5 Questions for Andrew Gant

July 27, 2018 Snehal Chavan

Andrew Gant has held a number of positions in the field of church music, including singing in the choir of Westminster Abbey and Organist and Choirmaster at Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal from 2000-2013, where he was responsible for the music at many Royal and state occasions.

He is a stipendiary lecturer in music at St Peter’s College, Oxford. His publications include “O Sing unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music” and “Christmas Carols: From Village Green to Church Choir.”

As a composer his recent commissions include a children’s opera for Cromarty Youth Opera in Scotland, based on the Beatrix Potter story “The Take of Mr Tod”. He lives in Oxford with his family, and has represented his local area on Ixford City Council since 2014.

Here, he chats with us about his upcoming book, Johann Sebastian Bach: A Very Brief History. 

1. What compelled you to write about Bach?

I think all musicians are drawn to Bach because his music combines a glorious immediate appeal with an inexhaustible wealth of depth and detail. Performing and teaching his music only continues to deepen my interest and admiration. But at the same time the man himself remains rather in the shadows, much more so than, for example, his larger-than-life contemporary Handel. I knew that the man who created this wonderful art must be more interesting then the slightly dour image we can easily get

2. What has been your favourite part of the writing process?

Getting to know the real man from his letters and other documents. Visiting his places of work in Leipzig and seeing the wonderfully evocative collections in the Bach museum and Town museum. Hearing the Thomanerchor- Bach’s own choir- singing his music in his own church

3. What have you learned about yourself as an author?

That summing up an achievement on this scale in 20000 words is even harder than I thought: but it’s always great fun trying to communicate something of the character of a place, a person and an age

4. Whose writing did you look to during your research?

There is a wealth of original documentation about Bach, though much of it is fairly dry administrative stuff. Scholars who have done the world a huge service in assembling this material include Christoph Wolff. Another writer-scholar I came to admire hugely was Bach’s first biographer Nikolaus Forkel, writing in the decades after his death with the help of his sons

5. What’s next for you as an author?

One of the other of the great triumvirate of 1685, Handel. And a major single-volume history of music - yes, all of it.