CONCERNING THE LAST DECADE

Apart from events surrounding the composer's death, the Obituary's only report on the last decade is the account of his visit to Frederick the Great in 1747 and the music it led to, an account owing a great deal to what had already been in print about the event. Emanuel, perhaps not knowing, says nothing about the various visits to Dresden while Friedemann was there (1733–46) and through whom, probably, Forkel was later to say that Bach ‘often went to Dresden to hear the opera’ (1802, 48). If he did, and alluded now and then to its ‘secular’ styles in the royal homage cantatas or the Peasant Cantata (see p. 292), all the more striking is the very different music to which he gave such priority in his last decade: the fugues, canons, antique counterpoint, etc.

Although church work continued in the 1740s, there is little clear evidence of what happened each Sunday – what was sung and how enthusiastically the cantor performed his duties – or of relations between cantor and school and clergy. The Council still required special music on each August's election, but whether an older cantata such as No. 119 was often repeated or an earlier cantata re-worded and arranged (as BWV 69 in 1748), is not recorded.