|
|
It cannot have been easy to have been a son
of the great Johann Sebastian Bach--or especially to undertake a career in
music under the shadow of such a father. The most notable members of
Sebastian’s progeny broke from their father’s influence like billiard balls
escaping a neat triangular formation. Musically, they turned away from the
traditions he had embodied, mainly because they knew themselves unable to
surpass his outstanding achievements.[1]
In some cases, the paths of their lives also seemed to reflect rebellion
against his legacy. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-84), Sebastian’s eldest
son, became a rather tragic figure, abruptly abandoning his organist’s
position in Halle in 1764 and never again holding a formal post, reduced to
recycling his own music and plagiarizing his father’s.[2]
Johann Christian Bach (1735-82), youngest of Sebastian’s sons, abandoned
Sebastian’s Lutheran faith after the latter's death, being received into the
Roman Catholic Church during his years in Italy.[3] Although Sebastian seems to have been
especially fond of Christian, treating him as "the Benjamin of the
family,"[4]
Christian is reputed to have referred to his father as "the old
wig";[5]
this son composed as though Sebastian had never existed, prompting J.S.
Bach’s first biographer, J.N. Forkel, to remark that "The original spirit of Bach is
. . . not to be found in any of [Christian’s] works."[6]
Undoubtedly the child of
Bach who made the most of both the advantages and the handicaps of being a
son of Sebastian was Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88).[7]
This second son of the great composer first took up the study of law at the
Universities of Leipzig and of Frankfurt an den Oder, but during the same
period (1731-38) was also producing his first compositions under his father’s
tutelage. After completing his education, he received a summons to the court
of the Crown Prince of Prussia, soon to become king--Frederick the Great, one
of the most notable "scholar-kings" of all time. Frederick himself
was an avid flautist, and was assembling a musical entourage consisting of
several of the greatest composers and performers of the day. Emanuel would seem to have
had it made at this point, but although he served Frederick for the next
thirty years, he had ample reason to become dissatisfied with his royal
employer. Not only did Frederick become more involved in military exploits
than in musical matters, but he also largely ignored Emanuel’s compositions
and resented the composer’s independence of mind. He also grossly underpaid Emanuel as
compared with other court musicians such as Nichelmann, Quantz, and the Graun
brothers.[8] Dissatisfied with Berlin, Emanuel applied
for several posts in other cities over the years. Finally in 1767, when his
godfather G.P. Telemann, cantor and music director in Hamburg, died, Bach
applied for the position and was chosen to succeed him. Frederick finally
released Bach after repeated requests, and in March 1768 Bach took up the
position in Hamburg, where he remained to the end of his life. Emanuel Bach became so well
known throughout Europe that he was often referred to as the Hamburg Bach (to
distinguish him from his brother the
London Bach--Johann Christian, who was now music master to the
Queen of England). Not only did he supply music for Hamburg’s five churches,
but he also initiated concerts and published many of his compositions,
including six influential sets of keyboard pieces für Kenner und Liebhaber ("for
connoisseurs and amateurs"). Already famous for his definitive Essay on the True Art of Playing
Keyboard Instruments, he proceeded to make great strides in the
genre of symphony in the ten works of Wq. 182-183 (Helm 657-66), and in
choral music, culminating in his magnificent oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt
Jesu ("The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus," Wq.
240 [H. 777]). In addition to his own
substantial contributions to music, he provided an immense service in
protecting the legacy of his deceased father. Prof. Eugene Helm, one of the
foremost authorities on Emanuel Bach, states that he was "an honourable and effective
guardian of Sebastian’s music and other Bach family treasures important to
Bach research; most of the Bachiana now extant were owned by him."[9]
Unfortunately, the largest share of Sebastian Bach’s autographs had been
given after his death to his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, due to whose
negligence most of the scores he inherited have been irrecoverably lost.[10]
Philipp Spitta’s account of the disposition of J.S. Bach’s five Passions
indicates the comparative respect by Emanuel and neglect by Friedemann of
their paternal legacy: . . . After his death, his sons, Friedemann and
Emanuel, divided these cantatas [i.e., Sebastian’s five yearly cycles of such
works] between them, and the Passions were no doubt included. Emanuel had the
original scores of the St. John and the St. Matthew Passions. He treasured
them faithfully and they still exist. The original manuscript[s] of the other
three fell into the hands of the dissipated Friedemann, who now grew wilder
than ever; they were sold for a trifle, and two have entirely disappeared . .
. .[11] It has been accurately said
of Emanuel that he "was
the only one among [Bach’s sons] who would actively work to increase Johann
Sebastian’s fame and make his works more generally known."[12]
Besides treasuring his father’s manuscripts, he was responsible for the only
J.S. Bach publications between the Art
of Fugue edition published shortly after Sebastian’s death and
the competing editions of the Well-Tempered
Clavier which appeared in 1801: Emanuel brought out 371 chorales
culled from his father’s vocal works, commending them to both connoisseurs
and students of counterpoint.[13]
He directed a performance of the Credo from Sebastian’s B Minor Mass (BWV
232) in Hamburg in 1784, at a time when this monumental work was completely
unknown.[14]
At the end of his life, he published (albeit anonymously) a defense of his
father’s art against unfavorable comparisons with that of Handel.[15]
Posterity thus owes Emanuel a
double debt, since in addition to creating his own
masterpieces, he safeguarded
many of Sebastian’s as well. And it would be unfair to
allow Emanuel’s works to remain in the shade of those of his father.
Certainly nothing is quite like Sebastian’s music--but then Emanuel’s does
not aspire to be like it, but to cultivate a very different effect. The
German term empfindsamer
Stil, which can be loosely rendered as "sensitive
style," is often used regarding Emanuel’s highly subjective music. His
most original works are the opposite of predictable; he delights in startling
the listener with a sudden shift in dynamics, or a new pattern of
note-rhythms, or an unexpected modulation.
Pamela Fox remarks, at the outset of an important study of what she
terms the composer’s stylistic “nonconstancy,” that “The novel
unpredictability and imaginative unorthodoxy of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s
music exert a magnetic attraction upon scholars, performers, and listeners.”[16] The opening of his Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Wq.
46 [H. 408], or the first movement of his Sixth "Prussian" Sonata in
A, Wq. 48/6 [H. 29], provide good examples of the wide range
of moods through which he can navigate in a mere few bars. Rather than try to compete
with Sebastian’s style--or to vacillate between various styles, as Friedemann
did, failing to find a consistent style of his own[17]--
Emanuel travelled the corridors of the human psyche and related to his
audience on a level that seems emotionally immediate. To say that Sebastian
was the only great Bach and that his sons were unworthy successors to his
legacy, as many in the 19th century did,[18]
betrays a lack of critical discernment.
Indeed, we are still suffering from the effects of this
shortsightedness in that much of Emanuel’s music is still not widely
available, or is available in old or unreliable editions. Complicating the
problem is the fact that, according to Rachel W. Wade’s important study The Keyboard Concertos of Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach, this artist “rarely considered a work finished. More than
most other composers, he revised quite frequently”[19]--a
trait that has obvious ramifications for responsible editors of his
music. Only towards the end of the
twentieth century was the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Edition
finally initiated to provide an authoritative text of the works of this
composer. (Compare this with J.S. Bach
and Mozart, each of whom has been honored by two complete works
editions!) The C.P.E. Bach Edition
unfortunately ceased publication after only four volumes had been released,
but a new edition called Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete
Works has now been started, with a projected completion date of 2014
(the 300th anniversary of C.P.E.’s birth). [20] Sebastian and his
sons--especially his most remarkable, Emanuel--composed very different types
of music. No doubt Sebastian’s St.
Matthew Passion is the finest musical setting of the suffering,
death, and burial of Christ; but can anyone who has heard Emanuel’s Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu
(possibly his finest composition) deny that the son’s depiction of the
resurrection and ascension of Christ is also unsurpassable?[21]
Can one pit Sebastian’s concerti against Emanuel’s, or one’s sinfonias
against the other’s symphonies, and come away with anything meaningful? That
would be as foolish as comparing Sebastian Bach to Handel, or Mozart to
Beethoven, in an effort to downgrade one or the other’s compositions.
Hopefully our musical culture has outgrown favorite Victorian parlor games
like these. Emanuel himself enunciated
a far sounder musical judgment when someone tried to draw him into a battle
with Joseph Haydn. Correcting a story in the European Magazine, which had accused him of
attacking Haydn in print, Bach wrote: . . . According to my principles, every master has his
true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only
the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to
everyone his own value.[22] If the value of Johann
Sebastian Bach is unmistakable, so too is that of his son Carl Philipp
Emanuel. Far from being a mere
transitional figure, C.P.E. Bach is increasingly being recognized as a highly
significant composer in his own right; as harpsichordist Ludger Rémy aptly
says, “Does [Emanuel] Bach stand between the times? No, he is his own time.”[23] Rather than diminishing Emanuel’s work, the
fact that the son had a father like J.S. Bach should enhance our appreciation
of Emanuel’s achievement. The towering figure of Sebastian had both
encouraged his sons’ musical careers and unwittingly, simply by being the
great J.S. Bach, made it more difficult for them to assert their artistic
personalities. Emanuel emerged from his father’s shadow and made his own way
in the world, cutting a path that would ensure his own immortality--but not
without reverence toward the already immortal father who had so decisively
influenced his course. (Last
revision: |
