1714–1788 · Germany · Classical
A German composer and keyboard player, son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in Weimar on 8 March 1714, he died on 14 December 1788 in Hamburg. He served at the Prussian court in Berlin and later directed music in Hamburg. Players know him for his keyboard works and for a treatise on keyboard playing that influenced his contemporaries.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar on 8 March 1714. His father was Johann Sebastian Bach, and his mother was the composer's first wife, Maria Barbara. His godfather was Georg Philipp Telemann, who was his father's friend, and one of the boy's names was given in Telemann's honour.
At the age of ten he became a pupil of the St Thomas School in Leipzig, where from 1723 his father led the school and its choir as cantor. Emanuel was one of four of Bach's children who became professional musicians, and all of them learned music almost entirely from their father.
In an age of court patronage, father and son both knew that a university education helped to stop a professional musician being seen as somebody's servant. So Carl, like his brothers, turned to the law, studying first at Leipzig University in 1731 and then at Frankfurt an der Oder. He took his degree in 1738, aged 24, but never worked as a lawyer and at once gave himself to music. His earliest compositions date from 1731.
A few months after taking his degree, Bach took a post in Berlin with Frederick, the Prussian crown prince, on the recommendation of Sylvius Leopold Weiss. When Frederick came to the throne, Bach became part of the royal court. By then he was counted among the leading keyboard players in Europe, and he had written roughly thirty keyboard sonatas and concerted pieces for the harpsichord and the clavichord.
Two published sets of sonatas, one for Frederick the Great (1742) and one for Duke Charles Eugene of Württemberg (1744), made Bach's name. These works helped him win the post of court musician. In 1746 he rose to chamber musician and served the king together with Franz Benda, Johann Joachim Quantz and Carl Heinrich Graun.
Berlin offered a rich artistic setting. Bach met many skilled musicians there, among them former students of his father, and prominent writers, and he became close friends with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He kept composing for the keyboard, among other things a group of character pieces called the Berlin Portraits, one of which is La Caroline.
During his Berlin years Bach wrote a Magnificat (1749), which shows more of his father's influence than usual, a cantata for Easter (1756), symphonies, concertos for harpsichord, oboe, flute and cello with orchestra, no fewer than three volumes of songs, among them the well-known settings of Gellert, and a few secular cantatas. But he put most of his effort into the keyboard: sonatas and other solo pieces, including the set with varied reprises (1760–1768).
One of these works stands out: the little Solfeggietto (1766), Bach's best-known piece. Its theme and most of its passages are in a single voice, which is why it is often played with the left hand alone.
His wide fame as a teacher and theorist came from the treatise known as the Versuch, or Essay on the right way of playing the clavier. By 1780 it had gone through three editions and became the basis of the methods of Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer. Bach gives fingering for every chord and explains ornaments such as trills, turns and mordents; the second part deals with figured bass, counterpoint, advice on performance and improvisation, chiefly the fantasia.
For his performances Bach preferred clavichords and fortepianos made by Gottfried Silbermann, at the time a leading maker of keyboard instruments.
In 1768, after long negotiations, Bach was allowed to leave his post, and he succeeded his godfather Telemann as Kapellmeister in Hamburg. On leaving the court he also received an honorary title: court composer to the king's sister, Princess Anna Amalia.
In his new post he turned more of his energy to church and choral music: he had to supply a steady stream of music for Protestant services at St Michael's church and elsewhere in the city. In 1769 came the oratorio The Israelites in the Desert, and over his Hamburg years he wrote twenty-one Passions along with about seventy cantatas, litanies, motets and further sacred pieces.
The peaks of his choral output were the double-chorus Heilig (1776) and the oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (about the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, 1774–1782), to a text by Karl Wilhelm Ramler, a poet. In 1788 this oratorio was performed three times in Vienna with the backing of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, with Mozart conducting. Bach also introduced Hamburg audiences to other composers' music, presenting works by Johann David Holland, Salieri, Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Graun, Telemann and his own father.
Johanna Maria Dannemann (1724–1795) became Bach's wife in 1744. The children who grew up were Johann Adam (1745–1789), Johann Sebastian (1748–1778) and Anna Carolina Philippina (1747–1804). None of them became a musician. Anna Carolina was her father's right hand: as his secretary she looked after the legacy of J. S. Bach and copied out the Bach family genealogy, which was itself incomplete. Johann Sebastian, a painter and graphic artist, died at 29 during a trip to Italy.
In his last years Bach put much of his energy into publishing the Kenner und Liebhaber (For Connoisseurs and Amateurs) collections, which began to appear in 1779 and include sonatas, fantasias and rondos. The composer died on 14 December 1788 in Hamburg and was laid to rest in St Michael's church.
In the second half of the 18th century Bach was very well known. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven admired his music and eagerly collected his works. He influenced the composers of the North German school, among them Georg Anton Benda, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, Johann Gottfried Müthel and Ernst Wilhelm Wolf, and his influence can be seen in Mendelssohn, Haydn and Weber as well. His fame rested above all on his keyboard sonatas.
In the 19th century his name gradually faded. Robert Schumann thought that as a creative musician Bach remained far behind his father, whereas Johannes Brahms valued his works and even edited some of them. A new life for his music began in the 1960s, when Helmuth Koch recorded his symphonies and Hugo Ruf his keyboard sonatas. Today Miklós Spányi and the Swedish label BIS are working on a recording of his complete works. In 2014 the 300th anniversary of his birth was marked, and in 2015 a museum named after him opened in Hamburg.
Bach worked at the point of transition from his father's Baroque manner to the Classical style, and he was the leading representative of the empfindsamer Stil, the sensitive style. In expressiveness his keyboard music anticipates Romanticism, and it stands deliberately against the statuesque forms of the Baroque. His works are full of invention and unpredictability and cover a wide range of emotions.
In his lifetime he brought out more keyboard collections than any other kind. They include the sonatas dedicated to Frederick the Great (the Prussian sonatas, 1742) and to the Duke of Württemberg (the Württemberg sonatas, 1744), the set with varied reprises (1760) and six Kenner und Liebhaber collections (from 1779). Many of the sonatas were meant for the clavichord, his favoured instrument. He also published mixed keyboard collections, such as the Clavierstücke verschiedener Art (1765) and the 1766 Kurze und Leichte Clavierstücke.
His sonatas stand out for freedom and variety of structure, leaning towards cyclic and improvisatory forms. His fantasias are regarded as especially typical of him, with dramatic silences, harmonic surprises and ever-changing figuration. Other well-known keyboard pieces, besides the Solfeggietto, are La Caroline and the F-sharp minor Fantasia, Wq 67.
Among Bach's most popular and most often recorded works are his symphonies. The string symphonies Wq 173–181 date from his Berlin years, and he later added wind parts to most of them; the symphony in E minor, Wq 178, is a particular favourite. In Hamburg came a set of six string symphonies, Wq 182 (1773), for Baron Gottfried van Swieten: the patron wanted a more difficult style and kept them for private use, so they were not published in Bach's lifetime. The composer himself rated the four symphonies Wq 183, with twelve obbligato parts, as his best in the form.
Bach wrote many concertos, above all for keyboard. In his own view the finest of his keyboard concertos were the six of Wq 43 (Sei concerti per il cembalo), which he aimed to make a little more engaging and less demanding to play. He also wrote concertos for oboe, flute and organ, and Wq 170–172, three cello concertos, are regarded as a cornerstone of that instrument's repertoire.
His chamber music stands midway between Baroque and Classical types. Alongside trio sonatas and solo sonatas accompanied by continuo, he wrote accompanied sonatas for keyboard with violin and cello, in effect early piano trios, and three well-liked keyboard quartets with flute and viola. One of the earliest solo flute pieces is also his: a sonata that shows the clear mark of J. S. Bach's Partita in A minor, BWV 1013.
Among his choral works is the D major Magnificat, Wq 215: Johann Sebastian Bach heard it in 1749, and his son went on revising and performing it as late as 1786. Other important works are the Heilig, Wq 217, 21 Passions, and two oratorios, The Israelites in the Desert, Wq 238, and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, Wq 240.
The site has two editions of Bach's music. Rondo in E-flat Major (H.288) is for piano, at the level "Intermediate+". Sonata in a minor for solo flute (Wq 132) is a work for solo flute, at the level "Intermediate". The Wq numbers come from Alfred Wotquenne's catalogue of 1906, and the H numbers from Eugene Helm's catalogue of 1989.