Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
by Franz Conrad Löhr

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788) was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach. His second name was given in honor of his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, a friend of Johann Sebastian Bach.

C. P. E. Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father’s Baroque style and the Classical style that followed it. His personal approach, an expressive and often turbulent one known as empfindsamer Stil or ‘sensitive style’, applied the principles of rhetoric and drama to musical structures.  Bach’s dynamism stands in deliberate contrast to the prevailing mannered galant style.