The Temple of Fame and Friendship: Portraits, Music, and History in the C. P. E. Bach Circle by Annette Richards (review)

I personally have been waiting for this book for several years, after working with author Annette Richards on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Portrait Collection, in Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works. The book grew out of her reconstruction of most of the portraits that C. P. E. Bach collected and that were listed in the composer’s estate catalogue in 1790 following his death in December 1788. As Richards points out, “Bach’s was not the only collection of musician portraits known to contemporaries, but it was by far the largest and most significant” (3). Of the 300 or so portraits listed in the estate catalogue, Richards assembled more than two-thirds of them in her edition. I edited the appendices for the Portrait Collection, which included the portraits of C. P. E. Bach and his family, not listed in the estate catalogue, as well as his collection of silhouettes. Richards begins appropriately enough with Charles Burney, who experienced Bach’s collection firsthand when he visited the composer in Hamburg in October 1772: