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C. P. E. Bach Studies.

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C. P. E. Bach Studies. Edited by Annette Richards. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xii, 268 p. ISBN-10: 0-5218-3629-8; ISBN-13: 9780521836296. $90.] Illustrations, index, music examples, notes.

That winds of change in C. P. E. Bach research are actively blowing across folios of his music and pages of words written about him become imminently evident in this volume of essays edited by Annette Richards. Its nine articles explore themes that have received minimal treatment until recent years--namely, Bach's lively connections with North German literary circles, aesthetic concerns, issues of his reception, treatment of his vocal music and contrapuntal compositions, and the intriguing discovery of the 1772 catalog of his keyboard works.

The concept of the book emerged from a conference of papers and concerts, German Orpheus: C. P. E. Bach and Musical Culture in the Late 18th Century, held in February 1999 at Cornell University. Though this volume is not a publication of those papers, essays appearing in it by Richard Kramer, Annette Richards, and Richard Will originate from earlier versions presented at the conference.

Given the delightful ingenuity of C. P. E. Bach, a more imaginative title for this volume might have been in order. More important, the existing title duplicates that of another collection of essays and a standard staple in Bach literature, C. P. E. Bach Studies, edited by Stephen L. Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). One hopes this duplication of titles, whose volumes stand beside each other on library shelves, will not create confusion among readers.

Kramer's essay, "Diderot's Paradoxe and C. P. E. Bach's Empfindungen," thoughtfully treats ideas of these two contemporaries who nearly met in 1774 and...

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