Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second (surviving) son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. His second name was given in honor of his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, a friend of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach's chamber music forms something of a bridge between stereotypically Baroque and Classical forms. On the one hand, he wrote trio sonatas and solo sonatas with basso continuo (including ones for harp and viola da gamba); on the other, he wrote several accompanied sonatas for piano, violin, and cello, which are more or less early piano trios, and three very popular quartets for keyboard, flute, and viola. Bach also wrote one of the earliest pieces for solo flute, a sonata that is clearly influenced by his father's Partita in A minor for solo flute, BWV 1013.

Among Bach's most popular and recorded works are his symphonies. While in Berlin, he wrote several string symphonies (Wq. 173—181), most of which were later revised to add parts for wind instruments. Of these, the E minor symphony, Wq. 178 has been particularly popular.

However, Bach's masterpieces in the form (by his own estimation) are assuredly the four Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen, Wq. 183, which, as their title suggests, were written with obbligato wind parts that are integral to the texture, rather than being added on to an older string symphony. The first symphony (D major) in the set has been particularly popular, seeing a continuous performance and publication tradition all the way through the 19th century, which makes it the earliest such symphony. Some of its more unusual features have been taken as characteristic of Bach's style: the work, although it is in D major, begins on a D major chord, which then turns into a D dominant-seventh chord, outlining G major. In fact, there is no cadence on D major (D major is not "confirmed" as the key of the piece) until the beginning of the recapitulation, quite late in the piece.