Highly informative and accessible

Really easy to follow. All explainations clear. Now have much deeper understanding of Bach's music.

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First Class.

What can I say ? These lectures have been truly inspiring.They have transformed, for me, the Baroque in a way that has been exciting and informative. As a result I have bought many CD's of the works studied - unusual for me.
As for the narrator, I wish I had enjoyed him as a tutor at university - I am sure my knowledge of music would have been far more profound. He has made the subject of the Baroque LIVE in a way I have never experienced hitherto.

Truly one of the best series of lectures I have ever experienced.

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1 person found this helpful

Inspired and inspiring

This is teaching at its absolute best - to the point where I wish I could go back in time and major in Music.

Several things lift this into the sublime... (i) Apart from Greenberg's obvious breadth and depth of knowledge, he has a thoroughly infectious passion for Bach's music that can't help but transmit itself. (ii) He's a natural teacher with a knack for getting to the core of things in a few pithy sentences, combined with a brilliant sense of humour (iii) The musical examples embedded in the book.

As a Bach (and classical music) newbie, the whole package is an exhilarating trip which leaves me listening with a dumb grin on my face.

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Fascinating

As someone with a love of Bach and baroque music but no musical training, this was a revelation although it was hard to follow at times - but I didn't use the accompanying PDF which would have it more comprehensible and memorable I'm sure. That I can't remember so much is a comment on my memory and the amount of information, not on the delivery. Prof Greenberg's chummy delivery and American pronunciation grated at times - but I listened from beginning to end, was held throughout and could listen again - despite the irritations. Excellent.

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3 people found this helpful

Exceptional series of lectures!

Surely one of the problems with having a series of lectures which centre around my most favourite of all composers, J.S. Bach, lies in being able to judiciously select only a very small number of pieces from his vast output in such a way as is skillful enough to allow thorough expansive illumination of each of the most vital aspects of the composer's multifaceted art......Prof Greenberg succeeds in doing this over all of the 32 chapters contained in this series. Even as an avid fan of Bach's of over twenty years (although admittedly a musical layman in most respects), I learned so many new things from every single lecture.....Most surprising of all for me perhaps (speaking as one who is intimately familiar with a great deal of Bach's cantatas and other sacred works) was the Professor's emphasis on how much opera was a genre that influenced Bach's style; this point is repeatedly reiterated, not just during the lectures surrounding the St Matthew Passion where the fact would seem most obvious, but throughout practically all the other lectures also......I defy most people to once again claim that Bach "cannot be dramatic" after having listened to all of these lectures.

My only reservation about this presentation is that occasionally the delivery extends beyond being one emanating from the perspective of an obviously deeply admiring (even at times awestruck) narrator and begins to spill over into an over-abundance of effusive (in places almost cloying) displays of enthusiasm, with slightly jarring uses of humour and levity and flights of fancy from the narrator's own imagination which sometimes serve to add little in the way of useful information, and which (at least from the perspective of this humble reviewer) did begin to grate in places.

All in all, though, this is a deeply rewarding set.

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4 people found this helpful

Like listening to Woody Allen on Bach!

Fantastic, scintillating listen-such fun! Every lecture packed with treasures. Highly entertaining; favourite Audible purchase ever!

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3 people found this helpful

Don't hesitate ...

Add this to you Audible library and prepare to be enchanted, amazed and moved at the glory of Bach's music, the challenges that he overcame to write it, the incredible intellectual and emotional skills he employed to compose it, the playful and profound patterns and messages he concealed within in, and the historical jeopardy faced by his manuscripts to reach us today. Sadly, not all of his music survived. Bach was mortal but his music is not. This course celebrates his life and reserves the mourning for the music that has been lost. Overall, the course is uplifting. Even though I already enjoyed the music of Bach and was aware of many aspects of its ingenuity, this course has changed the way that I listen to it.

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Accessible to non musicians

If you have any interest at all in developing your acquaintance with Bach you are sure to enjoy this course. Don’t be daunted by the length - it’s all entertaining. I suggest turning up the volume during the played extracts as they can sound a bit distant.
Greenberg is a human bring, as was Bach, so not everyone is going to love everything about his lecturing style, digressions, humour or pronunciation (eg of French). But for heavens sake open your ears to the insights he provides to the music, its context and Bach’s personal situation. He cleverly avoids all but the barest references to music theory so this can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in hearing Bach and appreciating his music.

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Odd Balance

Robert Greenberg spends about 8 lectures setting the scene before he plays anything by Bach. From what I remember Bach hardly gets a mention in lectures 2-5! He then rushes through Bach's early life and spends ages on the St Massion Passion and Goldberg Variations. I actually thought he covered Bach better (and more briefly) in "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music".

Even the title is a bit confusing. The course is about Bach, who happened to live in the High Baroque. But everyone else who gets a mention is incidental to Bach's story.

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1 person found this helpful

Very informative and interesting

There was so much information in this lecture series, about Bach's life and well as his music. I found it very easy to listen to and understand, even though it's by a university professor and I have no musical training, and his admiration for Bach shone through all the lectures. One of my best Audible purchases

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