Johann Sebastian Bach's penultimate son, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, was the longest lived of the musical Bachs and was placed, just before his father died, in the Bückeberg post in which he served for the rest of his life. This Bach's posthumous reputation took a heavy hit when a World War II airstrike wiped out the library that held his personal manuscript collection, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to the part of his output left behind; Christoph Friedrich drew from the galant style of younger brother ...
Read More
Johann Sebastian Bach's penultimate son, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, was the longest lived of the musical Bachs and was placed, just before his father died, in the Bückeberg post in which he served for the rest of his life. This Bach's posthumous reputation took a heavy hit when a World War II airstrike wiped out the library that held his personal manuscript collection, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to the part of his output left behind; Christoph Friedrich drew from the galant style of younger brother Johann Christian, had the taste for drama and eccentricity exemplified by his elder brother Carl Philipp Emanuel and, yes, retained some of the rigor and surface features common to the music of his father. Another thing he held in common with his dear old dad was the opportunity to write secular cantatas, and judging from the librettists in these works -- Karl Wilhelm Ramler for Pygmalion and Ino and arch-Sturm und Dräng author Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg for Die Amerikanerin (The...
Read Less
