Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources VII ed. by Mark W. Knoll, and: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach ed. by Jason B. Grant and Elias N. Kulukundis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources VII ed. by Mark W. Knoll, and: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach ed. by Jason B. Grant and Elias N. Kulukundis Simon P. Keefe Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources VII. Edited by Mark W. Knoll. (C. P. E. Bach - the Complete Works‚ Ser. III, Vol. 9.7). Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute, 2018. [xv p.; score, 255 p. Cloth. ISBN 1933280654. $54.25] Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources XI. Edited by Jason B. Grant and Elias N. Kulukundis. (C. P. E. Bach - the Complete Works‚ Ser. III, Vol. 9.11). Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute, 2017. [xvii p.; score, 134 p. Cloth. ISBN 1938325044. $38.50] The C. P. E. Bach Complete Works has emerged as one of the most important, extended scholarly ventures in current eighteenth-century musical scholarship. C. P. E. Bach (1714–1788) wrote around fifty concertos at all stages of his career. As General Editor Peter Wollny explains in a succinct preface to both volumes under review: "In addition to the increasingly refined interplay between solo and tutti, the development of Bach's concerto style manifests itself primarily through larger dimensions, higher compositional demands, and a more symphonic quality to the movements" (ix). On the first point, it can be noted that the influential German theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch (1714–1816), writing between 1782 and 1793, considered C. P. E. Bach concertos models of a well-worked concerto in which, during the solo, the accompanying voices are not merely there to sound this or that missing interval of the chord between the soprano and bass. There is a passionate dialogue (leidenschaftliche Unterhaltung) between the concerto player and the accompanying orchestra. He expresses his feelings to the orchestra, and it signals him through short interspersed phrases sometimes approval, sometimes acceptance of his expression, as it were. Now in the allegro it tries to stimulate his noble feelings still more; now it commiserates, now it comforts him in the adagio. (Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition [Leipzig, 1782–1793; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969], trans. Nancy Kovaleff Baker as Introductory Essay on Composition: the Mechanical Rules of Melody, Sections 3 and 4 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983], 209, 211–212. In his later Musikalisches Lexikon [Frankfurt, 1802; reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964], col. 854, Koch cited Mozart's concertos as the model.) Together, the two new volumes contain five keyboard concertos, Wq 21 in A minor, Wq 22 in D minor, Wq 23 in D minor (vol. 9.7, plus an early version of Wq 21), and Wq 34 in G major and Wq 35 in E major (vol. 9.11). The editors' introductions are informative and concise, skillfully explaining source issues and matters of compositional genesis. Wq 21 was initially written in 1747 (in Berlin) and "renewed" (erneuert) nearly thirty years later in 1775 [End Page 157] (Hamburg). We should be thankful to the editor, Mark W. Knoll, and publisher for providing both texts: "Wq 21 is unquestionably a rare case of a surviving original version of one of Bach's works prior to its revision" (vol. 9.7, xii). Wq 22, in contrast, originated as a flute concerto, only later being arranged by C. P. E. Bach for keyboard, a version for which two horn parts not in the flute concerto were also added. Wq 23, unlike Wq 21 and Wq 22, survives in autograph form. Wq 34 and Wq 35 (vol. 9.11) date respectively from 1755 and 1759, are contemporary with C. P. E. Bach's organ sonatas, and were conceived with organ as well as harpsichord in mind. Surviving autograph materials "indicate that Bach made alterations and improvements at a somewhat later time after the works were composed" (vol. 9.11, xi). Moreover, "more than a dozen contemporary copies of each work exist, indicating that they were both well-known and popular with the North German musical public" (vol. 9.11, xi). Wq 35, probably composed for Princess Anna Amalia, is the only C. P. E. Bach concerto written between 1755 and 1762, a fact attributable to the challenging conditions of the...