Cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 at Ground Zero as the names of those who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks were read aloud.
: Zohran Mamdani on X
It’s well known that Johann Sebastian Bach had 20 children. Several of his sons became accomplished composers in their own right.
But what about the next generation?
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach (1759–1845) was the grandson of Johann Sebastian – and the last member of the family to pursue composition professionally.
Today we’re taking a look at his life, his career, and five of his most interesting works.
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach was born on 24 May 1759.
He was the son of composer Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (the fifth son of Johann Sebastian Bach) and his wife, singer Lucia Elisabeth Münchhausen. We wrote about their marriage here: https://interlude.hk/christoph-friedrich-bach-and-lucia-elisabeth-munchausen/.
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach
Wilhelm was one of eight children, only half of whom survived infancy. He was the only boy to live to adulthood, and therefore the only one who pursued music professionally.
His music education began under his father. Later he went to Hamburg to study with an uncle, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, usually referred to as C.P.E. Bach.
In 1778, when he was nineteen, he and his father went to London to visit yet another uncle, Johann Christian Bach, whom Wilhelm studied with until Johann Christian died in 1782.
He may have been the only person ever to study with three of Johann Sebastian’s sons.
After Johann Christian Bach’s death, Wilhelm returned to the Continent, embarking on a concert tour in the Netherlands and France.
In 1786, he was named the Kapellmeister in Minden, Germany, a small town a hundred miles south of Hamburg.
King Friedrich Wilhelm II
The following year, his life and career took a turn when King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia visited Minden.
The king was impressed by a work of Wilhelm’s that he heard during his trip, and hired Bach as Kapellmeister for his own court.
In 1788, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach became Kapellmeister in Berlin, a position he held for over twenty years. Part of his duties included teaching music to Prussian princes.
He married twice. In 1798, he married a woman named Charlotte Elerdt. She had two daughters, Caroline and Juliane, before dying young in 1801.
He remarried a woman named Wilhelmine the following year and had two more children: Auguste and Friederike.
Of the four children, only Caroline and Auguste survived past childhood.
Caroline lived until 1871, becoming the last surviving direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach.
In 1811, at the age of fifty-two, Wilhelm retired from his Kapellmeister duties after the Prussian royal family granted him a pension. He continued living in Berlin, where he appeared as a pianist and composer.
He reappeared in music history in 1843, when he travelled to Leipzig, where a monument to Johann Sebastian Bach was being dedicated.
While there, he met a young Robert Schumann, who described him as “a very old, agile gentleman of 84 years old with snow-white hair and expressive features.”
He also corresponded with Felix Mendelssohn, who, with the help of his Bach-loving family, had done much advocacy for Johann Sebastian Bach’s music.
Wilhelm died a few years later, in 1845.
He was open-eyed about his legacy, acknowledging the discrepancy in talent between himself and his grandfather, and is remembered for his wry remark, “Heredity can tend to run out of ideas.”
Today we’re looking at five of Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s works.
This is a slender, spirited three-movement symphony.
The outer movements are sparkly and mischievous, with a serene, noble slow movement that prominently features horn calls reminiscent of genteel hunting horns.
This is an elegant work for clarinet, two horns, violin, viola, and cello, written around 1800.
The varied, unconventional instrumentation would have helped it to carry in a large aristocratic space, and it is easy to imagine it as background music for a charming, gossipy, candlelit event.
“Westphalens Freude” (“Westphalens Joy” or “Triumph! Triumph Westphalia!”) was a cantata published in 1791, composed for orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists.
This is the work celebrating King Friedrich Wilhelm that so impressed the monarch that he invited Bach to work in Berlin.
Just like his famous grandfather, Wilhelm wrote works for solo organ.
Although this Toccata may not be as forcefully virtuosic as Johann Sebastian’s, it is pleasantly triumphant and explores a range of the instrument’s timbres.
This is an unusual (to put it mildly) work written for one keyboard, three players, and six hands.
The centre player is to be a large man, and the ones on the sides are to be petite women.
In an era when playing piano duets was one of the few socially acceptable times for unmarried men and women to be physically close, this piece takes the sexual subtext of the genre and makes it quite explicit!
Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach may not have matched his grandfather’s towering genius – as he himself cheerfully admitted.
But his long life gave him a unique vantage point on musical history, bridging the world of Johann Sebastian Bach and the early Romantic era of Schumann and Mendelssohn.
If you’d like to explore more of the Bach family tree, we’ve written more about it here: https://interlude.hk/the-bach-family-eight-fascinating-relatives-of-johann-sebastian/.
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The violin is one of the most recognisable instruments in the world – but it is far from the only instrument of its kind.
Across cultures and centuries, musicians have developed bowed string instruments that share the violin’s basic logic: strings, a resonating body, and a bow.
Some of these instruments predate the violin; others were built to solve problems the violin couldn’t. All of them are worth knowing.
Here are six violin-like instruments from around the world.
The Stroh violin was invented by electrical engineer Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh in 1899.
Unlike a traditional violin, it replaces the wooden body with a metal diaphragm and attached horn, which amplify the sound and project it outward.
Stroh violin or Horn-violin
This made it perfect for the early recording era, when it was difficult for recording equipment to capture the sound of acoustic string instruments.
However, it was more expensive to manufacture than a traditional violin, and once recording technology advanced, the instrument became obsolete.
The Stroh violin is largely forgotten today, but is still admired as a historical curiosity.
Electric violins are violins equipped with an electronic pickup that transmits sound to an amplifier.
The pickup is attached to the bridge, body, or fingerboard.
Electric violins don’t need to hew to traditional designs, and many don’t. It’s common to see instruments with five or more strings, frets, or carbon fibre bodies – enough differences to differentiate the electric violin as a separate instrument from its acoustic counterpart.
A traditional acoustic violin and a modern electronic violin from Marc Capuano
The electric violin’s roots stretch back to the 1920s. Jazz violinist Stuff Smith (1909-1967) was among the first to bring the electric violin to prominence. By the 1930s, they were being sold commercially.
The Apache are indigenous people native to the southwestern United States.
One of their musical instruments is called the “tsii’ edo’a’tl”, which, translated literally, means “wood that sings.” However, it is better known in English as the Apache fiddle.
Arizona Apache fiddle, from the Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, Arizona
The Apache fiddle is made from the stem of a thick-stalked plant, such as agave.
One or two strands of natural material – such as horsehair – serve as strings. The player stops the strings with their fingers and draws a bow across them.
To create more friction between the string and the bow, the player might apply sticky pine pitch onto the bow – similar to how rosin is used for violin bows.
Historically, the instrument is known for its role in Apache courtship rituals.
We wrote a whole article on the pochette here: https://interlude.hk/the-violin-in-your-pocket/
Pochettes (French for “pockets”) were miniature violin-like instruments that first appeared in the 1400s. They were favoured by dancing masters due to their portability.
Decorated pochette
The instrument is played tucked onto the player’s chest.
The pochette is usually tuned one octave above a violin’s range, and its sound is shriller. Its range is also notably smaller; in fact, a player can’t shift above third or fifth position without running out of string to stop.
An erhu is an ancient two-stringed Chinese instrument. Its predecessor instruments first appeared during the Tang Dynasty (600–900 CE).
Erhu in the Mets
Over the following centuries, the erhu evolved into a folk instrument most often seen in southern China.
An accomplished erhu player, Liu Tianhua, introduced the erhu to Beijing in the 1920s, updating the instrument and composing new music for it.
The bodies of many erhus are covered with python skin. In 2005, new regulations were put in place in China requiring documentation of the origins of the skin; today, erhu python skins must come from farm-raised pythons rather than endangered wild specimens.
The player vibrates the skin by bowing the two strings. The two strings are tuned to A and D – interestingly, the same pitches as the middle two strings of a violin.
The national instrument of Norway, the Hardanger fiddle has inspired generations of composers, from Edvard Grieg to film composer Howard Shore.
The earliest surviving Hardanger fiddle was built in 1651 by maker Ole Jonsen Jaastad, who lived in the town of Hardanger, Norway.
A Hardanger fiddle made by Knut Gunnarsson Helland. Owned by Monica Skaro, who inherited it from her grandfather Knut Skaro from Geilo, Norway
Although at first glance a Hardanger fiddle looks similar to a modern violin, there are some noteworthy differences.
The fiddle has four main strings like a violin, as well as secondary strings that vibrate sympathetically when particular pitches are played.
A Hardanger fiddle also has a longer scroll and more tuning pegs (to account for the extra strings), a larger bridge designed to facilitate playing on two strings at once, and folk-inspired decorations.
The Hardanger fiddle, like many European folk instruments, has long been associated with the devil. In fact, during religious revivals of the 1800s, many Hardanger fiddles were destroyed.
In 2023, we wrote about the history of the Hardanger fiddle and how Grieg was inspired by it: https://interlude.hk/finding-home-griegs-violin-sonata-no-1/
From the Apache fiddle’s agave stem to the Hardanger fiddle’s sympathetic strings, these six instruments represent just a fraction of the world’s bowed string traditions.
The violin may be the version most familiar to Western ears – but as these instruments attest, the instinct to draw a bow across a string to make it sing is very nearly universal.
by Emily E. Hogstad September 7th, 2026
This list isn’t about who wrote the greatest music for the instrument. (If it were, Chopin would be on the list, despite the fact he rarely performed in public.) Instead, it’s about who took the concert stage by storm, and how each of the era’s touring virtuosos built on each other’s work to redefine what the piano could do.
Taken together, the names below trace something more than individual careers: they create an unbroken chain of teachers, students, rivals, and mentors that runs from Beethoven to the dawn of the 20th century.
When Ludwig van Beethoven first arrived in Vienna in 1792, he worked more as a pianist than a composer. Over the following years, he gained a reputation as a fierce performer in Viennese salons. Aristocrats found his improvisations shocking – and irresistible.
Around the turn of the century, his deteriorating hearing became increasingly noticeable. He performed less and less, turning his focus to composition instead.
Joseph Willibrord Mähler: Beethoven, 1804 (Vienna Museum)
Between 1800 and 1810, Beethoven wrote 14 of his 32 piano sonatas, as well as his three final piano concertos. He infused them all with his revolutionary spirit – and they pushed the instrument’s technical and expressive limits further than any composer before him.
The next generation of pianists, from Hummel to Liszt, would spend the rest of the century reacting to how Beethoven had changed pianism.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born in present-day Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1778, seven years after Beethoven.
He was a child prodigy who began studying with Mozart when he was eight. (He even lived in the Mozart household for a while.)
He later studied with Beethoven’s teacher Joseph Haydn, and even succeeded Haydn as Kapellmeister at the Esterházy court.
Hummel pushed back (politely) against Beethoven’s theatrical style, prioritising clarity, precision, and refinement. That contrast made him attractive to the more conservative listeners in Vienna.
After Beethoven withdrew from the stage in 1815 due to his worsening deafness, Hummel graciously stepped into the spotlight.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel, 1814
Hummel’s music has fallen out of the modern canon, likely because it was old-fashioned even in his own lifetime. But his Fantasy was a major inspiration to Franz Schubert, and his Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor was admired by Robert Schumann.
Ignaz Moscheles
IIgnaz Moscheles was born to a wealthy family in Prague in 1794. From an early age, he loved Beethoven’s piano music. His teacher tried to restrict him to the Classical repertoire by composers such as Mozart and Clementi – in vain. As an adult, he would be one of the primary advocates for Beethoven in Britain.
After becoming a fully fledged virtuoso in Vienna, he moved to London in 1825 and became that city’s leading pianist.
Over the course of his career, and especially during the 1820s, he had a profound impact on Romantic giants. He mentored Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny; his playing also inspired Robert Schumann to pursue a career as a piano virtuoso.
Historians disagree whether Moscheles or Franz Liszt was the first man to invent the concept of a solo recital. But regardless of who was first, Moscheles helped to define and refine the idea, changing piano performance forever.
Friedrich Kalkbrenner
Friedrich Kalkbrenner built on Moscheles’s successes, helping to create the Romantic-era archetype of the celebrity pianist.
He was born in 1785 in a carriage somewhere between Kassel and Berlin. A child prodigy, he lived in Vienna in his late teens, meeting both Haydn and Beethoven. He also played duets with Hummel and became a friendly rival of his younger contemporary, Ignaz Moscheles.
Between 1814 and 1823, Kalkbrenner came to prominence as a performer, composer, and teacher. He hit peak popularity in the 1830s, spurred by his travels around Europe.
In his teaching, he popularised a device known as the chiroplast, which set pianists’ arms and fingers in a particular position. He even opened an academy with the device’s inventor in 1817, and also wrote a method book to propagate his pedagogical ideas. A few years later, in 1824, he joined the Pleyel and Co. piano-making company. These activities outside of performing made him a fortune.
By the end of the decade, he’d laid the groundwork for a new kind of musician: the celebrity pianist.
The career of Franz Liszt, born in 1811, was a culmination of influences from all the pianists on this list so far.
Through his teacher, Carl Czerny (a former Beethoven student), Liszt met and played for Beethoven as a child.
Czerny had himself studied with Hummel. In fact, Liszt’s father originally wanted Hummel to teach his son, but Hummel’s fees were too high – so Liszt ended up with Czerny instead.
Meanwhile, Moscheles was a Liszt fan and even bailed him out in 1841 after a disastrous British tour, and Kalkbrenner often appeared on programs with him in Paris.
After absorbing all of these influences (and countless others), Liszt went on the road, conquering Europe over an eight-year period that lasted for much of the decade.
Franz Liszt
In doing so, he popularised the idea of the solo recital, as well as playing by memory – and even orienting the piano perpendicular to the audience, so they could see his dramatic side profile. He also had the greatest technique of any pianist of the century, as evidenced by his piano music.
In 1847, at the height of his fame, he retired from public performance to settle in Weimar. There he focused on composition, conducting, teaching, and supporting the musicians who would shape the second half of the century. But the impact of his 1840s tours has reverberated to the present day.
Anton Rubinstein was born in present-day Moldova in 1829. Since the Russian Empire of the time lacked infrastructure for music education, he trained and toured in Berlin and Paris as a child, meeting Chopin, Liszt, and Mendelssohn.
Portrait of Composer Anton Rubinstein by Michail Michailovich Yarowoy
During the first half of the 1850s, after escaping the revolutions of 1848, he became a fixture in the Imperial court in Russia. In the second half of the decade, he spent touring Europe to acclaim. His predecessor Moscheles paid credit to him in 1855, writing, “In power and execution he is inferior to no one.”
However, arguably the most important contribution that Rubinstein made to the piano happened offstage in 1862, when he founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory. It would soon become one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, training dozens of the greatest pianists who ever lived.
Clara Wieck Schumann was born in 1819 in Leipzig. She was one of the most celebrated child prodigies of the 1820s and 1830s, and was a major inspiration to her husband, Robert Schumann.
After he died in 1856, driven by both grief and the need for money to support her children, Clara ramped up her touring schedule, resulting in a career she famously treated with the seriousness of a priestess.
During the 1860s and 1870s, she championed her husband’s works and inspired new ones by Brahms. She also drew audiences away from flashy but empty virtuoso pieces toward more challenging repertoire by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, helping solidify what we think of today as the canon. At every concert, she prioritised fidelity to the score over her own whims. It was a departure from the showmanship of Liszt – and her immense influence meant that her male colleagues took notice.
She was also among the first pianists to play from memory.
Hans von Bülow
Hans von Bülow was born in Dresden in 1830. Early on, he studied with Clara Schumann’s father. After a stint studying law, he was drawn back into the musical world by Wagner‘s work. In 1851, he began studying piano with Liszt and even married Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, in 1857 – the same year he premiered Liszt’s B-minor piano sonata in Berlin.
In the early 1860s, Cosima fell in love with von Bülow’s idol Wagner. He resisted granting her a divorce for a few years, but after she had three children with Wagner, he finally agreed to one.
He was best known as a conductor, but also made major contributions to 19th-century pianism. In 1875, he premiered Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto, among the most famous in the repertoire. He also made an important edition of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas, and became the first pianist to perform all 32 sonatas.
Hans von Bülow’s piano career offered an intriguing new career model for up-and-coming pianists: a holistic one that mixed conducting, composing, editing, and interpreting others’ music – one that some modern touring pianists embrace today.
Eugen d’Albert in 1904
Eugen d’Albert was born in Glasgow in 1864 to an English mother and a French-Italian father from Germany.
As a young man, d’Albert emigrated to his father’s homeland and began taking lessons from the elderly Liszt in Weimar. This made him one of the youngest links between Liszt, his teacher Czerny, and Czerny’s teacher Beethoven. Not surprisingly, Beethoven became a d’Albert speciality.
In 1882, at the age of seventeen, he became the youngest pianist (up to that point) to perform a solo with the Vienna Philharmonic. He also published his first piano sonata and first piano concerto in 1883 and 1884, respectively, kicking off a long composing career that ran in tandem with his performing career.
Excerpts of his 1930 performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto are among the earliest broadcast recordings we have of a classical pianist.
He was also famous for his love life: he married six wives and divorced five – including our pick for the greatest pianist of the 1890s, Teresa Carreño.
Teresa Carreño was born in Venezuela in 1853.
Her career – begun when she was a young girl – intersects with nearly every name on this list.
Beethoven was a vital part of her repertoire. She played Hummel at her debut concert at the age of eight. Her teacher Georges Mathias had studied composition with Kalkbrenner. She performed for Liszt in the 1860s and then declined to take lessons from him – but did study with Anton Rubinstein. Clara Schumann had proved that a woman could have a long-lasting career as a solo pianist. She played under von Bülow, who called her “the most interesting pianist of the present age.” And of course, she married Eugen d’Albert (then, a few years later, divorced him).
Teresa Carreño
Her connections to these men didn’t define her career. But their presence in her biography does serve to illustrate how she became the culmination of an entire century’s worth of pianistic inspirations and trends.
At the end of the 19th century, she pointed toward the next hundred years and beyond, proving that women and non-European pianists could become global superstars, too.
