ABSTRACT
Johann Sebastian Bach has long been regarded as the consummate Baroque composer (Fig. 11.1). His is the music performers and listeners return to time and again, knowing there is always some other way of interpreting it or some detail that was missed in a previous performance. For scholars, Bach remains a cornerstone of Baroque research, and his music has been examined from all angles: editing, biography, source studies, archival work, gender, symbolism, tonal theory, and formal analysis. Some scholars consider Bach’s music the pinnacle of the Baroque period, the natural culmination of decades of contrapuntal practice and Lutheran musical values. His contrapuntal skills, which can be seen not only in fugues and partitas, but across his instrumental and vocal works, were unparalleled among his peers.
