Author: BACH (Johann Sebastian). FORKEL (Johann Nikolaus):
Title: Life of John Sebastian Bach With a Critical View of his Compositions. Translated from the German.
Description: London: Printed for T. Boosey and CO..., 1820. FIRST (AND ONLY?) ENGLISH TRANLATION. Tall 8vo, 223 x 138 mms., pp. xi [xii blank], 116, 3 folding plates of music at end of text, followed by one leaf, printed on recto, of adverts for Bach's music, original boards, uncut; front end-papers renewed, corners worn, boards and spine slightly soiled, but uncommon in original boards. Forkel published Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke: Für patriotische Verehrer echter musikalischer Kunst in 1802. The translator herehas not been identified, but Samuel Wesley 1766 – 1837) would be a plausible suggestion. As Wikipedia notes, "Wesley seems to have become acquainted with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach sometime between 1796 and 1808. In 1810, he and Charles Frederick Horn collaborated in publishing the first English edition of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier.Their joint publication and popularisation of Bach's work have been described as an 'English Bach awakening.' No time was lost in converting others to the Bach cause; Wesley's principal converts were William Crotch and Charles Burney. In a series of letters to his friend, Benjamin Jacob, Wesley documented how he made Bach better appreciated." New Grove attributes the translation to Augustus Frederic Christopher Kollmann (1756 - 1829), who has also been described as "The First Apostle of Bach in England," and Kollmann translated excerpts from Forkel's biography of Bach in his 1812 magazine the Quarterly Musical Register.

Keywords: music biography prose


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