Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach (jan 1, 1714 – jan 1, 1788)

Description:

The concept of "sensibility" was developed in the arts during the early eighteenth century,. The German equivalent of sensibility was Empfindung (sensation) or Empfindsamkeit, meaning "susceptibility to sensations." It was a new aesthetic, which aimed not at a more objective depiction of a character's sensations, as in an opera seria, but, rather, at the expression and transmission of varying human sensations. Composers of the EMpfindsamer Stil, composing for intimate surroundings such as teh home, sought to capture the sentiments of real people. They tried to create an impression of self-portraiture in which the player of and listener to their music would recognize themselves. In line with the philosophical thought of the time, they recognized the fluidity and changeability of subjective feeling.

The origins of artistic sensibility are found in literature. One of its first great exponents was the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock who established the style in the 1740s with his odes and love poems... CPE set Klopstock's odes to music and carried on a lively correspondence with him about the relationship between music and poetry. In effect, he became a sort of musical Klopstock and the chief representative in his own medium of artistic Empfindsamkeit. That term is now firmly, if retrospectively, associated with CPE and with some of his keyboard music in particular.

CPE outlined his artistic goals in his treatise Versuch uber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen... His book is of course full of technical information about ornamentation, for example, and continuo realization, all of which is of great value to the historian of performance practice. But it also deals in less tangible matters. "Play from teh soul," CPE exhorted his readers, "not like a trained brid!" And then, lending his novel idea some authority by casting it as a paraphrase of the Roman poet Horace, he argued: Since a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved, he must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his listeners. He communicates his own feelings to them and thus most effectively moves them to sympathy. In languishing, sad passages, the performer must languish and grow sad... Similarly, in lively, joyous passages, the executant must again put himself into the appropriate mood. And so constantly varying the passions he will barely quiet one before he rouses another.

Fantasia in C Minor is an illuminating example of musical empfinsamkeit.

Added to timeline:

Date: