Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Bach / Anna Magdalena

Bach

BIOGRAPHY

Anna Magdalena

January 16, 2019

Anna Magdalena Wülcken came from a family of musicians and brought to the marriage the background and orientation of a professional singer. Indeed, she regularly performed with her husband in Cöthen and elsewhere until 1725, and from the time the public singing engagements are no longer recorded, her collaboration as a copyist is well documented. Until the early 1740’s, her hand shows up in a variety of manuscripts containing Bach’s music. She prepared, in particular, fair copies of the Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012; the Violin Partitas and Sonatas, BWV 1001-1006; the organ Trio Sonatas, BWV 525-530; major sections of The Well-Tempered Clavier, parts I and II; the Kyrie and Gloria of the B-minor Mass, several cantatas, and other vocal and instrumental works. By comparison, Maria Barbara, Bach’s first wife, left few traces. Although she was the product of a musical family as well, there are no references whatsoever to her performing activities, secretarial assistance, or any other semiprofessional activities, but it is hard to imagine that she would not been engaged in any.

When Anna Magdalena celebrated her twentieth birthday in Cöthen on September 22, 1721, having reached top rank and pay in a princely capelle with her first professional appointment (above that of her father and brother), she could rightfully anticipate a most promising career as a singer. And she definitely planned to continue her professional life when the capellmeister asked her to marry him. Bach himself supported her intention, and thus she remained fully active in the capelle until their move to Leipzig. The Bach house-hold had continued to run smoothly, managed by Johann Sebastian’s sister-in-law Friedelena Bach, with the help of a maid named Anna Elisabeth. Still, when on December 3, 1721 – nearly one and a half years after Maria Barbara Bach’s death – the widowed Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Wülcken “were married at home, by command of the Prince,” it certainly brought a dramatic and generally uplifting change for Bach and his four children. And they seem to have celebrated the happy event in opulent style. Around the time of the wedding, Bach contracted a major shipment of Rhine wine, at a discount granted him by the Cöthen Ratskeller: four pails and eight quarts (one pail = sixty-four quarts) for 84 talers 16 groschen (more than a fifth of his annual salary). In all likelihood, the wedding was attended by many members of the Bach and Wülcken families and by friends and colleagues at the Cöthen court.

Probably not long after the wedding but sometime in 1722, Anna Magdalena started an album in which Johann Sebastian entered compositions for her to play in order to improve and cultivate her keyboard skills or that he would play to entertain her. She wrote herself the title page, Clavier-Büchlein vor Anna Magdalena Bachin, Anno 1722, and a few headings, but the musical entries are written exclusively in Johann Sebastian’s hand. They include, at the beginning, composing scores of five short yet highly refined harpsichord suites, BWV 812-816; first versions that would eventually become the set of the so-called French Suites. Bach’s devotion to Anna Magdalena and their affectionate relationship is evidenced, from the very beginning of their marriage, by the two Clavier Books of 1722 and 1725 dedicated to her. The second continued to be filled until the early 1740’s with early compositional attempts of their young son Johann Christian among the later entries. Around 1741, Anna Magdalena herself copied into it the Aria of the Goldberg Variations, apparently one of her favorite pieces. Unfortunately, as the album has survived in a dreadfully mutilated state, with only twenty-five leaves remaining out of about seventy to seventy-five, the precious document provides information that is more suggestive than exhaustive about the couple’s intimate and serious musical companionship.

Although Anna Magdalena in all likelihood continued her professional singing career after 1725, she would have done so on a greatly reduced scale. Opportunities existed in Leipzig within the Collegium Musicum series and in private homes, and elsewhere when she accompanied Bach on various trips, especially to her home-town Weissenfels and perhaps also to Dresden. Within the family circle, there were unlimited performance possibilities. In his 1730 letter to Erdman, Bach proudly mentions that his children ‘are all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form an ensemble both vocaliter and instrumentaliter within my family, particularly since my wife sings a good, clear soprano, and my eldest daughter, too, joins in very well.’

Anna Magdalena fulfilled many roles over the years: companion, professional partner, assistant, keyboard student, and maybe also critic, but above all she mothered a large and steadily increasing family. In marrying Bach, she took on a widower with four small children ranging in age from eleven to six. She then gave birth to thirteen children over nineteen years. Only six of Anna Magdalena’s children outlived early childhood, as did four of Maria Barbara’s. Joy and sorrow always stood side by side, with experiences of hardship, illness and pain usually prevailing. Thus, Bach shared worries and much grief with both of his wives. After Bach’s death in 1750, Anna Magdalena remained in Leipzig with her three daughters, Catharina Dorothea, Johanna Carolina, and Regina Susanna. Next to nothing is known about their lives but the women seem to have eventually lived together in rather poor circumstances. Anna Magdalena lived on the Hainstrasse, apparently in an apartment at the house of the attorney Graff, where she died on February 27, 1760, at the age of fifty-nine.

Christoph Wolff – Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician; pages 217, 395, 396, 456

BWV 812: Minuet II – Christiane Lang