Creativity Quote by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

C.P.E. Bach is drawing a hard line against the social economy of taste: the salon chatter, the courtly reputations, the critics who can inflate or deflate a composer like a currency. Coming from an 18th-century musician who lived inside patronage systems and shifting fashions, that stance is less lofty detachment than survival strategy. If your livelihood depends on other people’s ears, you learn quickly how unstable “approval” can be.

The intent here is almost managerial: set the terms of evaluation, then refuse to negotiate. “According to my principles” signals a private constitution, a moral framework that isn’t up for debate. He grants that “every master has his true and certain value,” a remarkably democratic claim in a period obsessed with hierarchy and pedigree. The subtext is a warning to the culture around him: stop confusing noise about art with art itself.

There’s also quiet self-defense. Bach had to define himself in the long shadow of his father while the musical world pivoted toward the Classical style. Saying that “only the work itself praises and criticizes the master” is a way to bypass lineage and fashion and insist on the score as evidence. It’s an early version of “receipts only.”

Yet the last clause - “I leave to everyone his own value” - is the sharpest. It sounds generous, but it’s also withdrawal: I won’t fight for your status, and I won’t let you fight for mine. In a reputation-driven art world, that’s both integrity and a subtle refusal to play.