Anna Magdalena

Phil Kirlin wrote (March 19, 2001):
Does anybody know of any good resources on Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena? General resources and biographies are great, but anything dealing with her as a singer or composer would be great--I've been hearing things that possibly SHE wrote some of the compositions credited to HIM..

Wouter Verhoog wrote (March 19, 2001):
[To Phil Kirlin] I really don't know any sources for his 2ndn wife, Anna M. Bach; but I must tell you; that it is possible she wrote some works; but you must remember:

The works she wrote where probably written:
-for harpsichord;
-with constructions from her husband, J.S. Bach;

And they where small, not great works like concerti or passions. Just a cluw for you, so It will 'shrunk' your searching.

Sybrand Bakker wrote (March 20, 2001):
[To Wouter Verhhog] Why are you always making up things? There is no proof at all whatsoever of your assertion. Please stop telling fairy tales in this group, or chop your thumb of, where these stories all come from.

Wouter Verhoog wrote (March 19, 2001):
[To Wouter Verhoog] Why do you think I tell fairy tales in this group? All answers in this group are nothing more than speculations. No one of us where there. By the way, i got the information from a docu on ZDF.

Sybrand Bakker wrote (March 21, 2001):
< All answers in this group are nothing more than speculations. >
You must be joking or worse. Of course you are well aware a television documentary doesn't want to provide info like 'we don't know for sure, but I might be possible that Anna Magdalena composed music' Maybe they read the book of Esther Meynell of which it is well known the author made almost everything up.

Do you know anything about history and historian's research methods? Do you really think historians make everything up? Do you think I am making up answers?

Do you try to insult me and other people trying to provide serious answers to questions? Yes, you do! The assertion 'all answers in this group are no more than speculations' is what is: plain utter nonsense

I will not hesitate to continue to expose your fairy-tales as fraudulent, you're just asking for it.

Wouter Verhoog wrote (March 19, 2001):
[To Sybrand Bakker] In one thing you're right. Perhaps ZDF has read that book of Meynell. Indeed, almost everything in this book is maked up. BUT this is what I wrote; you just took one piece of the original text:

All answers in this group are nothing more than speculations. No one of us where there.

Where you there? No. Was I there? No. Where the writers of the biographs of Bach there? No. And who says that the first biograph of Bach (written by Forkel) is correct? No! It wasn't. Only Bach himself can tell us.

And I don't say EVERY single word in this group is a speculation. All right, perhaps its was a little stupid to say that ALL answers are speculations, I'm sorry about that, newsgroup; but NO ONE of us where there.

Your attitude looks a little bit (but perhaps that isn't true..) angry; so I'm sorry.

< Do you try to insult me and other people trying to provide serious answers to questions? >
I don't insult any one.

< Do you know anything about history and historian's research methods? >
Yes, I know. Because I'm a historian.

< Do you really think historians make everything up? >
No, I've never say that.

< Do you think I am making up answers? >
Perhaps... Perhaps I'm making answers up. Perhaps we all... Perhaps none of us.

So my dear friend; we'll never know it for sure. Only Bach knows.

Anna Magdalena as Copyist

Thomas Braatz wrote (October 22, 2002):
Using the Göttinger Bach-Katalog that I referred to recently, I was able to speed up considerably the time needed to research the question about Anna Magdalena's 'Super Woman' image of woman (married, as she was, to a genius) who not only found time to run the Bach household and raise many children, but also took over the formidable task of copying from the original score many of the parts for the weekly cantata performances (picture her sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by WF, CPE, and JC all helping Papa in this family endeavor)-- at least, so the myth goes that can be found in children's books that treat the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. Of course, scholarly biographies are careful not to conjure up this image because they suspect, as I also do, that this simply is not true. But how should one prove this?

Assuming that the Göttinger Bach-Katalog is complete, accurate, and up to date regarding all of the Bach cantatas, I was able to quickly obtain the results to my query, "In which vocal works did Anna Magdalena participate as a copyist?" The results indicated the BWV # and the NBA KB reference. This saved me from having to look into each KB for the details given about each vocal work from BWV 1 to circa BWV 250. 16 items were returned which I could then look up specifically in the KBs. Of these 16, only 10 could be definitely verified as containing actual copy work done by Anna Magdalena: BWV 9, 13, 14, 32, 41, 58, 72, 124, 226, 244, a very small number indeed!

At the most, Anna Magdalena, in any given BWV #, copied out one, or in a few instances two parts. Her most frequent task was to copy the violin doublets (I assume here, that she would copy this not from the score, but rather from the 1st copy of the violin parts already completed by other copyists. In his discussion of Anna Magdalena's copy work done for BWV 58 (the 1st violin part, mvt. 1 & 5 only), Dürr characterizes the quality of her work as very undependable ("unzuverlässig") with serious errors ("grobe Notentextfehler.")

Considering the monumental task of copying out all the parts in a hurry and yet attempting to keep them as free of errors as possible, Bach needed dependable, accurate, and reasonably readable (even with poor lighting) parts that he would not have to spend an inordinate amount of time correcting and editing. Perhaps Bach called upon her late in the day while he was correcting the parts copied by others, and when he had completed doing this with the 1st and 2nd violin parts, he would then ask her to make a 2nd copy of an already existing, edited part.

Here is what I could find to be verifiably copied by Anna Magdalena Bach:

BWV 9 -- mvt. 4 to 7 of the untransposed continuo part (there was almost always another transposed continuo part for every cantata)
BWV 13 -- both violin 1 & 2 doublets (almost - she did not quite finish them)
BWV 14 -- a continuo doublet
BWV 32 -- 1st violin doublet only
BWV 41 -- 1st violin doublet only
BWV 58 -- 1st violin mvts. 1 & 5 only
BWV 72 -- a part of the continuo doublet
BWV 124 -- 1st & 2 violin doublets
BWV 226 -- (Motet) Soprano 2 only from mm. 146 to the end
BWV 244 -- (SMP) viola doublet for 1st chorus only and both continuo doublets

Perhaps now the myth can finally be laid to rest!

Continue of this discussion, see: Anna Magdalena as Copyist

Anna Magdalena as Copyist

Martin Jarvis wrote (January 30, 2004):
I am researching AMB's contribution to the work of JSB. I have read many of the messages from the site. Why is there so much hostility towards AMB and the possibility that she composed?

Thomas Braatz wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Martin Jarvis] What an odd question from a researcher! Could you point to some specific examples where ‘hostility’ is clearly apparent as others (including myself) reading this probably have no clear idea why such an accusation is being made? A better approach might be to share a summary of the results of your research and see what comments/opinions on any specific matter will be elicited from other list members who might have a special interest in this subject.

Martin Jarvis wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Thomas Braatz] Thanks for the message. There is indeed much hostility to the idea that Anna Magdalena composed in many academic circles, I can assure you of that fact. I am interested in finding people who have an open mind on the subject and who are willing to let go the traditional view. Are you one of those people?

Fumitaka Sato wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To MarJarvis] I suppose there was a booklet written by AMB, or I might be confused. I hope to find some information of the booklet in a week.

Fumitaka Sato wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Martin Jarvis] After a little search, I have noticed the booklet credited to AMB is a fake. However I am trying to get a copy of it (or translation of it).

Charles Francis wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Martin Jarvis] I wasn't aware of any such hostility in this group. But having said that, the burden of proof is obviously with the one claiming she composed. Certainly, there are several pieces in the "Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach" consisting of only a melody supported by a figured bass. This suggest she was at least able to extemporise the other two parts herself from the figures. Maybe BWV 515a is her harmonic realisation (and transposition) of BWV 515, for example.

Thomas Braatz wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Chales Francis] Christoph Wolff, in the New Grove (Oxford University Press, 2003), compiled a list of almost 80 ‘musicians’ in the extended Bach family. AMB is not among them.

He also lists BWV 515 as being by Gottfried Heinich Bach(?) but arranged by J. S. Bach.

Here is an extended section concerning AMB from Wolff’s section on the Cöthen period from the same article:

>>One of Bach’s friends at Cöthen was the goldsmith C.H. Bähr; Bach stood godfather to one of Bähr’s sons in 1721, and deputized for a godfather to another in 1723. About the beginning of August 1721 he gave a performance of some unspecified kind for Count Heinrich XI Reuss of Schleiz; this may have been arranged by J.S. Koch, the Kantor there, who had held a post at Mühlhausen, though possibly not in Bach’s time there. On 15 June 1721 Bach was the 65th communicant at St Agnus; one ‘Mar. Magd. Wilken’ was the 14th. This may well have been Bach’s future wife – the mistake in the first name is an easy one – but Anna Magdalena makes no formal appearance until 25 September, when Bach and she were the first two among the five godparents of a child called Hahn. This baptism is recorded in three registers. In two of them Anna is described as ‘court singer’, in the third, simply as 'chamber Musician’ ('Musicantin'). In September Anna was again a godmother, to a child called Palmarius; again the registers differ in describing her occupation. Her name does not appear in court accounts until summer 1722, when she is referred to as the Kapellmeister’s wife; her salary (half Bach’s) is noted as paid for May and June 1722.
Practically nothing is known of her early years. She was born on 22 September 1701 at Zeitz. Her father, Johann Caspar Wilcke, was a court trumpeter; he worked at Zeitz until about February 1718, when he moved to Weißenfels where he died on 30 November 1731. The surname was variously spelt. Anna’s mother (Margaretha Elisabeth Liebe, d 7 March 1746) was daughter of an organist and sister of J.S. Liebe who, besides being a trumpeter, was organist of two churches at Zeitz from 1694 until his death in 1742. As a trumpeter’s daughter, Anna may well have met the Bachs socially. The stories that she was a public figure, having sung at Cöthen and the other local courts since the age of 15, have been discredited; they are said to have arisen through confusion with her elder brother, a trumpeter. However, she was paid for singing, with her father, in the chapel at Zerbst on some occasion between Easter and midsummer 1721. By September 1721, aged just 20, she was at Cöthen, well acquainted with Bach (aged 36), and ready to marry him on 3 December. The prince saved Bach 10 thaler by giving him permission to be married in his own lodgings. At about this time Bach paid two visits to the city cellars, where he bought first one firkin of Rhine wine, and later two firkins, all at a cut price, 27 instead of 32 groschen per gallon.
On 11 December 1721 the prince married his cousin Friderica, Princess of Anhalt-Bernburg. The marriage was followed by five weeks of illuminations and other entertainments at Cöthen. This was not however an auspicious event for Bach: he was to leave Cöthen partly because the princess was ‘eine Amusa’ (someone not interested in the Muses) and broke up the happy relationship between Bach and her husband. Perhaps her unfortunate influence had made itself felt even before she was married.
A legacy from Tobias Lämmerhirt (Bach’s maternal uncle) had facilitated Bach’s first marriage; Tobias’s widow was buried at Erfurt on 12 September 1721, and Bach received something under her will too, though not in time for his second marriage. On 24 January 1722 Bach’s sister Maria, together with one of the Lämmerhirts, challenged the will, saying that Bach and his brothers Jacob (in Sweden) and Christoph (at Ohrdruf) agreed with them (Christoph had died in 1721). Bach heard of this only by accident; and on 15 March he wrote to the Erfurt council on behalf of Jacob as well as himself. He objected to his sister’s action, and said that he and his absent brother desired no more than was due to them under the will. On 16 April Jacob died; and the matter seems to have been settled on these lines towards the end of the year. Bach’s legacy must have amounted to rather more than a year’s pay.
In summer 1722 there was no Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, and Bach was commissioned to write a birthday cantata for the prince; for this he was paid 10 thaler in April and May. The birthday was in August, and payments made during that month presumably refer to the performance. If so, the work, which seems to have disappeared, was scored for two oboes d’amore and ‘other instruments’.
Several didactic works for keyboard belong to the Cöthen period. One is the 'Clavierbüchlein' for Anna Magdalena Bach. 25 leaves are extant, about a third of the original manuscript; there is a kind of title-page, on which Anna Magdalena (probably) wrote the title and the date and Bach (certainly) noted the titles of three theological books. Despite the sceptics, it remains reasonable to suppose that Bach gave the book to his wife early in 1722. It seems to have been filled by 1725. The autograph of 'Das wohltemperirte Clavier' (book 1 of the ‘48’) is dated 1722 on the title-page but 1732 at the end. The writing is uniform in style, and for various reasons it is incredible that he did not finish the manuscript until 1732. This handsome fair copy was preceded by drafts, like those in W.F. Bach’s 'Clavier-Büchlein' (begun in 1720); and some of the movements look earlier than that. Presumably Bach brought them together for convenience, partly to serve as the last step in his keyboard course, partly to exhibit the advantages of equal temperament. As in book 2, no doubt Bach transposed some of the pieces to fill gaps in his key scheme; the odd pairing of the prelude in six flats with the fugue in six sharps suggests that the former was originally in E minor, the latter in D minor.<<

Guido De Winne wrote (January 30, 2004):
[To Thomas Braatz] Met vriendelijke groeten,

Bach's biography by Anna Magdalena Bach?

Stevan Vasiljevic wrote (January 31, 2004):
I must ask list members to give me their opinion on one book.

Not long ago I acquired a book titled "Little chronic of Anna Magdalena Bach". It is said in it that it was written by AMB several years after Johann Sebasian died, and it is a well written biograpy that describes Bach's life since even before they met. It was a pleasure to read, but I was unable to determin wheteher it was authentic or not. My book was printed in Yugoslavia in march 1990, it is of course a translation, but there is no indication when the original book was published, nor what was it's name, there are simply no clues about what was the model for translation.

Does any list member know anything about one sbook? In treatises on BCML no one ever mentioned it as a source, so I have scepticism about it's authenticity, because I have no access to any expert sources on this subject to check it myself.

Rob Potharst wrote (January 31, 2004):
[To Stevan Vasiljevic] This is what the Oxford Composer Companion on J.S.Bach edited by Malcolm Boyd has to say about it:

"In 1925 a book, The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach", purporting to be a transcription of Anna Magdalena's own journal, was published anonymously in London. It proved later to be the work of Esther Meynell and was translated and reprinted many times. It paints a highly romanticized picture of the composer, but the facts it presents are (for its time) remarkably accurate".

Later, in 1967, a movie with the same title was made by Jean-Marie Straub, starring Gustav Leonhardt as J.S.Bach; however, the scenario for the movie was not based on Meynell's book.

Unfortunately, I neither read the book, nor saw the film.

Fumitaka Sato wrote (January 31, 2004):
[To Rob Potharst] I am obtaining a copy of the translation of the booklet. Probably it requires a week or so. If I notice something to say, I will post my opinion here.

Nicholas J. Philposian wrote (February 2, 2004):
[To Rob Potharst] There are many biographies on Bach. I have a biography on Bach through letters and other documents. I also have one by Otto Bettmann which I like. Do you know of a good current biography on Bach. I am primarily interested in his years in Leipzig. I beleive his years there were very hard for him and I would like to know more. How are Albert Schweitzers and Malcolm Boyds biographies of Bach? Richter's St. John Passion is magnificant!!

Continue of this discussion, see: Johannes-Passion BWV 245 – conducted by Karl Ricther

Fumitaka Sato wrote (February 8, 2004):
I have read through "The Little Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" ("Die kleine Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach") as a fiction/novel. It is a very moving story and I love it. I could not find any implication for Anna Magdalena Bach's composing a piece anywhere in the book.

AMB

Cara (Piano Pedal) wrote (May 13, 2004):
Right...okiedokie then.
Does anyone know ANYTHING at all about Anna Magdalena Bach? I do seem to know much about her, but there are always things in the world we don't know. My big question: Do we know what happened to the painting that Bach allegedly had painted of her? Painted in Leipzig, I think, though I can't seem to come up with a year.

P.S. Listen to BWV 8 (Liebster Gott...I forgot the rest of the German...)!
It's a great cantata.

Bradley Lehman wrote (May 13, 2004):
< Does anyone know ANYTHING at all about Anna Magdalena Bach? I do seem to know much about her, but there are always things in the world we don't know. >
There was some "slice of life" stuff about her in one of my postings last year, from the situation she and her husband moved into when they got to Leipzig: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/BachCantatas/message/5157

Cara (Piano Pedal) wrote (May 13, 2004):
[To Bradley Lehman] Ah! Thank you!

Cara (Piano Pedal) wrote (May 13, 2004):
[To Bradley Lehman] Oh right...and where did you learn all that stuff about her?

Bradley Lehman wrote (May 19, 2004):
Cara wrote:
< Oh right...and where did you learn all that stuff about her? >
This morning, looking through the old (1966) Bach Reader for some other things, I came across the interesting information that Magdalena's father and brother-in-law were both professional trumpet players.

This gets me thinking about the way JSB had some easy family connections whenever he wanted any technical inside information about the instrument: kind of the same way I can call on my father-in-law and brothers-in-law whenever I need advice on issues of their business expertise. And the way CPE said that JSB's household was like a beehive of activity, interesting people always coming and going through....

Thomas Braatz wrote (May 19, 2004):
>>This morning, looking through the old (1966) Bach Reader for some other things, I came across the interesting information that Magdalena's father and brother-in-law were both professional trumpet players.<<
The Csibas, on p. 21-22 of their book "Die Bleichblasinstrumente in J. S. Bachs Werken" [Merseburger, 1994] indicate that among the most probable trumpeters who could handle Bach's 2^nd Brandenburg were 1) Ludwig Schreiber, 1^st trumpeter at the court in Köthen, 2) Johann Caspar Wilcke [last name spelled in various ways], Bach's father-in-law, trumpeter at the court of Weißenfels, or a Stadtpfeifer (City Piper) from the surrounding region. These are all conjectures, because there is simply no evidence to back up any of these claims.

Cara (Piano Pedal) wrote (May 19, 2004):
For everyone's rather useless information, not only was Anna Magdalena's father and brother-in-law trumpeters, so were her other two brother-in-laws AND her real brother. Both father and real brothers names were Johann Caspar Wulcken (umlau, I know). Then there was Meisner, J.A. Krebs (not either of the Krebs that learned under Johann Sebastian Bach) and Nicolai. I'm sure AMB felt either a bit left out or a bit of pride in being the only one in the family not married to a trumpeter. (All the mentioned above were professional trumpeters in either Weißenfels or Zerbst, both of Anhalt.)

John Pike wrote (May 19, 2004):
[To Cara] But she was married to one of the greatest geniuses in the history of Art (all media) and she may have realised it.

Cara (Piano Pedal) wrote (May 20, 2004):
[To John Pike] Here here! (I don't think he would have played the trumpet very well-can anyone verify that?)

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