Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Free Sheet Music, Program Notes, Recordings and Biography

The Expressive Son:

Forging a New Path from Bach to Mozart

Imagine being the son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Your father is not just a musician; he is the living embodiment of a musical universe, a master of counterpoint so profound that his work represents the summation of an entire era. How do you forge your own identity in the face of such a legacy? For Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the second surviving son of the great master, the answer was not to imitate, but to innovate. While his father perfected the Baroque, C.P.E. Bach deliberately broke its rules, cultivating a new style of radical emotion and startling originality that made him, for a time, far more famous than his father and became the foundation upon which the Classical era was built.

Born in a Giant's Shadow

Born in Weimar in 1714, Carl Philipp Emanuel was immersed in music from his first breath. His godfather was the great Georg Philipp Telemann, a close friend of his father. He received his only formal music education from J.S. Bach himself, becoming a proficient keyboard player and a thorough master of composition and theory. Unlike his father, however, he received a university education, studying law at Leipzig and Frankfurt (Oder). This broader intellectual grounding would inform his articulate and well-reasoned approach to musical aesthetics.

While he deeply respected his father's genius, he felt the dense contrapuntal style of the high Baroque was becoming outdated. A new aesthetic was emerging across Europe, one that valued clarity, directness, and personal feeling over complex polyphony. C.P.E. Bach would become the leading German proponent of this new "sensitive style," or Empfindsamer Stil, which aimed to move the listener through raw, often turbulent, emotional expression.

The Court of Frederick the Great

In 1738, Bach's career took a decisive turn when he was appointed court harpsichordist to the crown prince of Prussia, who would soon become King Frederick the Great. For nearly thirty years, Bach served in the glittering but artistically restrictive court at Berlin and Potsdam. Frederick was a skilled flutist and a conservative composer who favored the light, elegant French style known as style galant. While in the king's service, Bach composed hundreds of keyboard sonatas, concertos, and chamber works, and accompanied the king’s nightly flute performances.

This period was both a blessing and a curse. It provided him with financial security and a platform, but he often felt creatively stifled. The king's conservative tastes clashed with Bach's desire for experimentation and emotional depth. It was during these years, however, that he wrote his monumental treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments). Published in two parts, this became the most important keyboard manual of the 18th century. It was a comprehensive guide to technique, fingering, ornamentation, and accompaniment that codified his expressive ideals and was studied religiously by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Hamburg and Freedom

In 1768, Bach finally secured his release from Frederick's court to take one of the most prestigious musical posts in Germany: he succeeded his godfather, Telemann, as the music director of the five main churches in the bustling, independent city of Hamburg. This move marked the beginning of his happiest and most productive period. Free from the constraints of a royal court, his genius flourished. He was now responsible for a vast amount of sacred music, composing magnificent oratorios like Die Israeliten in der Wüste (The Israelites in the Desert) and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus).

His instrumental music from this period became even more bold and idiosyncratic. His symphonies surge with dramatic power, and his concertos feature turbulent, unpredictable dialogues between soloist and orchestra. It was in his keyboard works, particularly the fantasias and rondos, that his Empfindsamer Stil reached its zenith. These pieces are wildly improvisatory, with shocking harmonic shifts, abrupt changes in tempo and dynamics, and melodies that sigh, rage, and surprise at every turn. They were designed to portray the fluctuating, often contradictory, landscape of human emotion.

Legacy of the Expressive Style

By the time of his death in 1788, C.P.E. Bach was one of the most respected composers in Europe. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart famously declared, "He is the father, we are the children. Those of us who know anything at all learned it from him." Joseph Haydn meticulously studied Bach's keyboard sonatas, which he said formed the basis of his own style. The dramatic intensity and developmental principles in Bach's work directly paved the way for Haydn's symphonies and Beethoven's piano sonatas.

Though his father's reputation would eventually eclipse his own in the 19th century, C.P.E. Bach's historical importance is immense. He was not merely a transitional figure; he was a true revolutionary who broke from the past and laid the theoretical and aesthetic groundwork for the Viennese Classical style. He taught the next generation that music could be more than divine order and intricate patterns; it could be a direct, spontaneous, and deeply personal expression of the human heart.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Ottaway, Hugh. Mozart: A Musical Biography. Oxford University Press, 1980.

• Schulenberg, David. The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. University of Rochester Press, 2014.

• Bach, C.P.E. Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. Translated and edited by William J. Mitchell. W. W. Norton & Company, 1949.

• Clark, Stephen L. (editor). C.P.E. Bach Studies. Clarendon Press, 1988.

• Wade, Rachel W., and E. Eugene Helm. "Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001.