On-line Book Review

an essential reading for every performer

Clearly, many changes are made to both the physical layout and the actual contents of the book. Although the hugely over-crowded table of contents is still there, readers can now navigate the book more easily, as the chapter structure is made more visible, thanks to the clear headers appearing on each page. General index is now split into two—‘name and subject’ and ‘Bach’s works’—and there is also a separate Bibliography, a chapter previously lacking from the original edition. All these make the book user-friendly. The modification made to the style of notes is doubtful in my opinion: the continuous numbering of ‘footnotes’ is now changed to the ‘end notes’ system of which its numerical sequence is reset at every chapter. Regrettably, there are some minor glitches in the numbering of notes as an unfortunate consequence (page 67, notes 18 where references to notes 18 and 19 should read notes 1 and 2; page 72, note 69 where reference to note 8 should read 'note 8 of Introduction'; page 74, note 112 should read 'See note 108' (instead of '125') to name but a few).

As for the contents, the book receives much desired information update, which is particularly evident in notes. While much of the reference to the Bach-Gesellschaft edition is replaced with that to the Neue Bach Ausgabe, it is in notes themselves that the author expands his arguments based on more recent literature. Exception to this are the areas of ‘continuo practice’ (p. 10) and ‘Bach’s choir’ (pp. 120-1), the argument of which the author expands in the main text; needless to say, these are necessitated by the recent research of Laurence Dreyfus and Joshua Rifkin respectively.