In his provocative essay, “Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the Aesthetics of Patricide,” Richard Kramer remarks, “Everywhere, Emanuel felt the need to speak of his father. In his music, he fails to do so. The patrimony is not acknowledged there.” Kramer demonstrates this in a perceptive analysis of one of Emanuel's challenging keyboard compositions, the Sonata in C Major, H. 248 (1775).

Coping with that patrimony could not have been a picnic for the male offspring of Johann Sebastian Bach. The towering shadow cast by J. S. Bach on the lives, careers, and ambitions of all five of them was undoubtedly overwhelming. Kramer's comment invites us to ponder the various tactics and strategies these uniquely privi-leged—and uniquely challenged—offspring developed to come to terms with that intimidating legacy. He has also offered an intriguing way to assess and understand the meaning of the careers of the Bach sons: namely, by determining the degree to which—and the manner in which—they succeeded in emerging from their father's shadow. Much of what follows will be conjectural; but very little is not conjectural in historical or biographical writing concerned with comprehending the meaning of events centuries old. On the other hand, much of it will be a matter of reasonably “connecting dots”—that is, documented facts—which we may have become overly reluctant to connect or account for in rather obvious ways.

Bach and His Sons

According to at least one eighteenth-century author, there was an abundance of mutual disdain between Johann Sebastian Bach and his musical sons. Carl Friedrich Cramer (1752–1807), the editor of the important Magazin der Musik, personally knew both Philipp Emanuel and Friedemann. In his autobiography, written in 1792–93, Cramer mentions: “The old Sebastian had three sons. He was satisfied only with Friedemann, the great organist. Even about Carl Philipp Emanuel he said (unjustly!): ‘’Tis Berlin blue! It fades!’—Regarding the London Chrétien, [Sebastian] Bach was wont to cite the verse by Gellert: ‘The boy is sure to thrive owing to his stupidity!’ In fact, among the three Bach sons this one had the greatest success.—I have these opinions from Friedemann himself.”