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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- Composer: Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795)
Work: Sinfonia in B flat major, HW 1/2 (1768)
Performers: Orchestra of St. Lukе's
Painting: Aleksander Zauerveid (1783-1844) - Der Marktplatz von Leipzig am 19ten October 1813
Image in high resolution: flic.kr/p/2kuYwN3
Further info: www.discogs.co...
Listen free: open.spotify.c...
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Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach
(Leipzig, 21 June 1732 - Bückeburg, 26 January 1795)
Composer, son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Anna Magdalena Bach (1701-1760). He is known as the ‘Bückeburg Bach’. He received his musical education from his father. After leaving the Thomasschule, he is thought to have studied law briefly, but there is no record of his matriculation at Leipzig University. At the express wish of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe he was appointed harpsichordist to the court in Bückeburg, where he may at first have been subordinate to the court organist Ludolf Münchhausen. In June 1751 his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel visited him in the retinue of Frederick the Great when the king awarded the Order of the Great Eagle to Count Wilhelm. On 8 January 1755 Bach had married Münchhausen’s daughter Lucia Elisabeth. The Seven Years War imposed considerable restrictions on the court of Bückeburg. Bach took this opportunity to apply, successfully, for the vacant post of organist at the German church in Altona, then under Danish rule, but for unknown reasons he never took it up. On 18 February 1759 he was appointed Konzertmeister of the Bückeburg Hofkapelle. However, court life did not return to normal until after the Peace of Hubertusburg, and the return of Count Wilhelm from his military missions in Portugal in November 1764. In the period up to 1770 Bach wrote symphonies, trio sonatas, a number of Italian arias and cantatas and perhaps his most important work of this time, the large-scale cantata Cassandra. After Count Wilhelm’s marriage to Marie Barbara Eleonore zur Lippe-Biesterfeld on 12 November 1765, Protestant sacred music was performed at the Bückeburg court. Perhaps encouraged by his successful application to Altona, Bach applied on 24 June 1767 to succeed the late G.P. Telemann in Hamburg. He was, in fact, one of the short-listed candidates, but his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel gained the appointment. Between 1765 and 1773 Johann Christoph Friedrich set the best-known Protestant oratorio texts of his time. The tendency towards sacred vocal composition increased with the arrival in Bückeburg of J.G. Herder, who was court preacher and superintendent there from 1771 to 1776.
The death of Countess Marie Barbara in 1776, Herder’s appointment to Weimar in the same year and the death of Count Wilhelm in 1777 marked a watershed in the intellectual life of the Bückeburg court. In spring 1778 Bach asked for three months’ leave to visit his brother Johann Christian in London. A series of string quartets and a set of six keyboard concertos, printed in London with dedications to members of the house of Schaumburg-Lippe, show how rapidly J.C.F. Bach adapted his music to English tastes. He also brought back an English piano from his travels, so his keyboard compositions after 1778 were not necessarily for the harpsichord. In 1780 Count Philipp Ernst took as his second wife Princess Juliane zu Hessen-Philippsthal, who was particularly fond of the fine arts. At the Princess’s wish, attendance at court concerts was now open to the citizens of Bückeburg and to visitors. Forkel regarded the little Kapelle as one of the finest in Germany. Juliane took lessons in foreign languages and drawing, and studied the keyboard with J.C.F. Bach. Among the better known of his pupils (in addition to his son Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst and C.F. Geyer) were the future Thomaskantor A.E. Müller and perhaps Adolf, Baron von Knigge. For teaching purposes Bach wrote a number of pedagogically valuable keyboard works, including the Sechs leichte Clavier-Sonaten, variations, concertos and sonatas for four hands. The arrival in Bückeburg about 1793 of the Bohemian musician Franz Neubauer presented Bach with unaccustomed competition in the last years of his life. It inspired him to write new works (including a dozen large-scale symphonies and several double concertos) but it also intensified the latent depression from which he had been suffering since the death of his half-brother Carl Philipp Emanuel and which may have hastened the course of the chest ailment that brought about his death on 26 January 1795. In his obituary his friend Karl Gottlieb Horstig, superintendent at Bückeburg from 1793, described him as an industrious composer, always ready to be of service, and praised his upright character and ‘kindness of heart’.
One of my favorite bach children!
Bellissima esecuzione! 👏👏👏
A sinfonia clássica teve esse momento de primar pelo ligeiro nas cordas e seu efeitos orquestrais, mesmo assim existem inserções melódicas belas. Os movimentos lentos equilibram a pressa cosmopolita, as palhetas dão o toque pastoril.
About half of the 20 songs of sinfonìa are lost in the fifth son of Great Bach, but as far as I know, only No. 2 and No. 20 are in B flat major.
Although pre-classical in the era, his style is said to be classical, with at least five of Great Bach's sons being composers, and I think Great Bach's lineage is tremendous heritability. ..
This sound source will be added to and saved in the catalog of works by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach.
I am grateful that I have always enriched my music collection.
JCF was the 16th child of JS Bach, and the 9th from his second marriage.
JCF is really a Classical composer.
Many of the scores, copies, and manuscript symphonies were destroyed during WW2 - you can’t say ‘songs of sinfonia’* in English.
Four - not five - of JS Bach’s sons became composers: WF, CPE, JCF, and JC.
JCF is an interesting, but minor composer of the period, and certainly the least amongs his brothers/half-brothers.
* Note:
Symphony in English,
Sinfonia in Italian,
A song is something that has words and can be sung by a voice.
@@elaineblackhurst1509 Since I am Japanese, I may have misused symphony as sinfonìa, but that of C.P.E.Bach is usually written as sinfonìa.
The line between pre-classical and classical is not clear, and JCF Bach is six years older than Vanhal and Dittersdorf, and the composers who were active around 1740 to 1760 (or before 1780) are pre-classical. It seems to be called a school.
Certainly, the point is plausible, and I think it is a difficult question to disagree whether J.F.C.Bach is a true classical composer or a composer in the previous stage.
Of the many children of J.S. Bach, the four who became composers were the eldest son W.F. Bach, the second son C.P.E. Bach, the seventh son J.C.F. Bach, and the youngest son J.C. Bach.
However, W.F.Bach and C.P.E.Bach are clearly pre-classical composers, and J.C.Bach is clearly a classical composer. Therefore, J.F.C.Bach can be thought of as a transitional composer of an era as close as possible to the classical period.
I'm a Japanese who doesn't speak English as my mother tongue, so I was worried that Pau NG could understand my true intentions, but as soon as I realized that I had to study English seriously after receiving a reply. is.
@Alcina
I think we are over-complicating a very simple translation here, whilst simultaneously altering the definition at the same time - something of which native English speakers are guilty more than most.
Sinfonia* is an Italian word that translates as Symphony in English.
Mozart and Haydn only rarely used anything other than Italian on their manuscripts.
Beethoven 5 is a sinfonia, as are Bruckner 4, and Shostakovitch 10, et cetera.
We cannot try to unilaterally re-define the word Sinfonia as applying only to mid-18th century early Classical works - though they too used the word from wherever they came as Italian was the lingua franca.
I get your point entirely, but there is a problem if we use ‘sinfonia’ to mean one thing, whilst using ‘symphony’ to mean something else; more importantly, it is un-international as it is clearly confusing to non-native and non-English speaking people interested in the subject.
* Another bugbear of mine is the grotesque mangling of the pronunciation of this word by almost all native English speakers; it is correctly:
Seen-fon- *ee* -ah
(not Sin- *fown* -ya).
@@日下部宗永
Thank you for your reply; you have made an excellent attempt with your English - most importantly, we can understand clearly the points you make.
I suggest the following - along with taking a look at my reply to Alcina (above).
Sinfonia* (It) = Symphony (Eng).
CPE Bach in Germany, Mozart and Haydn in Austria, JC Bach in England, along with almost everyone else across the continent used Italian terms when it came to music - it was the universal language; the fact that CPE uses the term signifies nothing at all other than the fact that the work was a sinfonia (symphony).
It would have been odd if he had not used the word.
The Classical period (c1750 - 1800) is a broad term and it contains a wide variety of composers and styles, as does the Baroque, and other musical periods.
Therefore this period encompasses galant, sturm und drang, rococo, Viennese Classical, empfindsamer Stil, and many other styles.
The Classical period did not begin on 1 January 1750, neither did the Baroque end there; some Classical composers were producing works in 1740 (Sammartini, Monn), some Baroque in 1760 (Telemann).
I do think the idea of ‘pre-Classical’ and ‘transitional’ is a bit of a modern-day fabrication that never really existed, composers tended to be one thing or the other, though I agree that both WF and CPE Bach are more difficult to classify than most, especially as there are more obvious traces of he old Baroque in their music.
I think you will find that so-called ‘transitional’ composers were some of the least influential in the history of music; a composer like Johann Stamitz for example who died in 1757 is probably better described as revolutionary than transitional, but he is 100% a Classical composer.
CPE Bach died 31 years later in 1788, so you will see my difficulty with the term ‘pre-Classical’ or transitional being applied to CPE, especially as he was considered so important by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven - ie modern composers.
I think there is absolutely no difficulty in placing JCF Bach - who was born in the same year as Haydn (also 100% Classical) which you did not mention - in the Classical period.
Hope you find something of interest in these observations.
* There is no accent on the Italian word ‘sinfonia’ (sic).
@Alcina
I have to admit that my knowledge of JCF is far more limited than is the case with his brothers/half-brothers; I’m not sure there are enough extant works - either published or recorded - to ever fix this problem any time soon.
The situation is not helped I think by his being relatively isolated at the minor court of Buckeburg where he moved as an 18 year old in 1750 and remained for the rest of his life until he died in 1795.
Along with the loss of so many manuscripts at the end of WW2, and my lack of knowledge of German, he remains a shadowy figure.
There are a small number of works I do know reasonably well that I think hold up well when compared to his contemporaries; some of his symphonies I think are very interesting - the late B flat symphony I think shows he knew some Haydn works.
There are some competent keyboard concertos (some doubtful), but some of his other keyboard works I find charmless, trite and insipid; his variations on ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman’ (‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’) is perhaps worth an occasional play through.
I have a cd of three German secular cantatas which I think are good - if slightly old-school - ‘Ino’ (1786) in particular.
I think the visit to JC in London in April 1778 is interesting and probably did have as you say some impact; he would have heard the standard slightly old-fashioned English repertoire popular at the time, but also the more up-to-date items of the Bach/Abel concerts that were being performed in an attempt to modernise the rather conservative English ears.
JCF almost certainly would have heard some Haydn symphonies at the Bach/Abel concerts as I think this is where they were first performed in England, but I doubt if he heard any Mozart in London on this visit; as late as 1791/92, and again in 1794/95, Haydn reported that he found Mozart almost unknown in that city.
As ever, thanks for the interesting comment.
Excellent and thank you for uploading
Bellissima . Thanks for the great display end biography - yes - Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. "Casandra". Dramatic Cantata for Alto, String and Basso continuo; there is a good performance on the net: Lena Susanne Norin, alto, Das Kleine Konert, Hermann Max.
Loved it! 😀
amazing
Splendid masterpiece ... thank you so much
Wonderful piece, thank you.
Gradevole!