Carnet d’Anna Magdalena Bach (pièces anonymes)
Several pieces in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach carry no composer’s name: marches, polonaises, a musette and minuets copied out for music-making in the Bach household.
Anna Magdalena Bach, a singer and Johann Sebastian’s second wife, received two music books: the first in 1722, the second in 1725. The second notebook is a family collection into which several hands copied keyboard pieces, songs and chorales over the years.
It contains works by Bach himself, but also by François Couperin and Christian Petzold, and pieces that may be by his sons, notably Carl Philipp Emanuel. Many carry no composer’s name at all: the Musette in D major (BWV Anh. 126), the March in E-flat major (BWV Anh. 127) and several polonaises and minuets are among them.
That is why the catalogue of Bach’s works (BWV) places them in the “Anhang”, the appendix reserved for works of doubtful attribution. Their exact author remains unknown, and it is more honest to present them as anonymous.
These short, dance-like and well-built pieces have become teaching classics: they introduce two-voice reading, the Baroque dances (minuet, polonaise, march, musette) and the first ornaments.