Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works

A composer of great versatility and breadth, a promoter of instrumental music as an art in its own right, a prolific contributor to most genres of vocal music, a keyboard virtuoso, an outstanding improviser, a groundbreaking musical pedagogue, a commercially minded Vielschreiber of easy music to “please the bourgeoisie,”¹ an avid collector of musicians’ portraits, a prominent musical figure, yet someone who would give his creativity free reign, preferably in the confines of his private sphere: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the icon of late eighteenth-century German musical life, could be called many things. Later, as we know, he was often labeled merely a “theorist” and sidelined in favor of his father.² Remnants of such sentiments lingered on well into the era of the historically informed performance movement of the 1960s and ’70s, likely accounting for the comparatively slow pace at which musicians, producers, and the public warmed up...