In 1721 a 20-year-old soprano employed at the princely court in Köthen married the court’s Kapellmeister, set to become the greatest composer of the age. As his second wife she married into a young family with four children, and a busy household filled with music. The music book that Johann Sebastian Bach presented to his new wife Anna Magdalena in 1722, and replaced more lavishly in 1725, treats us to a tantalizing glimpse inside this unique family, allowing us to sit beside Bach as a composer, teacher, husband and father. Over the years, these notebooks became a place for the family to share instructional exercises, favourite pieces – by Bach and other composers – to play or sing, early composition efforts from the children, and first versions of some of Bach’s more ambitious keyboard works.
What is usually presented as ‘the’ Anna Magdalena Notebook is a set of excerpts from the 1725 collection. The scholarship that informed the New Bach Edition in 1957 has been greatly developed and expanded since then.
Now, for the first time, Edition Peters presents a new Urtext edition of the Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach.
- Contains all the material from the 1722 and 1725 notebooks together in one volume, in the original landscape format
- Edited by pre-eminent Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, Harvard Professor and former Director of the Leipzig Bach Archive
- Represents the very latest in Bach scholarship, reflecting up-to-the-minute research on texts, authorship and copyists
- Extensive preface, detailed critical commentary, and beautifully engraved notation
- Hardcover clothbound edition with gold embossing
- Printed in Köthen and bound in Leipzig – the home of Bach and the home of Edition
- Peters – this cutting-edge, premium modern edition’s journey to your library retraces the Bach family’s own move from the princely town to the city
This premium edition offers a truly best-in-class publication.