Sex, Death, and Minuets
Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks
9780226617701
9780226617848
Sex, Death, and Minuets
Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks
At one time a star in her own right as a singer, Anna Magdalena (1701–60) 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.
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.
336 pages | 29 halftones, 35 line drawings, 2 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2019
New Material Histories of Music
History: European History
Music: General Music
Reviews
Table of Contents
Note on Translations and Musical Examples
List of Figures
List of Musical Examples
List of Abbreviations
Prologue
List of Figures
List of Musical Examples
List of Abbreviations
Prologue
Chapter One Magdalena Mania
Chapter Two Music for Weddings and Beddings
Chapter Three Death Every Day: The 1725 Notebook and the Art of Dying
Chapter Four Fragment and Fantasy: Anna Magdalena Bach at the Organ
Chapter Five Bitter Bean and Loose Ließgen: On Coffee, Cantatas, and Unwed Daughters
Chapter Six A Widow’s Song
Coda The Minuet Sings
Chapter Two Music for Weddings and Beddings
Chapter Three Death Every Day: The 1725 Notebook and the Art of Dying
Chapter Four Fragment and Fantasy: Anna Magdalena Bach at the Organ
Chapter Five Bitter Bean and Loose Ließgen: On Coffee, Cantatas, and Unwed Daughters
Chapter Six A Widow’s Song
Coda The Minuet Sings
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Table of Contents of Anna Magdalena Bach’s Notebooks
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Be the first to know
Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!