Bach: Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

Only a few are aware that Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, was a promising soprano who as a 20-year-old chose not to pursue a singing career when she married the widower Bach. Yet collections of their own and other compositions compiled by Bach and his wife in 1722 and 1725, which went down in history as the Notebook for Anna Magdalena, reveal Anna Magdalena to be quite a gifted musician and far more than just “Mrs. Bach”.