John Eliot Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner was born on April 20th, 1943 and is currently 83 years old. John Eliot Gardiner was born in Fontmell Magna, Dorset, England. Gardiner attended King's College, Cambridge and King's College London.

John Eliot Gardiner is an English author and conductor. He is famously known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

He has contributed to music education and public understanding through narration and documentary work and was the narrator of the 2013 BBC Two documentary Bach: A Passionate Life.

An impassioned biography of Bach, written by a composer and orchestra director who knows Bach's music (especially his cantatas) like the back of his hand.

Given the scarcity of information we have about Bach's life, the author does what he can to squeeze the most out of the sources we have, in a way that seems to me honest and very well documented.

Bach was a genius; there aren't many conflicting opinions on this, but there's still a sort of stereotype today according to which, while Mozart, Beethoven, and others were somewhat bizarre and unusual characters, Bach was a "bore." Gardiner debunks this myth, highlighting episodes that demonstrate Bach's stubbornness and a certain irritability.

More than once, he clashed with his colleagues and various authorities, especially ecclesiastical ones, because it seems that during his brief stint at the court of a Calvinist count, things went much more smoothly (they included music in their liturgies). Therefore, during those four years, Bach composed "non-church" music, even though he was always a convinced Lutheran and always wrote with God in his mind and heart.

Gardiner then delves into a series of chapters analyzing several of Bach's works, including the two immense Passions and the Mass in B minor. You don't have to be a musician to understand these chapters, but if, like me, you're just a music novice, I highly recommend listening to the works he discusses while reading these chapters.

These analyses are very detailed and insightful, a true pleasure to read while listening to the divine music of the Saxon genius.

What becomes clear from these analyses is that Bach wasn't just "ahead" of his contemporaries; he was truly on another planet.

At times, Gardiner gets a little too carried away by his desire to read Bach's mind, confusing the power of Bach's music with the power of the biblical narrative used in the texts of his cantatas. Indeed, Bach often used his genius to fuse religious messages with those of his music, but sometimes I get the distinct impression that Gardiner is overdoing his speculations a bit (similar to certain Dante scholars who, perhaps after drinking one too many coffees, give birth to abstruse and sometimes downright ridiculous theories about the Divine Comedy).

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John Eliot Gardiner: F.A.Q