The Nekrolog. See supra, p. xxiv.
Carl Philipp Emmanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann. The latter was born in 1710, and after holding Organistships at Halle and Dresden, died at Berlin in 1784, leaving his widow and daughter in great poverty. The former received a grant from the receipts of the Messiah performance alluded to in note 1, supra. A man of brilliant musical attainments, Wilhelm Friedemann's character was dissolute and unsteady. See Schweitzer, i. 146 ff.
Two letters written by C. P. E. Bach to Forkel in 1775, conveying a good deal of information reproduced by Forkel in this monograph, are printed in facsimile by Dr. Max Schneider in his Bach-Urkunden (N.B.G., XVII. (3)).
Forkel's statement is entitled to respect. On the other hand there is nothing in the recorded careers of either of Bach's sons that bears him out on this point. Schweitzer (i. 229) endorses Elinor's judgment: “Bach's sons were the children of their epoch, and never understood their father; it was only from piety that they looked at him with childlike admiration.” Dr. Charles Burney spent several days with Carl Philipp Emmanuel at Hamburg in 1772, but during the whole time the son never played to him a note of his father's music.
i.e. Hoffmeister and Kühnel's project.
The accuracy of this statement is apparent from the Genealogy appended to this volume. Bach's sons represented the sixth generation from Veit Bach, the sixteenth century ancestor of the family. Veit himself was not a professional musician; one of his sons was a Spielmann; thereafter for the next 150 years all but seven of his descendants, whose professions are known, were Organists or Cantors or Town Musicians. Many of them, moreover, were men of the highest attainments in their profession.
He took his name from St. Vitus (Guy), patron saint of the church of Wechmar, a fact which sufficiently disproves Forkel's statement that his original domicile was in Hungary. The Bachs were settled in Wechmar as early as circ. 1520. Veit migrated thence to Hungary, though there is no adequate foundation for the statement that he settled at Pressburg. He returned to Wechmar during the beginning of the Counter-Reformation under the Emperor Rudolph II. (1576- 1612), and died at Wechmar, March 8, 1619. See Spitta, i. 4.
Apart from church and town registers, laboriously consulted by Spitta in tracing the Bach genealogy, we owe our knowledge of it to an MS. drawn up by Bach in 1735 which is now in the Berlin Royal Library after being successively in the possession of Carl Philipp Emmanuel, Forkel, and G. Pölchau, the Hamburg teacher of music.
The original entries in it are stated by Carl P. Emmanuel to be by his father. Forkel also owned a Bach genealogical tree, given him by Carl Philipp Emmanuel; it has disappeared. Traces of it exist in a work published at Pressburg by Johann Matthias Korabinsky in 1784, its insertion being due to the assumption that the Bachs were a Hungarian family. Forkel shared that error. See Spitta's Preface on the whole question. The MS. genealogy of 1735 is published by the New Bachgesellschaft (XVIII. 3) in facsimile.
Veit, in fact, returned to his native village. His name, as has been pointed out, implies a connection with Wechmar that must have dated from infancy. Moreover, there was living there in 1561 one Hans Bach, an official of the municipality, who may be regarded confidently as Veit's father.