Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725)

“A mendicant woman from the Haynstrasse, aged 59 years, Anna Magdalena, née Wilckin, widow of Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, cantor at the St. Thomas School” – thus reads the entry dated 29 February 1760 in the Leipzig "Ratsleichenbuch” (City Register of Deaths) for a woman whose name has become known throughout the world thanks to the two music books put together for her by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach himself opened the book with two of the large Partitas subsequently published in the first part of the "Clavierübung”; the rest of the contents was determined by Anna Magdalena. On the whole, these are short pieces of “galanterie”: minuets, polonaises, marches, compositions by the elder children and attempts by the younger ones, little pieces, which she copied out of the family guest book and which had been written there more or less as tokens of friendship by the many visitors in the Bach home.