Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, third son of Johann Sebastian Bach, b. 1714; Kammermusikus to Frederick the Great of Prussia (1746), Kapellmeister at Hamburg (1768); d. 1788.
Johann Friedrich Agricola, of Dobitsch, b. 1720; studied composition with Bach at Leipzig; Court Composer (1751) and, after Carl Heinrich Graun's death (1759), Kapellmeister to Frederick the Great of Prussia; d. 1774. See Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, iii. 243 ff.
Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711-78), a pupil of Bach, founded at Leipzig in 1738 the “Sozietat der musikalischen Wissenschaften,” of which Bach and Handel were members. Mizler's journal, the Neueröffneter Musikalischer Bibliothek, was its organ. It appeared from 1736 to 1754. In Part I. of vol. iv. (1754) C. P. E. Bach and Agricola collaborated in the obituary notice, or “Nekrolog,” which is almost the earliest literary authority for Bach's life. It covered less than twenty pages. (See Schweitzer, J. S. Bach (trans. Ernest Newman), i. 189 ff. and Spitta, i. Pref.) Agricola's association with Bach's son in the preparation of the obituary notice is explained by the fact that for the last ten years of Sebastian's life Agricola was in closer relations with him than Carl Philipp Emmanuel, who no longer was resident in Leipzig.
Forkel's Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (2 vols. 1788-1801) had only come down to the sixteenth century when its author diverted his pen to a biography of Bach.
The firm of Hoffmeister and Kühnel was founded at Leipzig in 1800 by Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who started, in 1801, a subscription for the publication of Bach's works, to which Forkel alludes. The scheme failed to mature, and its accomplishment was reserved to C. F. Peters, who purchased Hoffmeister's “Bureau de Musique” in 1814. See articles on Hoffmeister and Peters in Grove's Dictionary.
Though Bach never ventured upon such tours as Mozart or Berlioz, for instance, undertook, he loved travelling, and his artistic journeys made him famous throughout Germany, at least as an organist. Forkel himself describes (infra, pp. 19, 23) his notable visits to the Courts of Berlin and Dresden.
In 1802, it must be remembered, not a note of Bach's concerted Church music was in print except the tunes he wrote for Schemelli's Hymn-book (1736) and the vocal parts of an early Cantata (No. 71). Of his instrumental works engraved by 1802 Forkel gives a list infra, p. 137. It was hardly until the foundation of the Bachgesellschaft in 1850, to celebrate the centenary of Bach's death, that the systematic publication of his concerted Church music began. Before that date, however, Peters of Leipzig had taken in hand the abandoned scheme of Hoffmeister and Kühnel, to which Forkel alludes, and in which he participated.
It is notable that Forkel makes no mention of Haydn, Mozart, or Handel, whose English domicile had divorced him from Germany's service. Forkel's pessimism is the more curious, seeing that Beethoven was already thirty years old, and that Mozart in 1786, after giving him a subject to extemporise upon, had remarked, “Listen to that young man; he will some day make a noise in the world” (Holmes, Life of Mozart, Dent's ed., p. 223). Forkel, in fact, appreciated neither Mozart nor Beethoven and thoroughly detested Gluck.
As has been pointed out in the Introduction, Forkel stood almost alone in 1802 in his opinion of Bach's pre-eminence. Even Beethoven placed Bach after Handel and Mozart, but knew little of his music on which to found a decision.
The anonymous article in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, to which Forkel alludes, deals with Bach's Clavier and Organ works and upon them asserts Bach's superiority over Handel. The judgment was unusual. Bach's fame was gravely prejudiced by German Handel-worship, which the first performance of the Messiah at Leipzig in 1786 stimulated. Johann Adam Hiller, Bach's third successor in the Cantorate of St. Thomas', was largely responsible. He neglected, and even belittled, the treasures of Bach's art which the library of St. Thomas' contained. See Schweitzer, i. 231.