The Faber Pocket Guide to Bach

The music of J.S.Bach has a unique power and attraction some 300 years after it was written. From annual performances of the great Passions and BBC Radio 3's hugely successful Bach Christmas, to its use in adverts, films and popular arrangements, the imaginative strength of Bach's music continues to draw listeners to explore its mysteries. This new Pocket Guide looks at all Bach's music, sacred and secular, and explores why he speaks so profoundly to our age about both the spiritual and the sensual in life. Among the features of this easy-to-use book: The Bach Top Ten Bach: The music work by work Performing Bach today Bach: The life year by year What people said about Bach Accessible and easy to use, Nicholas Kenyon provides for the first time an up-to-date survey of all Bach's major works in the light of the latest research, from Masses to Cantatas, Concertos to Suites, and recommends the best CDs and further reading.

Nicholas Kenyon has been Managing Director of the Barbican Centre since 2007. He was Director of the BBC Proms from 1996 to 2007, and Controller, BBC Radio 3, from 1992 to 1998. He read History at Balliol College, Oxford, and his first post was with the English Bach Festival 1973-6. He was a music critic for The New Yorker, The Times, and the Observer, and has written the history of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the biography of Simon Rattle, edited the influential volume Authenticity and Early Music, and co-edited The Proms: A New History. He is a member of the boards of English National Opera and Sage Gateshead, a Trustee of Dartington Hall and a member of Arts Council England.