- C.P.E. Bach composed this sinfonia in 1758. He originally scored the work for strings, but around 1762 he revised the work and added winds.1
- This is one of eight symphonies C.P.E. Bach composed while he was working in Berlin for Frederick the Great. Peter Wollny, the General Editor of the complete edition of C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies, observes that these Berlin symphonies are unusual in that we (as yet) know of no occasion for which they were written.2
- A proliferation of scores demonstrates that C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies entered the repertory in the late 18th century and were still performed after his death (the idea of a canon of musical classics was only just developing at the time; most composers in the Baroque had written music for specific occasions, rather than for posterity).
- The Mendelssohns’ teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter had copies of C.P.E. Bach’s Berlin symphonies. Peter Wollney suggests C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies were a model for Felix Mendelssohn’s youthful string symphonies.3
Sources
- Christoph Wolff and Ulrich Leisinger, “Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 13, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278185.
- Peter Wollner, Preface to Symphonies, from C.P.E. Bach: The Complete Works: Vol. III/1: Berlin Symphonies, ed. Ekkehard Krüger and Tobias Schwinger (Cambridge, MA: The Packard Humanities Institute, 2008).
- Ibid.
Cut IDs
23797