Independent of his international renown as a humanitarian, Albert
Schweitzer is well known as a great musicologist; a reputation that
rests largely upon this book. Schweitzer's "J. S. Bach" is one of the
great full-length studies of the composer, his life, and his work. Its
influence on the subsequent performace of Bach's music was enormous, and
there is scarcely a later work on Bach which does not acknowledge a deep
debt to Schweitzer's. Grove's Dictionary says of the book, "Schweitzer
has probably been more quoted than any authority since Spitta."