This anthology of 55 keyboard works provides an instructive picture of the music of the young J. S. Bach within the context of a spectrum of works by his elder contemporaries.

The Andreas Bach Book and the so-called Möller Manuscript, the most important sources for the young Bach’s keyboard music, were compiled in the early eighteenth century by Bach’s eldest brother and only keyboard teacher, Johann Christoph Bach of Ohrdruf, himself a pupil of Johann Pachelbel. The significance of the two manuscripts lies not only in their close connection to J. S. Bach (as evidenced by Bach autographs in both books), but equally in the fact that they contain some of the most outstanding keyboard music by Bach’s North German colleagues: Georg Böhm, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Johann Adam Reincken. While some of these compositions have been published in modern editions, others have been entirely overlooked.

This anthology presents keyboard works by the young J. S. Bach which are either little known or are earlier versions of better known works (for example, the Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582). Also included are all the unpublished keyboard works in the two manuscripts, as well as works by lesser known composers for which modern editions are not easily accessible. Rounding out the picture are works by well-known contemporaries for which the transmission in the young Bach’s circle proves particularly significant.

Intended for both player and scholar, this edition offers the texts of the two manuscripts in an easy to read layout that emphasizes the clarity of the counterpoint. Of particular interest to organists is the presentation of the organ works in the appropriate notion of the time, on two staves with the pedal voice integrated in the bass staff.

For centuries the exchange of letters between Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) and Prince Kurbskii, Muscovy's first notable defector, has been considered an authentic and important source for sixteenth-century Russian history. The Ivan portrayed in these letters has dominated posterity's perception of him and his time. But the provenance of the "Correspondence" has never been properly established.

Edward L. Keenan draws on all the tools of source study and literary criticism to demonstrate that the "Correspondence" is a forgery, and in fact was composed some decades later in the seventeenth century. He concentrates on the first letter of Kurbskii, which is the earliest of the letters as well as a source for the later ones, and concludes that it was written between 1623 and 1625 by Semen Ivanovich Shakhovskoi--a conclusion that will necessitate the re-evaluation of sixteenth-century Russian history as it has previously been written by scholars throughout the world.

Keenan discusses at length the implications of his discovery and sketches directions for future study, which will include a reconstruction of our conception of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political thought, of Ivan's personality--indeed of the nature of his reign--and of the evolution of Muscovite state ideology.