I thought she had 13 sons... Sent from my iPhone. John Mardinly 408 921 3253
> On Mar 1, 2015, at 12:09 PM, "howard posner" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mar 1, 2015, at 9:32 AM, Rainer <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Has any lute-netter in Germany or Switzerland seen "Written by Mrs. Bach" on >> 3SAT yesterday evening? >> >> A certain Martins Jarvis claims that Anna Magdalena composed some of Bach's >> finest works. Very funny… > > That would be Martin Jarvis, not the British actor, but a professor at > Charles Darwin University (or Chuck D U, as the rappers call it) in > Australia. > > This has come up before on this list. Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, > was his copyist. Don’t ask me where she found the time, but I suppose when > you’re constantly dealing with a house full of children and you’re pregnant > 12 times in 25 years (that’s nine years of pregnancy), you need a hobby you > can do sitting down. > > The Jarvis theory is that her copy of the cello suites shows the sort of > errors and whatnot that are made when composing rather than copying. I’m not > kidding. (It's rather like my own theory that Beethoven was a talentless > hack, and the greatest composer in history was the typesetter who had to > decipher his illegible manuscripts; the difference is that I’ve never gone > pubic with it. Oops…) Cellist Steven Isserlis discusses (well, disses) the > “theory” (Jarvis’s, not mine) here: > > http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/oct/29/why-bach-wife-cannot-take-credit-for-his-cello-masterwork > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
