J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

the equitable distribution of his estate, and the connections his sons maintained after
his death (Emanuel bringing up his younger siblings, Johann Christian Friedrich
visiting Johann Christian in London, Emanuel seeking to publish his father’s works,
the care shown by Emanuel and Johann Christian Friedrich 53 in their preservation of
their father’s manuscripts) paint a different picture. Significantly, Cramer’s statement
came directly from Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Was he jealous of his brothers;
perhaps slightly less gifted, but so much more successful in their musical careers? 54
Whatever the case, there may well have been a grain of truth in his claim. Certainly
Wilhelm Friedemann seems to have been his father’s favourite. His musical education
was the most thorough, including a trip to Merseburg to study the violin with Graun
(and, mastering the WTC and the trio sonatas while in his teens, his progress was
remarkable). If Sebastian Bach went out of his way to secure promising positions for
his sons, he certainly went the extra mile for his eldest; to the extent of composing the
letter his son sent to Dresden in applying for the post of organist at St Sophia’s
Church, and even copying out his audition piece. Did he go too far? Can we trace
Wilhelm Friedemann’s later problems to an overfond, over-protective father?
Certainly they had a lot in common. Friedemann was the only son who developed a
reputation as an organist; 55 like his father, he was widely held to be the foremost
organist in Germany. He was the only one of his siblings to greatly value and produce
convincing works in a completely Baroque style. Liturgical works (some of them,
admittedly, pastiches) make up a larger proportion of his oeuvre than those of his
brothers. Furthermore, the independence and irascibility at times visible in J. S. Bach
came to dominate his eldest son’s dealing with the world, in contrast to his more
53 Unfortunately Johann Christian Friedrich’s portion was dispersed after his death.
54 Note how Cramer also distances himself from Friedemann’s testimony with the bracketed ‘unjustly!’,
and by continuing: ‘Actually this one of the the three Bachs [J. C. Bach] made the greatest
progress’—strong evidence as to Cramer’s stylistic sympathies.
55 A partial exception is his half-brother Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, who came to an even stickier
end, dying in debt at the age of twenty-four. By contrast, Johann Christian’s first appearance as an
organist in London was a fiasco, and C. P. E. Bach expressed to Charles Burney his regret that he
had lost the use of the pedals.
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