In Spring 2024, students in Dr. Christina Fuhrmann’s Seminar MUC 364 studied Anna Magdalena Bach, second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach. Anna Magdalena was a singer, copyist, keyboardist, teacher, mother, and, alongside Johann Sebastian, the head of a thriving musical household. Her life exemplifies the opportunities and challenges musical women faced in the eighteenth century. Students in the seminar studied various aspects of Anna Magdalena’s life, as well as the lives and careers of women musicians during this time period. For their final projects, Margie Raupp ’24 explored Anna Magdalena’s capabilities as singer, while Andrew Crans ’24 looked at the two “Anna Magdalena Bach Notebooks.” Emily Dyko ’24 detailed how influential women like Sara Levy helped preserve Johann Sebastian’s legacy, while Lacey Yacketta ’24 focused on how Johann Sebastian’s music can continue to appeal to listeners in transcriptions. Bonnie Vigil ’24 and Katie Ritzema ’25 put Anna Magdalena in context by highlighting the accomplishments of women composers of the time. Anna Magdalena has been in the news most prominently in recent years because of Dr. Martin Jarvis’s controversial theory—since disproven—that Anna Magdalena composed the cello suites. Jordan Blackburn ’24, Katherine Fisfis ’24, Brett Nickolette ’24, Erin Perry ’24, Anneke Van Slyke ’24, and Emma Wilansky ’24 produced creative videos, podcasts, and posters about this controversy.
In October 2024, Bach Printed Music Database has moved to its new home at “bachbib.bw.edu,” with help and support of Craig Kitko (Director of Digital Infrastructure) and Doug Harold (Senior Windows Administrator) at BWU.
Initially setup in November 2002 as a mirror service of Bach Bibliography in USA at “homepages.bw.edu/bachbib,” it has served Bach scholars for two decades from BWU. In 2012 Bach Bibliography was taken over by the Library of Bach-Archiv Leipzig where it is updated and maintained as one of their core online resources. Meanwhile the database at BWU is maintained and updated independently with special emphasis on printed sheet music of Bach’s works published during the long-19th century with the ultimate aim of identifying all different imprints of all editions of Bach’s works.
With this database you may be able to discover hitherto-unnoticed relationships of an imprint of one specific edition to others in various ways, for example other imprints of the same publication, the editor’s involvement with other publications, other publications by the same publisher, to name but three. The database also includes information such as reviews and advertisements which help us dating various imprints. With the data mining techniques offered you may be able to discover new meanings and implications.
For a fuller description of the project and its potential impact on scholarship, see Yo Tomita, “Veiled Aspects of Bach Reception in the long Nineteenth Century Exposed through a Macro-examination of Printed Music: with Particular Focus on The Well-Tempered Clavier,” Understanding Bach 7 (2012), 29-53.
