This approach to the imperfectly known work and life of Johann Sebastian Bach makes particular use of the Obituary (Nekrolog) in newly translated excerpts, as a thread leading through the maze of fact and conjecture about him. Presumed to have been drafted in the months following the composer's death and not published until some four years later, it joined two other obituaries in a periodical edited by one of his former Leipzig pupils (see List of references). A delay of four years was not uncommon at the time and need not imply faint public interest in its subject, although there does remain a question whether there had been difficulty in getting it published.

Apart from some closing memorial verses in the form of a cantata-text, the Obituary has two main sections, now attributed to two other former pupils: a factual-biographical part by the composer's second surviving son Carl Philipp Emanuel (here ‘Emanuel’) and a shorter critical-evaluatory part by another former pupil, Johann Friedrich Agricola (here ‘Agricola’). I have followed this plan, first expanding the biographical part in Chapters 1 to 7, then the evaluatory part in Chapter 8, and finally adding a brief epilogue and a glossary. In the course of this, questions are raised to which the present book often provides no clear answer, partly because so often one simply does not know, partly because the way a question is framed can imply a possible answer.