The complete keyboard concertos - Volume 8

Abstract

In the early and mid-1750s the Prussian capital of Berlin was the scene of lively musical activity. The thriving musical establishment founded and maintained by Friedrich II (better known as Frederick the Great) was not yet threatened by the Seven Years' War (although war clouds were gathering on the horizon): and outside the court, several members of the Prus¬sian aristocracy had assembled small musical organizations of their own in and around Berlin. Conversation and debate about musical issues were equally active, as evidenced by the treatise on musical poetics published in 1752 by Christian Gottfried Krause, and by the musical journals issued between 1749 and 1762 by the sometimes pugnacious critic Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg. And in 1752 the King's highly favoured flute player and personal teacher, Johann Joachim Quantz, published his Essay on playing the Traverse Flute, a manual directed at players with a wide range of musical abilities and sophistication. By 1753. the year of the earliest work in this eighth volume of his concertos, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach had been in Frederick's service for fifteen years, a time during which he had be¬come well established as a composer and performer in the Berlin musical community, and had acquired something of an international reputation as a keyboard composer. Yet despite this growing reputation - and the evident quality of his compositions - he had not gained particular favour in the eyes of his employer, who showed no inclination to promote him beyond his lowly official post as keyboard accompanist. Emanuel's awareness of the limitations on his official career may well have led to the increasing diversification of his compositions during the 1750s. Whereas in the past he had chiefly cultivated the more important keyboard genres of sonatas and accompanied concertos, these genres became less dominant in his output,\vhich now included solo keyboard fugues, pieces in imitation of the French piece de caractere and little minuets and polonaises for beginners - all types of music that were in demand by the burgeoning amateur market. He also directed his efforts towards the small pieces for voice with keyboard accom-paniment called Lieder. contributing first to collections bv Marpurg and by Krause and the Berlin poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler, and finally issuing his own collection of songs to texts by Christian Furchtegott Gellert in 1758. In 1753 he met Quantz on his own sround with the publication of a performers manual, The Essay on the Truth Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, wich was soon recognized as the authoritative text on Keyboard playing.