Stille, Tod und Liebe: songs for Anna

Three are the music notebooks we have preserved from Johann Sebastian Bach’s household: the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1720), the oldest of his sons, and two books (1720/1725) that the composer dedicated to his second wife, the young Anna Magdalena, who he married in 1721.

The Klavierbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach (1725) opens with autograph copies of the Partitas in a minor and e minor. They are followed by a compilation of pieces by several authors, together with some other pieces by Bach.

A large number of the short instrumental pieces and some vocal arrangements have their origin in Bach’s contemporaries and sons. There we can see a post-baroque style, reflection of the new musical taste during Bach’s lifetime, so different from his own music.

Some of the compositions included in the Klavierbüchlein were devoted to fulfill the needs of Anna Magdalena as amateur singer, and others, no doubt, had a place in the musical training of the children. In any case, they represent a selection of the music that sounded in the domestic environment of Bach’s family.

Departing from this idea, Recóndita Armonía has selected, reorganized and adapted vocal and instrumental pieces from the Klavierbüchlein, and combined them with other compositions by J.S. Bach, some of them of high technical demands (Sonata for viola da gamba in g minor), as a reminiscency of the original inclusion of master pieces such as the partitas.

Stille, Tod und Liebe (serenity, death and love) becomes then a modest tribute to the music performed within the walls that took in some of the greatest musical genious of the 18th century.

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who said...

"[Beethoven] went in his usual (I might say, ill-bred) manner to the instrument as if half-pushed, picket up the violoncello part of Steibelt's quintet in passing, placed it (intentionally?) upon the stand upside down and with one finger drummed out a theme of the first few measures. Insulted and angered, he improvised in such a manner that Steibelt left the room before he finished, would never again meet him and, indeed, made it a condition that Beethoven should not be invited before accepting an offer."

F.W. Wegeler & F. Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Koblenz, 1838)

"[...] the king [Charles II of Spain] eagerly asked me if I had heard Matheuchi sing, when he would come, and if he was impertinent or not, and as if there were no army in the world, nor Milanese state, completely forgot such matters, but this is not surprising given that all his ministers, or most of them, have had the same experience [...]"

Letter of Carlos Felipe Spinola y Colonna to the duke of Medinaceli (1698)

"I was in St Alban's Abbey and I was intrigued: they were building a new organ and I went up to - I suppose it must have been - the verger and I said, 'Is the organ baroque?' And he said, 'No, it's in perfectly good order.'"

John Tavener, The Music of Silence, A Composer's Testament (Faber ISBN 0571200885)

"The Second Harpsichordist will go only to the last rehearsal, sending the Third One to the previous, who won't read more high Clef than Soprano, trying to play without using the Thumbs, don't follow the Numbers, play always the Sixth, don't meet up with the Master, and close all the second Parts of Arias with major thirds, etc. etc. etc."

Benedetto Marcello, Il teatro alla moda (1720)