C.P.E. Bach: “Kenner und Liebhaber” Collections I and II. 2 Volumes, Christopher
Hogwood, ed. [Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, Series I, Volumes 4.1and 4.2. Darrell M. Berg, General Editor. Packard Humanities Institute, 2009]
It’s in the nature of the work done by charitable foundations that money is no object,
at least in theory, and so promotional considerations tend to be secondary. ThePackard Humanities Institute has already just completed its magnificent set offacsimile editions of the seven mature Mozart operas, which it is offering at
incredibly reasonable prices given the quality and importance of the release ($175
per volume in the United States). Granted, C.P.E. Bach (1714‐88) is a composer
substantially less popular than Mozart, but if the latter edition represents a gooddeal, then the Bach series is such a bargain that it almost seems ridiculous. It’s ashame that so few people know about it, and a particular pleasure to be able torecommend it to your attention now.
Individual volumes sell for about $20‐25 on average, and given that fact that these
are all cloth‐bound, scholarly critical editions produced according to the highest
modern standards, then you probably owe it to yourself to acquire a few whether
you like C.P.E. Bach or not. Furthermore, performance materials for many of thechamber, orchestral, and choral works are offered for download free of charge on
the Institute’s Bach website. Check it out here: http://www.cpebach.org/cpeb/.
The website also lists volumes currently available and soon‐to‐be released, andprovides many useful links to external resources. Projected for completion in 2014,
the 300th anniversary year of Bach’s birth, the edition will include not just all of themusical works, but also his most famous pedagogical treatise, the Essay on the True
Art of Keyboard Playing.
C.P.E. Bach was the most famous of all of the “Bachs” during the 18th century.
Indeed, his renown exceeded that of his father. It’s surprising, then, that it has taken
so long for a complete edition of his works to appear, but the simple fact is thatmany of them just recently have become available. In was only in 1999 that thearchives of the Sing‐Akademie zu Berlin were located in Eastern Europe. These
contained a large number of vocal works, principally Passion settings and Cantatas,that had been thought lost since the Second World War, as well as much othermaterial belonging to the Bach family. The recovery of these musical treasures has
made a complete edition possible at last.
Known primarily for his keyboard works, Bach also composed some eighteen
symphonies, and about sixty keyboard concertos, works which built on his father’s
discovery of the medium and led directly to the glorious flowing of the Classicalpiano concerto in the hands of Mozart and Beethoven. As a composer, Bach is mostoften categorized as a transitional figure, hovering somewhere between the highBaroque and the newer, lighter, simpler style of the Classical period. While this istrue as far as it goes, it does his originality and artistic maturity something of adisservice. Bach was an enormously influential figure, and a huge influence onClassical composers such as Joseph Haydn (by his own admission).

Donald Francis Tovey, in his celebrated essay on Haydn’s Symphony No. 102, limits
Bach’s importance to his increasing tendency to write out ornamentation in his
celebrated series of “Reprise” Sonatas. But there is more to the story than this. The
violent emotional contrasts typical of Bach’s music have long been acknowledged,particularly by keyboard players, and these often have been seen as evidence of hislack of artistic poise and balance‐‐at least as compared to the later productions of
the Classical period. David P. Schroeder, however, perhaps best summarizes theimportance of these expressive extremes in his thought‐provoking study Haydn andthe Enlightenment (Clarendon Press, 1990):“Beginning in the early 1770s, some fundamental changes occurred in Haydn’ssymphonic language. The apparent insistence on the thematic unity of the earlier
works is now replaced by a strong duality in a number of works. There are different
possible explanations for the change occurring at this time. On the theoretical side,
Haydn gradually came to discover that there was another body of opinion which not
only condoned contrast but actively advocated it. Contrary to those who would not
tolerate more than a single affect [per movement], Quantz recommended the use ofstriking dissonances to bring out ‘the excitement of alternating passions.’ C.P.E.
Bach, whose influence Haydn so freely acknowledged, stated in his Versuch über die
wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen that the musician ‘has barely quieted down one[affect before] he arouses another, so that he constantly alternates the passions.’” (p.
78)
From this opposition of contrasting emotions within a single movement the sonata
style was born, and if the eponymous formal procedures remain largely embryonicin Bach’s music, the range of feeling is as large, or larger, as we find in any composerof the period. It was the importance of expressive immediacy that led to Bach’s
preference for the clavichord among all keyboard instruments, though he also
became quite fond of the piano. Only the clavichord had the sensitivity to touch thatso much of his music demands, and the critical ability to sound two kinds of pitch
vibrato: Bebung, and Tragen der Töne (or portato). These were produced byrepeated pressure on the key after striking a note (thus tightening the string andsharpening the pitch).
Bach’s notational conventions for these two techniques varied somewhat over thecourse of his career. In his Essay (this extract from the Norton Edition), Bach states
that, “A long, affettuoso tone is performed with a vibrato. The finger that depresses
and holds the key is gently shaken.” Bach then goes on to give examples of both
portato and vibrato notation, in that order:Later German keyboard pedagogues, such as Daniel Gottlob Türk in his Clavierschule(1789), expanded on Bach’s repertoire of notational signs, and of course we know
from accounts of Bach’s own playing that the printed scores hardly encompass thesum total of expressive accents that he improvised on the spot. Charles Burney
famously described C.P.E Bach’s playing in these terms: “In the pathetic and slow
movements, whenever he had a long note to express, he absolutely contrived toproduce, from his instrument a cry of sorrow and complaint, such as can only beeffected upon the clavichord, and perhaps by himself.”
During the last decade of his life, Bach published six sets of sonatas, rondos, andfantasias that he grouped under the general heading of works for “Kenner undLiebhaber,” that is, for “professionals and amateurs.” It was his largest publishingproject, and as editor Christopher Hogwood points out in his excellent prefaces tothe two volumes, one that enjoyed steadily declining commercial success. It wasn’t
just musical styles that were changing, but also the instruments themselves. Bach,always very much a musician’s musician despite the numerous pieces he composedin simpler style, designed the first set unambiguously as clavichord music, which isidentifiable from the extensive use of notated vibrato in the opening movement of
the Sonata in F major, Wq 55 No. 2:This particular example is interesting for several reasons. In the first place, themusic is generally cheerful in tone, suggesting that the reason Bach notates thevibrato is because he wants to give the movement a special timbre despite the factthat the music does not obviously demand “a cry of sorrow and complaint.” Theabove episode in fact is not an isolated event, but a frequently recurring musicalidea. Furthermore, you will note that although vibrato is written into the melody,
most of it occurs as accompaniment. This purely timbral, non‐ornamental use of thetechnique closely tracks what we find in much orchestral music of the Baroque andClassical periods, including Bach’s own.
Witness, for example, the following tritonal shriek at the start of the Adagio of hisString Symphony No. 3 in C major, Wq182 No. 3 (from the Packard Humanities
Institute edition of those works):

Obviously string instruments have a different technique for producing vibrato thandoes the clavichord, and so Bach here uses the portato notation that keyboard andmelody instruments share (other composers, such as Hasse, Boccherini, or Gluck,
also use wavy lines over or below the notes). Indeed, in later sets of the Kenner undLiebhaber series, which Bach designates specifically for the piano as an alternative
to the clavichord, he uses portato exclusively for both Bebung and Tragen der Töne,
leaving its specific realization up to the performer depending on the instrument
being used. Here is a typical example from the Sonata in E minor, Wq 59 No. 1 (notealso the extremely detailed dynamic markings).

Although his pedagogical work has always been recognized because of its usefulnessin understanding the art of ornamental embellishment in music of the period, Bach’s
notated use of Bebung and other vibrato techniques in his keyboard and orchestral
works often is not ornamental at all, if by this we mean an improvised or optional
addition to the principal melody. It is intrinsic to his timbral and expressive designs,often occurs as accompanying texture, and thus serves as a useful corrective to thefad current in “historically informed” musical circles for witlessly repeating themantra that vibrato was considered an “ornament” during this period. This is
usually the excuse given to justify the notion that vibrato should not be employed as
extensively as the music plainly requires.

Bach’s own attitude toward this matter can be gleaned from a number of sources. In
his Essay, he does not class vibrato among the ornaments at all, but rather places his
discussion of it in the chapter headed “Performance,” which is dedicated to theexpressive nuances of dynamics, timbre, and articulation that bring any musicalperformance to life. This in itself suggests a much more friendly view of vibrato thanmuch of today’s current thinking would allow, but as Mozart scholar Neil Zaslaw has
pointed out, Bach’s close friend and colleague the magazine publisher Carl FriedrichCramer also made a special point of its necessity:“The application of [vibrato] to instrumental execution is easy to do. Because
however much vocal performance (also the model and ideal for the instrumental)
and passionate expression permit it, so much more does the indefiniteness of thenaked, wordless tone [of instrumental music]. Thus it follows irrefutably that, insuch passages where the singer would apply vibrato, the instrumentalist not only
may make use of it, but must.” Cited in Mozart’s Symphonies: Context, Performance
Practice, Reception (p. 480)
Here, in this statement, resides the essence of Bach’s importance as a major figure in
18th century music. Like his exact contemporary Gluck, Bach’s primary goal lay inexpressing human passion in music. You might argue that this is what all composers
do, or claim to do, but of course the devil is in the details. For Gluck, this meant
stripping away what he regarded as the abuses of singers and the stale conventionsof Baroque opera seria. For Bach, engaged in the much trickier task of giving thesame expressive immediacy to instrumental music (primarily), this meant a daring
use of dissonant harmony, extreme contrasts of timbre, texture, and dynamics,
extensive use of affective devices such as vibrato, and an attempt to rationalize thepractice of improvised embellishment that he had learned from that greatest of all
masters of keyboard improvisation, his father Johann Sebastian.
Thanks to Packard Humanities Institute’s ongoing edition of the Complete Works,
music lovers will have the opportunity to follow Bach’s creative life through reliable
modern texts accompanied by helpful explanatory material. This project is a modelof what a good Critical Edition should be, and as already pointed out, the asking
price per volume is insanely modest. Anyone with an interest in the period, and inparticular students of the piano, will need to investigate this series forthwith. C.P.E.
Bach was much more than just an important figure historically; he was a wonderfulcomposer by any standard. There’s a world of fine music here waiting to bediscovered, savored, and enjoyed.
David Hurwitz
January, 2010