ABSTRACT
It has often been proclaimed that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, standing in the sense between eras, played the role of a great intermediary – and that he thus was deprived of recognition as a 'classic'. There can be no doubt that Bach's music is fundamentally conditioned by the ideas, in view of all the characteristics of his music and everything that belongs to the concept of the 'rhetorical principle'. The reason why Bach, despite the care taken by biographers and historians of style, continues to be surrounded by riddles may lie in the fact that until now he has been regarded and explained essentially as a purely musical phenomenon. The great interest that Lessing brought to it indicates the lively manner in which the possibility and realization of musical 'expression research' was discussed in Hamburg's artistic circles. Emanuel had a great deal of expertise not only in people and souls but also in the language of looks and gestures.
