She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
An Australian academic Pauline Askin claims to have found evidence to suggest that the wife of Johann Sebastian Bach wrote several of the German composer’s acclaimed pieces.
With over 30 years of research and applying more recent training from forensic police, Associate Professor Martin Jarvis says he can clearly show that Anna Magdalena Wilcke, Bach’s second wife, wrote several of the manuscripts previously credited to her famous husband.
“I don’t doubt that the ‘cello suites’ are not written by Johan Sebastian,” Jarvis, who is also conductor of the Darwin Orchestra, told Reuters.
The self-styled music detective became suspicious about Bach’s work when he was a teenaged student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. While playing Bach’s “cello suites” he became convinced there was something wrong.
“In 2001, I deconstructed the ‘cello’ pieces and came up with 18 reasons why they weren’t written by Bach,” Jarvis said.
Over the years, he said he found two famous 1713 Bach manuscripts in Anna Magdalena’s handwriting.
“When you consider I found manuscripts that pre-date by seven years when she was supposed to have met him, you have to ask yourself what’s going on here,” Jarvis told Reuters.
His final breakthrough came when he obtained a copy of a manuscript. Applying forensic analysis, he examined it thoroughly and found the inscription “Ecrite par Madam Bachen” on the manuscript’s cover in the handwriting of a musician friend of Bach’s. The word means “written by,” not “copied by.”
“When you are looking for a fingerprint, to put it in a forensic sense, of how you might identify somebody, I found them,” Jarvis said.
“So you bring all these bits together and there seems to be overwhelming evidence that she was involved,” Jarvis said.
Bach married Anna Magdalena in 1721. He died in 1750.
Well-known conductor Valery Gergiev will give a major outdoor concert tonight in the capital of South Ossetia Tskhinvali. The performance would be “a requiem for those who died at the hands of the aggressors, for those who sacrificed their lives defending their homeland from a treacherous attack by Georgia”, Valery Gergiev said. You can see the long-suffering town and listen the great music performing by great musicians online at 18-00 PM.
