Milk her impalpable paunch

_{(just had to get that off my chest)}

Anyhow, who's for a Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach thread?

He is often labelled a 'Rococo' composer, and you know how much labels are worth. Yet it's true that much of his music is a great thicket of ornamentation, sometimes of an otherwise rather hackneyed thematic idea; in fact, this is often some of his strongest work. The Six collections Für Kenner und Liebhaber contain a wealth of highly inventive keyboard texture, and some incredibly wild modulations, but the harmonic syntax of individual phrases is meanwhile fairly conventional. This makes sense, as KPE practically wrote the book on conventional harmonic syntax.

Sorry to those who don't like the term syntax bandied about (with).

What makes it most assuredly Rococo is that some of these modulations are themselves ornamental -- they don't seem to serve a clear formal purpose other than to befuddle/delight. I wanted to cite an example from the Rondo in A major, a rather long one, but I can't find an online source. Suffice it to say that the opening motif is at one point restated some 12 or 13 times, each in a different (implicit) key and then the passage ends where it started. In addition, each statement is provided a different dynamic from the previous, with no perfectly clear pattern. Also, some have fermatas, and some don't. If someone can find this piece as a pdf somewhere, that would help; otherwise I'll post it myself when I get a chance to scan it in.

And I haven't even begun on the 'Fantasia' pieces, which of course are explicitly intended to befuddle/delight us.

The Cello Concertos with Anner Bylsma, and the Symphonies with the orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Gustav Leonhardt. It's on the Virgin Label

Gabor Antalffy has recorded the complete Kenner and Liebhaber cycle, but complete is not necessarily best. I recommend hearing these pieces with a variety of performers. Unfortunately, the music doesn't get as much attention as deserved.

I thought I'd republish this little sendspace tidbit of Hartmut Haenchen and his Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra playing the Sinfonia to WF Bach's Cantata "Ertönet, ihr seligen Völker"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7npvjn

Some of the most unsettling music I've heard in a while, not b/c of its affect, but because of phrase structural wackiness. Tell me you don't hear it as thoroughly disorienting.

Later I shall have to upload some CPE score footage, from the Kenner und Liebhaber collection, for your pleasure.