Compositional Style of C.P.E. Bach

“In studying Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s compositional process, one cannot ignore the fact that his career lasted some fifty years and spanned the highly significant change in musical style that occurred during the middle of the century. Bach wrote his first concerto in 1733, when he was nineteen, and his last in 1788, the year of his death” (Wade 59). Bach’s compositions draw from both the late Baroque and the early Classical periods, and hence his music is often viewed as transitory into that of Haydn and Mozart. Had Bach been composing a few years earlier or a few years later, how differently would his music been received?

The reception of C.P.E. Bach’s compositions is proof of how critical the time in which a composer is living and working affects the style and process of the composer. Bach’s desire to subscribe to one style or another (more often that of the Classical period) exemplifies how much composers take the audience into account while writing. There is evidence of Bach cutting measures and rearranging his compositions in order to better follow the phrase model of the Classical period. I believe that Bach’s desire to “fit” into the fabric of the musical community hindered his musicking. Had he denounced both the Baroque and Classical styles and instead of attempting to fit in between them, risen above them with his own style, would he have earned the acclaim of Mozart and Haydn?