Scholar ascribes new role to Bach's wife

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/10/04/Scholar_ascribes_new_role_to_Bachs_wife/UPI-32681223172998/

Scholar ascribes new role to Bach's wife
Oct. 4, 2008

MELBOURNE (UPI) -- An Australian researcher says some of the works attributed to classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach may have been composed by his second wife.

Martin Jarvis -- conductor of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and a teacher at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territories -- said he became interested in the great German's work as a 19-year-old viola student in London in 1971. While he was playing one of Bach's cello suites, he decided the music did not sound Bach-like.

He was told that Bach's original was long gone, with only a copy made by his wife, Anna Magdalena Bach.

More recently, Jarvis has become a musical forensic investigator. He did a detailed examination of many Bach scores, looking at handwriting and the musical writing -- and says he believes Anna Magdalena was more than just a copyist for her husband.

Jarvis' musical investigation earned him an invitation to speak at the International Conference on the Forensic Sciences in Melbourne.