Describe the Free fantasia style used by C.P.E Bach in the late 18th Century.
Free Fantasia as a style became highly popular in the late 18th Century, with C. P. E. Bach being a prominent composer withint this style. However, he wrote very little upon this style and rarely discussed it in proper formal debate. The only exception to this was his work Versuch uber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. The second half of Versuch was published in 1762, when he was 48. Although this work does display Bach’s own postulations upon the modulative process behind the free fantasia form, it is surprising that he has no further work in which his views are displayed with such conviction as in Versuch. Yet, Bach was often seen and involved with the academic and theoretical minds of the time, who would debate the important matters that were being developed, such as modulation, which lies at the core of the supposed “anti-genre” of the free fantasia. Nevertheless, to understand Bach’s approach to free fantasia, there must be a careful analysis of aesthetic thought within the time-period, and its development beforehand.
