Karl

(entry for 10/11/24)

In the last post we talked a lot about one of the most famous Classical composers of all time: Johann Sebastian Bach. Even non-musicians have heard of Bach, and actual musicians come close to idolizing him at times.

But it was not always so.

By the time he passed away in 1750, at age 65, he was largely forgotten. Some of his compositions had been published, but more of them, and the most important ones, were buried in a dusty room in the basement of Leipzig Cathedral, completely neglected

By the year 1800, if you said the name “Bach” by itself, without specifying a first or middle name, you meant Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, known in the English-speaking world as C.P.E. Bach.  Karl was J.S.'s third son, and the second to survive to adulthood. For a time, he was much more famous than his father. In fact, he shared that distinction with three of his brothers and one sister, all of whom had by now eclipsed the musical memory of their dad.

In the year 1835, something happened that would eventually change all that back to the way it had been before. (That is, J.S.would regain the primacy in his extended family.) This would happen as the result of activities by a 26-year-old unestablished composer with roots in both England and Germany, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who became the primary musician in Leipzig, founded a music school there, and discovered the buried treasure in the basement of the Cathedral.

But that’s another story for another time, and a later post. For now, let’s concentrate on J.S. Bach’s son, C.P.E., known to some as Karl but to his closest friends as Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us.’ Emmanuel was the son who most outshone the father. Not only did he compose even more pieces of music than his father had, but he also wrote a very important book, An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which later musicians including Carl Czerny, Franz Josef Haydn, W.A. Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven all studied avidly. His advice on the fingering of fast passages and on the best way to play large chords is followed by classical piano instruction books to this day.

Sebastian Bach had fathered twenty children, of whom ten lived to adulthood, and of whom seven of those ten were male, and of whom four became world-class composers. He had two wives—first his second cousin Maria Barbara Bach, and, after her death, a much younger Anna Magdalena Wilcke (of Notebook fame), who was a gifted composer in her own right, as well as a spectacular soprano. Karl was the son of Maria Barbara, who died when he was six. He was only 13 years younger than his stepmother, who married J.S. when she was twenty and Karl was seven.

In 1723, when Karl was nine, the family moved to Leipzig, where his father became the head of the Cathedral music program and the lead cantor at the St. Thomas Music School, which Karl attended, studying with both his father and step-mother. (In fact, his parents were the only music teachers he ever had.)

By the time he was 15 he had become a prolific composer and by the time he was 20 was considered one of the greatest musicians in all of Europe, not just in Germany. 

Meanwhile, at age 17, he had decided to become a lawyer, and graduated from university with a degree in jurisprudence when he was 23. However, he never practiced law, knowing where his true talent lay.

When he was 24 he moved to Berlin and became head court musician to Frederick of Prussia (later known as Frederick the Great). Above is a painting of him leading (from the clavier) a small chamber group at court, in a performance of his Concerto for Flute, with Frederick himself on the solo instrument.  He taught hundreds of students there, mostly on keyboard, but also singers and orchestra instrumentalists. His much younger step-brother Johann Christian Bach, had about the same time moved to London, and had become almost as famous in England as Karl was in Germany. They became known as the ‘London Bach’ and the ‘Berlin Bach.’

Through all this he kept very close contact with his siblings and other relatives. His father was by now in his fifties, and his oldest brother, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, another composer (of course), was in his late twenties, and taking the world by storm with his organ and harpsichord performances, which outshone his activities as a composer greatly. Wilhelm moved to Berlin to join his brother, but soon moved on to Dresden, and eventually to the Les Halles district of Paris, where he became known as the ‘Halle Bach.’

Over the years, Karl wrote hundreds of clavier works, of which the most well-known is the famous Solfeggieto, which almost every young pianist who has ever lived has had to learn.  (The piano was invented during his lifetime, but he much preferred the clavier.) He also wrote dozens of symphonies, cantatas, and even one oratorio. (Several of the cantatas are secular, which was quite unusual at the time.)  He composed pieces for almost every instrument in existence, and some of them, for solo instruments, are considered extremely difficult even nowadays, in spite of huge improvements in the construction of the instruments.

Karl had also kept in very close contact with his step-mother. In 1722, when Karl was 8, his father J.S. had written a collection of keyboard and vocal pieces for her, which he called A Notebook for Anna Magdalena. In 1725 J.S. began another similar publication, Anna Magdalenas’s Notebook, for which he wrote about half of the contents. Their two oldest sons also made contributions to the book, of which Karl contributed five, although he was only 11 years old. Famous composers such as Handel and Telemann also made contributions. After Karl’s father died in 1750, Anna Magdalena moved to Berlin and lived with Karl and his wife, Johanna Maria. (Interestingly enough, one of Karl and Johanna’s three children who reached adulthood was named Johann Sebastian Bach, who was differentiated from his grandfather by appending the words ‘the Younger’ to his name. He was a gifted painter, but never studied music.)  Karl and Anna remained very close until her death a few years later.

Shortly before J.S. died, Karl began what is probably his masterpiece, the Magnificat in D Major. He finished a first version in time for his father to hear it, but he continued to revise and lengthen it repeatedly until only two years before his own death.

After his step-mother died, the Karl family moved to Hamburg, and they remained there for the rest of Karl’s life. Although of advanced age (for that time) he continued composing prolifically right to the very end. He died in 1788, age 74, and is buried in that city.

His reputation continued to grow (if that’s possible!) even after he died. Haydn called him ‘the greatest keyboardist who ever lived.’ Mozart, who had met him briefly as a child and studied with him a bit, later said of him, “Bach is the father. We are the children.”

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