(Princess Anna Amalie of Prussia; also: Amélie, Amalia)
born on November 9, 1723 in Berlin
died March 30, 1787 in Berlin
German composer; sister of Frederick the Great
300th birthday on November 9, 2023
Biography
When the first records with works composed by women appeared in the United States in the late 1970's, a boxed set entitled Woman's Work from 1975 included four marches by a certain Anna Amalie, Princess of Prussia. The youngest sister of Frederick the Great spent almost her entire life in the Berlin Palace; music remained her (perhaps) only love and dominated her daily life. At the age of 17 she took harpsichord and piano lessons, and at 21 she began composing. The desire to further develop her musical skills remained with her, and she also learned to play the organ and violin.
At the age of 35, she studied counterpoint with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a student of Bach’s, and focused primarily on the older composers due to his dominating conservative influence. However, it is an oversimplification to describe her – as can be read in encyclopedias – exclusively as an advocate of the old. She revealed herself to be at the vanguard of the pre-classical movement that would replace Baroque music when she wrote to her teacher in 1783: “In all things, a noble simplicity is far more difficult and lasting than any accumulated school knowledge.” After a long illness she died, almost blind and with paralyzed hands, in 1787.
Historians argue about whether Anna Amalie had a love affair with Baron Friedrich von der Trenck, a childhood friend of Frederick the Great. There is reason to believe that she did. Trenck, who was imprisoned by the monarch for years, wrote in his memoirs that a “noble lady from Berlin” loved him. According to her contemporary Countess Voss, Amalie fell into a “distressed and sickly state” immediately after her affair with Trenck.
Anna Amalie composed a cantata, chorales, songs and chamber music. Her marches should be viewed more as an exercise than as specifically composed for the military (lockstep had just been introduced in the army).
Anna Amalie admired the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and accumulated a large number of his manuscripts, including the scores of the Brandenburg Concertos, the St. Matthew Passion, and the Mass in B minor. This valuable collection constituted the beginning of Bach's cultivation during the Age of Enlightenment.
The tracts and books on music were moved out during the time of Nazi terror and are lost; the priceless collection of sheet music was preserved. After the end of the war, the library was split into an East and a West Berlin section; it was not until the 1990s that it could be brought together. Anna Amalie's fame today rests more on this collection than on her compositions. If she had been born not the sister but the brother of Frederick the Great, she would have enjoyed far more freedom to develop artistically.
(Text from 1998, translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2023.)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
Quotes
“...A person with a most problematic (and)...ambivalent nature ... she was quite inferior to her brother Frederick the Great in musical talent ... a certain counterpoint conceit is to be noted as the most striking trait of her musical personality.” (Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, the largest German-language encyclopedia of music)
“The listener shouldn’t need to tune out, one must constantly draw the listener in: and herein lies the whole and noblest art of the composer.” (Anna Amalie in a letter to her teacher in 1783)
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