There was a time when C. P. E. Bach's music was mostly interesting as a connection between periods of music history. Indeed, perhaps no composer was done a greater injustice by such un-useful terms as ‘pre-classical’, meant to place Bach in various grand narratives and often forcing him into the role of bearing the spirit of his father to the Viennese classics. Such fussy periodizations of eighteenth-century music history are now mostly passé. So it was a pleasure to attend this conference, held at the Faculty of Music of Oxford University, at which speakers explored the varied terrain of Bach's place in eighteenth-century keyboard culture without for the most part framing their arguments in terms of influence and legacy. They examined this most fascinating (and in some ways enigmatic) of composers on his own merits.