In the meanwhile, I thought I would write some thoughts that came to me on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Emanuel Bach has always been a composer I felt was seriously underrated. Of all of Sebastian Bach's son, he was the most accomplished. The problem about Emanuel Bach is that he staunchly refuses to fit neatly into any pigeon hole that people like to stuff composers into.
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| Frederick the Great of Prussia playing the flute: Emanuel Bach directs the ensemble from the keyboard |
In a sense, the apple does not fall far from the tree and you can immediately sense the influence his father had on him—not to mention the fact that his godfather was Telemann. He sported quite a musical pedigree. As a result some people do call his music Baroque. On the other hand, in some works you sense that he is proto-Classicist in that his music anticipates the Viennese Classicism of Haydn and Mozart. Yet, once again, this pigeon hole fails to contain him, for in his finest works you feel an explosive Sturm und Drang Romanticism. After all, by Emanuel Bach's time the Sturm und Drang movement was well underway in literature. Indeed, the Haydn Sturm und Drang symphonies could well also be called the CPE Bach symphonies. Unlike Haydn, Emanuel Bach really is the Father of the Symphony.
Those wanting a taste of Emanuel Bach's Sturm und Drang proto-Romanticism would do well to start with his B minor symphony (or sinfonia, which could well be a spelling variant of the German word for a symphony: Symphonie). My recommended recording of this comes from Il Giardino Armonico:
Their album is appropriately entitled La Casa del Diavolo: the house of the devil. It is deliciously diabolical, and the intensity of the playing is quite breathtaking. Listen out in particular for the explosive finale of the Emanuel Bach symphony.
Emanuel Bach's modulations are often extremely daring. Some claim that he is so far ahead of his time that he anticipates Mahler. Beethoven too greatly admired Emanuel Bach, and you sense that many of the Sturm und Drang styled minor keyed Romantic works by Beethoven, so often hailed as being totally revolutionary and without precedent, are in fact modelled after Emanuel Bach. That essentially makes Emanuel Bach the father of musical Romanticism. Yet he is also the father of much of Classicism too.
Perhaps that is the real reason why Emanuel Bach is so widely neglected: because he simply will not obey, and fit neatly into our conventional pigeon holes without completely destroying them in the process. He is the ultimate musical maverick, a genius who was way too far ahead of his time. He is simply extraordinary. Perhaps it is high time that, rather than being upset about Emanuel Bach breaking the textbooks, we should just throw the textbooks out.
More recommended recordings of Emanuel Bach's music include this firecracker from Café Zimmermann:
The two minor key keyboard concerti in this album featuring Michael Rische on the piano are also highly recommended:
When you tire of the all of the Sturm und Drang volatility, you may want to try something a bit more intimate:
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