Emanuel Bach - 300 Years, 2. Other keyboard works
In my previous post I explored Emanuel Bach's keyboard sonatas, some of which are among Bach's most characteristic works. We now turn to Emanuel's other keyboard works, and they are hardly less...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 3. Sonatinas for keyboard and small orchestra,...
Throughout much of his life Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (C.P.E. Bach, 1714 - 1788) composed concertos, often at the rate of one to two or more per year. It is not until the 1760s that Bach's concerto...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 4. Berlin/Potsdam keyboard concertos through 1744
After a few years in Frankfurt (Oder) as keyboard teacher active in the town's public concerts, Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788) became in 1738 harpsichordist in the Musical Chapel of Crown Prince Frederick...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 5. Berlin/Potsdam keyboard concertos (1745-1750s)
“Good performance,” he[C.P.E. Bach] writes, “consists of the ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of the compositions.” He has it in for those who...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 6. Keyboard Concertos: Berlin 1760s, Hamburg,...
What best describes C.P.E. Bach's style? (answer below (1))¡ Late Baroque ¡ Pre-Classical¡ Rococo...
View ArticleA prayer for the dead
This is in memory of the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a majority of whom were Dutch nationals. Among them were a large number of children and a group of prominent AIDS researchers en route...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 7. Flute, cello, and oboe concertos
As we slowly work our way through the opus of Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788), we are constantly reminded that this composer of over a 1,000 works, never stopped revising and rearranging his works. It was...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 8. Symphonies
Emanuel Bach (1714 -1788) left us eighteen three-movement orchestral Symphonies. They are often called Sinfonias or Sinfonien in older sources, but these words can have a broader meaning. (1)Eight of...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 9. Early Flute and Oboe Sonatas.
Upon perusal of Emanuel Bach's remaining chamber works (1), I quickly realized that Bach's output in this genre spans his entire career, is quite large, and will require several more posts. The...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 10. Flute Sonatas: Berlin/Potsdam Court and Hamburg
When Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia became King Frederick II in 1740, he took up winter residence in the Berlin City Palace and spent summers at the Sansscouci Palace in Potsdam. His royal...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 11. Violin, Viola da Gamba, Harp Sonatas
In 1731 Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788) graduated from St. Thomas School, enrolled at Leipzig University, and remained under the musical tutelage of his father. In perusing Emanuel Bach's chamber works for...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 12. Early Trio Sonatas
As we weave our way through Emanuel Bach's immense body of chamber works, we turn to the Trio Sonatas starting in the Leipzig and Frankfurt (Oder) years when six such works were first conceived. They...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 13. Mid-1750s Trio Sonatas, Accompanied Sonatas,...
Bach’s trailblazing outlook—his desire to capture novelty and expressivity, form and fantasy, learnedness and songfulness, pairs which are always in tension—make him rather more like the modernist...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 14. Duets, Kleine Stücke, Minuets, Polonaises,...
Amid the wealth of Emanuel Bach's chamber music works a limited number of them don't fit into the usual mold of Symphonies or Sonatas we've been exploring so far. Unlike his godfather Telemann and his...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 15. Marches and Pieces for Flute-Clock
In this last post on Emanuel Bach's chamber works we will discover the more 'masculine' side of this versatile composer in a number of brief Marches composed toward the end of his tenure in Berlin.As...
View ArticleVideo Pick - Maureen Forrester sings C.P.E. Bach
From his student years in Leipzig to the last years of his life in Hamburg Emanuel Bach composed over 250 songs, most of them sacred. Doing so he was instrumental in the development of the German...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 16. Songs and Motets
Of the 1,001+ works by Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788) over 400 are vocal. At least 250 of these are songs, sacred and secular. Bach's songs were composed and most of them published in collections...
View ArticleEmanuel Bach - 300 Years, 17. Choral Works
We've come to the last of my posts on Emanuel Bach--or C.P.E. Bach as he is more commonly known, Johann Sebastian's second son, dedicated to his father's legacy and celebrated composer in his lifetime....
View ArticlePer Brant - 300 Years
If the music of C.P.E. Bach kept me busy for quite a while, that of Per Brant (1714 - 1767) will not take any time at all. Even then, much of the writing about Per Brant deals with his predecessor and...
View ArticleChristoph Willibald Gluck - 300 Years, 1. Instrumental works, ballets and...
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787) was born in Bavaria to a long line of foresters. The family moved early on to Eisenberg Chateau in Bohemia, one of the Lobkowitz estates, where the young boy's...
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