Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann

by John Weeks Moore

Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann, eldest son of Sebastian Bach, was born in 1710. He approached the nearest to his father in the originality of his musical conceptions. All his melodies have a different turn from those of other composers, and yet they are not only extremely natural, but, at the same time, uncommonly ingenious and elegant. When performed with delicacy, as he himself used to play them, they cannot fail to enchant every connoisseur. It is only to be regretted that he tried more to play from his fancy, and to seek after extemporaneous musical delicacies, than to write ; the number, therefore, of his compositions is but small. W. F. Bach died at Berlin in 1784.