David Schulenberg - The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

The Music of
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Of Bachs four sons who became composers, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88) was the most prolific, the most original, and the most influential both during and after his lifetime. This is the first comprehensive study of his music, examining not only the famous keyboard sonatas and concertos but also the songs, the chamber music, and the sacred works, many of which resurfaced only recently and have not previously been evaluated. A compositional biography, the book surveys C. P. E. Bachs extensive output of nearly a thousand works while tracing his musical development-from his student days at Leipzig and Frankfurt (Oder), through his nearly three decades as court musician to Prussian King Frederick the Great, to his final twenty years as cantor and music director at Hamburg.

David Schulenberg, author of important books on the music of J. S. Bach and his first son, W. F. Bach, here considers the legacy of the second son from a compelling new perspective. Focusing on C. P. E. Bachs compositional choices within his social and historical context, Schulenberg shows how C. P. E. Bach deliberately avoided his fathers style while borrowing from the manner of his Berlin colleagues, who were themselves inspired by Italian opera. Schulenberg also shows how C. P. E. Bach, now best known for his virtuoso keyboard works, responded to changing cultural and aesthetic trends by refashioning himself as a writer of vocal music and popular chamber compositions. Audio versions of the books musical examples, as well as further examples and supplementary tables and texts, are available on a companion website.

David Schulenberg is professor of music at Wagner College and teaches historical performance at the Juilliard School. He is the author of The Music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (University of Rochester Press, 2010).

The book is a marvelous celebration of the 300th anniversary of [C.P.E. Bachs] birth, honestly showing the figure of one of the most important composers of the eighteenth century. DOCENOTAS [Mario Guada] Full review at http://bit.ly/1GVdAJX .

This is an important book that not only reflects the present state of knowledge regarding C.P.E Bachs music but also has great potential to stimulate further research. Full of insight, it will be essential reading for scholars and students with a serious interest in C.P.E. Bach and mid- to late-eighteenth-century music generally. Steven Zohn, author of Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemanns Instrumental Works .

Eastman Studies in Music

Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor
Eastman School of Music

Additional Titles of Interest

Aspects of Unity in J. S. Bachs Partitas and Suites: An Analytical Study
David W. Beach

Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organists Guide
Joel Speerstra

Bachs Changing World: Voices in the Community
Edited by Carol K. Baron

The Career of an Eighteenth-Century Kapellmeister:
The Life and Music of Antonio Rosetti
Sterling E. Murray

Dance in Handels London Operas
Sarah McCleave

A Dance of Polar Opposites: The Continuing Transformation of Our Musical Language
George Rochberg
Edited by Jeremy Gill

Looking for the Harp Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty
Markand Thakar

The Music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
David Schulenberg

Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach
Paul Mark Walker

Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez in Honor of Charles Rosen on his Eightieth Birthday
Edited by Robert Curry, David Gable, and Robert L. Marshall

A complete list of titles in the Eastman Studies in Music series may be found on our website, www.urpress.com .

To my mother

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was one of the most original and most significant composers of eighteenth-century Europe. For much of his long career, the name Bach when used alone stood for him, not his father Johann Sebastian Bach. In the twentieth century, music historians acknowledged his influence on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and in recent times his music has been the subject of renewed interest. Within the past two decades, spectacular rediscoveries have made available a substantial portion of his output that was long presumed lost, leading to many new recordings and making possible a new complete edition of his works.

Still, as the second son of a famous composer, Emanuel Bach stands in the shadow of his father. The Bach Revival of the nineteenth century involved solely Sebastian, and, as the latters music came to be ranked at the highest level of European art, Emanuels sank into obscurity. Yet a small fraction of Emanuel Bachs output, including keyboard pieces, songs (lieder), and a few concertos, never disappeared from the sight of scholars and adventurous musicians. His Versuch ber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the true manner of playing keyboard instruments) remained almost constantly in print, albeit sometimes in abbreviated versions. As his style came to be viewed as an evolutionary link between that of his father and the Viennese Classical style, he gained a respectable place in music history even when his actual music was rarely heard.

Today the evolutionary view of music history is out of fashion, and it is the proto-Romantic aspects of Emanuels style that seize the attention of players and scholars, who sometimes describe it as empfindsamer . The German term originally meant something like sentimental, but it is now applied to northern-European music of the later eighteenth century that achieves an expressive intensity unusual for its time, especially through harmonic and rhythmic surprises, including unexpected juxtapositions of remote keys or of different tempos or meters. Such devices were part of an improvisatory fantasy style associated with Emanuel Bach, then as now attracting further attention to his music. The empfindsamer and fantastic are known best from the composers works for keyboard instruments, on which he was a famous virtuoso. Yet Bach, as I shall call him, was also a major composer of chamber and orchestral musicand of vocal works, secular as well as sacred, as has become ever clearer in recent years.

With a career spanning over half a century and a list of works numbering close to a thousand, Bach and his music are a substantial subject, covered by a substantial literature. Yet, except in encyclopedia entries, no one has provided a recent account of his career or works as a whole, nor have the discoveries of recent years been integrated in an evaluation of his lifework. This book does so, commemorating the three-hundredth anniversary of the composers birth.

This is a compositional biography of Bach: a study of his complete oeuvre, focusing on his choices to compose in one genre or another, to follow particular models, to transform a style rooted in that of his fathers generation into one bearing much in common with Classical and later music. Throughout his life, Bach was an active member of lively intellectual communities, first in Leipzig and Frankfurt (Oder), later in Berlin and Hamburg, and his relationships with writers and thinkers left impressions on his music. So too did his professional activities, first as a member of the court of King Frederick the Great at Berlin, later as a church musician and cantor at Hamburg. His performing activities, as keyboard soloist, royal accompanist, and ensemble director, also shaped his compositions, determining their character and scoring. In addition, Bach was one of the first musicians to participate actively in the publication of his works, and the rapidly evolving music business of eighteenth-century Europe was another shaping force on his compositions.