Sunday, August 25, 2013

Lessons from CPE

What a pleasure to run into a real live person with whom I could have a lively conversation about C.P.E. Bach!  The work of this inventive man have gone largely unnoticed by the musical establishment as it is hard to read them without knowledge of the pre-Classical.   The orderly succession of bars and progressions that we learn as children and, alas, later in music school simply do not apply to this music.

I am discovering a whole new work, W. 62/10, assigned to me, as it were, by one of my audience for my next program.  It is hilarious, therefore insightful as to the clash between orderly and not.

If he did nothing else for posterity he bears as one of his middle names, perhaps the crucial one, Phillip, the name of his godfather, Georg Phillip Telemann.  If J.S. admired Telemann sufficiently to name a son after him, well....figure it out.