December 3rd – In the interests of research, with an eye on the fist of vitriol and with tongue firmly in cheek, I’m a believer in the suggestion
that women can indeed multi-task…unless one of those tasks is talking.
Men don’t need to multi-task for two reasons.
1) In the main, because they’re men, they have the luxury of
being able to concentrate on the task in hand without the interference of
children to care for, washing to get done, ironing to get done, cooking to get
done, sewing to get done, cleaning to get done…and so multi-tasking becomes
unnecessary…but if it were;
2) Men have the luxury of being partnered by a woman who will
do all those other things for them (because they can, so freeing up their
concentration for the task in hand; self-fulfilling lifestyle methinks.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a hell of a composer and a very
busy one too. 224 cantatas, 7 motets, 11 liturgical works, 12 passions, 2
secular cantatas, 192 chorals, 92 songs, 5 organ sonatas, 61 toccatas and
fugues, 9 misc. organ pieces, 8 organ concerti, 187 choral preludes, 8
partitas, 29 sinfonias, 4 four duets, 6 English suites, 8 French suites, 9
misc. suites, 6 keyboard partitas, 15 suite movements, 47 well-tempered clavier
works, 49 preludes, 20 fuguettes, 8 part-sonatas, 6 concerto, 16 keyboard
arrangements, 7 variations, 21 solo instrument pieces, 15 violin works, 4
sonatas for keyboard, 8 flute sonatas, 5 trio sonatas, 9 violin concertos, 8
Brandenberg concertos, 14 harpsichord concertos, 6 orchestral suites, 7 canons,
2 contranuptuals, 16 miscellaneous works, 30 Neumiester chorals and 60
‘various’ works.
That’s a rough grand total of 1253 works; he started
composing when he was 15 and died at age 65 so that’s 50 years of active
composing which means he wrote around 25 compositions a year…or put another
way, one composition per fortnight... There’s single-minded concentration for
you and it’s for sure he’d not have had the chance to concentrate on the task
in hand if he’d have to be forever breaking off to wash up or feed the kids;
then think of how much poorer the world of music would be. To keep his output
high, J. S. Bach married twice. His first wife died (now then, now then!) I distinctly
heard someone mutter;
Yeah, of hard work
Just keep those feminist thoughts inside your pretty little
heads, thank you; and so, in December 1721 (17 months after losing his first
wife) he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, a talented and accomplished singer. Of
course, her career had to go on the back-burner when she married Herr. Bach, I
mean, one talent in the household is plenty and anyway she had to get on with
raising the four surviving children (out of seven) from Herr. Bach’s first
marriage.
Composition and music were J. S. Bach’s only passion (well,
when I say only, I mean, OK, so seven children by his first wife…OK, I’ll give
you that…OK, OK, I’ll re-write; Christ you’re a pedantic load of buggers).
Composition and music were J. S. Bach’s main passion (better?) and now, with a
settled homelife, he could get on with it. He channelled all his energies into
composing…well most of his energy; whatever was left over he used to sire 13
children by Anna (seven of whom died very young). This is where Frau Bach’s
multi-tasking abilities came to the fore as she had to care for the ten
surviving children and help Herr. Bach with his compositions, particularly
those that had voices involved in them (I mean, come on, she was a singer…no
good having a dog and barking yourself, is there; and I’ll bet she enjoyed the
break from kiddie-minding)
During her life Anna, Mrs. Bach, also composed several works
herself (she’s even been posited as the composer of the famed, Six Cello Pieces which have been
credited to her husband) as well as being involved the vocal orchestrations for
Herr. Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
obviously utilising her multi-tasking skills well between all that washing and
cooking…but multi-tasking only gets you so far.
After being the main support for her husband, thereby
allowing him the single-minded time to concentrate on his composing by taking
on all other house and home duties for 29 years, following Herr. Bach’s death
his sons, who Anna had raised, fell out and left Frau Bach alone with three
daughters (one of them from Herr. Bach’s first marriage). She fell increasingly
on hard times but no one from the family would support her and she died,
destitute, ten years after her husband. She was buried in an unmarked pauper’s
grave and as if that wasn’t enough even that meagre, unmarked plot was wiped
out when the Allies bombed the church in 
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