What do you get someone for their 300th wedding anniversary? That’s like gold times six.
It was on this date in 1721 that Johann Sebastian Bach, 36, married Anna Magdalena Wilcke, 20. She was Bach’s second wife, a soprano at the princely court of Anhalt-Cöthen. Bach had been working there as Kapellmeister since December 1717. His first wife, Maria Barbara Bach, died 17 months earlier.
In 1723, the Bachs moved to Leipzig when Johann Sebastian was hired as Cantor at the Thomasschule (St. Thomas School). Anna Magdalena continued to sing professionally, and the couple’s shared interest in music contributed to a happy homelife. Bach wrote a number of works dedicated to her and assembled two volumes of “Anna Magdalena Bach Notebooks.”
In addition, Anna Magdalena organized musical evenings at the Bach home, with the participation of family and guests, making their house a center of attraction. Together, they raised the children from Bach’s first marriage, alongside 13 of their own. Seven of these died in infancy or childhood.
After Bach’s death in 1750, Anna Magdalena continued to care for their two youngest daughters and her stepdaughter. Increasingly, she became dependent on charity and handouts from the Leipzig city council. Ultimately, she had to rely on public begging to survive.
The only one of their sons to provide any financial assistance was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach – and he was a child of Bach’s first marriage. Anna Magdalena died on the street, penniless, in 1760, and was buried in a pauper’s grave.
Roughly 35 years earlier, in markedly happier times, Bach unveiled his latest cantata, the Cantata No. 62, “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” (“Now come, Savior of the heathens”), on the first day of Advent, which fell on this date in 1724. The work was inspired by an Advent hymn of Martin Luther.
Bach would compose over 200 such cantatas in Leipzig, largely in fulfillment of his duties as Cantor at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church). The premiere of his Advent cantata coincided with Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena’s “leather anniversary.”
The ”Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook”
Gustav Leonhardt in a very silly wig, in “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlRK1VzKGns
Advent cantata “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” BWV 62
IMAGE: “Bach with His Family at Morning Devotion” (1870), by Toby Edward Rosenthal