C. P. E.
Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon
Paul Corneilson
C. P. E. Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon
W ho is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach? Over
the past two hundred years he was known
as one of many »pre-classical« composers, filling
the artificial divide between his father, Johann
Sebastian Bach, and Handel in the first half of the
eighteenth century and Haydn and Mozart, who
in turn led ultimately to Beethoven’s synthesis (or
apotheosis) around 1800 1. Although Beethoven
himself was a great admirer of C. P. E. Bach’s
music and keyboard treatise, by the time Beethoven
was writing his »Eroica« Symphony in the first
years of the nineteenth century, the »Berlin« or
»Hamburg« Bach’s music was already disappearing
from the repertory. Perhaps Johann Nikolaus
Forkel’s biography of J. S. Bach, which appeared
in 1802, also helped to hasten the demise of his
son’s reputation: Forkel’s Bach is placed on such
a high pedestal that no other eighteenth-century
composers could compete, and even a hundred
years later Albert Schweitzer thought that C. P. E.
Bach was the only potential rival to J. S. Bach2.
1 This view of the progression of music history has been
with us a long time now, and in fact dates to the early
nineteenth century. See Carl Dahlhaus, Das 18. Jahrhundert
als musikgeschichtliche Epoche, in: Die Musik des
18. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Carl Dahlhaus (=Neues Handbuch
der Musikwissenschaft 5), Laaber 1985, pp. 1–8. In the most
comprehensive treatment of eighteenth-century music
history to date, Daniel Heartz’s trilogy: Haydn, Mozart and
the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (New York 1995); Music in
European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (New York
2003); and Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven, 1781–1802
(New York 2009). C. P. E. Bach receives substantial
discussion in the middle book in a chapter on »Dresden and
Berlin« (pp. 389–424), but the music of his Hamburg period,
1768–88, is mostly ignored.
2 Forkel’s biography: Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben,
Kunst und Kunstwerke, Leipzig 1802, was based in part on
extensive correspondence with both Wilhelm Friedemann
and C. P. E. Bach. Schweitzer’s biography was published
in German in 1908 and translated into English in 1911.
According to Schweitzer: »In the eyes of the public and the
critics of the end of the eighteenth century the great composer
of the Bach family was Emmanuel. No one stood so much in
the way of his father’s fame as he.«, vol. 1, p. 229.
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The Solfeggio in c minor, Wq 117/2 is one of the
few pieces by C. P. E. Bach that is well known, at
least by piano students. For many years, this stormy
exercise was reprinted in numerous keyboard
anthologies and is now available in arrangements
with a variety of styles, from jazz to the Swingle
Singers 3 . This situation should be remedied
now by the first complete critical edition of his
music, namely, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The
Complete Works (hereafter CPEB:CW), currently
in preparation by The Packard Humanities Institute
in cooperation with the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, the
Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and
Harvard University. This essay attempts briefly to
tell the story of the fate of C. P. E. Bach’s music
since his death in 1788 up to his 300th birthday in
March 2014. Naturally, in limited space, I can only
offer some of the highlights of this story, as well as
prospects for C. P. E. Bach breaking into the canon.
First, let us acknowledge that the canon has
either exploded or been under serious assault,
depending on your viewpoint, for the past thirty
years or longer. It is not my purpose to address
the value of the Western classical music canon,
especially the relative value of the music of »dead
white European male« composers vis-à-vis world
music, popular music, women composers, and
so on. Nor do I wish to be aggrieved about the
calcification and attrition of classical music scene in
general; critics have been lamenting the demise of
classical music since at least the 1950s, and there is
no sign of its death, even if some are convinced it
is largely irrelevant today. Indeed, there are more
recordings of C. P. E. Bach’s music and those of
his contemporaries than ever before, in spite of the
fact that sales of classical music represent a smaller
share of the total market for recorded music. Rather
I want to deal with a few specific challenges for
3 For more information on these arrangements see my
introduction to the anthology of C. P. E. Bach’s Greatest Hits,
Los Altos, California 2014.
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the Edition: (1) defining C. P. E. Bach’s work;
(2) publishing 115 volumes (almost 15.000 pages
of music), mostly in first editions; and (3) finally
overcoming stereotypes and indifference by making
his music known through scores and performances.
I – Early Attempts
We must begin with C. P. E. Bach himself, who
published quite a number of his own works »im
Verlag des Autors«. Of almost four dozen stand-
alone publications during his lifetime, more than
a quarter were issued by the composer4. Perhaps
he received some tips from his father, who
published the four volumes of the Clavierübung
at his own expense5. Bach is named as editor of
the Musikalisches Vielerley, a serial publication
issued by M. C. Bock in Hamburg in 1770, which
was modeled on two earlier serials: Musikalisches
Allerley (Berlin: F. W. Birnstiel, 1761–1763) and
Musikalisches Mancherley (Berlin: G. L. Winter,
1762–63). Bach was associated with both of these
publishers in Berlin, and thus it is not beyond the
realm of possibility that he had a hand in them as
well. Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel also brought
out a two-volume edition of the chorales of J. S.
Bach; and while C. P. E. Bach cooperated with
him, he was annoyed that Birnstiel made so many
mistakes and even included several chorales that
4 I am not counting here the works published in various
anthologies. The number of publications increased greatly
after Bach moved to Berlin. The following works were
published by the composer (with dates in parentheses): Wq 63
(1753), Wq 43 (1772), Wq 196 (1774), Wq 238 (1775), Wq 90
(1776), Wq 91 (1777), Wq 215 (1779), Wq 55 (1779), Wq 56
(1780), Wq 57 (1781), Wq 58 (1783), Wq 239 (1784), Wq 59
(1785), and Wq 61 (1787).
5 Richard Kramer points out that C. P. E. Bach was also
responsible for seeing his father’s posthumous Kunst der Fuge
to publication, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Leipzig
1752. C. P. E. Bach has sometimes been criticized for selling
the plates of the work, but as Richard Kramer notes this was a
practical matter. See his essay Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and
the Aesthetics of Patricide, in: Unfinished Music, Oxford 2008,
pp. 25–26. To this can be added the Credo from his father’s
Mass in b minor, BWV 232, which C. P. E. Bach performed in
1786; see the preface by Uwe Wolf in: Messe in h-Moll, Neue
Bach-Ausgabe. Revidierte Edition, Kassel 2010.
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Paul Corneilson
were not written by his father. Later, C. P. E. Bach
remedied the situation by editing a second edition
of his father’s chorales for Breitkopf in Leipzig in
the 1780s6. C. P. E. Bach also had the advantage
of living next door to the music publisher Georg
Ludewig Winter for a few years in Berlin. Winter
published several works of C. P. E. Bach in the
1760s and 1770s, the last being the Orchester-
Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen, Wq 183,
which Winter’s widow published in 1780 after her
husband died. One other editing project did not
come to fruition during his lifetime: his collected
songs for the Polyhymnia Portfolio (an annotated
facsimile edited by Christoph Wolff is published
in CPEB:CW, VIII/2; the songs are published in
CPEB:CW, VI/3).
Out of necessity, Bach became an editor and
arranger of church music to prepare the cantatas
and Passions for the many Hamburg services he
conducted while music director. Carl Friedrich
Zelter, the long-time director of the Sing-Akademie
zu Berlin and Felix Mendelssohn’s teacher,
recognized the problem in a long note regarding
C. P. E. Bach’s first St. Matthew Passion, H 782:
»One can deduce that he was not entirely in his
element in vocal music by the fact that the music
chosen by him for the Hamburg churches was
often patched together, with new texts adapted
for different occasions, or, indeed, even woven
together with other composer’s works. The latter
case is particularly evident in this manuscript
[of the 1769 Passion], in which all of the chorales
and turba choruses are borrowed from Sebastian
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.« And: »Now, that he
had little desire to indulge in the custom of setting
biblical texts or turba choruses [Volksgebell] can
be assumed, but I possess many church pieces by
him which contain choruses or arias by Homilius,
Georg Benda, and others, only in order to perform
a particular piece for a particular Sunday without
much effort!«7
6 Johann Sebastian Bachs vierstimmige Choralgesänge, 1st ed.,
2 vols., Berlin 1765–1769; 2nd ed., 4 parts, Leipzig 1784–1787.
C .P. E. Bach wrote a Vorrede for each edition.
7 »Daß er sich selber in seinen Singkompositionen nicht geistig
frey gefühlt habe ließe sich dadurch errathen indem die für
die Hamburger Kirchen von ihm bestimmten Musiken gar
C. P. E. Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon
We are still in the process of identifying these
borrowings in Bach’s church music, partly because
the works by other composers are so thoroughly
absorbed into his cantatas8.
II – 19th-Century Editions
Soon after C. P. E. Bach’s death in 1788, new
unauthorized editions of his music began to appear
in print9. One of the first was a keyboard-vocal
score of his Passions-Cantate, Wq 233, which had
already been widely distributed in manuscript
copies. His estate catalogue, the so-called Nachlaß-
Verzeichnis (hereafter NV 1790) published in
Hamburg in 1790, includes music incipits of most of
the composer’s instrumental music, and it also has
a short section near the end listing the prints that
were still available to purchase from Bach’s widow.
This remarkable document gave collectors access
to the authorized work of the composer, although
a few works were not included 10. Johann Carl
oft geflickt, andere Texte für neue Gelegenheiten unterlegt
ja mit fremden Compositionen durchflochten sind. Das
Letztere wird an diesem Manuscript besonders fühlbar
indem sämtliche Chöre und Volkschöre aus der Passion
dem Seb. Bach secundum Matthaeum abgeschrieben sind.«
And: »Daß er nun, der Observanz zu fröhnen wenige Lust
gehabt habe, biblische Relationen oder Volksgebell in Töne
zu bringen ist wohl anzunehmen, aber ich besitze viele
Kirchenmusiken von ihm worin sich Chöre oder Arien von
Homilius, G. Benda und dergleichen befinden um nur für
den bestimmten Sonntag ohne viel Mühe eine bestimmte
Musik aufzuführen!« The complete text, dated 14 May
1825, is printed in Heinrich Miesner: Philipp Emanuel
Bach in Hamburg. Beiträge zu seiner Biographie und zur
Musikgeschichte seiner Zeit, Leipzig 1929, pp. 61–62.
8 C. P. E. Bach continues to be criticized for his borrowing,
though this was a common and even expected condition in
the eighteenth century. To his credit, he never published any
other composers’ works under his name, and was careful to
keep cantatas by his contemporaries separate in his music
library.
9 For a survey of early editions, see E. Eugene Helm: The
Editorial Transmission of C. P. E. Bach’s Music, in: Early
Music 17 (1989), pp. 32–41.
10 Rachel W. Wade: Newly Found Works of C.P.E. Bach,
in: Early Music 16 (1988), pp. 523–532. Most of the early
compositions were destroyed by Bach around 1772, when
he compiled a list of his solo keyboard works. But an early
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Friedrich Rellstab published a number of works,
some of which are clearly corrupt and others simply
reprinted. The Magnificat, Wq 215 was published
in a keyboard-vocal score around 1820, and the
double-choir Heilig, Wq 217 inspired several
arrangements including Zelter’s for three choirs
for the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin; it was eventually
published in a keyboard reduction by Hans Michael
Schletterer (1824–1893). It was the keyboard music
that continued to generate interest in the latter
half of the nineteenth century, though isolated
symphonies and concertos were also published
or rather issued in second editions based on the
original prints.
In 1868 J. H. Deane, who wrote a regular
column for The Musical Standard, praised the
music of C. P. E. Bach and credited him with the
»existence of the sonata and rondo forms.« But he
mistakenly assumed that most of his music was lost:
»It is supposed that the greater number of Emanuel
Bach’s compositions are unfortunately lost, which
may account for our never hearing any of his
works in public by pianists at their recitals—a fact
much to be regretted, inasmuch as they would be
interesting in the highest degree as illustrating what
was the commencement of a new epoch in musical
composition.«11
When Sir George Grove published his
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1879),
he summed up the importance of C. P. E. Bach:
»As a composer, director, teacher, and critic, his
influence was very great, and he was beloved and
respected both by his brother professionals and by
the whole town. His goodness, pleasant manners,
literary culture, and great activity in music, all
combined to place him at the head of his father’s
sons and scholars. But when we remember that
for a Bach his musical gifts were by no means
extraordinary – far below those of Friedemann, for
example – it is plain that he stands so high because
he is recognized historically in the transition period
cantata, Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Stande, resurfaced in
2010; see below.
11 J. H. Deane: Notes on the Old Masters, in: The Musical
Standard 8 (7 March 1868), pp. 102–103. I want to thank
Christopher Hogwood for bringing this to my attention.
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between J. S. Bach and Haydn. In such periods
a man is eminent and influential more from his
general cultivation than from proficiency in any
special branch. At the particular time at which
E. Bach lived there were no great men. The gigantic
days of Handel and Bach were exchanged for a
time of peruke and powder, when the highest ideal
was neatness, smoothness, and elegance. Depth,
force, originality, were gone, and ›taste‹ was the
most important word in all things. […] To form a
right judgment of him as a composer he must be
regarded apart from his father and solely from the
point of view of his own time; and when so judged
it is impossible to deny that he surpassed most of
his contemporaries, and is of paramount importance
as a connecting link between the periods of Handel
and Bach on the one hand and Haydn and Mozart
on the other.«12
The article, signed by »A. M.« (»Herr A.
Maczewski, Concert-director, Kaiserslautern«),
mentions some of the recent editions of his music,
including E. F. Baumgart’s of the Kenner und
Liebhaber collections, but it is clear that the author
was not acquainted with most of the chamber
music, concertos, symphonies, and vocal music by
C. P. E. Bach, and probably not much music by his
contemporaries either.
III – 20th-Century Editions
In 1905 Alfred Wotquenne published a thematic
catalogue of C. P. E. Bach’s works, based almost
entirely on the Westphal Collection at the Brussels
Conservatoire13. Since that time the Wq numbers
have been familiar, even though only 85% of
Bach’s total output is included. It is unfortunate
that, although he listed NV 1790 (item 279),
Wotquenne did not include most of the Passions,
Einführungsmusiken, Bürgercapitainsmusiken, and
other works for special occasions. He also listed
several compositions under two different numbers,
12 George Grove (Ed.): A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 4
vols. and index, London 1879–1890, vol. 1, p. 113.
13 Alfred Wotquenne: Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke von
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Leipzig 1905.
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Paul Corneilson
depending on the number of times the works
were listed in Westphal’s earlier sales catalogue.
Nevertheless, the catalogue has remained in print
for more than a hundred years. Thus, most of the
works published and recorded during the twentieth
century are known by their Wq numbers.
This includes the four Orchester Sinfonien,
Wq 183 (published in Das Erbe deutscher Musik)
and selected keyboard concertos (e.g., Wq 23, ed.
by Arnold Schering, in the Denkmäler deutscher
Tonkunst, and Wq 27, ed. by Elias N. Kulukundis,
in the Collegium Musicum: Yale University) 14.
Heinrich Schenker ranked C. P. E. Bach as one of
the top composers and edited some of his keyboard
music15. Another early pioneer in C. P. E. Bach
studies was Ernst Fritz Schmid, who published a
dissertation on the chamber music, and later edited
some of this music for various series 16. Heinrich
Miesner was the first to study part of the church
music in the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin archives17, and
Gudrun Busch wrote a dissertation on the songs18.
Finally, in the 1980s, Eugene Helm published a
short article that he titled »An Honorable Shortcut«
to publishing the music of C. P. E. Bach 19 .
14 See also Rachel W. Wade: The Keyboard Concertos of Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1981; and Jane
R. Stevens: The Bach Family and the Keyboard Concerto: The
Evolution of a Genre, Warren, Michigan 2001.
15 Heinrich Schenker: Ein Beitrag zur Ornamentik. Als
Einführung zu Ph. Em. Bachs Klavierwerken, rev. ed., Vienna
1908.
16 Ernst Fritz Schmid: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und seine
Kammermusik, Kassel 1931. See also David Schulenberg:
The Instrumental Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Ann
Arbor, Michigan 1984.
17 Heinrich Miesner: Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg.
Beiträge zu seiner Biographie und zur Musikgeschichte seiner
Zeit, Leipzig 1929. See also Stephen L. Clark: The Occasional
Choral Works of C. P. E. Bach, PhD diss., Princeton
University 1984; and Reginald L. Sanders: Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach and Liturgical Music at the Hamburg Principal
Churches from 1768 to 1788, PhD diss., Yale University 2001.
18 Gudrun Busch: C. Ph. E. Bach und seine Lieder, Regensburg
1957. This has been supplemented by William H. Youngren:
C. P. E. Bach and the Rebirth of the Strophic Song, Langtham,
Maryland 2003.
19 Eugene Helm: An Honorable Shortcut to the Works of C. P. E.
Bach, in: Music in the Classic Period: Essays in Honor of Barry
S. Brook, ed. by Allan W. Atlas, New York 1985, pp. 85–98.
C. P. E. Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon
(It is not clear whether he was aware at the time
that Darrell M. Berg was editing a facsimile
edition for Garland of Bach’s solo keyboard
music20.) One option, in fact, would have been
the »Collected Works of C. P. E. Bach«, similar
to the pseudo-edition Garland published of the
Collected Works of Johann Christian Bach 21.
At the same time, Helm was working on his
own thematic catalogue of the works of C. P. E.
Bach 22, and this formed the basis for a new
critical edition, funded in part by the National
Endowment of the Humanities, Oxford University
Press, and the University of Maryland, the home
institution of Helm and Rachel W. Wade, the
general editor of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Edition 23. (See appendix A for the proposed
organization of this edition.) Joseph Kerman,
who complained about the positivist emphasis of
post-war musicology on creating critical editions,
admitted: »Yet almost any edition is better than
none, and no edition can meet every legitimate
need of the specialist, who sooner or later has
always to go back to the original documents
themselves.«24 But with the development of music
software and digital images, a new approach was
necessary for the twenty-first century.
20 Darrell M. Berg (Ed.): The Collected Works for Solo Keyboard
in Six Volumes by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, New York
1985.
21 Ed. by Ernest Warburton in 48 vols., New York 1984–1999.
I use the term pseudo-edition because part of the edition is
strictly speaking a facsimile edition, reproducing eighteenth-
century prints and manuscripts, and other volumes are
modern transcriptions of the works with limited critical
commentary.
22 Eugene Helm: Thematic Catalogue of Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach, New Haven 1988. A premature list of his numbering
was published in C. P. E. Bach’s work list for The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. by Stanley Sadie, 20
vols., London 1980.
23 This is not the place to tell the history of this enterprise,
which published four volumes from 1989 to 1994 (listed in
appendix A).
24 Joseph Kerman: Contemplating Music, Cambridge 1985, p. 49.
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IV – CPEB:CW
Planning for a new critical edition, tentatively
titled »Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Collected
Works«, began in 1997. After two formal planning
conferences in 1998 and 1999 at Harvard University,
the three general editors – Darrell M. Berg (series I);
Peter Wollny (series II, III, VII); and Ulrich
Leisinger (series IV, V, VI) – and Christoph Wolff
made a formal proposal to The Packard Humanities
Institute, and the project was approved in the spring
of 1999. The original plan (see appendix B) originally
projected more than seventy volumes and hoped to
finish by 2014, the 300th birth year of C. P. E. Bach.
In the summer of 1999, however, Christoph Wolff
and associates from the Harvard Ukrainian Research
Institute recovered the Sing-Akademie archive in
Kiew. This resulted in an additional thirty volumes
being added to the Edition, mainly vocal music from
Hamburg, including all twenty-one Passions, as well
as many other works thought to have been lost 25.
Once the Sing-Akademie archive was returned to
Berlin at the end of 2001, we were able to change the
title of the edition to »Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach:
The Complete Works«. Now we are projecting
115–120 volumes in total, and we are on course to
finish in about five or six more years (see appendix C
for the current organization).
The Edition is organized in eight series, and
each series is divided into volumes of related
repertories. Some of the volumes were further
subdivided between »music from prints« and
»music from manuscripts« (e.g., I/5 and I/6, also
III/7 and III/9). In series II we had a choice as to
how to publish the trios. There are almost four
dozen works in the »Trii« section in NV 1790,
listed in chronological order. But after much
deliberation, the Editorial Board decided to
organize the volumes by scoring, so that the
works are grouped as follows: »trio sonatas«
in II/2, for works with two (mostly treble)
instruments plus bass; »keyboard trios« in II/3,
for works for keyboard plus one solo instrument;
25 See Christoph Wolff: Recovered in Kiev. Bach et al. a
Preliminary Report on the Music Collection of the Berlin Sing-
Akademie, in: MLA Notes 58 (2001), pp. 259–271.
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and »accompanied sonatas« in II/4, for keyboard
plus violin and violoncello. This gives performers
better access to related repertory, though it was
impossible to find perfect solutions for works
like the sonata for keyboard and viola da gamba,
Wq 88, which is published in II/3.1 with works
for keyboard and violin. The flute, oboe, and cello
concertos (in III/4–6) are published separately,
even though all of them either derive from or are
related to keyboard versions (in III/9). Some works,
like Klopstocks Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste,
Wq 239, are harder to classify. Helm lists it with
the »major choral works« (H 773) but its scoring
is limited to strings and flutes, and it is only about
twelve minutes long. We ultimately published it in
VI/4, along with the arias and chamber cantatas, but
it could have been published with the miscellaneous
sacred works in series V.
The ongoing work of editors and the Bach-
Repertorium has led to additional discoveries.
One of the most interesting was the lone surviving
cantata written by the young C. P. E. Bach before
he left Leipzig for the University at Frankfurt
an der Oder. His autograph score of Ich bin ver-
gnügt mit meinem Stande was identified by Peter
Wollny in the parish archives of St. Johannis in
Mügeln (Saxony)26. Annette Richards was able to
reconstruct about three-quarters of C. P. E. Bach’s
portrait collection (CPEB:CW, VIII/4; see also her
article in the present volume). And recently a short
»Amen«, Wq 210, for four-part choir has been
found in Hamburg (CPEB:CW, V/6.1). More im-
portant for understanding Bach’s workshop during
his tenure as music director in Hamburg, many of
the Vorlagen for arias, duets, and choruses in his
church music have now been identified. Since the
Edition is publishing repertories like the Passions
and Quartalstücke, which contain music mostly
borrowed from other composers, especially Georg
Benda, Gottfried August Homilius, Anton Schweit-
zer, and the Graun brothers, we might call it »The
Complete Works of C. P. E. Bach Plus«.
26 Peter Wollny: Zwei Bach-Funde in Mügeln, C. P. E. Bach,
Picander und die Leipziger Kirchenmusik in den 1730er
Jahren, in: Bach-Jahrbuch (2010), pp. 111–151; his edition of
the cantata is published in CPEB:CW, V/5.2.
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Paul Corneilson
From the outset the Edition has been planned
as both a printed and digital edition. With ever-
changing technology over the past fifteen years,
it is difficult to predict exactly what format(s) the
future will bring. When the project began, most
libraries were still sending us microfilm/microfiche
of sources; now they send almost exclusively digital
scans, which can allow editors to see details that
are difficult to see with the naked eye on location.
But the overall editing process is not that different
from publishing in the nineteenth or twentieth
centuries. The sources still need to be compared
and evaluated; the text and music still need to be
carefully proofread. Even if in the future optical
recognition software can convert hand-written
music notation to modern printed notation,
editors will need to use their critical faculties and
skills of observation to settle inconsistencies and
infelicities in the original sources. For example,
the first page of the Sonata in C major, Wq 55/1,
is a good example of C. P. E. Bach’s characteristic
keyboard notation, in which he shows how the
left and right hands should play the arpeggios
(see figure 1). Although this breaks many rules of
modern engraving for beaming and stem direction,
the edition follows Bach’s patterns to faithfully
represent how it is meant to be played (see figure 2).
All of us who have worked on C. P. E. Bach’s music
these past few years have grown to appreciate the
complexity of the composer, his attention to detail
but also his economy in adapting, reusing, and
revising his own music as well as that of others.
The digital age has made it more economical to
produce performing material, including piano-vocal
scores, and study-score offprints.27 The Edition is
also publishing facsimiles of representative works
as supplements to each series; this gives scholars
and performers a chance to study the sources
themselves. Bach Digital will eventually include
scans of the most important sources of C. P. E.
Bach’s music. We also plan to publish a new English
27 Carus Verlag has recently issued several vocal scores of
C. P. E. Bach’s works, including Die Israeliten in der
Wüste, Klopstocks Morgengesang, the Dank-Hymne der
Freundschaft, and the 1769 St. Matthew Passion. CPEB:CW
Offprints of selected works are available as print-on-demand
paperbacks from Amazon.com and its subsidiaries.
C. P. E. Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon THEMA

figure 1: The first page of Sonata I in C major, Wq 55/1, in the first edition (1779)
Courtesy of University of Michigan, Music Library, M23.B12 S55

translation of the Versuch to supersede the one by
William Mitchell (New York 1948). Finally, the
Edition will publish a catalogue of sources and
scribes and various indices to assist users, all based
on a comprehensive database that should eventually
be available online.
V – Conclusion:
Prospects for a 21st-Century Revival
In 1981, reviewing some recent recordings of
the composer, Edward Rothstein predicted a
revival in interest in C. P. E. Bach’s music: »But
gusts of fashion blow unpredictably, and though
we are thoroughly at home in the classical style
which C. P. E. made possible, his music is strange
to contemporary ears. The works are scarcely
recorded; they appear on concert programs as exotic
appetizers. Emanuel’s career has become historical
testimony to the mannerisms of the transition
from Baroque to Classical; his works are eccentric
exclamations whose quirkiness may confuse rather
than convince.«28
Unfortunately, such views are still found in
music history text books, which are prone to keep
C. P. E. Bach in the cracks between J. S. Bach
and Handel and Haydn and Beethoven. What has
been lacking of course is a Gesamtausgabe. Our
undertaking will enable scholars and performers
comprehensive access to a body of work, spanning
28 Edward Rothstein: The Rediscovery of C. P. E. Bach,
in:The New York Times (4 January 1981). Under review
were recordings by Bob van Asperen (the Prussian and
Württemberg Sonatas), Herbert Tachezi (the complete
organ works), Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert and
Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music
(discs including the Wq 182 symphonies), and Raymond
Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra (the Wq 183
symphonies).

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21
THEMA Paul Corneilson

Sonata I in C Major
Prestissimo Wq 55/1

13

17

21

25 1 2

figure 2: The first page of Sonata I in C major, Wq 55/1, edited by Christopher Hogwood in CPEB:CW, I/4.1
Copyright 2009 by The Packard Humanities Institute, Los Altos, California

the life of an important composer who was active
from the 1730s to the 1780s. No longer will
scholars have to rely solely on tracking down
eighteenth-century material or having to take
honorable shortcuts to understand the music of
one of the major composers of the eighteenth
century. Recording projects of C. P. E. Bach’s solo
keyboard music and concertos are now complete 29,
and his symphonies, songs, and chamber music are
also well represented on recordings and in concert
halls. A few important works like the Magnificat
are already known, but CPEB:CW has now made
it possible for conductors to choose between the
early Leipzig/Berlin version and the later revision
for Hamburg. When more of his vocal music is
known—especially the oratorios, the double-choir
Heilig, and Morgengesang—C.P.E. Bach should
gain the foothold in the canon that he deserves. 

29 Solo keyboard music and concertos on historical keyboards music on modern piano by Ana-Marija Markovina and
by Miklós Spányi on BIS, and forthcoming solo keyboard concertos played by Michael Rische on Hänssler Classic.

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22
C. P. E. Bach and the Challenge of Breaking into the Canon
Appendix A.
Organization of CPEBE (ca. 1989)
I. Solo Keyboard Music (31 vols.)
[…]
18. Keyboard Sonatas, 1744–1747 (H 40, 43, 46,
47, 48, 49, 51)
[…]
24. Keyboard Sonatas, 1763–1766 (H 176–178,
189, 192, 211–213)
II. Concertos and Sonatinas (31 vols.)
[…]
15. Keyboard Concertos 38 & 39 (H 448 and 454)
[…]
23. Keyboard Sonatinas 4 & 5 (H 451–452)
III. Chamber Music with a Leading Keyboard
Part (4 vols.)
IV. Solo Sonatas for Wind and String
Instruments (2 vols.)
V. Trio Sonatas (2 vols.)
VI. Other Chamber Music (2 vols.)
VII. Symphonies (7 vols.)
VIII. Works for Solo Voices (4 vols.)
IX. Major Choral Works (6 vols.)
X. Choral Works for Special Occasions (10 vols.)
Total estimated volumes: 99; the titles of the four
volumes that appeared are given under series I and II.
Appendix B. »First Draft«
Organization of CPEB: CW (October 1999)
I. Keyboard Music (17 vols.)
1. »Prussian« and »Württemberg« Sonatas
2. Sonatas with Varied Reprises
3. Probestücke, Leichte Claviersonaten,
Damen-Sonaten
4. 1–2 Kenner und Liebhaber Collections I–VI
5. 1–2 Individually Published Sonatas
6. 1–5 Sonatas Not Published during Bach’s
Lifetime
7. Variations
8. 1–3 Miscellaneous Keyboard Pieces, Suites,
Sinfonie, Fantasias, Juvenilia; Clavierstücke
verschiedener Art; Minuets, Polonaises,
and Other Pieces for Keyboard; Duets;
Solfeggios, Fantasias, and Character Pieces
9. Organ Works
© DIE TONKUNST, Januar 2014, Nr. 1, Jg. 8 (2014), ISSN: 1863-3536
THEMA
II. Chamber Music (6 vols.)
1. Solos
2. 1–2 Trio Sonatas
3. Keyboard Trios
4. Quartets
5. Miscellaneous Chamber Works, Dances,
Pieces for Mechanical Instruments
III. Orchestral Music (24 vols.)
1. Sinfonias from the Berlin Period
2. Six Sinfonias for Strings
3. Four Orchestral Sinfonias with 12 Obbligato
Parts
4. Orchestral Dances
5. Published Concertos from the Berlin Period
6. Sei Concerti per il cembalo concertato
7. 7–20 Unpublished Concertos
8. 21–24 Sonatinas
IV. Oratorios and Passions (6 vols.)
1. Die Israeliten in der Wüste
2. Passions-Cantate
3. Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu
4. (4.1) St. Matthew Passion (1789)
(4.2) Lost Passions (texts only)
5. Bürgerkapitänsmusiken
V. Sacred Choral Music (6 vols.)
1. Magnificat, Veni Sanctus Spiritus, Sanctus
2. Easter Cantatas
3. Michaelmas and Christmas Cantatas
4. Cantatas for Special Occasions
(incl. texts of lost works)
5. Inauguration and Congratulatory Cantatas
(incl. texts of lost works)
6. Single Choruses, Motets, and Chorales
VI. Songs and Secular Cantatas (4 vols.)
1. 1–2 Secular Cantatas and Songs
2. 1–2 Sacred Songs, Chorale Melodies
VII. Sketches, Didactic, and Theoretical Works
(3 vols.)
1. 1–2 Versuch I–II and other writings
2. Cadenzas, Miscellanea Musica, Album
Entries, Sketches
VIII. Editions and Arrangements (3 vols.)
1. sMusikalisches Vielerley
2. Instrumental works by J.C. Bach, J.E. Bach,
and others
3. Vocal works by G. Benda, C.F.C. Fasch, C.H.
Graun, G.A. Homilius, and others
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THEMA Paul Corneilson

IX. Supplement (3 vols.) IV. Oratorios and Passions (24 vols.)

1. Catalogue of Principal Copyists (Frankfurt, 1. Die Israeliten in der Wüste
Berlin, Hamburg) 2. Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu
2. Catalogue of Autographs and Authorized 3. Passions-Cantate
Copies 4. 1–6 Passions according to St. Matthew
3. Nachlassverzeichnis (with commentary and 5. 1–5 Passions according to St. Mark
documentation) 6. 1–5 Passions according to St. Luke
7. 1–5 Passions according to St. John
Total estimated volumes: 72
V. Choral Music (20 vols.)
Appendix C.
1. 1–2 Magnificat
Current Organization of CPEB:CW
2. 1–6 Quartalstücke
(October 2013)
3. 1–5 Einführungsmusiken
4. Bürgercapitainsmusiken
I. Keyboard Music (18 vols.)
5. 1–2 Works for Special Occasions
1. »Prussian« and »Württemberg« Sonatas
2. Sonatas with Varied Reprises 6. 1–4 Miscellaneous Sacred Works
3. »Probestücke,« »Leichte« and »Damen«
Sonatas VI. Songs and Vocal Chamber Music (4 vols.)
4. 1–2 »Kenner und Liebhaber« Collections 1. Gellert Songs
5. 1–2 Miscellaneous Sonatas from Prints 2. Cramer and Sturm Songs
6. 1–5 Sonatas from Manuscript Sources 3. Miscellaneous Songs
7. Variations 4. Arias and Chamber Cantatas
8. 1–2 Miscellaneous Keyboard Works
9. Organ Works VII. Theoretical Works (3 vols.)
10. 1–2 Arrangements of Orchestral Works 1. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu
spielen I
II. Chamber Music (7 vols.) 2. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu
1. Solo Sonatas spielen II
2. 1–2 Trio Sonatas 3. Commentary to the Versuch
3. 1–2 Keyboard Trios
4. Accompanied Sonatas VIII. Supplement (10 vols.)
5. Quartets and Miscellaneous Chamber Music 1. Miscellanea Musica
2. The Polyhymnia Portfolio
III. Orchestral Music (29 vols.) 3. 1–3 Librettos
1. Berlin Symphonies
4. 1–2 Portrait Collection
2. Six Symphonies for Baron van Swieten
5. Historical Catalogues
3. Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten
6. Sources and Scribes
Stimmen
7. Indices
4. 1–2 Flute Concertos
5. Oboe Concertos
Total estimated volumes: 115
6. Violoncello Concertos
7. Keyboard Concertos from Prints
8. Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato
9. 1–15 Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript
Sources
10. Concertos for Two Keyboards
11. Keyboard Sonatinas from Prints
12. 1–2 Keyboard Sonatinas from Manuscript Detailed contents of individual volumes, plus the
Sources introductions of published volumes and librettos for
13. Sonatinas for Two Keyboards vocal works, can be found at www.cpebach.org.

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