"The Bach Reader is a comprehensive collection of the most significant original source material on Johann Sebastian Bach. In these pages the personality of Bach come alive again -- in his own words, and in the testimony both of contemporaries and of the generation following his own. Here are documents relating to his personal and business life, letters, family papers, anecdotes, and his evaluations of his students. Fine scholarship and careful editorial discrimination have gone into the translation and selection of the vast amount of information ; much that appears here has never been available in English before. The various items are coordinated by the short discerning biography, "Portrait of Bach in Outline," and are annotated where necessary to make their part in the picture clear. Thus in a unique manner The Bach Reader brings the great cantor of St. Thomas very close and contributes to a true understanding of his incomparable music." -- Back cover.