Blogs Are Abuzz for Anna Magdalena Bach - Did She Compose the Cello Suites?

Close-up of title page to the first volume of Singende Müse an der Pleisse, a collection of strophic songs published in Leipzig in 1736, by “Sperontes”, Johann Sigismund Scholze. JS and Anna Magdalena Bach may be the couple pictured.Martin Jarvis decided, as a 19-year-old violist, that the famed cello suites didn’t sound like J.S. Bach.

“Certainly in the first suite, the movements are short and very simple, in comparison with the first movement of the violin works. And I couldn’t understand why,” he said. 

After years of forensic study, the conductor and professor at Darwin University finally discovered this alleged slam-dunk: a manuscript with the notation “Ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse” which says “written by the wife of Bach” rather than “copied.”

We already knew of Anna Magdalena’s role as a copyist. Obviously neither that word, nor the recognizable handwriting of Anna Magdalena would cut it as proof given her known role as a copyist — but in news reports Dr. Jarvis mentions “18 reasons why they weren’t written by Bach.” (Specifics would be great.)

There are several mentions on blogs, but none provides additional detail or (yet) a good discussion beyond what’s in the most detailed Reuters article. Over at the Museum of Hoaxes, there’s a little more detail, with a mention of “a musicologist from Sweden who has used statistics to conclude the cello suites did not fit into Bach’s other works.” The Telegraph did find a Belfast Bach Scholar who described the findings as “highly important.” Unfortunately they also have some skeptical quotes from academic Stephen Rose and cellists Julian Lloyd Webber and Steven Isserlis:

Stephen Rose, a lecturer in music at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “It is plausible that she corrected, refined and revised many of his compositions, although there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites.”

Cellists who have performed the Suites extensively remained skeptical. Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that the compositions were “stylistically totally Bach” and that “many composers had appalling handwriting, which meant better copies would naturally have been made, with the originals then discarded”.

Steven Isserlis, the cellist, who is working on a recording of the Suites, said: “We can’t say that it is definitely not true, in the same way that we can’t prove that Anne Hathaway did not write some of Shakespeare’s work, but I don’t believe this to be a serious theory.”

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  Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites Arranged for Guitar Volume 1

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  Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites

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  Yo-Yo Ma

Given that Anna Magdalena did serve as a copyist, it’s hard to imagine how a physical analysis of the manuscripts could prove her authorship — unless you could somehow place an original manuscript in a time and place where it literally couldn’t have been the work of Johann Sebastian. What’s really needed is a consensus among at least some Bach experts who are in a position to address whether the compositional technique and style of the suites might indicate Anna Magdalena’s role. Dr. Jarvis will be speaking at the New Zealand Forensic Science Society — not a peer-reviewed musical conference. (I could be misinterpreting the term forensic study here. Given that the details aren’t obviously accessible on the web, it could be what historians call manuscript studies — or it could branch out into some kind of scientific analysis of the musical choices reflected in the scores. The point is that no specific finding reported in the media comes close to justifying Dr. Jarvis’s thesis.)

According to his faculty profile, Dr. Jarvis presented on this topic at the 2002 Musicological Society Conference - Newcastle. His publications include:

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 2 The Musical Analysis” Stringendo Australia 2003
• “Did Johann Sebastian Write the Cello Suites?” Musical Opinion, UK, 2002
• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 1” Stringendo, Australia, 2002
• “The Significance of Anna Magdalena Bach”, Musical Opinion July/Aug 2005

I haven’t been involved in musical academe for many years and am not in a position to determine how peer-reviewed these publications are, so my apologies in advance if I’m wrong. But Musical Opinion, at least, is a classical music magazine. Stringendo seems to be the newsletter of the Australian Strings Association.  Sadly, it’s not online so we can’t assess the 2003 musical analysis.

Perhaps the last doubt-casting word comes from Jarvis himself:

“It doesn’t sound musically mature. It sounds like an exercise, and you have to work incredibly hard to make it sound like a piece of music,” he said.

Yes, the suites are hard. I never really mastered the last three as an advanced (but not performing-career-bound) college-level cellist.  And while the first three lie beautifully under the fingers in the congenial keys of G major, D minor and C major, it’s challenging to do them justice.

But the reasons have nothing to do with musical flaws. The cellist plays alone and must manage the pacing and large-scale momentum independently. Pianists are accustomed to this, but the unaccompanied cello repertoire is quite small — and many student cellists face this challenge in these pieces alone. An even bigger challenge is bringing out the contrapuntal underpinnings of the music while playing a single line. My teachers spent countless hours explaining how and why to “bring out the base line” etc. and only after learning music theory did I truly understand.

Enjoy these free YouTube performances and decide for yourself. And a hat-tip to Dan Perry for bringing this story to my attention.

• Pablo Casals - Suite #1, Sarabande
• Mischa Maisky - Suite #2, Prelude
• Mstlav Rostropovich - Suite #3, Prelude
• Sifei Wen - Suite #4, Prelude
• Diemerson Sena - Suite #5, Prelude
• Mstislav Rostropovich - Suite 6, Gavotte & Gigue

Comments

[Robert Berger]

This is all highly interesting. I used to play a transcription of the Cello suites for horn when i was active playing (I no longer am ), and when I was part of the "Music Under New York " program , an organized program for street musicians which gave them assigned venues and times to perform, I played these at locations such as Grand Central and Penn Station. They work very well in transcription for horn, and are very effective. The transcription was made by horn player Wendell Hoss, and may still be available.

[john gibbons]

It seems obvious to me, and any contrary "scholarship" to be de facto irrelevant, that the pieces are by the Great Bach. They are wholly Bachian in every way, and the G major suite's supposed (and exaggerated) simplicity derives from the same cataloguing tendency in Bach that informs the first prelude and fugue from WTC. If reliable scholarship were somehow to 'prove' that A. Mag. had composed it, I would merely wonder how such a bizarre and irreconciliable proof could exist contrary to palpable reality, I would chalk it up to the supernatural.

[Bonnie Gibbons]

I was a little reluctant to make that assertion, not because I won't go out on a limb but because of a possible "selection bias." I grew up playing the cello suites and they (along with the concerti grossi that are student orchestra staples) were the basis of my understanding of "what Bach sounds like," pretty much until I was an adult studying music more broadly. While I now know the great choral masterpieces, several cantatas, I don't really play the piano and consequently don't have that foundation in Bach's keyboard music, as John does, against which to measure my idea of what Bach sounds like. OK, having said that, the cello suites couldn't possibly have been composed by someone other than the composer of the violin partitas and sonatas, the Brandenburg concerti, the WTC, or the St. Matthew Passion. I just have less depth of familiarity to back up that opinion than John does.

[Bonnie Gibbons]

BTW the point of my post, and maybe I didn't make it emphatically enough, was to protest the coverage of this story as news. Dr. Jarvis has been saying this for years (not, apparently, in major, peer-reviewed literature) and now (cleverly) it's being used to drum up interest in the thesis and/or the forensics conference at which he is presenting. Based solely on the news coverage, the evidence would not pass the introductory musicological resource courses I took so long ago -- and the specific 18 points of proof aren't out there on the internet for us all to examine. This is a story because everyone loves forensic detective stories, because it's probably an interesting contrast to the kind of paper generally presented at forensics conferences, and because there are those who desperately want more great female composers, despite the fact their very historical rarity, itself, tells the story about the relative lack of opportunity for women in ages past to distinguish themselves musically.

[Richard Shubart]

Yup, I do believe that the Cello Suites translation for Horn is still available as my daughter bought them for me about ten years ago, and I wholeheartedly agree that they are a delight to play. I think I'll dig them out again and enjoy a run or two through Mr. Bach's great writing. Until proven otherwise, I'll believe that J.S. takes sole responsibility!

[Daniel McIntosh]

Having played the Suites for Cello for 45 years and now most (g,b,d,C and E) of the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin (on the cello, down an octave from the original) for the past 6 years I am convinced the Suites are not by J.S. Bach. They are imitation Bach. Unless someone finds the missing autograph no one can prove otherwise. One can only say in so many words that one thinks they are real Bach.

[Bonnie Gibbons]

Hi Daniel and thanks for commenting. I'd be interested in what leads to your opinion that it's "imitation Bach."

My main point is that the "evidence" presented in the news coverage was laughable and too many folks simply accepted the Jarvis thesis as fact. Even a complete manuscript in Anna's hand, predating all other MSS would prove nothing, unless you could somehow date/place it in such as way that preclude Johann's involvement.

BTW I wonder if the same thing is going on with this week's story that it was actually Paul Gaugin who cut Vincent van Gogh's ear off. I've just seen that story in passing and haven't had time to check it out.

On a slightly related note, when you say "nobody can prove it's not fake Bach" you could equally say "nobody can prove it's not real Bach" -- the classic inability to prove a negative cuts both ways. I would say that the more far-fetched explanation probably faces a greater burden of proof.

[Daniel McIntosh]

All my life I struggled to make the cello suites sound and play like JS Bach. But I can't escape the feeling that they sound like student pieces. A student of JSB, albeit a good one, trying many of the devices JSB uses in, well, say the Violin Sonatas and Partitas. To me the simple explanation for cello suites is that JSB did not write them. I feel at times like the little boy in The Emperors' New Clothes.

[Bonnie Gibbons]

Exactly, Allen. I myself did no such lookup when I posted this, because the flaws in the news coverage were even more fundamental than that. For example, we were never enlightened as to the "18 points of proof" other than 1. the use of a single word and 2. "You know, they never sounded like Bach to me." Nor had this stuff been peer-reviewed. The Reuters reporter did no independent work save asking some cellists and scholars what they thought, and bloggers picking up the story took it as gospel due to the appeal of the narrative.Then came the rush to bestow upon yet another victim of the patriarchy the credit she "deserved." That alone was my beef.

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