The eldest Son

Taking what ¡Tunes gives me this morning on Baroque Classical Radio: A harpsichord concerto of the genial gentleman whose charming portrait graces this blog entry -- Old Bach's favorite, eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, universally acknowledged to have been the brightest and best of the (two) stellar litter(s). One sees--listening to this perfect fusion of Learning and Gallantry--why. Despite his sympathetic mien and the elegance of his Chapeau à l'anglaise as here portrayed, our man Wilhelm Friedemann was, by all accounts, a "difficult" personality: unquestionably the most gifted ex tempore improviser upon the organ and harpsichord of his day, a brilliant amateur mathematician, free thinker, and (some say) drunkard--and hopelessly heterosexual; thus with no possibility of preferment at the court of Frederic II of Prussia, like that enjoyed by his only slightly less talented, but fortunately homosexual brother, Carl Philip Emanuel. W.F. is often accused of having been a careless guardian of his father's manuscripts, of which he was the principal heir; but this, too, like Mme. Couperin's fish-wrappings and jampot-coverings, was simply the inevitable, heterosexual consequence of marrying a woman and having daughters by her who were, naturally, incapable of appreciating the value of such a bequest when it came their turn to inherit it. As Wikipedia explains: "[H]is daughter took some of the J.S. Bach manuscripts with her when she moved to America, and these were passed on to her descendants, who inadvertently destroyed many of them."