Original

After a disruption of some 30+ years, I felt a desire to play the flute again.  Back in the mid-80s of the last century, as a student of the Baroque one-keyed flute, I held the firm opinion - like all zealots recently converted to a cause -, that no serious music could have been composed after the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750.  Having spent those intervening years listening to, thinking about, assessing and mulling what makes music "serious" or "good", I decided to relax that cut-off a bit to encompass what amounts to the majority of the Western musical tradition.  Of course, this includes Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schumann and all the lessers in between.  So, wanting to take baby steps, I ordered a volume of flute sonatas composed by C P E Bach,  5th child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian - Thanks, Wikipedia -.  I had played CPE's music before but never really considered his style in its historic context.  CPE was active from about 1735 until his death in 1788.  Thus he fits rather conveniently between the Baroqueness of his father's output, and Haydn and Mozart's Classical elegance.  CPE's music is quite distinct, often using several musical motifs juxtaposed with each other and jumping straight from one to the next and then back again, rather like the moods of a manic.  The mood is called the empfindsamer Stil or 'sensitive style.  Thanks to Wiki for that!  The Blip shows a facsimile of the score for the A minor unaccompanied flute sonata along with a glimpse of my one-keyed flute made by Tom Prescott, a Boston maker very active in the '80s.