Affective practices in mid-18th-century German music-making: reflections on C. P. E. Bach’s advice to performers

Abstract

Abstract Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach stated that a musical performer ‘must of necessity be able to transport himself into all of the affections that he wants to arouse in his listeners’. As famous as this passage is, it still raises questions. Did Bach mean that performers must arouse and feel all the shifting affections of the music within their own bodies, or was he using a metaphor here? Were composers supposed to feel the affections in their music while they composed it, as Bach suggested? Was this demand specific to Bach alone, or was it a stock recommendation given by many mid-18th-century German music writers? This article explores similar recommendations in historical sources and describes how Bach’s strategy might be enacted by performers. In an ideal empfindsam concert, the listener’s sympathetic response to the music would have been reinforced by the physical manifestations of the performer’s affective state.