Scribe or Copyist

[née WilckeWülcke]

Member of Bach family.

(b Sept 22, 1701, Zeitz; d Feb 17, 1760, Leipzig). German singer, keyboard player, music copyist, teacher, and the second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach. Surviving contemporary documents, including those signed by her, use a German feminine form for her married surname, ‘Bachin.’ She began her career as a well-paid musician; in various documents she is called ‘princely court Singer’ (fürstl[liche]. Sängerin); ‘chamber musician’ (Cammer-Musicantin) and ‘Frau Capellmeisterin’ (Madame Music-Director); she was an integral collaborator in the Bach family’s musical success. Later in her life, she acted as music manager of Leipzig church services and as sales agent for influential musical works such as her husband’s Art of Fugue (bwv1080) and the Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (part 1, 1753), a keyboard treatise by her stepson Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Anna Magdalena Wilcke was born into a family of musicians. Her mother, Margaretha Elisabeth Wilcke née Liebe (...

(Florian)

Member of Elssler family

(b Eisenstadt, bap. May 3, 1769; d Vienna, Jan 12, 1843). Austrian music copyist, son of Joseph Elssler. Elssler himself said that he was Haydn’s personal copyist and valet for 22 years until the composer’s death (i.e. from 1787; in ‘Tages-Ordnung’, see below); however, he was presumably his valet only from the early 1790s (Schmieder, 1937, p.426). The widely held assumption that Elssler could have entered Haydn’s service before 1787 clearly results from false attribution: the manuscripts of the so-called Esterházy copyist Anonymous 63 (Peter Rampl) were long thought to be Elssler’s, and Landon has proposed that Anonymous 48 and the young Johann Elssler were identical (Soundings, ii, 1971–2, p.15). Like other authentic copies, those definitely originating with Elssler bear no date, though for his there are some clues to chronology, for example the use for some manuscripts of English paper (Elssler accompanied Haydn on the second journey to London in ...

Member of Elssler family

(b ?Kiesling, Silesia, 1738/9; d Eszterháza, Oct 26, 1782). Prince Nikolaus Esterházy’s Austrian music copyist from August 1764 to October 1782. He was a friend of Haydn, who witnessed his marriage (1766) to Eva Maria Köstler (d 1806) and was godfather to all the children of this marriage. Joseph made fewer copies of Haydn’s works than his son Johann Elssler, but they are a no less valuable part of the source tradition of Haydn’s music; they occur particularly in the Esterházy collection at Budapest, and in Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt and St Florian (von Zahn, 1988, pp.140ff). The magnificent manuscript volumes of baryton trios dedicated to Prince Esterházy deserve special mention, as does Joseph Elssler’s role in the preparation of Haydn’s ‘Entwurf-Katalog’ (EK), which was begun about 1765 (facsimile in Larsen, 1941; further specimens in Landon, 1955...