In 1721 a 20-year-old soprano employed at the princely court in Köthen married the court’s Kapellmeister, set to become the greatest composer of the age. As his second wife she married into a young family with four children, and a busy household filled with music. The music book that Johann Sebastian Bach presented to his new wife Anna Magdalena in 1722, and replaced more lavishly in 1725, treats us to a tantalizing glimpse inside this unique family, allowing us to sit beside Bach as a composer, teacher, husband and father. Over the years, these notebooks became a place for the family to share instructional exercises, favourite pieces – by Bach and other composers – to play or sing, early composition efforts from the children, and first versions of some of Bach’s more ambitious keyboard works.
What is usually presented as ‘the’ Anna Magdalena Notebook is a set of excerpts from the 1725 collection. The scholarship that informed the New Bach Edition in 1957 has been greatly developed and expanded since then.

*Now, for the first time, Edition Peters presents a new Urtext edition of the Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach.

*Contains all the material from the 1722 and 1725 notebooks together in one volume, in the original landscape format.

*Edited by pre-eminent Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, Harvard Professor and former Director of the Leipzig Bach Archive.

*Represents the very latest in Bach scholarship, reflecting up-to-the-minute research on texts, authorship and copyists.

*Extensive preface, detailed critical commentary, and beautifully engraved notation.

*Hardcover clothbound edition with gold embossing.

*Printed in Köthen and bound in Leipzig – the home of Bach and the home of Edition Peters – this cutting-edge, premium modern edition’s journey to your library retraces the Bach family’s own move from the princely town to the city.