Morally Audible ought to re-record this one!!

This is one of the very best books available on the subject and is of massive value to specialists and general readers alike. Not for the first time for Audible Inc. recordings (see also John Julius Norwich's book about Shakespeare's Kings) a great book is WRECKED by the choice of a narrator who demonstrates not the slightest familiarity with the subject matter. In this case, a book full of German, Latin and Italian names, places and musical terms is narrated by someone who has taken no trouble at all to master the fairly easy rules of pronunciation. He reads it like a robot. Was any editorial care taken at all? I think not. A massive lost opportunity and a true disgrace. I would have thought that hundreds of proficient readers could have been found who would have done a much better job for about £2000.

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4 people found this helpful

Great book, poorly read

Its clear that the narrator has no clue about the subject with so poor German, French and Latin translations. A bit of preparation is advisable..

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Erudite and interesting, in spite of the narration

As the author points out, Bach biographical sources are largely exhausted. But Gardiner's approach is new, and wears its exceptional learning and scholarship lightly for the non-specialist reader. As for the narration, I began to think that it had been computer generated from a not-quite-complete word list recorded by the narrator. This would explain the wooden quality, the peculiar pauses, some of the more glaring mispronunciations and the occasional occurrence of wrong emphases. The narrator is well-reviewed in other contexts, so the poor reading, much commented upon by other reviewers of this audio book, remains something of a mystery. The content, however, is excellent and highly recommended.

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Dreadful narration, almost ruining the book

This is a really good book by the most experienced conductor of the cantatas. The narration is horrible with consistently wrong — brutal — pronunciation of Latin, German, French, Italian and from time to time even English. (I’m a linguist and I know all these languages.) Listen to his pronunciation of “ricercar” — I thought first it was another mangling of German!! I did wonder if the voice was computer generated… Audible should offer all customers a refund or, even better, a new version.

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Will change your perspective on Bach

As a person who has played a large proportion of his clavier music, I feel I have a musical connection with Bach. This book widen that connection significantly. I am an owner of his excellent cantatas recordings, which I listen to often, and a large proportion of the book discusses these in the context of his life. It can get rather excessively nerdy which detracts from the narrative.

As a whole, the book expertly delves into Bach's environment and motivations and I now feel his presence even more when playing his music.

When it comes to the reader, yes, it's dire. But as a person who lives in England I can sympathize with the choice; I think they were going for authoritarian scholar which somewhat works. However, as another reader said, it might be best to read this book rather than listen to it and I'm sure your German enunciation is far better.

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Great book .... terrible narration!

A wonderful book written by one of today's leading authorities on Bach. But my God , the narration - probably the most wooden I have ever heard. It actually sounds like one of those computer generated narrations at times. Eventually, I purchased the print book; it was the only way to really enjoy it.

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Atrocious narration

Stopped listening when Hegel was pronounced „Heegl“. Shame as this would be a good book.

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Fails the Turing Test

WARNING! Either this audiobook is being "read" by a machine or somebody at Audible has deliberately chosen an actor who sounds exactly like a machine in order to test whether customers will tolerate a cheap, mechanical reading. There are too many mispronunciations to count: recitative, Webern, elegiac, Emmaus, viola, timbre, concertante, oboe d'amore, Goethe, Montaigne, palliative .... and the voice has no understanding of the subject, of the cultural context or of music. The delivery is SO dull: monotonous, tonally colourless, pedestrian, and unrelentingly harsh. It is as if the voice thoroughly dislikes doing the job, has no enthusiasm for the task, no vocal range. Whoever at Audible allowed this recording to be published should be sacked: it's obvious he didn't bother to listen to it. So many embarrassing mistakes: who is BARK? And one wonders at the mentality of issuing an audiobook about Bach's music but cutting out ALL the musical examples on which the analysis rests. Doesn't Audible understand written music? How Bach works on the ears?

This is a grotesque production because Gardiner's book is one of the most erudite, fascinating, quirky, stimulating, illuminating books about the greatest of all composers. He is no Taruskin but he knows this music so thoroughly from the inside that every page is full of engaging insights and often provocative, only sometimes simply daft reflections. The book should be on every music lover's shelf, every school syllabus. but NOT in the shoddy recording. I hope everyone who buys this volume will demand a refund. If Audible thinks it can get away with robotic readings it will make this the default, money saving option.

“Music in the Castle of Heaven’ will transform the way you think, not only about Bach, but about art and everything it touches. For insight and intelligence, breadth of scholarship – both musical and literary– for passion and intensity, and the ability to communicate complex matters and rich historical detail in everyday language, this book dwarfs every other book on music I’ve read – even Sullivan on Beethoven even, its ground breaking way, the magnificent, magisterial Taruskin.

There’s scarcely a wasted word, a silly speculation. Gardiner is more fully steeped in Bach through his rich experiences of a lifetime’s living and performing the music, and steeped in so much of the other music which helps contextualise it, exploring the cultural territory, struggling with the dirty business of getting the music performed, recorded, justified – a single-minded struggle, rather like Bach’s, or like Christ’s, much like any prophet’s in a sneering and hostile world, in an indifferent, complacent and semi-comatose world, addicted to junk TV and trivial pursuits.

If you have time to read nothing else, treat yourself a couple of hours to lose yourself in the run up to the first performances of the two passions: twin Everest peaks of the mighty sweep of the cantatas and everything else Bach wrote: two towering masterpieces, so different, complementary, twin leaps of faith by Bach- in every sense of that phrase: defying the probability of comprehension by the performers, by the congregation, by the dunder-headed bureaucrats always threatening to scupper the entire, audacious undertaking.

This is the story of the greatest art we have, triumphing over expectations, over probability, over contingencies, over Doubt: another, even more ambitious undertaking than “King Lear” and Hopkins’s sonnets. So far ahead of their times, so unwavering in the belief of what can be achieved through burning faith, unremitting graft, singleness of purpose, blazing determination in the face of the sceptics ...

“Of course, with Faith and hard work, we can walk on water!”

Bach’s achievement is on a different scale, even from Shakespeare’s: even more universal because music is an international language. Currently, the finest performances of these works are by a band of mostly Japanese musicians, steeped, like John Gardiner in England, in the music.

This book is inspirational: we hear, feel, experience Bach’s music lifting off the page as we read, suddenly the whole oeuvre, from the violin partitas to the b minor mass, making far more sense than we’d ever intimated, as we realise what he was up to, the way his mind worked, the breadth of vision, just how much he achieved in that unglamorous career, off the beaten track. A man largely forgotten for the next hundred years.

Bach’s achievements are inspirational for all time because the Christian myth he dramatises probably comes the closest to any universal, unifying conception of reality – cosmic and human – our civilisation is likely to generate, and also because it transcends its own dogmatic particulars in a way nationalist Ring for example can’t even begin to do. We don’t need to share Luther’s particular reading of the story to be inspired by the concept. Only a narcissist will find nothing here to build upon.

It is a self-transcending vision, an attempt to show everything in some kind of intelligible, purposeful liberating, life-affirmative coherence. Bach’s music is so technically masterful, wide ranging, virtuosic, more innovative than anyone’s likely ever to match. As with Shakespeare and the written word, there’s enough here to keep all of us busy for the rest of our working lives, learning from and building with the massive, ingenious Lego system of tonal harmony Bach’s bequeathed us, music at once so technically all embracing and intellectually challenging and yet grounded in, expressive of sensual delight and human passion. Has anyone else plumbed the depths of grief, despair, disintegration so movingly and also taken us to such serene heights? Will there ever be a dramatic experience as devastating as the opening chorus of the St John Passion or one as sublime as the closing pages of the St Matthew? All human experience is there, lies somewhere between those two peaks.

Bach’s is the story of someone almost devoid of vainglory – everything he did was educational, the disinterested pursuit of excellence, leading people to appreciate the glory of Creation and of human creativity. His furious engagements with the sour-voiced idiots who tried to limit what might be achieved was nothing to do with pride or self-promotion. Quite the reverse. If any man dedicated his life to the pursuit of excellence, the search for truth as illuminated by Art for the enrichment of all of us, it was Bach. Although there was more than enough to satisfy them, Bach’s target audience wasn’t the glitterati or the educational elite. It was the ordinary parishioners at their Sunday devotions. Shakespeare’s audience and Dickens’s. Ordinary folk touched by a divine spark.

***

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An interesting book, appallingly read

This is a dense book written by someone who knows Bach and his music better, I suspect, than anyone else. As he says at the beginning, there is little factual known about Bach and this book is an attempt to understand more about the man through an analysis of his historical and musical context and of the music he himself composed. This is a book that needs to be well read. There are quotes in French and German and many foreign names. Unfortunately I have not been able to make it beyond chapter four and I'm going to continue reading it as a book. This is because the reader is just appalling. He makes half the words sound as though they are written in quotation marks, his pacing and intonation is often is wrong and he mispronounces common words and on one occasion the name of a well known musician. He is obviously making an effort over the short French and German quotes and the foreign names. He sounds as though reading the book is difficult, a real strain for him and he would rather not be doing it. It sounds like a task given to a schoolboy, not the performance of a professional.
I didn't want to believe the other reviewer who said the reader was so bad, as I really wanted to listen to this, but he was absolutely correct. A great disappointment and a performance the book certainly does not deserve. I have given it one star overall because the reader was just so poor.

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8 people found this helpful

At least pronounce Bach correctly please!!

What would have made Bach better?

Having a reader who had a working knowledge of the classical music world-several misprints(?) Trevor Pincock?? Trevor Pinnock surely. And as mentioned above the name Bach is not the same as the noise made by a dog!

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