• Musician and Composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 1714
• Composer Johann Christian Bach, 1735

 

Emanuel Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father's baroque style and the classical and romantic styles that followed it. His personal approach, an expressive and often turbulent one known as Empfindsamer or 'sensitive style', applied the principles of rhetoric and drama to musical structures. Bach's dynamism stands in deliberate contrast to the more mannered rococo style also then in vogue.

Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar in 1714 to Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara. The composer Georg Philipp Telemann was his godfather. When he was ten years old he entered the St. Thomas School at Leipzig, where his father had become cantor in 1723. He was one of four Bach children to become a professional musician; all four were trained in music almost entirely by their father. In an age of royal patronage, father and son alike knew that a university education helped prevent a professional musician from being treated as a servant. Emanuel, like his brothers, pursued advanced studies in jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig (1731). He continued further study of law at Frankfurt (Oder) (1735). In 1738, at the age of 24, he obtained his degree. He turned his attention at once to music.

A few months after graduation Bach, armed with a recommendation by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, obtained an appointment in the service of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, the future Frederick the Great. Upon Frederick's accession in 1740 Emanuel became a member of the royal orchestra. He was by this time one of the foremost clavier players in Europe, and his compositions, which date from 1731, include about thirty sonatas and concert pieces for harpsichord and clavichord. During his time there, Berlin was a rich artistic environment, where Bach mixed with many accomplished musicians, including several notable former students of his father, and important literary figures, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, with whom the composer would become close friends.

In Berlin Bach continued to write numerous pieces for solo keyboard, including a series of character pieces, the so-called "Berlin Portraits", including La Caroline. His reputation was established by the two published sets of sonatas which he dedicated respectively to Frederick the Great and to the grand duke of Württemberg. In 1746 he was promoted to the post of chamber musician, and served the king alongside colleagues like Carl Heinrich Graun, Johann Joachim Quantz and Franz Benda.

The composer who most influenced Bach's maturing style was unquestionably his father Sebastian. He drew creative inspiration from his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, then working in Hamburg, and from contemporaries like George Frideric Handel, Carl Heinrich Graun and Joseph Haydn. Bach's interest in all types of art led to influence from poets, playwrights and philosophers such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Emanuel Bach's work itself influenced the work of, among others, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.

During his residence in Berlin Bach composed a fine setting of the Magnificat (1749), in which he shows more traces than usual of his father's influence; an Easter cantata (1756); several symphonies and concerted works; at least three volumes of songs; and a few secular cantatas and other occasional pieces. But his main work was concentrated on the clavier, for which he composed, at this time, nearly two hundred sonatas and other solos, including the set Mit veränderten Reprisen (1760 – 1768) and a few of those für Kenner und Liebhaber.

While in Berlin Bach placed himself in the forefront of European music with a treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments). Immediately recognized as a definitive work on keyboard technique, by 1780 the book was in its third edition and laid the foundation for the keyboard methods of Muzio Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer. In it, Bach broke with tradition in allowing, even encouraging, the use of the thumbs. Since his time this has been standard technique for keyboard instruments. The essay lays out the fingering for each chord and some chord sequences. Bach's techniques continue to be employed today. The first part of the Essay contains a chapter explaining the various embellishments in work of the period, e.g., trills, turns, mordents, etc. The second part presents Emanuel Bach's ideas on the art of figured bass and counterpoint, where he gives preference to the contrapuntal approach to harmonization over the newer ideas of Rameau's theory of harmony and root progressions.

In 1768 Emanuel Bach succeeded his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann as director of music at Hamburg. Upon his release from service at the court he was named court composer for Frederick's sister, Princess Anna Amalia. The title was honorary, but her patronage and interest in the oratorio genre may have played a role in nurturing the ambitious choral works that followed.

Bach began to turn more of his energies to choral music in his new position. The job required the steady production of music for Protestant church services at the Michaeliskirche (Church of St. Michael) and elsewhere in Hamburg. The following year he produced his oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste (The Israelites in the Desert), a composition remarkable not only for its great beauty but for the resemblance of its plan to that of Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah. Between 1768 and 1788 he wrote twenty - one settings of the Passion, and some seventy cantatas, litanies, motets and other liturgical pieces. In Hamburg he also presented a number of works by contemporaries, including his father, Telemann, Graun, Handel, Haydn, Salieri and Johann David Holland. Bach's choral output reached its apex in two works: the double chorus Heilig (Holy, Holy, Holy) of 1776, a setting of the seraph song from the throne scene in Isaiah, and the grand cantata Die Auferstehung Jesu (The Resurrection of Jesus) of 1774 - 1782, which sets a poetic Gospel harmonization by the poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler (1725 - 1798). Widespread admiration of Auferstehung led to three 1788 performances in Vienna sponsored by the Baron Gottfried van Swieten and conducted by Mozart.

Emanuel Bach married Johanna Maria Dannemann in 1744. Only three of their children lived to adulthood – Johann Adam (1745 – 89), Anna Carolina Philippina (1747 – 1804) and Johann Sebastian "the Younger" (1748 – 78). None became musicians and Johann Sebastian, a promising painter, died in his twenties during a 1778 trip to Italy. Emanuel Bach died in Hamburg on 14 December 1788. He was buried in the Michaeliskirche (Church of St. Michael) in Hamburg.

Through the later half of the 18th century, the reputation of Emanuel Bach stood very high. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said of him, "He is the father, we are the children." The best part of Joseph Haydn's training was derived from a study of his work. Ludwig van Beethoven expressed for his genius the most cordial admiration and regard. His keyboard sonatas, for example, mark an important epoch in the history of musical form. Lucid in style, delicate and tender in expression, they are even more notable for the freedom and variety of their structural design; they break away altogether from both the Italian and the Viennese schools, moving instead toward the cyclical and improvisatory forms that would become common several generations later.

The content of his work is full of invention and, most importantly, extreme unpredictability, and wide emotional range even within a single work, a style that may be categorized as Empfindsamer Stil. It is no less sincere in thought than polished and felicitous in phrase. He was probably the first composer of eminence who made free use of harmonic color for its own sake since the time of Lassus, Monteverdi and Gesualdo. In this way, he compares well with the most important representatives of the First Viennese School. In fact he exerted enormous influence on the North German School of composers, in particular Georg Anton Benda, Bernhard Joachim Hagen, Ernst Wilhelm Wolf, Johann Gottfried Müthel, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust and many others. His influence was not limited to his contemporaries, and extended to Felix Mendelssohn and Carl Maria von Weber.

His name fell into neglect during the 19th century, with Robert Schumann notoriously opining that "as a creative musician he remained very far behind his father"; in contrast, Johannes Brahms held him in high regard and edited some of his music. The revival of Emanuel Bach's works has been underway since Helmuth Koch's rediscovery and recording of his symphonies in the 1960s, and Hugo Ruf's recordings of his keyboard sonatas. There is an ongoing effort to record his complete works, led by Miklos Spanyi on the Swedish record label BIS.

The works of C.P.E. Bach came to be known by their Wq numbers (from Alfred Wotquenne's 1906 catalog). They are now also known by their H numbers, from a new catalog by Eugene Helm (1989).

Johann Christian Bach was born to Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach in Leipzig, Germany. His distinguished father was already 50 at the time of his birth, which would perhaps contribute to the sharp differences between his music and that of his father. Even so, his father first instructed him in music and that instruction continued until his death. After his father's death, when Johann Christian was 15, he worked with his second oldest half brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who was twenty - one years his senior and considered at the time to be the most musically gifted of Bach's sons.

He enjoyed a promising career, first as a composer then as a performer playing alongside Carl Friedrich Abel, the notable player of the viola da gamba. He composed cantatas, chamber music, keyboard and orchestral works, operas and symphonies.

Bach lived in Italy for many years starting in 1756, studying with Padre Martini in Bologna. He became organist at the Milan cathedral in 1760. During his time in Italy, he converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. In 1762, Bach traveled to London to première three operas at the King's Theatre, including Orione on 19 February 1763. That established his reputation in England, and he became music master to Queen Charlotte. He met soprano Cecilia Grassi in 1766 and married her shortly thereafter. She was his junior by eleven years. They had no children.

Johann Christian Bach died in London on New Year's Day, 1782. He was buried in the graveyard of St. Pancras Old Church, London.

Johann Christian Bach's father died when Johann Christian was only fifteen. This is perhaps one reason why it is difficult to find points of similarity between the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and that of Johann Christian. By contrast, the piano sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Christian's much older half brother, tend to invoke certain elements of his father at times, especially with regard to the use of counterpoint. (C.P.E. was 36 by the time J.S. died).

Johann Christian's highly melodic style differentiates his works from those of his family. He composed in the Galante style incorporating balanced phrases, emphasis on melody and accompaniment, without too much contrapuntal complexity. The Galante movement opposed the intricate lines of Baroque music, and instead placed importance on fluid melodies in periodic phrases. It preceded the classical style, which fused the Galante aesthetics with a renewed interest in counterpoint.

A full account of J.C. Bach’s career is given in the fourth volume of Charles Burney's History of Music.

There are two others named Johann Christian Bach in the Bach family tree, but neither was a composer.

Mozart esteemed J.C. Bach's music highly and arranged three sonatas from the latter's Op. 5 into keyboard concertos.