Johann Sebastian Bach

by Christoph Wolff

  Bach was not totally incapacitated through much of the spring of 1750, but, as the Obituary relates, his eye troubles apparently became so serious and the pain so unbearable that

  he wished to rid himself of this by an operation, partly out of a desire to be of further service to God and his neighbor with his other spiritual and bodily powers, which were still vigorous, and partly on the advice of some of his friends, who placed great confidence in an oculist who had recently arrived in Leipzig. But the operation, although it had to be repeated, turned out very badly. Not only could he no longer use his eyes, but his whole system, which was otherwise thoroughly healthy, was completely overthrown by the operation and by the addition of harmful medicaments and other things, so that, thereafter, he was almost continually ill for full half a year.71

  Clearly, Bach was not ready to give up, and he possessed physical strength, psychic determination, faith in God, and great confidence in the most modern medical procedures. He offered himself as a patient to the famous English oculist Sir John Taylor, who in March 1750 came to the university town of Leipzig in order to lecture on and demonstrate his ophthalmological expertise and surgical skills. The first operation took place after March 28—when Taylor arrived in Leipzig—and before April 1, when the local newspapers reported:

  This Saturday past, and again last night, the Chevalier Taylor gave public lectures at the concert hall in the presence of a considerable assembly of scholars and other important persons. The concourse of people who seek his aid is astonishing. Among others, he has operated upon Capellmeister Bach, who by constant use of his eyes had almost entirely deprived himself of their sight, and that with every success that could have been desired, so that he has recovered the full sharpness of his sight, an unspeakable piece of good fortune that many thousands of people will be very far from begrudging this world-famous composer and for which they cannot sufficiently thank Dr. Taylor.72

  Taylor, a specialist in cataract operations, was well respected and by no means a medical charlatan. The operation performed on Bach seemed to have been successful, for the newspapers reported on April 4 that “his cures of the medico Dr. Koppen, of Capellmeister Bach, and of the merchant Mr. Meyer have been so particularly successful as to do him honor. The many patients who call upon him have caused him to postpone his departure until next Tuesday morning, when he proposes to leave for Potsdam, and to reach Berlin the following day.”73 As it turned out, however, the success was short-lived, as the operation had failed to produce the desired result. Between April 5 and 8 (Taylor’s departure), Bach underwent a second operation, which, as the Obituary states, failed; matters were made worse by “harmful medicaments and other things,” possibly including rubbing the eye with a brush and draining the eye and its surrounding area of blood, up to half a teacup full—treatments known to have been applied by Taylor.74 A bulletin issued in May 1750 by the Leipzig Faculty of Medicine expresses restrained criticism of Taylor’s operations,75 focusing on the three prominent patients mentioned in the April 4 newspaper report. Accordingly, the operations on Kopp and Meyer were at least partially successful, whereas Bach was “suffering from bouts of inflammation and the like.”76 Taylor, who later operated on Handel as well, reported in 1761 on the operation he had performed on Bach. His account, though not exactly self-critical, let alone flawless, is still illuminating, in spite of its beginning with unconsciously comical analogies:

  I have seen a vast variety of singular animals, such as dromedaries, camels, etc., and particularly at Leipsick, where a celebrated master of music, who had already arrived to his 88th [actually 66th] year, received his sight by my hands; it is with this very man that the famous Handel was first educated [erroneously taking Bach for Handel’s teacher Zachow], and with whom I once thought to have had the same success, having all circumstances in his favor, motions of the pupil, light, etc., but upon drawing the curtain, we found the base defective, from a paralytic disorder.77

  After the second operation, Bach’s entire physical system fell into disarray, and he was “almost continually ill”—not for full half a year, as stated in the Obituary, but for a quarter. Nevertheless, his acceptance of Johann Gottfried Müthel, who arrived in Leipzig on May 4, as a boarding student again evinces his hopes of getting better; indeed, he probably found some welcome distraction by working with a good private pupil. Presumably, Bach was completely blind from early April until mid-July. Then,

  ten days before his death his eyes suddenly seemed better, so that one morning he could see quite well again and could also again endure the light. But a few hours later he suffered a stroke; and this was followed by a raging fever, as victim of which, despite every possible care given him by two of the most skillful physicians of Leipzig, on July 28, 1750, a little after a quarter past eight in the evening, in the sixty-sixth year of his life, he quietly and peacefully, by the merit of his Redeemer, departed this life.78

  From this report, it seems that Taylor’s operation itself had not damaged Bach’s eyes but that the postoperative treatment and subsequent inflammations had affected his whole body, which in addition may have been weakened by untreated diabetes. The two skilled physicians who were brought in—surely including Professor Samuel Theodor Quellmaltz, head of the Faculty of Medicine and a distinguished surgeon and ophthalmologist—were apparently unable to reverse Bach’s decline.

  In the immediate aftermath of the stroke that hit him on July 20, Bach realized that his end was near. Two days later, on the Wednesday following the eighth Sunday after Trinity, his longtime father confessor, D. Christoph Wolle, archdeacon at St. Thomas’s, visited the cantor at his bedside and administered the sacrament. During his final week, Bach thought of his organ chorale “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” (When we are in the greatest distress), BWV 668. Having set the piece long before and knowing his hymnal better than most, he realized that its original sixteenth-century melody also used to be sung to the text of “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit” (Before your throne I now appear), a prayer hymn first published in 1646 for morning, midday, and evening use.79 He had originally composed “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” in Weimar for his Orgel-Büchlein and then expanded the twelve-measure chorale (BWV 641) to a setting of forty-five measures, under the same title (BWV 668). In this version, it belonged to the collection of large-scale organ chorales known as the “Great Eighteen,” which he revised later in Leipzig, mainly in the years 1739–42. The texts of the two hymns complement each other, so that the expressive character of Bach’s setting fits both equally well. But the text that went through Bach’s mind, in the face of near death, especially the first and last stanzas of the prayer hymn, may have redefined the setting and its function for a moment he had not anticipated earlier:

  Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit

  Before your throne I now appear,

  O Gott, und dich demütig bitt

  O God, and bid you humbly,

  wend dein genädig Angesicht

  turn not your gracious face

  von mir, dem armen Sünder nicht.

  From me, a poor sinner.

  Ein selig Ende mir bescher,

  Confer on me a blessed end,

  am jüngsten Tag erwecke mich,

  on the last day awaken me,

  Herr, daß ich dich schau ewiglich:

  Lord, that I may see you eternally;

  Amen, amen, erhöre mich.

  Amen, amen, hear me.

  We cannot reconstruct what actually happened on Bach’s deathbed, but the “notice” on the back of the title page of the posthumous first edition of The Art of Fugue, which incorporates the chorale under the heading “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein,” should not be taken literally: “The late Author of this work was prevented by his disease of the eyes and by his death, which followed shortly upon it, from bringing the last Fugue, in which at the entrance of the third subject he mentions himself by name, to conclusion; accordingly, it was wished to compensate the friends of his muse by including
the four-part church chorale added at the end, which the deceased man in his blindness dictated on the spur of the moment to the pen of a friend.”80 The chorale could not have been dictated on the spur of the moment because it existed before, apparently for quite some time. There must, nevertheless, be a kernel of truth in this notice.

  Although the pertinent source materials have not been completely preserved, the following picture emerges: Bach asked “a friend”—whose identity, beyond the fact that he must have been an organist, remains open81—to play for him, on his pedal harpsichord, the chorale “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein,” BWV 668, now hearing it as a setting of “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit.”82 Listening to the piece, he realized that it could benefit from some improvements in a number of contrapuntal, melodic, and rhythmic details. He then asked the friend to change the heading of the chorale to “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit” and dictated the changes deemed necessary in order for him to be ready to appear before his Creator’s throne. In this form, with the composer’s final edits, the chorale (BWV 668a) was entered as a fair copy by an unnamed copyist83 (possibly the same person who took Bach’s dictation) at the very end of the partial autograph manuscript that already contained, among other organ works, seventeen of the Great Eighteen chorales in revised form and the “Vom Himmel hoch” Variations.84 Not knowing this revised version but aware that Bach on his deathbed had tinkered with the piece, the editors of The Art of Fugue incorporated the earlier version (BWV 668), headed differently. The extant sources for this extraordinary organ chorale, in its three versions, indisputably verify the composer’s involvement, both spiritual and artistic, with the larger setting close to his end. They offer a true glimpse at Bach’s deep-rooted devoutness. At the same time, the emendations that elevate the final version, “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit,” from the earlier “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” represent a final instance of a lifelong striving for musical perfection.

  Johann Sebastian Bach died on July 28, a Tuesday, a little after 8:15 P.M. The funeral took place three days later. Following the custom for the death of a school colleague, the entire faculty and student body headed the funeral procession through the Grimma Gate as family, friends, and others followed the oaken casket.85 For the cantor, whose office had obliged him to participate in all funerals for twenty-seven years, the hearse was provided gratis and no fees had to be paid to the St. Thomas School. Other than that, no further details are known—nothing about a possible memorial service at St. Thomas’s or St. Paul’s or the music sung at the school when the casket was carried down from the cantor’s apartment and at St. John’s cemetery, where the body was buried on the south side of St. John’s Church.

  Nevertheless, we have indirect evidence that a piece from the Old-Bach Archive, the double-choir motet “Lieber Herr Gott, wecke uns auf “by Johann Christoph Bach, may have been sung at Bach’s funeral. Johann Sebastian owned a score of his ingenious uncle’s composition, dated December 1672, and a set of vocal parts, both copied by Christoph Bach’s father, Heinrich Bach of Arnstadt. Late in 1749 or in the spring of 1750, Johann Sebastian prepared a set of instrumental parts doubling the vocal parts. The extant sources not only document what appear to be among the latest samples of Bach’s handwriting,86 they also reveal that the ailing old man clearly had trouble writing: the lettering is unwieldy—uneven, stiff, disproportionately large, and disjunct. Bach also limited himself to writing the absolute minimum, inscribing the complete title only for the wrapper of choir I, writing the instrumental designation at the top of every part (Coro I: Violino 1–2, Viola, Violoncello, Organ; Coro II: Hautbois 1–2, Taille, Basson, Violone), indicating the transposing mode so that the G-minor work could be performed in E minor (tief Cammerthon, that is, low chamber pitch), and notating the clef followed by a few notes at the beginning of the first staff of each part—specifying just enough so that his assistant, Johann Nathanael Bammler, could copy the parts (see illustrations). Bach had decided on a supporting instrumental complement that required the participation of the whole school, that is, all four choirs (the only parallel case being the motet BWV 226 sung in 1729 at the funeral of Rector Ernesti). Though neither the time nor the occasion can be determined exactly, it is hard to imagine, considering the circumstances, that Bach would undertake such a project unless it meant a lot to him. Conceivably, then, feeling that his end was near and wanting to make deliberate contingency plans, he selected a work by his most distinguished ancestor that set to music a traditional prayer text whose words anticipated life after death:87

  Lieber Herr Gott, wecke uns auf,

  Dear Lord God, wake us up,

  daß wir bereit sein, wenn dein Sohn kömmt,

  so that we are prepared when Thy son comes,

  ihn mit Freuden zu empfahen

  to receive him with joy

  und dir mit reinem Herzen zu dienen

  and to serve Thee with a pure heart,

  durch denselbigen, deinen lieben Sohn,

  by the same, Thy dear son,

  Jesum Christum. Amen.

  Jesus Christ. Amen.

  No gravestone or other marker signified Bach’s final resting place—at least, none was extant by the mid-nineteenth century—but groups of St. Thomas choral scholars paid tribute to their great cantor every year on July 28 for more than a century after Bach’s death. It was they who established a tradition that the grave was located about six paces from the southern church door.88

  On July 31, the day of the funeral, at the Friday afternoon prayer service, an announcement was read from the pulpit of St. Thomas’s: “The Esteemed and Highly Respected Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, Court Composer to His Royal Majesty in Poland and Serene Electoral Highness in Saxony, as well as Capellmeister to the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen and Cantor in the St. Thomas School, at the Square of St. Thomas’s, peacefully and blissfully departed in God; his dead body was this day, in accordance with Christian usage, committed to the earth.”89 With the date of the funeral, newspapers in Leipzig, Berlin, and elsewhere published a short notice that indicates the cause of death but also refers to the eminence of the deceased and to the import of this event in musical circles:

  Leipzig, July 31. Last Tuesday, that is, the 28th instant, the famous Musicus Mr. Joh. Seb. Bach, Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Composer, Capellmeister of the Princely Court of Saxe-Weissenfels and of Anhalt-Cöthen, Director Chori Musici and Cantor of the St. Thomas School here, in the 66th year of his age, from the unhappy consequences of the very unsuccessful eye operation by a well-known English oculist. The loss of this uncommonly able man is greatly mourned by all true connoisseurs of music.90

  The unknown author of this press release apparently knew well that despite the various distinguished titles he carried, Bach understood himself first and foremost as musicus, a practical musician of all trades but one who possessed the deepest understanding of music and, until the very end, was still searching for the truth—a genuine musical scholar.

  On July 29, the day immediately following Bach’s death, the inner city council briefly discussed six applicants for his post: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach of Berlin, Johann Trier of Leipzig, Johann Gottlieb Görner of Leipzig, Gottlob Harrer of Dresden, August Friedrich Graun of Merseburg, and Johann Ludwig Krebs of Zeitz. With Burgomaster Born’s statement, however, that “he could hardly disregard the recommendation” of Prime Minister Brühl, the stage was set for the decision to be made later by the entire council. Second burgomaster Stieglitz added a little more flavor: “The School needed a Cantor and not a Capellmeister, although he must understand music. Harrer had made excellent promises and had declared himself agreeable to everything required of him.”91 On August 7, the formal election took place with the expected result, and with little delay, Gottlob Harrer was formally installed on the following St. Michael’s Day, September 29—only three months and one day after the death of his predecessor.

  ESTATE AND MUSICAL LEGACY

  At his death, Bach left behind his w
ife and nine children, four of them minors. Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Johann Christoph Friedrich were gainfully employed, Elisabeth Juliana Friderica was married, but Anna Magdalena, his forty-eight-year-old widow with two sons and three daughters, was unprovided for. On August 15, 1750, she petitioned the Leipzig city council for a bounty, the traditional half-year’s grace payment. After some bureaucratic details were clarified, she received two late quarterly installments of the deceased cantor’s base salary in September 1750 and January 1751.92 The widow—in consultation with Leipzig University, the appropriate venue of jurisdiction for the Bach family—also arranged for guardianship of her minor children, for which the family friend and Thomasorganist Johann Gottlieb Görner was appointed on October 21, 1750; for the feeble-minded Gottfried Heinrich, the family friend and theology student Gottlob Sigismund Hesemann was appointed trustee.93 In all these arrangements, Anna Magdalena was assisted by a good family friend and godfather of two Bach children, the attorney Dr. Friedrich Heinrich Graff, judge at the Saxon Superior Court in Leipzig. Meanwhile, the large household had to be dissolved as the family needed to vacate the apartment in the St. Thomas School within the statutory six months—no minor task.