C. P. E. Bach for connoisseurs and amateurs

Abstract

Interest in C. P. E. Bach and his music has shown a considerable revival in recent decades, with a spate of books, articles, editions and conferences (including the enterprising C. P. E. Bach Study Day organized at the South Bank in March 2011 in conjunction with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert season), and a variety of performances and recordings. Prominent among these initiatives is the splendid new collected edition from the Packard Humanities Institute (following in the footsteps of the incomplete enterprise so promisingly launched by Oxford University Press in the 1980s). The two volumes of keyboard music produced by the Chair of the Editorial Board, Christopher Hogwood (who has long been a devotee of the composer) contain Emanuel Bach’s crowning achievement in publishing music for solo keyboard. Their contents were originally issued between 1779 and 1787 in the six sets of sonatas, fantasias and rondos for...