Meanwhile there were delays; Bach was not installed until May 31, 1723. Beside music lessons, and the direction of the choirs in St. Thomas' and St. Nicholas' Churches, the cantor (the third in the school by order of precedence) was still charged with certain duties of supervision, and in addition had a course in Latin to conduct; the latter Bach avoided as much as possible.
In itself it was not, on the whole, a very advantageous position for Bach, nor one where his independence would be respected; many annoyances, besides an almost overwhelming amount of labor, were caused him by the director, or more indirectly by envious musicians. Despite all these mortifications, and the difficulties of his situation—mitigated, it is true, as long as the celebrated Gessner was at the head of the school—Bach never left it; in soliciting it, he had taken into consideration the advantages it offered for bringing up his family, which was steadily increasing.
We have commented upon the relatively small number of organ compositions which date from this period, but this is not the case with the other religious works; of 295 cantatas, divided among five liturgical years, about 266 were written in Leipzig; five settings of the Passion, the Christmas Oratorio (1734), the Easter (1736), that of the Ascension, and a number of motets, composed between 1723 and 1734—only a few of these are to-day complete; others are apocryphal—four "Missae breves" (short masses), the Mass in B minor, composed between 1730 and 1737, testify to his prodigious activity in this style of music. Further, he did not rest without writing numerous secular works, in particular the concertos for several clavecins; he published some technical studies which he engraved himself; and he completed the second part of the Well-tempered Clavichord. If we add to the time devoted to the composition of these works that given to the duties of his position—to lessons, rehearsals, etc.—and to numerous pupils, we shall realize why this last period is less productive of biographical incidents of note. We may finally mention the famous journey to Berlin in 1740, the last triumph of "Old Bach."
In consequence of this excess of fatigue, Bach was destined to lose his sight during the last years of his life; the unskilfulness of the surgeons did the rest.
Bach passed away July 28, 1750. His remains were interred in St. John's cemetery; but the location of his grave is to-day unknown, because of the transformation which this burying ground underwent at the end of the last century.[204]
[Catalogue]
OF THE
COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
EDITION OF THE BACH-GESELLSCHAFT