The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1Hughes, Rupert
History
The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1
Hughes, Rupert
Composers -- Biography
A little inheritance of fifty gulden (£4 or $20) aided the new couple.
But it is small wonder that we find Bach sighing later: "Modest as is my
way of life, with the payment of house-rent and other indispensable
articles of consumption, I can with difficulty live." A year after his
marriage, however, he was appointed court organist to the Grand Duke of
Weimar, a post he held nine years. Then he became musical director with
the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. In 1720 he went to Carlsbad with his
prince. When he returned to the bosom of his family, he found that his
wife was not only dead, but buried. Spitta imagines his grief as he
stood over the grave of the woman who had followed him from humility to
success and had not been able to wish him a last Godspeed. She had borne
him seven children, three of whom died; of the sons were Wilhelm
Friedemann, the father's favourite, and Karl Philipp Emanuel, whom the
world long preferred to Sebastian himself, and whom later times
spitefully underrate.
The shock of coming home to his dead wife did not annul Bach's powers,
and his next cantata with the suggestive title, "He that exalteth
himself shall be abased," shows a larger grasp of resource and power. In
the same year he made a sensation by his playing in Hamburg, winning the
high praise of the eminent organist Reinken (whom by the way Mattheson
accused of being "a constant admirer of the fair sex, and much addicted
to the wine-cellar of the Council").
For all they may say of the superior genius of Bach's first wife's
children, it was in his second wife that he seems to have found his more
congenial and appreciative helpmeet. Bach's father had remarried after
seven months of widowering, and lived two months longer. Bach waited
from July 7, 1720, to December 3, 1721, and he lived nearly thirty years
more. His new wife bore him thirteen children, six of them sons, none of
whom were remarkable musically, though their mother was more musical
than the mother of Bach's first children. Perhaps the newcomers thought
it time to take the name out of the rut.
Anna Magdalena Wülken was the daughter of the court trumpeter in the
ducal band at Weissenfels. She was twenty-one years old while Bach was
thirty-six. They were betrothed as early as September, 1721, and
together stood sponsor to the child of the prince's cellar-clerk. The
wedding took place at Bach's own house.
The new wife was very musical, a gifted singer and a devoted student.
She made the Bach home a little musical circle. It is evident that she
kept up her singing, for October 28, 1730, he wrote of his family, "They
are one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already
form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family,
particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my eldest
daughter joins in bravely."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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