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Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach

By Chad Campbell

Music 121

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, born March 8, 1714, is considered to be one of the

founders of the Classical style, composing in the Rococo (the transitional period

between the Baroque and Classical periods) and Classical periods. He was the second of

five sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, and was a

German musician and composer.

At the age of ten, C.P.E. Bach entered the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, where his

father had been appointed cantor in 1723. He continued his education as a student of

jurisprudence, or law, at the universities of Leipzig, in 1731, and of Frankfurt, Oder, in

1735. In 1738, at the age of twenty-four, he received his degree, but immediately

abandoned any prospects of a legal career and decided to devote himself to music. A

few months later, on the recommendation of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, a German

composer and lutenist, he obtained an appointment to the service of Frederick II of

Prussia, or "Frederick the Great", the then crown prince. Upon Frederick's accession to

King in 1740, C.P.E. Bach became a member of the Kings royal orchestra. He was, at this

time, regarded as one of the foremost clavier players in Europe, and his compositions

which date from 1731, include around thirty sonatas and concert pieces for the

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harpsichord and the clavichord. His reputation was cemented by the two sets of sonatas

for which he dedicated to Frederick the Great and to the Grand Duke of Wrttemberg,

respectively. In 1746, he was promoted to the post of chamber musician, and for

twenty-two years shared the spotlight of the King with Carl Heinrich Graun, Johann

Joachim Quantz, and Johann Gottlieb Naumann, all German composers.

While in Berlin, he continued to write numerous musical pieces for solo

keyboard, including a series of character pieces the so-called "Berlin Portraits"

including La Caroline. During his residence, he wrote the Magnificat in D, which utilizes

the natural D trumpets to express a joyful, glorious and triumphal mood. The work

both pays tribute to his father, alive at the time, and points to the Viennese Classical

style according to Carol Talbeck. Yet where his father's work gives prominence to

fugue and counterpoint, Carl's expresses a lyrical style, stressing the melodic line. His

Magnificatsurges with an excited, joyful pulse through the opening movement says

Talbeck. But his main work was concentrated on the clavier, for which he composed,

nearly two hundred sonatas and other solos, including the set Mit vernderten Reprisen.

In 1768, C.P.E. Bach succeeded Georg Philipp Telemann as Kapellmeisterat

Hamburg, and began to turn his focus towards church music. From 1769 to 1788, C.P.E.

Bach added over twenty settings of the Passion, and some seventy cantatas, litanies,

motets, and other liturgical pieces. At the same time, his genius for instrumental

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composition was furthered by the career of Franz Joseph Haydn. He died in Hamburg on

December 14, 1788.

Musical culture in this time period was at a crossroads. The masters of the older

Baroque style had the technique, but the public yearned for a new and exciting style.

This is one of the reasons C.P.E. Bach is credited as a founder of the Classical style and

held in such high esteem; he understood the older forms and knew how to present

them in new and exciting ways, with an enhanced variety of the older form.

In closing, Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach was one of many very important and

influential composers that lived and worked during the transition from the Baroque

period to the Classical period. He helped to facilitate a transition with his works that

exposed new variants of old forms and with his intellectual works that suggested

previously frowned upon techniques, such as his essay, True Art of Playing Keyboard

Instruments, in which he suggested regular use of the thumbs. C.P.E. Bach truly was an

innovator in the musical field of his time.