Volume one contains essays by David Schulenberg, Russell Stinson, Michael Marissen, Eric Chafe, Stephen Crist, and James Brokaw.

"In 1988 the American Chapter of the Neue Bachgesellschaft transformed itself into what is now the American Bach Society; the change coincided with the rise to prominence of a corpus of young scholars who have already had a considerable impact on Bach studies. Their work seems to be marked above all by meticulous scholarship (especially in the area of source studies), keen awareness of the social and cultural contexts of Bach’s music and a readiness to engage in informed speculation. Certainly these qualities are central to the six essays contained in this first volume."—Music and Letters

"Unlike many other scholarly essay collections, this work is accessible to general readers with some knowledge of Bach; the footnotes are scholarly and appropriate, and also provide some background for the content. . . . [An] important new series."—Choice

“The inaugural volume sets a high standard both in terms of its production and its content.”—Warwick Cole, The Eighteenth Century: Current Bibliography