The Book of Anna Magdalena: the music that was played in Johann Sebastian Bach's family
- Bach Society Brasil
- 9 hours ago
- 10 min read
In 1725, Anna Magdalena Bach opened a green-covered notebook with her own initials engraved in gold and spent the next thirty-five years filling it with sheet music. What it contained forms a musical archive of the Bach family, with scores and even some rather bawdy jokes.
Music in the Bach household
Once a year, the Bachs scattered throughout the cities of Thuringia would gather. There were so many of them, and so many of them professional musicians, that the surname had become almost synonymous with the profession in the region. The meeting always began with a devotional choir and, according to the account that Bach's first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, collected from Johann Sebastian's sons, ended in collective improvisations on popular songs of partly comic, partly indecent content, amidst laughter that no one could contain.
The Leipzig house functioned in the same spirit, with the difference that it was also a workplace. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach would describe his father's house as "a dovecote, and equally full of life": Zelenka, Quantz, the Graun brothers, Hasse, and the celebrated soprano Faustina Bordoni passed through it, and there was no music teacher who crossed the city without making the acquaintance of the owner. When there was a score to copy under deadline pressure, it was his wife, children, nephews, and students who lived there who did the copying. Instruments were plentiful: the inventory of Bach's estate in 1750 listed eight keyboards , and the four harpsichords were the four most valuable possessions he left behind.
It is in this context that Anna Magdalena's Book needs to be read. It is not a work by Bach nor a collection organized by a publisher. It is what today would be called the family songbook : the notebook where they recorded what that household actually played and sang, from the minuet a child studied to the aria the lady of the house played for the harpsichord after dinner.
Two notebooks, and the second one is hers.
There are two notebooks, and the difference between them is the key to everything. The first, from 1722 , was probably a first wedding anniversary gift: she calligraphed the title page, but almost all the music inside is in Johann Sebastian 's handwriting. It survives mutilated, with twenty-five of the original seventy-five pages, and only two minuets remain from her handwriting.
The second, from 1725 , is another object altogether. Seventy-five leaves with gilded edges in green leather, with a decorated frame and the initials "AMB" engraved in gold. It has no title page: the three-letter monogram is sufficient as a declaration of ownership. It is often said that Bach commissioned and gifted it, but nothing prevents her from having commissioned it herself, from her husband, or from the bookbinder himself. There is no evidence for either version.
What is known is who wrote it. She is responsible for just over half of the pages; the rest is divided between her husband, her stepsons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann , her sons Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian, the boys' tutor, and at least one anonymous copyist. It was a collaborative project, sustained for twenty years, hence David Yearsley's formulation:
“If the first notebook was ‘for’ her, the second can be thought of as being ‘of her,’ not as a composer, but as the person who curated the volume according to her tastes, duties, and desires, and then used its contents in ever-new ways from 1725 until her death, thirty-five years later.” (David Yearsley, Sex, Death, and Minuets, p. xxiii)
There are forty-two musical numbers: twenty individual dances, twelve songs including chorales and arias, and the rest in larger keyboard pieces. At least two of these arias are not by Bach.
The binding of the 1725 notebook: green leather, gilded edges, and the initials AMB engraved in gold. No title page, because the monogram already indicated who the book belonged to.
Anna Magdalena: copyist and archivist
From 1725 onwards, when Anna Magdalena's public performances became less frequent, her collaboration changed in nature and began to be recorded in a different way: in manuscripts.
She produced clean copies of the following works:
Cello Suites, BWV 1007–1012
Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001–1006
the six sonatas for organ trio, BWV 525–530
extensive excerpts from the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier
the Kyrie and Gloria parts of the Mass in B minor sent to Dresden in 1733
parts of cantatas, the St. Matthew Passion , and a motet.
The first item on the list deserves a pause because it changes the scope of the subject: there is no autograph by Bach of the Cello Suites . The closest source to the composer, the one on which all editions and all cellists in the world depend, is the copy made by her. A former student of the house, Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanberg , even recorded on the title page of his own copy of the violin works that it was " Ecrite par Madame Bachen son Epouse ," written by Mrs. Bach, his wife. She imitated her husband's notation with such mastery that musicologists, over a century and a half of studying Bachian sources, have confused her handwriting with his. Of his first wife, Maria Barbara, nothing of the sort remains: no reference to performance, secretarial assistance, or any semi-professional activity.
There was also a third type of work, which historiography has never counted as work: she archived . Among the papers in the house was a loose, unidentified continuous sheet. She herself labeled it, in her own handwriting, as belonging " zur groß Bassion ," to the great Passion, and no one needed further explanation: it was the St. Matthew Passion . The gesture is small and says a lot. She didn't copy mechanically; she knew the house catalog inside and out, she knew which work each loose sheet belonged to, and the family trusted that judgment. In a workshop that produced music every week against the clock, knowing where things are is a skill, and that was hers.
The last two pages of the 1725 notebook complete the portrait. On them, her son Johann Christoph Friedrich copied some summary rules of basso continuo; immediately following are more complete rules, written by his mother. Basso continuo was, in the 18th century, preparation for composition and, therefore, male territory. In that notebook, the complete version is hers.
The works within the Book of Anna Magdalena
Here's the fact that will most surprise those who grew up playing this notebook: the most famous pieces in "Bach for Beginners" are not by Bach.
The two Minuets in G major and G minor, BWV Anh. 114 and 115 , the first of which is probably the most frequently played keyboard piece in the world, are by Christian Petzold , organist of the Sophienkirche in Dresden. This only became known in the 1970s , when a harpsichord suite of his containing the pair appeared, and the 1990 edition of the BWV catalogue moved the two pieces to the appendix of other works. Bach had played a recital on the Silbermann organ in Petzold's church in 1725, the year the notebook began; it is likely that he brought the pieces from Dresden with him. Anna Magdalena copied them.
The rest of the notebook follows the same big-city logic. The Rondo in B-flat major, BWV Anh. 183 , is " Les bergeries " by François Couperin . The March in D major, BWV Anh. 122 , and the pieces that accompany it in the catalog are by Carl Philipp Emanuel , copied from his own hand when he was a boy of eleven to fourteen years old. The Polonaise in G major is probably by Johann Adolph Hasse , capellmeister of Dresden and a friend of the house. There is a minuet by Georg Böhm , copied by Bach, a calling card of the old organist who had been his teacher a quarter of a century earlier. And, among the last entries, a piece by the youngest son , Johann Christian , at the age of ten.
Amidst these untitled and unassuming little dances are two of the most well-known pieces in the history of the keyboard. One is the Prelude in C major, BWV 846 , which opens the Well-Tempered Clavier , here in an abridged version. The other is an Aria in G major , the same one that in 1741 would become the theme of the Goldberg Variations . The copy of the Aria is hers, and it bears a revealing detail: she rewrote the right hand in soprano clef , the clef a singer reads without thinking. In that notebook, these two pages are not the portico of any monument. They are drawing room music, and the Aria seems to have been one of the book's owner's favorite pieces.
Anna Magdalena's Book, therefore, is not an anthology of Bach. It is the repertoire that that house actually played, and that house played the whole of Europe, in French, Italian, and Polish. A scrapbook as much as a textbook, with family heirlooms, snapshots of the children learning to compose, and memories of distant friends.
From dance to the hour of death
At a certain point the notebook flips. After a sequence of easy dances, without any transitions, " Bist du bei mir " begins, and from then on the volume is something else entirely. Of the twelve melodies with lyrics, eight speak of death , and in four of them dying is the central theme: the song asks the singer to imagine their own last moments.
The image that runs through them all is that of death as sleep. In "Bist du bei mir," which is also not by Bach, but by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel , taken from an opera of 1718, the eighth notes begin to sway precisely when the text equates dying and sleeping, over pulsating bass notes that the German song of the time used to lull. The same language returns in the longest piece in the notebook. " Ich habe genug " and " Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen, " from the cantata BWV 82 , were created in 1727 for bass voice; in 1731 Bach revived the work transposed for soprano. It is this version that is there, copied by her, without strings and without refrains, reduced to two staves and to the key that suited her voice. Forbidden from singing as a soloist in church, she took the aria home and reworked it to the size of a room.
The “indecent” wedding verses
And then, on the last written page, the notebook makes the most disconcerting gesture of all. The final musical piece is a choral piece copied by her, " O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort ": "O eternity, word of thunder, O sword that pierces the soul, O beginning without end." Turning the page, there are some nuptial verses , also in her own handwriting, written vertically, so that it was necessary to rotate the book ninety degrees. The handwriting there is hurried and full of smudges, far below her usual standard, like someone hastily copying from borrowed paper.
The first stanza is harmless: compliments to the bride, praise for the wreath and the dress. The second is not. Cupid, "the trustworthy rogue," doesn't let anyone escape unscathed; to build, you need stone and lime, and "you have to drill the holes"; for a chicken coop, wood and nails are enough; and the peasant threshes the wheat "with large and small flails." In early 18th-century German, Flegel , flail, was established slang for penis, and the humor lies in "large and small." That Anna Magdalena Bach's music notebook allows for penis size jokes is as undeniable a fact as it has been uncomfortable for the guardians of Bach's legacy. Between eternity and the wedding joke, for her, there was no contradiction whatsoever. There was a page of interval.
The Animation: Episode #17 – A New Consolation
The episode depicts Bach's meeting with the young soprano who would become his second wife and her arrival in the musical environment of the Köthen court. This is the starting point of the story that this post continues: four years after that meeting, the 1725 notebook would begin. (Channel: youtube.com/@BachTheAnimatedSeries.)
About the series Bach: The Animated Series
About the series Bach: The Animated Series
This episode is part of an independent series created and animated by artist Peter Fielding . Born in Flanders and based in Italy, Fielding explored the biography of Johann Sebastian Bach through a visual narrative that humanizes the composer's challenges.
The Bach Society Brazil presents the videos from the series as part of its outreach initiative. To understand the behind-the-scenes production and the author's creative process, read our exclusive interview with Peter Fielding .
Real or Fiction?
The domestic image that the animation constructs, the Bach home as a family musical workshop, is solid and goes beyond what the dramatization shows. The parts of the Mass in B minor sent to Dresden in 1733 were copied almost exclusively by family members: the composer, his wife, Friedemann, and Carl. The four may also have played together.
The most useful correction this post can offer isn't about the series, but about the notebook itself. Most of the pieces for which the "Book of Anna Magdalena" became famous are not by Johann Sebastian Bach. The two minuets in G are by Christian Petzold, and this only became known in the 1970s; the rondo is by Couperin; the most remembered marches and polonaises are juvenile exercises by Carl Philipp Emanuel; "Bist du bei mir" is by Stölzel; the "Aria di Giovannini" is by an author whose identity remains disputed. Entire generations of piano students, and a good part of the methods they use, still attribute these pieces to Bach.
Suggested Listening
The longest piece in the notebook, and the only one whose path to this point we can reconstruct step by step: written for bass in 1727, transposed for soprano in 1731, and then copied by Anna Magdalena in G major, without strings and without ritornellos, the size of a room. The bass pulsates from the first measure; in the fourth, the voice also begins to repeat notes, over the word Schlummert , "I fell asleep," enacting the sleep it describes.
The recording is from the Bach Society Brazil , on the program "Arias for Soprano," from March 13, 2021, with Marília Vargas (soprano) and Fernando Cordella (harpsichord and artistic direction). It is exactly the home-based setup of the notebook: a voice and a keyboard.
Before becoming the subject of thirty variations, it was a sarabande copied into a family notebook, untitled, somewhere between a song and a boy's exercise, with the right hand rewritten in the clef that a singer reads best. To hear it as domestic music, and not as the portico of a monument, is to hear it as that house heard it.
The recording is from the Bach Society Brazil , with Fernando Cordella on harpsichord, at the "Easter Concert" on April 3, 2021.
Bibliographic References
DAVID, Hans T.; MENDEL, Arthur; WOLFF, Christoph (Ed.). The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents . New York: WW Norton & Company, 1998.
GARDINER, John Eliot. Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
WILLIAMS, Peter. JS Bach: A Life in Music . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
WOLFF, Christoph. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician . New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000.
YEARSLEY, David. Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Audiovisual Production: FIELDING, Peter . Bach: The Animated Series . 2024–. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/@BachTheAnimatedSeries .
Comments