This notion was repeated by the guardians of BachвЂ™s legacy, his family legacy and early biographers,ДЄlthough BachвЂ™s devotees presented the deathbed chorale as an inspired, unpremeditated creation, neither the printed nor manuscript version of the piece could have been dictated extemporaneously, at least not in its entirety, as BachвЂ™s myth-making heirs hoped to imply.ДЇar from having been conjured ex nihilo by the dying composer, this chorale is in fact an expansion of the short setting of the chorale melody that appeared in OrgelbГјchlein written nearly thirty years earlier to an alternate text Wenn wir in hГ¶chsten NГ¶then sein (When we are greatest need). In the note which appeared on the reverse side oft he title-page of the first edition oft he Art of Fugue, Emanuel claimed that shortly before his death his father had dictated the chorale extemporaneously to an unnamed scribe. The myth of finality is complicated further by the fact that the manuscript version of the deathbed chorale, also a fragment, includes some improvements to the published readings. The piece was first published posthumously in 1751, appended to the first edition of the Art of Fugue in order to make up for the incompleteness of the collectionsвЂ™s final contrapunctus, whose own shatteringly premature end in the midst of a massive contrapuntal oration supposedly marked BachвЂ™s death, at least according to an annotation in the original manuscript made by BachвЂ™s second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. With the ultimate question to be decided over the course of BachвЂ™s last days, the composition or, as is more probable, the revision of his so-called deathbed chorale, Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, would have played a crucial role in the domestic drama of his death :Д«achвЂ™s last piece is an elaborate demonstration of intricate contrapuntal tehnique used to treat a chorale text which both anticipates death and refers beyond it, to the arrival of the dead man in heaven:ДЄs one might expect from the dying musical utterances of a composer of BachвЂ™s stature Vor deinen Thron is embedded in mystery and myth, the fragment of truth often indistinguishable from the shapes of legend. But however comforting father confessor and family may have been, in the last week of his life it was Bach alone who would determine the fate of his soul. Following his training in pastoral care, Wolle would have given Bach a final belssing, quoted passages from scripture, and read prayers, while commenting on the dying manвЂ™s deportment in order to assure the family that his faith was unswerving. A pastor was the most reliable and resourceful interpreter of the actions of the dying, and during BachвЂ™s last week, his father confessor, Christoph Wolle, the archdeacon at the Thomaskirche, was summoned to the cantorвЂ™s bedroom. Even Martin Luther himself, when on his deathbed, had been repeatedly awakened by those around him so that they could confirm his faithfulness as near as possible to the actual moment of death.

They were also there to watch for signs: at this critical juncture BachвЂ™s every action could give crucial information concerning the destiny of his soul, that is, the outcome of the final contest between good and evil, between heaven and hell. Those gathered around the deathbed would have comforted the dying man by praying and reading from the Bible, singing chorales, perhaps even playing them on a harpsichord or clavichord. In these circumstances, the actions of the dying person and oft he family members, friends, and clerics standing by were thoroughly ritualized.

The hours of BachвЂ™s death was approaching. A week before his death on July 28, BachвЂ™s condition had deteriorated quickly when he suffered a stroke, which was soon followed by raging fever a pair of failed eye operations performed on him a few months earlier had left Bach blind, and lying in his bed he would not have been able to see the summer morning early in his east-facing window. As was customary in the Lutheran rituals of death and dying, Bach died at home, probably on the second floor of the cantorвЂ™s apartments in the Thomasschule, in his own bedroom above the Thomasplatz.

Bach compositions