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The Organ Music of J. S. Bach.

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The Organ Music of J. S. Bach. By Peter Williams. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [x, 624 p. ISBN 0-521-81416-2. $110 (hbk.); ISBN 0-521-89115-9. $40 (pbk.)] Music examples, glossary, bibliography, indexes.

When Peter Williams' magisterial The Organ Music of J. S. Bach first appeared nearly twenty-five years ago (Cambridge University Press, vols. 1 and 2 in 1980, vol. 3 in 1984), a new era in the scholarship of Bach's organ music was opened. This study pointedly avoided the celebratory tone so typical of previous books on the topic, and it refused to allow mere speculation about these pieces to assume the status of accepted fact. It drew great attention to sources, particularly since ongoing close study of them at the time was making problematic much received wisdom about this repertory. The volumes were loaded (even overloaded) with lists of manuscripts, quotations of opinions from previous generations, richly detailed formal analyses, and an extravagant number of musical examples which supported the myriad connections drawn by the author to Bach's organ works from a wide range of composers of organ music (and other keyboard, instrumental, and even vocal music). In the end, however, Williams preferred to pose questions rather than offer answers, and the reader learned much about how to formulate such questions and what might constitute a reasonable answer or, perhaps more likely, why it would not be reasonable to expect an answer.

The...

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