Bach’s Art of Fugue & Musical Offering. Oxford University Press, 2023.

The initial volume in a series of American Bach Society Guides, Bach's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering is a comprehensive study of two closely related masterworks of the late Baroque fugal style. This compact guide, intended for practitioners, music scholars, and a general readership, summarizes a considerable body of knowledge about these famously cerebral collections in an engaging and accessible style.

“impeccable scholarship, deep understanding of performance issues, and obvious reverence for the music. This volume will long be consulted by anyone taking the plunge into the Musical Offering or the Art of Fugue.”

- B. J. Murray, Choice Reviews (July 2024)

“Dirst has a knack of conveying musical effects in words, including the tactile aspect for the player.” “This book’s great merit is that Dirst has managed to summarize so much, always in a balanced and lively way. Quite apart from the intended nontechnical readership, it will be the ideal starting point for students, and for anybody with the curiosity to approach these great and demanding works.”

- David Ledbetter, BACH (September 2024)

Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

“a compelling and readable survey, one marked by clarity, judgement and nuance, that provides rich context and dispels misconceptions.”  
- David Ledbetter, Early Music (February 2012) 

“A welcome and valuable addition to the burgeoning genre of Bach reception literature, as well as to the numerous recent studies concerned with German musical aesthetics in the 18th and 19th centuries…. The documentation of the various intellectual, editorial, and interpretive engagements with Bach’s music, which extends from the composer’s contemporaries to the mid-19th century, is itself most engaging and highly readable. And it is generously set forth here.” 
- Robert Marshall, Early Music America (Spring 2013) 

“In treating the legacy of Bach’s keyboard works from 1750 to 1850, Dirst addresses many topics often mentioned in passing—such as the continuous regard in which Well-Tempered Clavier was held even after the composer’s death, Mozart’s relationship with Bach’s music, or the collection of the four-part “Bach” chorales—and presents them in a fuller light and with much more nuanced detail…. Engaging Bach thus has great value not only for historians but also for performers and listeners alike.” 
- Mark Peters, Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (June 2014) 

Bach and the Organ. University of Illinois Press, 2016.

“For this latest volume in the Bach Perspectives series, Matthew Dirst edits essays by prominent scholars Lynn Edwards Butler, Matthew Cron, Robin A. Leaver, Christoph Wolff…George B. Stauffer, and Gregory Butler…. Rich with information on various aspects of the organ music of Bach, the essays are of interest to Bach researchers, organists, organ history specialists, and other musicians, and is a worthy addition to all libraries.”
- Joy Schroeder, Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (September 2018)