C. P. E. Bach's Sonatas for Solo Flute

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 130.Considering the singular importance of the flute at the court of Frederick the Great (the King himself was an accomplished flutist who employed Quantz as his instructor) and C. P. E. Bach's position as Frederick's accompanist for over a quarter century, it seems at first quite surprising that Bach composed only eighteen sonatas for the instrument.' Explanations, however, have been readily proffered: the King's conservative musical taste, his unbridled admiration for Graun and Quantz, his less than enthusiastic reception of Emanuel Bach's experimental style. Bach's disdain for the King's musical talents-particularly Frederick's erratic rhythm-is no less legendary. Perhaps, then, the appropriate query is precisely the opposite: given Frederick's indifference to Bach's music and Bach's deprecation of the King's performance, what prompted the composition of so many flute sonatas?Why, too, are these works not concentrated exclusively in Bach's early years at the court, in the first bloom of a potentially harmonious relationship with one of Europe's most powerful monarchs? For indeed, Bach's Berlin flute sonatas span nearly his entire residency at Frederick's court (1738-68). Additional sonatas for the instrument pre-date his association with Frederick, and Bach's final work in this genre was composed in 1786, long after he had left Berlin for Hamburg. Although in numbers EmanuelBach's flute sonatas are dwarfed by his hundreds of keyboard sonatas and vast output of concerti, the excellence of the compositions themselves places them among his There are also four flute concerti (discussed below) and a few minor works. The concerti are listed in E. Eugene Helm, Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), nos. 431, 435, 438, and 445. 203 This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Fri, 01 Jan 2016 08:00:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 Most notably, works by Rachel Wade on the keyboard concerti, Darrell Berg on the keyboard sonatas, and Stephen Clark on the choral works. For a bibliography of secondary literature on C. P. E. Bach, see Stephen L. Clark, "C. P. E. Bach in Literature: A Bibliography," in C. P. E. Bach Studies, ed. Stephen L. Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 315-35. FLUTE SONATAShere; suffice it to note that study of C. P. E. Bach's flute sonatas supports his hypothesis. There remains, then, the G-minor sonata, BWV 1020, which even Marshall postulates to have been composed by Emanuel Bach. Nevertheless, serious questions about the authorship of this work persist, and the possibility that the sonata was composed by J. S. Bach cannot be wholly ...