beauty and no perfection.

For beauty and perfection consists in the conformity of diversity."

Wolff's subsequent analysis of this concept amounts to this: only a contrapuntist as capable as Bach was able to bring palpable unity to the several divergent strands of his part-writ-ing without hint of confusion.

Thus his music is perfect. It is a good, strong and still noble point; but by this time the reader may be reflecting that the real strength of the book lies in less speculative material, in the reliable recitation of biographical facts.

lA text and parallel translation by Richard Stokes of The Complete Church and Secular Cantatas of JS Bach has recently been published by Long Barn books at 25.

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