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From: segre@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Bach's Eyesight
Message-ID: <6900001@uicsl>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 18:07:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uicsl.6900001
Posted: Mon Jul 22 18:07:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Jul-85 05:18:53 EDT
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Nf-From: uicsl.UUCP!segre    Jul 22 17:07:00 1985


If my memory serves me correctly [from my undergraduate music history class]
Bach had cataracts removed surgically about a year and a half before his
death in 1750. The surgery was not successful, and he essentially
lost all sight. Some biographers maintain that the botched surgery 
actually led to the decline of his health and jos eventual death
at age 65. The surgery was performed in Leipzig by a surgeon who had 
just arrived from London and was considered a leading authority in this
type of surgery (for his day, anyway).

His biographers usually attribute his failed eyesight to many years of
copying music and reading by candlelight.

Although he recovered some of his eyesight ten days before his death, his
final composition (a choral on a hymn tune which is appended to The Art
of Fugue) was dictated to a friend (or perhaps his son, I can't remember).

He never did finish the huge quadruple theme which was to finish the Art of
Fugue...he had just managed to introduce the third theme, which was a musical
reference to his own name, e.g. B-A-C-h.

An excellent reference on the life of Bach is "The Bach Reader" which is,
I believe, published by Norton (I can't remember the author, but I could
go look if someone is interested - who knows where I put that thing!).

=====

Alberto Segre
Artificial Intelligence Research Group
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Coordinated Science Laboratory
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


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