Robin A. Leaver is professor emeritus of sacred music, Westminster Choir College, Princeton; currently visiting professor at the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, and Honorary Professor at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has written the program notes for the Bach Choir of Bethlehem since 1984 and contributes from time to time to the program books of the Bach Collegium Japan. Past president of the American Bach Society, Dr. Leaver is the editor of monographs in the series Contextual Bach Studies (Scarecrow/ Rowman & Littlefield 2006- ), and the General Editor of The Yale Journal of Music and Religion. Recent Bach studies include contributions to Exploring Bach's B-Minor Mass (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which he co-edited with Yo Tomita and Jan Smaczny; the Bach-Jahrbuch (2013); Bach: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute (2014), and Bach Perspectives 10 (2016). He is currently researching the liturgical contexts of Bach's music.
This excellent and substantial book will be essential for the collections of reference libraries and specialists, while anyone with an interest in Bach could use some of its content via judicious use of the index to take them to such topics as specific works, centres, or associates of Bach. All in all, this research companion represents a fine achievement. - Robert Manning, The Consort Early Music Journal, vol.74, Summer 2018 ... marks a new milestone in Bach research.... [These] twenty articles... are refreshingly multifacted, reflecting their authors' scholarly background, nationality and academic perspective. At the sam time, the quality of the scholarship binds these articles together. Scholars, librarians and inquisitive music students will find this a compelling read. - Zoltan Szabo, Eighteenth-Century Music, Volume 15 Issue 2