This Week in Classical Music-October 12, 2008

October 12, 2008

Anna Magdalena Script?

( Phoenix )
•Anna M wrote some of Bach's works?
•China bans some western works
•LA Phil creates new music commission fund

This week in classical music 10-12-08

It’s this week in classical music, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world, I’m Randy Kinkel.
An Australian musician and researcher thinks he can prove that several of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 1127 manuscripts were actually written by his second wife, Anna Magdelena. Dr, Martin Jarvis has used forensic analysis to examine the scores, bar by bar, looking at the musical structure and the handwriting and musical calligraphy, and has concluded that Bach’s wife, Anna Magdelena, long known as the copyist of Bach’s works, was actually the real author of some of Bach’s compositions. How does he know? Weel, in 2001, he decided to investigate the music's authorship and obtained a copy of an original 1727 manuscript of Bach’s first cello suite and began a painstaking examination which showed the structure and use of musical language did not fit with any of Bach's other work. The handwriting was also inconsistent…."I kept seeing the name J. S. Bach written in different ways. Yet I had been told that Bach's and Anna Magdalena's handwriting was so similar that you couldn't tell them apart," he said. He noted the inscription "ecrite par Madame Bachen" on the manuscript's cover - in the handwriting of a musician friend of Bach’s.” The words meant 'written by' not 'copied by'," he said. "The handwriting gives a context [to contradict] the lowly position that Anna Magdalena has been given in the history books," Dr Jarvis said. "Our understanding of her role has been mistaken."
Musicians and tour organizers have reported the China's culture ministry has banned public performances of Handel's Messiah and other major works of western religious music. According to a piece in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, a series of performances have been affected amid a tightening of political control over the arts and Christianity. The Academy of Ancient Music’s performance of The Messiah at the Beijing International Music Festival in October has been made “invitation only”; The Sinfonica Orchestra di Roma has dropped plans to play Mozart's Requiem in the Sichuan earthquake zone in honour of the dead and to raise money for survivors. It will play a programme of smaller, mostly non-religious works instead. At least one other performance of The Messiah has been cancelled and one of Verdi's Requiem is under threat. No comment from the ministry of culture on the reasons for the ban. Attitudes in the top leadership on religion and western culture in general are thought to be divided. Some regard an explosion in evangelical Christianity across the country as having social benefits, while others regard it as an alien threat to Communist Party control.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has created a special new-music fund in honor of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who steps down after 17 years at the end of the season. The fund will support the commissioning of new work, something Salonen has brought to the orchestra’s repertoire. The Esa-Pekka Salonen Commissions Fund was announced on Oct. 2, just before the season’s gala opening.
“I am completely overwhelmed and so absolutely proud of this organization - one that would conceive a gift of this kind,” said the 50-year-old Finnish conductor/composer. “I am struck with an enormous sense of gratitude for this special honor.” At the time of the announcement, the fund already had $1.6 million in it, from board members and devoted patrons.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website kbaq.org; be listening each week at this time for another update; and join me every weekday at noon for the Mozart Buffet, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries; I’m Randy Kinkel for This week in Classical Music, on 89.5 KBAQ, Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.