Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788)
- Concerto (E-Dur) | per | Jl Cembalo Concertato
| accompagnato | da | II Violini | Violetta | e Basso (1744), HelB 417
Performers: Orfeus Barock; Francesco Corti (harpsichord & conductor)
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German composer. The second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750) and his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach (1684-1720), he was
baptized on 10 March 1714, with Georg Philipp Telemann as one of his
godfathers. In 1717 he moved with the family to Cöthen, where his father
had been appointed Kapellmeister. His mother died in 1720, and in
spring 1723 the family moved to Leipzig, where he began attending the
Thomasschule as a day-boy on 14 June 1723. J.S. Bach said later that one
of his reasons for accepting the post of Kantor at the Thomasschule was
that his sons’ intellectual development suggested that they would
benefit from a university education. He received his musical training
from his father, who gave him keyboard and organ lessons. From the age
of about 15 he took part in his father’s musical performances in church
and in the collegium musicum. He appears relatively seldom as a copyist,
no doubt because, as an able musician himself, he was usually excused
such duties. The one large-scale work of sacred music in Leipzig mainly
copied by him is the anonymous St Luke Passion (BWV 246), obviously
arranged by J.S. Bach to an urgent deadline for Good Friday 1730. On 1
October 1731 he matriculated at Leipzig University. Following his
godfather’s example, he studied law, although he was obviously destined
for a musical career. His first compositions were probably written about
1730. They consisted mainly of keyboard pieces and chamber music.
Deciding to become a musician, he was recommended to Crown Prince
Frederick in Rheinsburg, and upon the crown prince’s crowning as
Frederick II of Prussia, he moved to Berlin as a chamber musician, a
formal title granted in 1746. As an active member of the Berlin School,
he participated in the intimate inner circle of musicians and writers of
the period, producing a seminal treatise on keyboard playing, 'Versuch
über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen' (1752). The death of his
godfather Telemann in 1767 offered him the opportunity to seek the
appointment as city Kapellmeister in Hamburg (a post that was
temporarily occupied by Georg Michael Telemann).
From 1768 to his death, he was the leading musician in the city, whose
friendship with major literary figures such as Friedrich Gottlob
Klopstock and Johann Heinrich Voss, his pedagogical efforts at the
Johanneum, and the maintaining of his close ties to colleagues in Berlin
made him one of the most prominent figures in music of the period. Over
the course of his long career, he composed almost 900 works in all
genres save opera (and there is an indication that he may have made an
abortive attempt at one). One of the main figures in the emerging
empfindsamer Stil (Empfindsamkeit) with its emphasis upon emotion and
drama in music, he created compositions that were far ahead of his time
in terms of harmony and form. For example, the introduction to the
oratorio 'Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu' is both monophonic and
atonal, while his free fantasies move rapidly from tonal center to tonal
center using sometimes harsh dissonance, extreme changes in tempo and
dynamics, and effective musical moods, all without metrical regularity.
Ludwig van Beethoven lauded him as his spiritual father, and almost all
other composers of the period imitated his style. He published works,
such as the Klopstock’s Morgengesang, by subscription, having control
over much of his own creative output. His compositions include 370
miscellaneous works for keyboard, 69 keyboard concertos), 11 flute
concertos, 19 symphonies, two keyboard quartets, six pieces for
Harmoniemusik, 37 sonatas for various instruments, 48 trio sonatas, 30
pieces for musical clockwork, 277 songs and secular cantatas, a
Magnificat, two Psalms, 22 Passions/Passion cantatas, an oratorio, 13
large-scale choruses, an ode, 14 chorales, four Easter cantatas, 26
pieces for Hamburg celebrations, and nine cantatas. He was the most
important composer in Protestant Germany during the second half of the
18th century, and enjoyed unqualified admiration and recognition
particularly as a teacher and keyboard composer.
