Carl Philipp Emanuel BACH
(1714-1788)

     His music is no longer as well known as that of his father, but in the second half of the 18th century, he was known as the "great Bach": Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), Johann Sebastian's second eldest son and the most famous of all musical Bach sons.
     Intended for legal career but turned to music while at Frankfurt University. In 1738 became cembalist in Berlin at court of Frederick the Great, holding this post until 1767, when he succeeded Telemann as director of church music at Hamburg. Applied unsuccessfully in 1750 to succeed his father at Leipzig. His achievement was to develop sonata-form and invest it with weight and imaginative quality, most evidently in his keyboard sonatas, of which there are over 200, but also in his sinfonias, concerts (over 50), violin. sonatas, and the masterly solo flute sonata in A minor. Also composed 22 Passions, Magnificat (1749), the oratorios Die Israeliten in der Wusten (1769) and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (1780), and many songs. Wrote celebrated treatise on klavier-playing.
     An advocate of subjectivity and individual self-expression in music, C.P.E. Bach was quickly hailed as the foremost exponent of the "Sturm und Drang" movement of the late 18th century. Growing out of Baroque music and prefiguring the Romantic era, the "Storm and Stress" period can be seen as a time of transition between the works of J.S. Bach, Handel and Telemann, and those of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.
     C.P.E. Bach believed in the aesthetic tenets of his time, which demanded that music "touch the heart" and "awaken the passions". His works abound in features that were daring and even bizarre in his day, but which we have become accustomed to through the music of the romantic composers: bold harmonic progressions, interjected sections in contrasting tempo, seamless transitions between movements, abrupt changes of mood, rambling passages that seem to be searching for a goal...
     While Bach's progressive, highly individualistic style is more pronounced in his keyboard works and certain symphonies, his concertos also contain many features that seize our attention and delight us through their originality.

© 2003 Vladimir Grudin