CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL UND WILHELM FRIEDEMANN BACH UND DEREN BRUDER

Published in 1868 by the Berlin firm of Wilhelm Müller, this two-volume biographical study by Carl Heinrich Bitter served as one of the first major scholarly attempts to document the lives and works of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach. Written during the mid-19th century as a revival of interest in the elder Bach began to permeate German musicology, the work specifically seeks to elevate the profiles of Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, who had lived largely in the long shadow of their father.

Bitter, a Prussian statesman and music historian, approached his subject with a characteristically rigorous, if somewhat Romantic, Victorian perspective. While the volumes were received by contemporary scholars as an essential foundation for the study of the transition from the Baroque to the Classical style, later musicologists have noted that Bitter's accounts occasionally reflect the biases of his era. Despite its age, the set remains a significant artifact of the 19th-century effort to codify the genealogy and artistic legacy of the Bach family.