12 Concertos Op. 1 & 7 for fortepiano

Abstract

For two centuries the Bach family had produced composers and musicians of stature who had mostly found employment as Kapellmeisters or Kantors in the courts and churches of Protestant Germany. The last important member of this dynasty, Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782), the youngest son of the greatest composer, Johann Sebastian, radically departed from this tradition. He received his early training in composition and keyboard playing from his father in Leipzig and then from his halfbrother Carl Philipp Emanuel in Berlin, where he wrote his earliest keyboard concertos, stolid works written in a heavy, Germanic style. Johann Christian then travelled to Italy in 1755, where he evidently was converted to Roman Catholicism, wrote operas and church music and for a while became second organist (though not a very dutiful one) at Milan cathedral. In 1762 Bach moved to London where he remained for the rest of his life, save for a number of import¬ant trips abroad to France, Germany and Italy for the performance of his operas and other works. Thus, in contrast to his predecessors and immediate family, Christian was, in his lifetime, a truly inter¬national (rather than a parochial German) figure, whose music was known and loved in places as far apart as Stockholm and Naples, Lisbon and Koniesberg..