ABSTRACT
The present volume pursues a pioneering concept. It challenges an entire scientific branch to stop, to reflect on the achievements of sixty years of research, and to contrive future tasks. If I, having reached four score years, participate in such a project (as compared with someone thirty or sixty years younger), both reflection and contrivance take on a different character. I refrain from providing an historical depiction, especially since the field of research has become too complex even for someone who has personally experienced and partly shaped this time. What I can achieve is a personal report, a source that is subject to all the problems inherent in oral history. Moreover, I can point to desiderata that I will indeed only be able to redeem to a certain extent. Therefore, I would above all request lenience towards my individual perspective, and I hope that subjective experience and contrivance will include enough objective merit in order to introduce the specific area of Bach’s compositional technique and its investigation.
