Few composers have generated as many anecdotes as Johann Sebastian Bach. The “deathbed chorale dictation” is one of the most famous: a blind Bach, sensing that his final days had arrived, dictated one last chorale from his deathbed, “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit.” What are the elements—the actual facts—on which this story is based?
The history of the story
The story does not begin with the obituary (written in 1751 and published in 1754), because it is not there. The authors, C. P. E. Bach and Bach’s student Agricola, refer to Bach’s eye problems, the operations he underwent, and even the temporary recovery of his sight ten days before his death, but they don’t mention a “last composition” or any “last words.
The story takes off with the publication of Die Kunst der Fuge (1751), issued by Bach’s heirs:
On the verso of the title page there is a small text (Nachricht/ Message)
„Der selige Herr Verfasser dieses Werkes wurde durch seine Augenkrankheit und dem kurz darauf erfolgten Tod ausser Stande gesetzet, die letzte Fuge, wo er sich bey anbringung des dritten Satzes namentlich zu erkennen giebet, zu Ende zu bringen; man hat dahero die Freunde seiner Muse durch Mittheilung des am Ende beygefügten vierstimmig ausgearbeiteten Kirchenchorals, den der selige Mann in seiner Blindheit einem seiner Freunde aus dem Stegereif in die Feder dictiret hat, schadlos halten wollen.“ (The late author of this work was prevented from completing the final fugue—wherein he identifies himself by name upon the introduction of the third theme—due to his eye ailment and his death shortly thereafter. Therefore, the editors wished to compensate the friends of his art by providing the four-part church chorale appended at the end, which the late composer, in his blindness, had dictated off the cuff to one of his friends.)
The phrase in red explains the presence of a four-part church chorale after the fugue without an ending: It’s a ‘compensation’ for the incompleteness of that final fugue. NB: the title of the chorale at the end is not the one we expect (Vor deinem Thron) but : Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein, BTW, like the fugues presented on 4 separate bars.
Summa: According to Bach’s heirs a 4vv chorale Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein
1. was dictated to a friend while Bach was already blind. i.e. somewhere between late 1749 – july 1750. Bach suffered severe visual impairment from late 1749, operated March-April 1750, to no avail.
2. It was added at the end of die Kunst der Fuge as a ‘compensation‘.
That’s all, and this remains the story throughout the 18th century, with a very positive appreciation of the quality of the music being added by J.M.Schmidt (Musico-Theologia, 1754, a book in which he proofs the existence of God ‘ex musica’). Schmidt uses Bach’s Kunst der Fuge and the Chorale as evidence that real music can only be made by human beings who have ‘a soul’ (no machine will ever be able to produce such wonderful music. Just look at it, or play it).1 Nothing about a ‘deathbed-dictation’, or ‘last words’ whatsoever.
1802: THE LEGEND STARTS:
Half a century later, J.N Forkel: 1802 (catalogue of Bach’s Works – Art of Fuge) writes:
“To make up for what is wanting to the last fugue, there was added to the end of the work the four-part Chorale: Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen seyn & Bach dictated it in his blindness, a few days before his death, to the pen of his son-in-law, Altnikol. Of the art displayed in this Chorale, I will say nothing; it was so familiar to the author that he could exercise it even in his illness. But the expression of pious resignation and devotion in it has always affected me whenever I have played it; so I can hardly say which I would rather miss— this Chorale, or the end of the last fugue.”
How Forkel knew that it was ‘a few days before his death’ and that the scribe was ‘Altnickol’ we don’t know. He had corresponded with C.Ph. Emmanuel, but his letters to Forkel with information about his father, don’t contain any information on this topic.
1880: THE LEGEND GETS ITS WINGS
Ph. Spitta (1880, Biography) fills the gaps and completes the picture:
“By his deathbed stood his wife and daughters, his youngest son Christian, his son-in-law, Altnikol, and his pupil Müthel. He had been working with Altnikol only a few days before his death. An organ chorale composed in a former time was floating in his soul, ready as he was to die, and he wanted to complete and perfect it. He dictated and Altnikol wrote. “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” was the name he had originally given it; he now adapted the sentiment to another hymn and wrote above it “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit.”2
Spitta did not have any other factual historical source than we have for ‘his story’. It’s clear that the people present at Bach’s deathbed are those he imagined that would/could have been there. What he has noticed, however, is that the chorale published after Bach’s death was not a ‘new’ composition, but a ‘perfection’ of an already existing composition. And he saw and grasped the opportunity in changing the original title from Wenn wir in höchsten Noten sein into Vor deinem Thron tret ich hiermit (With this, I stand before your throne). That gives the story its captivating twist…
The rest is history…
The work in question published as ending of Die Kunst der Fuge is de facto a revised setting of the hymn Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (BWV 668), belonging to the Leipzig Chorales (a manuscript collection, Bach had been working on between 1739-1742), which itself was a revision of a chorale from the Orgelbüchlein (Weimar), as he did with many others. During his final years Bach kept working on his oeuvre, finetuning, perfectioning. The resulting version of Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein is catalogued as BWV 668a. However, that version is not identical with the composition that the family placed at the end of The Art of Fugue. That seems to be a slightly older version. Confusion among the various versions seems to have begun almost immediately after Bach’s death. See scheme. Christoph Wolff, who analysed it into every detail (1991: Essays). He produces a stemma diagram at the end of his article (which I have expanded in with details from the article)
The Kunst der Fuge
Today we know that in his final years Bach was occupied with several projects, among them the B minor Mass and the Eighteen Leipzig Chorales (see above). The Art of Fugue, whose first version dates back to the early 1740s (as a study in ‘Contrapunctus’, like Buxtehude) , had already been set aside for some time. However, Bach must have revisited his ‘Contrapunctus’ revising, expanding it in what we now know as the ‘Kunst der Fuge’. He must also have had a publication in mind, because there are prints of ‘test plates’ on which Friedemann and Emmanuel made corrections (or is this ‘posthumous’?, I don’t know). Unfinished indeed. In handwriting (C.Ph.Emmanuel Bach): NB über dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme B A C H im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben.“ (Over this fugue, where the name BACH has been introduced into the countersubject, the composer died.) This is not to be taken as an ‘eye-witness’ report, litterally, but as a personal note, explaining why the fugue is not finished.
He might very well have been working on the Fugues, in order to get them published/printed, as The Art of Fugue, or as Clavierübung V, or for submitting a contribution to the Correspondierende Societät der musicalischen Wissenschaften (Mizler’s Society). In the 1751 publication the notes of the last bars are not printed, the remark is not retained, but replaced by the chorale.
Source material
- NOTHING in the Obituary compiled by C.Ph. Emmanuel Bach and Joh. Fr. Agricola (compiled early 1751).
- Anonymous editor, verso of the titlepage Kunst der Fuge – 1751: “…Man hat dahero die Freunde seiner Muse durch Mittheilung des am Ende beygefügten vierstimmig ausgearbeiteten Kirchenchorals, den der selige Mann in seiner Blindheit einem seiner Freunde aus dem Stegereif in die Feder dictiret hat, schadlos halten wollen.”
– See above. - Fr. W. Marpurg (second edition Kunst der Fuge – 1752) : “… Man hat indessen Ursache, sich zu schmeicheln, dass der zugefügte vierstimmig ausgearbeitete Kirchenchoral, den der selige Mann in seiner Blindheit einem seiner Freunde aus dem Stegereif in die Feder dictiret hat, diesen Mangel ersetzen, und die Freunde seiner Muse schadlos halten wird.”
– Bach Dokumente III, p. 15 - J.M. Schmidt (1754) in Musico-Theologica, oder Erbauliche Anwendung Musicalischer Wahrheiten (Bayreuth, Vierling, 1754): par. 88, p. 197: “Wie nöthig einem Musico die Seele sey” (contra de materialistisch-mechanische opvatting van de muziek, toentertijd populair vanwege de ingenieuze speeldozen, ‘.. aber ein denkendes, eind wollendes, ein componirendes Bild had noch keiner erfunden, nicht einmal etwas ähnliches) “Wer sich recht überzeugen will, der beliebe des vorhin belobten Bachs in Kupferstich herausgekommenen letztes Fugenwerk, welches aber durch seie darzwischen gekommen Blindheit unterbrochen worden ist, recht anzusehen, und die darinnen liegende Kunst, anzumerken; oder, welches ihm noch wunderbarer vorkommen muss, den in seiner Blindheit von ihm einem andern in die Feder dictirten Choral: Wenn wir in höchsten Nothen seyn. Ich bin gewiss, er wird gar halb seiner Seele nöthig haben, wenn er alle angebrachte Schönheiten einsehen, geschweige wenn er selbst spielen oder von dem Verfertiger urtheilen will.”
The Dutch translation of this tract 1756 by J.W. Lustig (click to enlarge) :
