And just like that, C. P. E. displaced J. S. as the family’s musical celebrity. For the last decades of J. S.’s life (and a century afterward), C. P. E. was considered the greatest of the Bachs. Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven admired C. P. E. and collected his music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself said, “Bach is the father, we are the children,” referring to C. P. E., not J. S.
