C.P.E. Bach Studies

C. P. E. Bach Studies collects together nine wide-ranging essays by leading scholars of eighteenth-century music. Offering fresh perspectives on one of the towering figures of the period, the authors explore Bach’s music in its cultural contexts, and show in diverse and complementary ways the reciprocal relationship between Bach’s work and contemporary literary, theological, and aesthetic debates. Topics include Bach’s relation to theories of sensibility and the sublime; the free fantasy and concepts of self and being; and Bach’s engagement with music history and the legacy of his predecessors. Wider questions of C. P. E. Bach reception also play an important part in the book, which explores not only the interpretation of Bach’s music in his time, but also its reception over the two centuries since his death.

Author Biography

Annette Richards is Associate Professor of Music and University Organist at Cornell University. She is the author of The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge, 2001), and co-editor of Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines (2000). An active performer, she has won prizes at the Dublin International Organ Competition and the Bruges Early Music Festival, and has recorded the complete works of Melchior Schildt at the historic organ in Roskilde Cathedral.