Johann Sebastian Bach

Piano booklet for Anna Magdalena Bach

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.

The fingerings which have been added by Renate Kretschmar-Fischer represent a selection among many conceivable options. They have been chosen with a particular eye to the inspiration that this marvellous volume from Bach’s family circle can still impart to piano lessons today. In this sense, they also accommodate small hands searching for an ideal connection between physical dexterity, sensible voice-leading, and musical design.

Renate Kretschmar-Fischer studied in the master class of Conrad Hansen and was a scholarship holder at the Music Summer School in Bryanston (UK) where she worked with Arthur Schnabel, Monique Haas, Georges Enescu, Nadia Boulanger and Igor Stravinsky. For well over thirty years she taught as a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and was a jury member of numerous national and international competitions.