“Adieux à Bach”

Abstract

"The Capriccio sopra la lontananza del fratello dilettissimo, BWV 992 was written not only in youth and in search of compositional identity, but also in a period when several meanings and musical genres overlapped under the term of capriccio. Moreover, among specialists, there is still no full agreement on the date and dedicatee of Bach’s work. Who departures and from whom? Is he a family member or a friend? Due to the extra-musical program of the movements’ subtitles, besides the formal and rhetorical analysis psychology-related concepts might help to highlight these questions. However, by farewell sometimes new perspectives open, and other possible influences and models become clear either, within family for a father’s son (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) or outside of it, in a composer generation distance (Ludwig van Beethoven). Keywords: J. S. Bach, capriccio, programmatic keyboard music"