Bach in Berlin

Rezensionen / Stimmen

Bach in Berlin is a wonderful piece of scholarship from a leading historian of German national identity.... It is not so much an account of the revival itself, but instead an examination of how educated Germans (the Bildungsbuergertum) learned to view music as a fundamental component of German culture and how they saw Bach, especially in his vocal music, as the epitome of German music: serious, profound, religious. Applegate tells the story brilliantly, traversing disciplinary boundaries with virtuosic ease.... Stunningly original, well-written, and judicious in its handling of historical and musicological controversies, Bach in Berlin is an engaging, first-rate book that should be on the reading list of anyone with interests in nineteenth-century music and German history.

- Anthony J. Steinhoff (H-Germany, H-Net Reviews) Applegate brings together the personnel and circumstances around an event famous in all music history books. Her confident handling of written sources reveals Berlin as a burgeoning city of culture and, let us not forget, military power, both of which were to impinge so radically on Europe that all kinds of historians will find much of interest in Bach in Berlin. I particularly appreciated the excerpts from the day's musical journals, pleased to see that, for example, Bach's recitative was already admired by the discriminating.

(Musical Times) Exemplary.... Applegate arranges her material elegantly around an account of the 1829 performance itself, supported by a detailed examination of the circumstances in which it took shape, and discusses how these illuminate an emerging German culture.... The story of the revival of the St. Matthew Passion is people by vivid characters. Among the principals are Mendelssohn, Schinkel and Goethe, supported by Zelter and Fasch and the actor Eduard Devrient, but the evocation of place and period is made more lively by Applegate's fascination with the coteries surrounding them.

- Richard Coles (Times Literary Supplement) It is easy to enjoy Applegate's fascinating and flawlessly written book, which abounds in colorful prose and into which a myriad of well-chosen and superbly translated quotations are woven. Every page is engaging.

- Mark-Daniel Schmid (Nations and Nationalism)