# is it true that Bach's wife wrote his greatest works?



## MusicFree (Jun 16, 2014)

http://www.newhistorian.com/bachs-wife-actually-composer-greatest-masterpieces/1969/

this is back in november 2014...but still interesting

what do you guys think?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Not this again, please.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

MusicFree said:


> http://www.newhistorian.com/bachs-wife-actually-composer-greatest-masterpieces/1969/
> 
> this is back in november 2014...but still interesting
> 
> what do you guys think?


Are you insane? Everyone knows women can't write music.

Geez!


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

> Jarvis' investigation began when he was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, when he himself was first playing the cello suites. *In his mind, these compositions were very different to the other pieces Bach wrote*, which aroused his suspicions.


This is not a promising beginning for his "investigation."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

This thesis has been roundly dismissed. There is no real evidence for it whatsoever. Just why the BBC broadcast a programme on this is beyond me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

MusicFree said:


> http://www.newhistorian.com/bachs-wife-actually-composer-greatest-masterpieces/1969/
> 
> this is back in november 2014...but still interesting
> 
> what do you guys think?


Yes, and Einstein's wife really came up with the relativity theory, and Henry David Thoreau's wife brought him pies and did his laundry for him while he was 'roughing it' out on Walden Pond.

Men without women, and what do they do? They start armies.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

And Beethoven's wife...well, never mind. :lol:


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Yes, wives — where would Adam be without Eve?

Try the fruit, she said; it's good to eat, she said . . . OY VEY!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> And Beethoven's wife...well, never mind. :lol:


...And Aaron Copland's wife...and Henry Cowell's wife...John Harbison's wife...Charles Wourinen's wife...Ravel's wife...Debussy's wife...never mind.:lol:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

...and John Williams' wife used to play Lazer Tag with him...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> ...And Aaron Copland's wife...and Henry Cowell's wife...*John Harbison's wife*...Charles Wourinen's wife...Ravel's wife...*Debussy's wife*...never mind.:lol:


Two of these don't fit with the others....










And for your information Wuorinen is in fact married...just not to a woman!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Interesting theory. I keep an open mind but in the absence of convincing evidence other than circumstantial conjecture and broad opinion, I would hesitate.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Actually all of his music was composed by Shakespeare.

When playing organ in England one summer, he found a trunk with all this music that was composed by Shakespeare. He just put his name on the manuscript and took credit for it.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

No!
Stupidly I can't have a one word answer so I've tagged on this superfluous tripe.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

Classical music conspiracy theories - Now that's a subject that needs looking into. Lots of potential there. I hope the History Channel is working on it. A good way to introduce classical music to the legions of moronic couch-potatoes who watch the History Channel.

An obvious choice for the first episode - Who killed Mozart?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Metairie Road said:


> I hope the History Channel is working on it.


Nah! They're trying to work on 'What happened to the Aussie's first innings at the Nottingham test?' ..... but they're struggling to get a one hour programme out of it :devil:


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Metairie Road said:


> Classical music conspiracy theories - Now that's a subject that needs looking into. Lots of potential there. I hope the History Channel is working on it. A good way to introduce classical music to the legions of moronic couch-potatoes who watch the History Channel.
> 
> An obvious choice for the first episode - Who killed Mozart?


If this were ever featured on the History Channel I think we all know what they'd claim:

Who *REALLY* wrote Bach's music?


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Were The JS Bach Works That Were Actually Written By Bach's Second Wife Actually Written By His First Wife?

...whoops, wrong thread

Was Jack the Ripper actually the Loch Ness Monster?


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I just did a skim-binge through all of the Bach cantatas and in my opinion she wrote all of the stuff I didn't like.


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## Chipomarc (Jul 18, 2015)

How often do you guys wake up in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack over Bach's 'Goldberg Variations, no. 26' decision to change the time signature in the middle of a measure (at the beginning of the excerpt, the lower staff is in 3/4, the upper in 18/16) :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Purely on stylistic grounds, I think it more likely they were composed by his sister, Fanny.


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## MoatsArt (Jul 18, 2015)

It is common knowledge that Bach's dog, "JS Bark", was responsible for the majority of his ostensible output. It is only the remaining few works that can be attributed to his wife with any certainty. In an odd twist of the laws of probability, the works by JS Bark are still yet to be written, as he is a time-travelling dog from the year 2650. This makes writing any scholarly articles about the whole situation quite problematic due to the grammatical issues relating to tenses.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

I'm writing my thesis on how it was JS Bach who actually gave birth to CPE Bach.

My suspicion was first raised when I realised that CPE was born SEVEN YEARS before he met Anna Magdalena.

Obviously there will be a backlash from "the establishment".


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## Guest (Aug 8, 2015)

Interesting how in the series of jokes, the composers mentioned were always men, so it was always their wives this and that. Careless too, with Wourinen's wife actually being a husband....

So what about it? What about Clara Schumann's husband? What was he up to? And Alma Mahler's husband? What's more, what about Judith Weir's husband or Diana Salazar's husband? Or Jennifer Higdon's husband? Oh wait. The Wourinen effect has entered into it.

But really. Since the husbands of female composers are men, then it's really likely that all of the compositions by these women were actually written by their husbands.

And the lesbians? Well, obviously, they had to find other men to write their music for them. Stands to reason. Girls can't write music. Who are these shadowy male figures who write music for lesbian composers? There's your History Channel material for ya!!


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Yep. Totally true.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

No, it's not true - a wife cannot, by definition, be a "he".


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## Foodlover79 (Aug 8, 2015)

And the Boulangers? Darn, they were wives of no one...


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> I just did a skim-binge through all of the Bach cantatas and in my opinion she wrote all of the stuff *I didn't like*.


How did you manage to find something you didn't like in those 60-odd discs?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

She did produce more composers for the Bach fold.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

starthrower said:


> She did produce more composers for the Bach fold.


Is that mentioned in Richard Dawkins' "The Composing Gene"?


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## PierreN (Aug 4, 2013)

Metairie Road said:


> An obvious choice for the first episode - Who killed Mozart?


Constanze Mozart likely killed him because she couldn't stand anymore his taking credit for all her best works.


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## Metairie Road (Apr 30, 2014)

> Constanze Mozart likely killed him because she couldn't stand anymore his taking credit for all her best works.


Nah. For my money it was Count Franz von Walsegg who had Mozart bumped off.

Best wishes
Metairie Road


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Wait a minute...could it be that the "immortal beloved" wrote Beethoven's greatest works too?


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

Look, I haven't wanted to confess this, but I can see you are on to me. 
I actually wrote most of Bach's music, and all of Beethoven. That tired me out for a while, but Mahler is really me. And Stravinsky. 
And by the way, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Steatopygous said:


> Look, I haven't wanted to confess this, but I can see you are on to me.
> I actually wrote most of Bach's music, and all of Beethoven. That tired me out for a while, but Mahler is really me. And Stravinsky.
> And by the way, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you.


Wow!!!?!!!??!

I'm going to give you a blank check and tell you to write the greatest piece of music ever, with no deadline. There's no way I could possibly end up the worse in this bargain.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Is it true that Bach's wife wrote his greatest works? *

No. But she did sign the checks.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

The Earl of Oxford wrote Bach's works. A poor uneducated smelly commoner like Bach can't have had knowledge of all that theology, the way a noble man would. The best in the arts must come from the best in breeding, obviously.


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