The Temple of Fame and Friendship

“In this vividly drawn portrait of C. P. E. Bach’s gallery, Richards has illuminated much more than the art and act of collecting, and the range and recognition of Bach’s circle in Enlightenment arts and letters. She has reconstructed the shades of feeling animating musical character portraits, reimagined the resonances of playing and hearing music in a space filled with faces, and resituated the genius of Bach in a trans-European and transhistorical context that is nonetheless boldly particularized. Her demonstration that Bach’s collection was materially implicated in the self-conscious invention of music history toward the turn of the nineteenth century is one of the book’s most astonishing revelations.” * Elaine Sisman, Columbia University *
“Not only a preserver of repertories from previous generations but also an indefatigable connoisseur of portraits, C. P. E. Bach amassed an immense collection that dazzled his contemporaries. In this fascinating book, Richards takes us into late eighteenth-century culture and details the ways Bach acquired, commissioned, displayed, composed, and performed portraits of the artists and intellectuals he admired.” * Susan McClary, Case Western Reserve University *
“The Temple of Fame and Friendship is nothing less than a delightfully readable tapestry of a vast cultural world in which C. P. E. Bach held center stage. This is a formidable study that takes Bach’s collection as a provocation to understand portrait as an aspect of Enlightenment endeavor, in its theoretical underpinnings, and as a component in Bach’s idiosyncratic creative work. It probes the range of figures who populate the collection: the friends and acquaintances in Bach’s active musical world, the iconic figures who dwell in the histories and mythologies of the profession, and the painters and etchers whose portraiture enliven these pages.” * Richard Kramer, author of 'Cherubino’s Leap' *
"Richards takes the reader on a tour of eighteenth-century portraiture, through seven chapters focused on exhibiting, collecting, speculating (on resemblance), character, friendship, feeling, and memorializing. Though the book is grounded in one individual’s collection, her observations are wide ranging and multidisciplinary. . . . I know of no other book that does justice to all these aspects of one of the most important composers of the eighteenth century." * BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute *
"The book can be enjoyed purely for the author’s accounts of the sometimes obscure subjects, the provenance of many individual items, and her commentaries on their style or technique. . .  Detailed notes and extensive bibliography reveal massive research in letters, memoirs, nineteenth-century writings on local history, and modern literature on the visual and literary arts—not to mention the artworks themselves: drawings, prints, and paintings, chiefly in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin but also scattered across other collections." * Eighteenth-Century Studies *