ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was supposedly banished from court for one month, during which time he and his colleagues were allegedly replaced by a visiting oboist from Dresden, whom Burney names as John Christian Fischer. Among the many figures depicted in Adolph Menzel's painting are some of the famous musicians who served Frederick, including the composer and keyboard player Bach. Sebastian Bach's surviving letters are little more than official documents that tell us primarily about certain mundane activities. Bach left behind considerably more correspondence than his father, but his letters, like Sebastian's, are mostly impersonal business documents, and virtually all date from the last twenty years of his life, at Hamburg. The considerations of salaries and pay lists might not be necessary if biographers had not repeatedly mistaken Emanuel Bach's position and advanced his poor pay as a reason for unhappiness at court.
