Bach and Mozart: Connections, Patterns, and Pathways ed. by Paul Corneilson (review)

Abstract

Bach in London made by Abel the painter suggest a far closer relationship between Emanuel and the London musicians than has hitherto been imagined. Perhaps Emanuel and Johann Christian were not the estranged brothers of popular accounts? Given the associations between portraiture, art, and music, a notable omission is any discussion of images used as vignettes on Emanuel’s titlepages or those of his contemporaries. These were not merely a whim of the publisher, especially in editions ‘printed for the author’: they are integral to the music. Here is a case where art and music combine, yet Richards is virtually silent on the subject. Emanuel must have been passionate about the look of his publications, to judge by the lavish and splendid illustrations of swags of flowers and fruit, and other motifs in the first edition of his father’s Die Kunst der Fuge, which Emanuel put through the press. These are worth a discussion in themselves. The book is beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated, and is a welcome addition to my shelves. Apart from being owned by C. P. E. Bach, the relevance of the oil painting of a young woman with a book on the front cover escapes me. It is perhaps symptomatic of a study where a firmer editorial pencil might have been in order. All German phrases are relentlessly and unnecessarily translated and there is much repetition and some careless slips. Niccolò Jommelli was never ‘the Mannheim Kapellmeister’ and did Mozart really ‘conduct’ a large orchestra? And Sir Joshua Reynolds did not merely become the director of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, he was the founder and first president. Richards’s prose is wordy and repetitive, sometimes with sentences of a Wagnerian length. Her writing about music is sometimes affected: ‘But they are followed by the fullest of the chords . . . which vex still further the melancholic mien of the opening’. Such writing furrows this writer’s brow. There are very many admirable pages in this book, so diligently written and so handsomely produced, but Richards strays too far in drawing conclusions about this distinguished collection of images that neither illuminate Emanuel Bach’s music, nor amount to a musichistoriographical project. The presence or absence of a musician in a collection cannot be a fool-proof guide to the interests of the collector. Nor can extravagant assessments and judgments be made about such a collection: James I is present, but no Shakespeare. Collecting is such a private, personal activity, shaped by opportunity, serendipity, chance, predilection, and happy accident. Sometimes a collection of portraits is just that. There was little public exposure for C. P. E. Bach’s collection during his lifetime. Emanuel’s pictures were briefly displayed and enjoyed by the composer and his many visitors but, afterwards, the engravings were returned to their folders, the candles extinguished, and the room doors closed and locked.