The Temple of Fame and Friendship

This book examines the renowned portrait collection assembled by C. P. E. Bach, J. S. Bachs second son. One of the most celebrated German composers of the eighteenth century, C. P. E. Bach spent decades assembling an extensive portrait collection of some four hundred music-related itemsfrom oil paintings to engraved prints. The collection was dispersed after Bachs death in 1788, but with Annette Richardss painstaking reconstruction, the portraits once again present a vivid panorama of music history and culture, reanimating the sensibility and humor of Bachs time. Far more than a mere multitude of faces, Richards argues, the collection was a major part of the composers work that sought to establish music as an object of aesthetic, philosophical, and historical study. The Temple of Fame and Friendship brings C. P. E. Bachs collection to life, giving readers a sense of what it was like for visitors to tour the portrait gallery and experience music in rooms thick with the faces of friends, colleagues, and forebears. She uses the collection to analyze the portraitive aspect of Bachs music, engaging with the influential theories of Swiss physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater. She also explores the collection as a mode of cultivating and preserving friendship, connecting this to the culture of remembrance that resonates in Bachs domestic music. Richards shows how the new music historiography of the late eighteenth century, rich in anecdote, memoir, and verbal portrait, was deeply indebted to portrait collecting and its negotiation between presence and detachment, fact and feeling.