There is no beginner pianist who has not come across the minuet in G major from Anna Magdalena Bach's 1725 sheet music during his introduction to the instrument. The name of the second wife of the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach has survived mainly thanks to her sheet music and the fact that she was a key figure in the composer's large family - she raised four stepchildren and thirteen children of her own. However, the author, David Yearsley, now looks at his heroine, Anna Magdalena, from a new perspective: she no longer views her life from the position of a caring mother and a loving wife who always provides her husband with a secure family background. The professor of music at Cornell University tries to present the role of women in the 18th century - with many period documents and thought experiments. From the book, we can get to know the families organized according to Puritan Lutheran principles, we get an insight into the ethics of the era, we learn what the ars moriendi (the art of dying) was, but the author also takes the reader to the lagzis of the time, where the groomsmen entertain the bridegrooms with smooth rhymes on their shields. great value. From the perspective of three centuries, Yearsley tries to think about what Anna Magdalena's fate would have been like as a successful singer in another era, but it also reveals the terrible fate of the girls and widows who remained in the party at that time - just like Anna Magdalena after her husband's death.
The numerous pictures and sheet music examples richly illustrate what is described. The music professor simultaneously wrote a scientific work with all its expectations, as well as an entertaining reading for the public about a woman whose life we ​​already know from numerous novels and plays, here we can meet her as an equal partner of one of the world's greatest composers.