A new article published by the Telegraph is going to make us think twice about famous musicians, sexism and history…. When you think about the past, and I am talking about centuries ago, you can only name male musicians, simply because female artists were not allowed to even exist. It’s clear that women were raising children and doing other very domestic tasks, and were not allowed to express themselves.
However, what Martin Jarvis, professor of music at Charles Darwin University in Australia, has discovered may change our vision of the past. He has spent years compiling evidence, going through many manuscripts and doing serious handwriting studies, and he is now able to prove that Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, was actually the composer of some of the famous musician’s major works, including the Cello Suites. Jarvis will present all his evidence, like his analysis of ink and writing style, in a new documentary (‘Written by Mrs Bach’) which will also include analysis of the composer’s signature by an American forensic scientist.
How do they know this actually? ‘Researchers found the handwriting did not have the “slowness or heaviness” usually attributed to someone who is merely copying, but was likely to have flowed from her own mind’, and ‘they also pointed to numerous corrections to scores written in her hand, signaling she is likely to have been composing it as she went along.’
I don’t know how everyone feels about this but it is huge for me, if this woman has stayed in the shadow of her husband for centuries because of society’s sexism, imagine how many have had the same fate? Who knows how far this goes, who knows how many works, now attributed to Bach, Anna Magdalena did compose or at least participate to? The movie argues that she wrote the Cello suites, the aria from the Goldberg Variations, and even the first prelude of the Well-tempered Clavier: Book I, for all these Bach’s aficionados out there.
There is no way to tell, but I would bet there have been a lot of Anna Magdalenas during history, but it will take time to make people accept this. Jarvis said that ‘people felt threatened and embarrassed by his revelation’ even being ‘frightened of ridicule if they publicly back him’, and we are in 2014!
At the risk to play my feminist card, I’d say that women’s work and contribution has always been hijacked by men, there are many examples everywhere, people argue that many paintings attributed to masters were actually the work of their female partners, models, students. One of the most famous examples in science is illustrated by Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the model of DNA being ignored by history, while the Nobel Prize went to Watson and Crick.
Come on, do you really believe there were only Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Handel… and no women at all composing at the time? Even now there are many more men than women in music, as the independent noticed that famous classical orchestra only consisted of 7 % to 40% females in 2012. And don’t be fooled by the Adele, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and other Lorde, the majority of musicians and singers are still males. According to this article by the Guardian, ‘66% of people working in the music industry are male’ and ‘when it comes to promotion and management work the figure rises to 77%’…
I was actually surprised to see how many comments following articles about Anna Magdalena Bach were very sexist and were making fun of the author of the study… What have we accomplished since the 18th century? Not much!
