Bach's sons all embraced the newer, less contrapuntal style known as Rococo rather than continue on in the learned, Baroque fashion of which their father was a late master. This style emerged as the "Classical" style which reached its full flowering with Mozart and Haydn. During his career Carl Philipp Emmanuel was the most famous of Bachs, for Johann Sebastian's music had settled into a decades-long period of obscurity. The Magnicat in d minor, one of the finest of settings of the Virgin Mary's great exclamation of praise after the Annunciation (Luke 1:46-55) is an exception to C.P.E. Bach's generally modern mid-18th Century Style. Probably because it is a liturgical text and he thought a conservative approach best, he filled this work, over its essentially early Classical framework, with many polyphonic devices such a fugues, and is thus the major work of C.P.E.'s which most evokes the spirit of his illustrious father. The mixture of Baroque complexity and clear Classical melodism makes this one of the finests of this composer's many compositions.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide