# CPE Bach: Baroque or Classical?



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I have always wondered about this when I listen to his music. He certainly has a distinctive style which to me still feels very baroque like when you compare it to what Haydn was writing at the same time. Maybe CPE and WF Bach were squeezing the last vestiges out their father's genre.


----------



## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

I would say neither but probably more baroque than classical. However you label him he's all brilliance. His choral works include some very interesting dissonances, I would recommend his Magnificat to any one interested in exploring his music.


----------



## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Sounds a little more classical then baroque in my ears.

That's why they call it "pre-classical" 

I read there was a link also with "sturm und drang". That's certainly something that matches CPE


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I consider CPE Bach a transitional composer, much like Beethoven, and like him a “school of one.” I can’t think of him at all as belonging to the galant movement prevailing in his time, of which his brother JC Bach was a part.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The "period" between Baroque and Classical (the "Rococo"), being brief and having no representatives like JS Bach and Handel or Haydn and Mozart who epitomize a clear style, is difficult to characterize other than as transitional. CPE represents the transition perfectly, since he learned and utilized all the techniques his father could teach him, yet experimented with new ideas both fashionable and idiosyncratic. I find he had the genius to bring off most of his experiments quite convincingly; Beethoven studied him carefully, and I think I can hear that in the impulsiveness and vehemence of Beethoven's music. JC Bach was more fully Classical; his Italianate melodiousness and elegance, especially in his keyboard concertos, were a principal influence on Mozart.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> . . . like JS Bach . . who epitomize a clear style,


I'm not sure about this. Like, the style of the ricercar a 3 is quite different from the style of the trio sonata in Opfer. My own view is that J S Bach wrote music in several diverse styles. And possibly CPEB too -- the style of the Kenner and Liebhaber sonatas seems rather different from the style of the Prussian Sonatas.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure about this. Like, the style of the ricercar a 3 is quite different from the style of the trio sonata in Opfer. My own view is that J S Bach wrote music in several diverse styles. And possibly CPEB too -- the style of the Kenner and Liebhaber sonatas seems rather different from the style of the Prussian Sonatas.


I agree that JS could absorb and write in a variety of styles, but so could Mozart. A characteristic style dosn't exclude that kind of diversity, and Bach synthesized many influences into the contrapuntally, harmonically and emotionally rich style which seems to many to summarize the late Baroque, and which the new "galant" tendencies were a reaction against.


----------

