Johann Sebastian Bach - Life and Work (Martin Geck, 2000) (translated 2006)

Bach seems impossible.  How could he produce so much high-quality art?

I rather like this reviewer's take on this question:  "Consider: A professionally competent 18th-century burgher raised a very large family, came and went as a busy and productive musical technician, associated himself for nearly three decades with a church in Leipzig whose school of 55 boys he taught music while also training a choir. He provided his employers with the cantatas they required for Sundays and feast days and was active in the civic musical collegium. He traveled, though sparingly, and spent tedious hours copying out his own material. He was disputatious about a lot of things but was finally submissive to the requisite councilors, dukes and princes. When the end came, he left behind, in the city of 32,000 souls, a huge family, an indigent widow and a library of compositions which would ordain him as the greatest musical artist who ever lived."

So what happened here?  The author provides all sorts of interesting information, but I guess there's no figuring out how Bach did it.  Bach was anything but the lonely-genius-artist - he was an engaged family man with a demanding day job.

As I get older, I spend more and more time with Bach's music.  And I'm pretty sure the greatest concert I've ever attended was  this presentation of the B minor mass).  (Interesting to read that Beethoven bought his own copy of this work a century after it was written.)

The last portion of the book focused on technical details - for me, sort of like reading a foreign language - I just don't anything about composition or theory.

I'm pretty sure I need to attend a Bach concert at this church in Leipzig.

Two and Three-Part Inventions
Well-Tempered Clavier
French Suites
Goldberg Variations
The Musical Offering
The Art of Fugue
Cantatas, Motets, etc. (thankful for youtube access)
Brandenburg Concerto
St. Matthew Passion
St. John Passion
B minor Mass
Etc.
Etc.

A Time to Keep Silence (Patrick Leigh Fermor, release date 2007)

Fermor's two unique "travel" books are quite justifiably highly-regarded (discussed here and here).  So I bought them - probably will haul them along if we ever actually visit those areas in Europe.

This book is entirely different - I bought it because it was essentially a throw-in with the other two.

Short, interesting, but less interesting to me than the other two works.  Not sure how it came about, but Fermor settled into the Abbey of St. Wandrille as a place to take a break, do some writing, whatever.  Good discussion of the history of the place; interesting discussion of the process of transitioning into monastic life (even if only as a guest), and then back into the "real" world.

Later, he stays at a Trappist monastery - incredibly austere.  Finally, he visits a rock monastery in Cappadocia - no longer occupied - literally hewn from stone way back when.

He is respectful of these versions of what just seems to be an incredibly odd life; also knows that he is an outsider not really capable of knowing "what it's really like."

Short easy read, so worthwhile.

Krakatoa - the day the world exploded - August 27, 1883 (Simon Winchester, 2003)

Light reading, very interesting discussion of a volcanic eruption that would have dwarfed the Mt. Pinatubo eruption that made such headlines in 1991 (and allowed us to see some wondrous sunsets over the Pacific while visiting Oxnard, CA that summer).

The author gets a little carried away, trying to make a case that the eruption was a catalyst for Islamic extremists in that part of the world at that time.  Something about the traditional gods (definitely nothing to do with Islam) being displeased with the white man.  Whatever.  Otherwise, this was interesting throughout.

Dutch were still in charge in this part of the world, though Britain taking over.  The story line reminds that the Dutch East India Company was one of the first stock corporations (1602).

Useful explanation of the Wallace Line - not difficult to grasp, but I had never paid any attention.

Very interesting explanations of plate tectonics and the way in which scientists developed the theory, then confirmed it.  The process was all new to me.

Krakatoa's eruption was one of the first big events following worldwide linkage via telegraph - newspapers worldwide followed the story.  One of the first international stories in a shrinking world.

The power of the eruption was simply unbelievable.  They figured out that sounds reported as distant gunfire on an island 2,968 miles away - were the sounds of the Krakatoa eruption.  That seems absolutely unbelievable - would you think any event in San Francisco could be heard in New York City (about 500 miles less distance)?

"Barographs" in London recording barometric pressure changes . . . all over the city (and, upon follow-up investigation, all over the world) - massive changes linked to the eruption.

Landscape artists are inspired - Hudson Valley school.

Anyway - the blown-away mountain is again rising.