Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788)

Born in Weimar in 1714, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach received all his musical training from his father. After studying law, around 1740 he entered the service of the crown prince, later King Frederick II of Prussia, a keen flautist whom he accompanied at the harpsichord for nearly thirty years in Berlin and Potsdam.

In 1768 he succeeded his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann as director of church music in Hamburg, a post he held until his death in 1788. There he published, among other things, his collections of sonatas, rondos and fantasias “for connoisseurs and amateurs”.

His Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753 and 1762) is one of the great treatises of the eighteenth century, covering fingering, ornaments, accompaniment and above all expression. Haydn said he studied it closely, and Beethoven had his pupils work from it.

His so-called “sensitive style” (empfindsamer Stil) aims to move the listener directly: sudden changes of mood, dramatic silences, surprising harmonies and richly ornamented melodies. His free fantasias, almost improvised, already foreshadow some Romantic pages.

For pianists he is a chance to learn to “speak” at the keyboard: sudden contrasts, expressive ornaments and rhetorical freedom, on an instrument he loved above all, the clavichord.