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Classical Fact

In 1722, Johann Sebastian Bach presented his second wife, Anna Magdalena, with the first of what would become a trilogy of manuscripts containing sketches and completed pieces of music. The "Little Keyboard Books", also known as the "Anna Magdalena Notebooks" are now at the Berlin State Library and Yale University. Bach used the works contained in the pages of these notebooks to teach the musically gifted members of his immediate family. The notebooks also became a valuable teaching resource outside the Bach household. They were a basis of music education in eighteenth-century Germany, and their influence is felt in music classrooms to this day.