Anna Magdalena Bach (née Wilcke or Wilcken) (22 September 1701 – 22 February 1760) was the second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Anna Magdalena Wilcke was born at Zeitz, in the Electorate of Saxony, to a musical family. Her father, Johann Caspar Wilcke, was a trumpet player, and her mother, Margaretha Elisabeth Liebe, was the daughter of an organist. Little is known about her early musical education, but by 1721 she was employed as a singer and had likely known Johann S. Bach for some time.
Johann married Anna on December 3, 1721, 17 months after the death of his first wife, Maria Barbara Bach. Together they had 13 children from 1723 to 1742, 7 of whom died at a young age:
Their shared interest in music contributed to their happy marriage. She regularly helped him transcribe his music, and he wrote a number of compositions dedicated to her, most notably the two Notenbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach.[2] During the Bach family's time in Leipzig Anna Magdalena organized regular musical evenings featuring the whole family playing and singing together with visiting friends. The Bach house became a musical centrum in Leipzig.
After Bach's death in 1750, his sons came into conflict and moved on in separate directions, leaving Anna Magdalena alone with her two youngest daughters and her stepdaughter from Bach's first marriage. While they remained loyal to her, nobody else in the family helped economically.[3] Anna Magdalena became increasingly dependent upon charity and handouts from the city council; when she died on February 27, 1760, she was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave at Leipzig's Johanniskirche (St. John's Church). The church was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.
Recently, it has been suggested that Anna Magdalena Bach composed several musical pieces bearing her husband's name.[4] Associate Professor Martin Jarvis of the School of Music at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, claims that she wrote the famed six cello suites (BWV 1007–1012) and was involved with the composition of the aria from the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988),[5] a claim which is dismissed more recently by Yo Tomita.[6]
Her fictive autobiography "The Little Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" was written in 1925 by the English author Esther Meynell.[7] This sentimental narration of the family life of Bach is not based on any sources and is probably far from the personality of Anna Magdalena Bach.
A compilation of material about Anna Magdalena Bach has been published by Maria Hübner in 2005, "Anna Magdalena Bach. Ein Leben in Dokumenten und Bildern", completed by a biographical Essay of Hans-Joachim Schulze.[8]