The final days of Johann Sebastian Bach: the cataract surgeries and deathbed music
- Bach Society Brasil
- 15 hours ago
- 6 min read
On July 28, 1750, at approximately 8:15 p.m., Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig, in his sixty-sixth year of life, after half a year bedridden and nearly blind.
The immediate cause was a stroke followed by a high fever; however, this was caused by two unsuccessful eye surgeries and the brutal treatment that followed. It was a sober end surrounded by stories involving the interruption in the composition of The Art of Fugue and an alleged chorus dictated on his deathbed.
The fading eyesight
Bach's eyesight was already fragile from birth, and decades of work wore it down. The obituary written by his children summarizes the process: his naturally somewhat weak eyesight, further weakened by his extraordinary zeal for study, which led him, especially in his youth, to spend entire nights sitting at work, resulted, in his later years, in an eye disease. Copying scores by candlelight, year after year, took its toll.
In the last months of 1749, physical decline was already evident even in his handwriting. When preparing the instrumental parts of a motet by his great-uncle Johann Christoph Bach for his own use, Bach wrote in an awkward, stiff, and irregular script, limiting himself to the bare minimum—signs, observes Christoph Wolff , that the old master already had difficulty seeing and writing. By this point, what was consuming him was not old age alone: at 65, the rest of his body, sources say, remained entirely healthy.
Chevalier Taylor arrives in Leipzig
In March 1750, the itinerant English ophthalmologist John Taylor , self-proclaimed Chevalier , arrived in Leipzig to give lectures and publicly demonstrate his surgical technique. Bach, determined to regain his sight, volunteered as a patient. The first operation took place between Taylor's arrival on March 28 and April 1—the date on which the Berlinische Privilegirte Zeitung newspaper announced, in a promotional tone, that Capellmeister Bach had regained all the clarity of his vision, an unspeakable blessing for which thousands of people would have only to thank Dr. Taylor.
Here, the historical record disproves the popular myth. Taylor is often portrayed as a charlatan who blinded both Bach and Handel; but Wolff is careful: he was a respected cataract specialist and by no means a medical charlatan . The problem was not so much the scalpel stroke as what came after. The first operation failed, and between April 5th and 8th, Bach underwent a second surgery , aggravated by harmful medications and other things—probably bloodletting and rubbing of the eye. In May 1750, the Leipzig Medical School itself issued a bulletin criticizing the outcome.
Taylor's own account, published in 1761, reveals his lack of rigor: he claims to have operated on a celebrated music master who had already reached his eighty-eighth year—Bach was 66—and confuses him with Handel's teacher. The one who boasted of the cure was, in the end, an unreliable witness to his own case.
Half a year of decline and the death of Bach
After the second operation, according to the obituary, his entire body, which had otherwise been perfectly healthy, was completely ruined. Bach was almost continuously ill and probably blind from the beginning of April to mid-July. Even so, he did not give up: on May 4th he accepted the young Johann Gottfried Müthel as a boarding student, a gesture that reveals hope for improvement and, perhaps, the consolation of continuing to work.
The obituary recounts that, ten days before his death, Bach's eyesight seemed to suddenly improve : one morning he regained his sight and could tolerate the light. A few hours later, he suffered a stroke —Wolff dates the episode to July 20—followed by a violent fever. Two days after the stroke, Archdeacon Christoph Wolle of St. Thomas administered communion to him in bed.
Bach died on Tuesday, July 28, 1750, shortly after 8:15 p.m. The burial took place three days later. The entire faculty led the funeral procession through the Grimma Gate; the hearse was provided free of charge. The body was buried in the cemetery of St. John's Church ( Johannisfriedhof ). Only in 1950 were his remains transferred to the Thomaskirche , where they rest today.
The unfinished work and the final choral
Bach left unfinished The Art of Fugue ( Die Kunst der Fuge , BWV 1080), his testament to counterpoint.
The final fugue is interrupted when the third theme enters, which spells out, in notes, the name BACH . In a note about the autograph, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach recorded: the author died while working on this fugue. The image is irresistible: the composer expiring with pen in hand, at the exact moment he signs his own music.
Musicology, however, complicates the picture. The autograph is written in Bach's own handwriting and dates from 1748-49, before his blindness—that is, the fugue was not literally interrupted on his deathbed. Equally famous is the deathbed chorale: the first edition of The Art of Fugue included, at the end, a four-voice chorale that the deceased supposedly dictated impromptu, in his blindness, to a friend's pen.
It couldn't have been quite like that. Wolff demonstrates that the chorale already existed : Bach had composed Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (BWV 641) in Weimar, for the Orgel-Büchlein , and later expanded it (BWV 668). In his final days, Bach asked an organist friend to play the piece, realized that its melody suited the hymn Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, dictated adjustments to the counterpoint, and ordered a title change. It wasn't a spontaneous creation, but a final act of revision —the same pursuit of perfection that had driven him throughout his life, now in the face of his own death.
The Animation: Episode #28 – Series Finale
About the series Bach: The Animated Series
This episode is part of an independent series created and animated by artist Peter Fielding . Born in Flanders and based in Italy, Fielding explored the biography of Johann Sebastian Bach through a visual narrative that humanizes the composer's challenges.
The Bach Society Brazil presents the videos from the series as part of its outreach initiative. To understand the behind-the-scenes production and the author's creative process, read our exclusive interview with Peter Fielding .
Real or Fiction?
The animation gets the essentials right. The 1754 obituary — written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola — confirms the key elements: the eye disease, Taylor's two failed surgeries, blindness, stroke, and death on July 28, 1750.
However, there are three points that deserve attention. First: the image of Taylor as a charlatan who blinded Bach is simplistic—he was a respected surgeon; the damage came from aggressive post-operative treatment. Second: the blind Bach dictating the chorale on his deathbed is a legend—the piece pre-existed, and what happened was a revision; the idea that The Art of Fugue is interrupted the moment Bach writes his name is disproven by the manuscript's dating. Third: retrospective diagnoses of the cause of death are speculation.
What remains, after the romantic veneer is removed, is no less moving: a working man who faced blindness with the same determination with which he faced everything—accepting students, revising a final piece, methodically preparing for the end.
Suggested Listening
Bach worked on the Mass in B minor throughout the last decade of his life, bringing it together as a synthesis of all his sacred vocal output—many describe it as a musical testament. The Christe eleison , a soprano duet on the most elemental supplication of the liturgy, is the most intimate moment of this monumental mass: a whisper of two voices before the mystery. To hear it is to enter the work that Bach polished as his eyesight faded.
In his final years, Bach adapted Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 's Stabat Mater —Pergolesi died at age 26—translating it into German as a paraphrase of Psalm 51. Wolff interprets this gesture as a rare late opening to the Italian gallant aesthetic. It is a work about pain, penance, and death—the type of text the composer chose to work on at the end of his life.
Bibliographic References
BACH-ARCHIV LEIPZIG . Calendarium: A Timeline of the Life of Johann Sebastian Bach.
DAVID, Hans T.; MENDEL, Arthur; WOLFF, Christoph (Ed.) . The New Bach Reader . New York: WW Norton & Company, 1998.
FORKEL, Johann Nikolaus . Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke . Leipzig: Hoffmeister & Kühnel, 1802.
GARDINER, John Eliot . Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
WILLIAMS, Peter . JS Bach: A Life in Music . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
WOLFF, Christoph . Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician . New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000.
Audiovisual Production: FIELDING, Peter . Bach: The Animated Series . 2024. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/@BachTheAnimatedSeries
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