4 Flutes Concertos 2 Oboe Concertos 1 Solo for Harp

Abstract

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second son of Johann Sebastian, was, of all the many chil¬dren in that large and talented family, perhaps the closest in temperament, output and achievement to ' his illustrious father. Receiving his musical edu¬cation under the eye of Johann Sebastian, Emanuel developed into one of the greatest exponents of the keyboard of his age. His treatise on keyboard play¬ing, the Versuch iiber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Berlin, 1753), is regarded as the most import¬ant on the subject in the eighteenth century. The passages on musical expression and on wider aes¬thetic matters therein are also highly revealing. Charles Burney's later description of Emanuel Bach's keyboard playing, remarking on the enrap¬tured expression of the composer absorbed in his performance, also sheds light on the importance of musical expression for the composer: "His eyes gazed motionless, his lower lip sagged, and his spirit seemed to be concerned only... with satisfying his passion..." Indeed some of Bach's earliest publi¬cations, the Prussian and Wurttemberg sonatas for keyboard, contain highly expressive writing, full of j musical surprises: sudden pauses, violent contrasts, changes of texture and mood; in all, highly unstable and unexpected music, written for an audience which would relish such writing. But for nearly 30 years Bach spent his life in Berlin and Potsdam at the court of Frederick the Great, whose rather conservative taste in music was the limiting factor on Bach and on the many of the other musicians who worked there. Frederick was an en-thusiastic musician and composer who evidently regarded music as a relaxation from the prosecution of wars and his social reforms. Bach accompanied the king's not always expert flute-playing on the harpsichord and would have become acquainted with many of the monarch's own 121 sonatas for flute, as well as the 500 sonatas and concertos of Quantz, the greatest flautist of his day and the king's teacher.