Bach JS - Music In The Bach Household - Peter Schreier

 

 

... it shows that Johann Sebastian Bach first of all dedicated to his wife important parts of his keyboard compositions, and that she actively participated in her husband's work, her writing was for long confused with his. She certainly was able to play, and she also transcribed (e.g the six soli for violin alone). Both notebooks, one to a less extent, one to a greater, subsequently became a manuscript collection of keyboard pieces which, for whatever reason, always had to be available as "instructional pieces" the motives for the items were tuition in playing, thoroughbass and composition, but also a predilection for what was specially successful or useful for domestic prayers. The present recording seeks to put these motives into effect. Chorales and sacred arias are performed as solos and as four-part movements, as is suggested by the model of the two versions of "Dir, dir Jehova will ich singen", certainly this aria owes its two-fold setting to its extraordinary beauty. Occasionally father Bach lent a helping hand in trying out a composition, the bass of the Tobacco song is by him. A simple minuet (Bwv Anh 132) is the thematic point of departure for the celebrated aria "Frohe Hirten eilet, ach eilet" in the Christmas Oratorio. Bach's pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola reports that Johann Sebastian "often played the six violin solos without bass, on the clavichord", certainly a procedure he had heard in domestic music-making in the cantor's home. Most remarkable is the version of the aria "Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen" - which Anna Magdalena completely adapted to her personal needs. She transposed it from the original key to G major, leaving out almost all the ritornellos - to our purist ears a scarcely conceivable interference that Johann Sebastian must nevertheless have tolerated. From the inventory of his estate that was prepared on his death can be seen which musical instruments were available in the house, and these provide the model for the instrumentation on our record, only the Lautenwerck (lute-harpsichord), such as Bach had had built around 1740 by the organ-builder Zacharias Hildebrand could not be provided. (excerpt from booklet)

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