#236 - At home with Bach

An episode from 8/3/26: Tonight, we return to the life of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and look into two very different aspects of his creative life. The first is to ask the question how, and under what circumstances, did he write his great music? As it turns out, for the last almost-thirty years of his life, he wrote his music in a 125-square foot room, amid the inescapable the sounds of his family and students. The second question: what was Bach like as a public performer, and what was it like to perform with him—or, more likely, under his critical eye? The two books I read from are John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven and Chritoph Wolff's Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. My other episodes on Bach is Bach and God. Let me know what you think in the comment. The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].