Considered the fundamental source for Bach scholarship, the original book contained extensive primary source material that made it, according to Edward Mclrvine in Notes, “the most significant portrait of a composer up to that time to be drawn primarily from letters and contemporary documents.” To the original book Wolff adds over a hundred new documents he also reorganizes material, provides a detailed chronology and map of Germany, and expands headings and references.

Among his most respected works is The New Bach Reader, a revision and enlargement of Hans David’s and Arthur Mendel’s classic, The Bach Reader. He has made several important archival discoveries, including Bach’s “Neumeister Chorales” at Yale in 1985, and a trove of Bach manuscripts in Kiev, Ukraine in 1999. At Harvard he served as chair of the music department, acting director of the University Library, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He became a professor at Columbia in 1973, and joined the Harvard faculty in 1976.

With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a new standard in Bach biography.After teaching at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 1970, Wolff came to the United States to accept a post at Columbia University as an assistant professor of musicology. Time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his

Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. Now available in paperback, this engaging biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing-and sometimes imperfect-human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances gained in the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author and leading Bach scholar Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. Bach through countless performances and recordings, the composer himself continues to come across as the somewhat enigmatic figure depicted in a single, familiar portrait. Although we are acquainted with the music of J.

Christoph wolff bach