CotW: CPE Bach 06.05.24

[edashtav]

What a marvellous COTW on JS Bach's son CPE with Donald Macleod drawing on the composer's autobiography and creating a fascinating tale illustrated by some carefully selected recordings. I was hooked, drawn in by the nylon yarn of a born storyteller and landed on the bank at 5pm gasping more...more.

Yet more to R3 and Donald Macleod

[richardfinegold]

I didn’t realize that CPE (KPE?) left an autobiography. I wonder if there are a lot of details of the paterfamilias

[smittims]

Yes, it was a good idea to base the series on the composer's own reminiscences, though he also wrote a very influential book on keyboard practice. Perhaps it's characteristic of this programme that the emphasis is more on the life than the music. For this reason I've rarely listened toit in the past, but now it's on at 4 pm I tend to hear the first ten minutes or so while havng my dinner.

[french frank]

I didn’t realize that CPE (KPE?) left an autobiography.

According to Wiki 'also formerly spelled' Karl Philipp Emmanuel (why?); now Carl Philipp Emanuel. Referred to as Emanuel Bach.

[oddoneout]

This was one I would have liked to follow but the new time just doesn't fit in, and catch up not an option, so I just have to do without.

[french frank]

This was one I would have liked to follow but the new time just doesn't fit in, and catch up not an option, so I just have to do without.

In such circumstances, saying people can listen to it on catch-up has all the lordly disdain of 'Let them eat cake' when impoverished peasants had no bread.

[Serial_Apologist]

This was one I would have liked to follow but the new time just doesn't fit in, and catch up not an option, so I just have to do without.

CPEB had a COTW a few years ago, one which was predicated more on the music than this sequence. I remember being astonished at the speed with which he came up with the stylistic change that brought in the Classical period proper. The only other transitions I can think of that dispatched with then-accepted (or insisted on) procedures and aesthetics were the changes in direction Stravinsky made between 1908 and 1912, and those of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern around the same period - with Bartok and Ives not far behind.