This basic, one-volume study of Johann Sebastian Bach combines a sensitive biographical sketch with a detailed analysis of each of his major types of composition, including vocal music, organ music, keyboard music, and instrumental music. In each section, Geiringer thoroughly examines many Bach compositions and evaluates them in relation to the rest of the composer's work, as well as in relation to the music of his contemporaries. More than seventy musical examples enable the reader to understand how Bach worked and to observe his music in various stages of completion. In addition, an...

Karl Geiringer's biography of Brahms is generally regarded as the finest study of the composer ever published in any language. It is based upon the great body of material in the archives of the Viennese Society of Friends, for which Dr. Geiringer was curator from 1930-1938, and which contains more than a thousand letters written by and to Brahms. These letters, exchanged with family and with his famous contemporaries, reveal his loneliness, grim humor, loyalty, painful shyness, and enthusiasm for the music of Beethoven and Schubert--moods that the self-effacing composer did not publicly...

This definitive study of the life and works of Joseph Haydn represents half a century of research. As a curator of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, Dr. Geiringer was in charge of one of the world's leading Hayden collections. His scholarly investigations took him to various monasteries, to libraries in Eisenstadt, Prague, Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., and, as a guest of the Hungarian government, to the previously almost inaccessible archives of the Princes of Esterhazy in Budapest. In the past decade, Haydn studies have progressed enormously. A thematic catalog is...