Bach Books

B-0220

Title:

Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks

Sub-Title:

Category:

Biography / Essay Collection / Performance Practice / Children / Score / Analysis / Texts & Translation

J.S. Bach Works:

Author:

David Yearsley

Written:

Country:

USA

Published:

Jul 2019

Language:

English

Pages:

HC: 336 pages; Kindle: File Size: 5172 KB

Format:

Hardcover / Kindle

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press; First edition

ISBN:

ISBN-10: 022661770X
ISBN-13: 978-0226617701

Description:

At one time a star in her own right as a singer, Anna Magdalena (1701-1760) would go on to become, through her marriage to the older Johann Sebastian Bach, history’s most famous musical wife and mother. The two musical notebooks belonging to her continue to live on, beloved by millions of pianists young and old. Yet the pedagogical utility of this music- long associated with the sound of children practicing and mothers listening - has encouraged a rosy and one-sided view of Anna Magdalena as a model of German feminine domesticity.
Sex, Death, and Minuets offers the first in-depth study of these notebooks and their owner, reanimating Anna Magdalena as a multifaceted historical subject—at once pious and bawdy, spirited and tragic. In these pages, we follow Magdalena from young and flamboyant performer to bereft and impoverished widow—and visit along the way the coffee house, the raucous wedding feast, and the family home. David Yearsley explores the notebooks’ more idiosyncratic entries—like its charming ditties on illicit love and searching ruminations on mortality—against the backdrop of the social practices and concerns that women shared in eighteenth-century Lutheran Germany, from status in marriage and widowhood, to fulfilling professional and domestic roles, money, fashion, intimacy and sex, and the ever-present sickness and death of children and spouses. What emerges is a humane portrait of a musician who embraced the sensuality of song and the uplift of the keyboard, a sometimes ribald wife and oft-bereaved mother who used her cherished musical notebooks for piety and play, humor and devotion—for living and for dying.

Comments:

Buy this book at:

HC (2019): Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de
Kindle (2019): Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de

Source/Links:
Contributor: Aryeh Oron (September 2019)

Book Review, "Sex Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks"

William L. Hoffman wrote (August 25, 2019):
David Yearsley's new book, Sex Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks, is a study of the Bach second wife's musical notebooks, married life with Sebastian, widowhood, and historical reception.¹ Its musical emphasis is on Bach beyond the church in various non-Lutheran church venues such as the Bach family annual gatherings with his "Quodlibet," BWV 524 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524-Gen2.htm, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/BWV524Quodlibet%5BBraatz%5D.htm), the 1725 Notebook as a primer for family home learning and playing, weekly concerts at Zimermann's coffee house, secular weddings cantatas at various private homes, and special musical events at venues such as the Cöthen Court.

Yearsley's book shows Anna Magdalena Bach (AMB, 1701-1760, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Magdalena_Bach) as a late bloomer in the 19th century Bach revival with her 1725 Notebook emerging as a collection of simple pieces mostly by non-Bach composers for keyboard beginners, with Bach lesser-known cantatas probably composed for her to sing, some only recently reconstructed, and the saga of her talent as a singer turned housewife and her final decade as an impoverished widow, says Yearsley, a perpetual myth fueled by imaginative, fictional accounts which continue to this day. The fields of historical musicology and gender equality studies are brought to bear on this multi-faceted by still illusive figure with some facets still to be explored. Yearsley even devotes one of his six chapters to the possibility that Anna Magdalena was involved in the male-dominated organ playing profession, never before considered.

The book's chapters are: Prologue: "Known by Her Notebooks," over which she presided from the early 1720s to the 1740s; Chapter 1. "Magdalena Mania," a reception history of her Notebooks beginning in the late 1800s and the notorious Esther Meynell fictional biography, The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach (1725) and its various popular English and German iterations, as well as offshoot "biographies"; Chapter 2. "Music for Weddings and Beddings," with the emphasis on little-known works such as the "Quodlibet" and the private home Cantatas BWV 216 and 210a (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV216-D3.htm_), and wedding Cantata 202 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV202-D5.htm); Chapter 3. "Death Every Day: The 1725 Notebook and the Art of Dying," with minuets and death lullabies, as well as the 1729 funeral cantata, "Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt" (Cry, children, cry to all the world, by Z. Philip Ambrose), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klagt,_Kinder,_klagt_es_aller_Welt,_BWV_244a, now BWV 1143, a parody primarily of the St. Matthew Passion;² Chapter 4, "Fragment and Fantasy: Anna Magdalena Bach at the Organ," using the 1722 Notebook fragment, "Fantasia pro Organo," BWV 573 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vuLaVixsCQ),³ with an historical study of women organists; Chapter 5, "Bitter Bean and Loose Ließgen: On Coffee, Cantatas, and Unwed Daughters," the intermezzo Coffee Cantata 211 and the Aria di Giovannini: "Willst du dein Herz mir schenken" (If you want to give me your hearthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpl2dOCQiU0), BWV 518 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1127-Gen.htm, “Aria di Giovanini,” BWV 518), music which Yearsley suggests Bach's first child, unwed Catharina Dorothea (1708-1774), may have sung at Zimmermann's or at a salon in the 1730s, with Bach at the harpsichord; Chapter 6, "A Widow’s Song," the estate settlement, Anna Magdalena's widowhood as embodied in house soprano Cantata 204, Von der Vergnügsamkeit (Pleasing contentment); and Coda, "The Minuet Sings," the "Minuet in G," BWV Anh. 114 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1gGxpitLO8), by Christian Petzoldt is probably Bach's most iconic music and the impetus for Meynell's book and tin Pan Alley's response (http://popdose.com/soul-serenade-the-toys-a-lovers-concerto/).

Yearsley's book is an historical-musicology study that produces a plethora of information about the early publication of the Notebooks and the "historical" AMB novels that continue to today. Beginning about 1950 with the new Bach studies, attention was directed to her Notebooks while the old myths persisted and new ones were generated.⁴ The most astonishing is Martin Jarvis' claim that she composed the Six Cello Suites (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/case-mrs-bach) and subsequently his 2015 film with historical-biographical melodrama about an elicit affair with Sebastian and first wife Anna Maria Bach's suicide (https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/our-hero-worship-of-bach-is-to-blame-for-rubbish-like-written-by-mrs-bach/).

The Bach scholars have almost unanimously rejected Jarvis' contentions, particularly in articles involving the Bach Network.⁵

Yearsley's extensive, source-critical historical documentation involves the publication of the Notebooks and the associated novels in Chapter 1, featuring the Anna Magdalena's last 1725 Notebook entry, the two-verse, off-color wedding poem, "Ihr Diener, werte Jungfer Braut" (Your servant, worthy maiden bride"),⁶ which sets the stage in Chapter 2, "Music for Weddings and Beddings," for a lengthy discussion of the early (1708) "Quodlibet," at Bach Family gatherings with weddings. The later Leipzig milieu involves the Johann Christoph Gottsched text to the 1725 Bach secular wedding serenade,"Auf! süß entzückende Gewalt" (Up, sweet-enchanting force and pow'r, by Z. Philip Ambrose), BWV 1193=Anh. 196, with its learned yet staid poetry (http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/I.html), and the source of at least two parodied arias (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV210-D3.htm: "Cantata BWV Anh. 196"), as well as an extensive discussion of AMB's involvement in the recently reconstructed house-wedding Cantatas BWV 216 and 210 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV210-D4.htm). In Chapter 3, "Death Every Day," Yearsley focuses on the popular minuets in both Notebooks and examines the 1725 Notebook songs dealing with death, the three lullabies, "Bist du bei mir" (If your are with me, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7muJVEQfc), BWV 508 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bist_du_bei_mir); "Gedenke doch, mein Gest" (Reflect back, my soul, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74TMgPnmoo), BWV 509; and "Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen" (Go to sleep, you tired eyes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N7ABsJKCpc), BWV 82a.

The final three chapter's in Yearsley's book follow a trajectory of speculation, Chapter 4, "Fragment and Fantasy: Anna Magdalena Bach at the Organ," where Anna Magdalena's early musical training could have been explored (although Yearsley's book is not a full-length biography of AMB), followed by the Chapter 5 discussions of women singers, coffee and clothing fashion with a focus on the Coffee Cantata 211, and culminating in the sixth and final chapter, "A Widow’s Song." This shows AMB's decline and uses the c1727 Cantata 204 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV204-D3.htm) and the Funeral Ode Cantata 198 motet, "An dir, du Fürbild großer Frauen" (In you, model of great women, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhfBTvhX22U) to emphasize pious, withdrawn, generic widows at church and home. The expectations and perils of widowhood are conflated to build a case for AMB's final decline in the decade after Sebastian's death.

It is only since the 300th anniversary of Anna Magdalena's birth in 2001 that scholarly research has brought her out of the shadows of Sebastian (http://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/en/artikel/Anna_Magdalena_Bach.pdf), particularly with the publication of Maria Hübner's Anna Magdalena Bach. Ein Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern (Anna Magdalena Bach: A life in documents and pictures, https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8603994?q&versionId=9945023). Most recent is Eberhard Spree's just-published study Die verwitwete Frau Capellmeisterin Bach. Studie über die Verteilung des Nachlasses von Johann Sebastian Bach (The widowed woman Capellmeisterin Bach),⁷ study on the distribution of the estate of Johann Sebastian Bach, that shatters the Romantic myth of poverty to show a shrewd businesswoman. This study of the family estate distribution and her finances shows that she had a central role in the management of the business affairs of the Sebastian Bach family, according to Spree at the recent Bach Network dialogue meeting (https://www.bachnetwork.org/dialogue/DM9Programme.pdf). After her husband's death in 1750, she oversaw the distribution of the Bach vocal music autographs to sons Friedemann and Emanuel and continued to manage about one-fourth of the property, including the remainder of the musical estate which was sold to Breitkopf after her death in 1760 and then was the impetus for the first publisher's catalogue in 1761 showing the Bach holdings available for copying.

"Despite longstanding claims to the contrary, that is no reason to think that Emanuel neglected his widowed stepmother Anna Magdalena," says Robert L. Marshall in his recent study, "Father and Sons: Confronting a Uniquely Daunting Paternal Legacy."⁸ "In addition to whatever help he may have provided, she also had other resources," including being the sales representative in Leipzig for published works of husband and stepson, Emanuel. "Emanuel also contributed from 1772 on," says Marshall (Ibid.), "to the financial support of his surviving sister [Catharina Dorothea] and half sisters [Johanna Carolina (1737–1781) and Regina Susanna (1742–1809)]." In 1750, Catharina Dorothea went to live with brother Friedemann in Halle while the two half-sisters lived with Anna Magdalena beginning in February 1751 at an inn on Hainstraße. When Friedemann left Halle in 1770, Catherina Dorothea returned to Leipzig and lived with her half sisters. Other primary-source areas in need of further research are the support of the two-half sisters following their father's death from their Leipzig godparents, more details of the Leipzig council and University support, and the activities of AMB as a copyist of her husband's work as well as working activities of her two daughters.

FOOTNOTES

¹ David Yearsley, Sex, Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks (University of Chicago Press, 2019, https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo36366508.html).
² Funeral cantata, "Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt," reconstruction: audio, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_klxpqZXaEEDZIfqjOHM_k6t8ikVbuWn7s; 
score, https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=
http://www.edition-peters.de/product/klagt-kinder-kothener
-trauermusik-cothen-funeral-music-bwv-244a/ep12033a%3FTRE00000/&prev=search).
³ "Fantasia pro Organo," BWV 573, various versions, https://www.google.com/
search?client=safari&rls=en&biw=1199&bih
=709&ei=xd1hXeSHJ4zr-wSzkL6QCA&q=%22fantasia
+pro+organo%2C%22+bwv+573+&oq=%22fantasia+pro+
organo%2C%22+bwv+573+&gs_l=psy-ab.12..35i302i39l2.21666.
23700..25770...0.0..0.151.1128.0j8......0....1..gws-wiz.LVLq7CsG3V8&ved
=0ahUKEwik_uOR6ZzkAhWM9Z4KHTOID4IQ4dUDCAo,
 also http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/12984).
⁴ Anna Magdalena Bach Notebooks, novels: https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=Anna+Magdalena+Bach+novels&tbm
=isch&source=univ&client=safari&sa=X&ved=
2ahUKEwi2vZrPmJzkAhVB7J4KHb99AHgQsAR6BAgGEAE&biw=1199&bih=709.
⁵ Bach Network articles: Yo Tomita, "Anna Magdalena as Bach's Copyist" ( http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub2/tomita.pdf); Yael Sela, "Anna Magdalena Bach’s Büchlein (1725) as a Domestic Music Miscellany" (https://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub5/sela.pdf), and Ruth Tatlow's "A Missed Opportunity: Reflections on Written by Mrs Bach" (http://bachnetwork.co.uk/ub10/ub10-tatlow-wbmb.pdf).
⁶ "Ihr Diener" poem, see notes, text and translation: https://books.google.com/books?id=VoQXAQAAIAAJ&pg
=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=ihr+diener+werte+jungfer+braut&source
=bl&ots=IWBKyS1Hkf&sig=ACfU3U2Hi6glYkWWHOcJ3HUi5aGtX8hbHg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=
2ahUKEwjX4daDpZzkAhXOjp4KHdR3Dx4Q6AEwAnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q
=ihr%20diener%20werte%20jungfer%20braut&f=false.
⁷ Edward Spree, Die verwitwete Frau Capellmeisterin Bach (Kamprad, E. Reinhold Verlag, 2019, https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=
https://vkjk.de/artikeldetails/kategorie/verlag-klaus-juergen-kamprad/artikel
/eberhard-spree-die-verwitwete-frau-capellmeisterin-bach-studie-ueber-die-verteilung
-des-nachlasses-von-johann-sebastian-bach.html&prev=search).
⁸ Robert L. Marshall, "Father and Sons: Confronting a Uniquely Daunting Paternal Legacy." In Mary Oleskiewicz, Bach Perspectives 11 : J. S. Bach and His Sons (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017; https://web-b-ebscohost-com.libproxy.unm.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzE2NjA3NzlfX0FO0?sid
=76d3f7c9-12d7-46b5-8eff-3102569e23d7@pdc-v-sessmgr01&vid=0&format=EB&lpid=lp_1&rid=0: 13).

Anna Magdalena Bach: Short Biography | Discussions: Anna Magdalena Bach | Anna Magdalena as Copyist
Movies: Bach Movie: Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach
Books: Sex Death, and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks [D. Yearsley]