Summary: <br> On March 11, 1829 – 190 years ago today – the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a heavily edited version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sacred oratorio St. Matthew’s Passion at the Singakademie in Berlin.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/11090526/Berlin_Mitte_Maxim-Gorki-Theater.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Located just north of the Unter den Linden and know today as the “Maxim Gorky Theater”, the Singakademie was, for many years, the largest and most prestigious concert venue in Berlin<br> <br> <br> <br> Composed in 1727, 102 years before that sold-out performance in Berlin, Mendelssohn’s performance of the passion was the first to take place outside of Leipzig, and it caused a sensation. It single-handedly initiated what is now known as the “Bach Revival”, which brought the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – in particular his large-scale works – to the attention of a broad-based listening public for the very first time. At the time of Mendelssohn’s performance, the great man himself had been dead for nearly 79 years.<br> <br> <br> <br> Bach’s Death<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/11091120/Bach-Recreation-forensics.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Forensic reconstruction of Bach’s head based on a laser scan of his skull<br> <br> <br> <br> Sebastian Bach (as his contemporaries knew him) was built like a bull and had the constitution of one as well. At no point in his life had he suffered a serious illness until the late spring of 1749, when at 64 his body began to give out: among other things, he suffered from neuropathy (numbness and pain in his hands and feet, the result of damage to the peripheral nerves of same) and eye pain and vision problems (likely a result of inflammation of the optic nerves, and/or glaucoma, and/or cataracts). The most likely culprit for Bach’s poor health was type-2 diabetes, a disease that was not separately diagnosed until 1936, 186 after Bach died. <br> <br> <br> <br> Such was the pain in Bach’s eyes that in March of 1750, he allowed them to be operated on by the famous English quack, the “oculist” Chevalier John Taylor, who had come to Leipzig to lecture at the University. The operation took place sometime between March 28 and April 1; rather predictably, it failed. A second operation took place sometime between April 5 and 8; rather predictably, it failed as well. We are told that:<br> <br> <br> <br> “matters were made worse by ‘harmful mendicaments and other things’, possibly including rubbing the eye with a brush and draining the eye and its surrounding area of blood, up to half a teacup full – treatments known to have been applied by Taylor.”<br> <br> <br> <br> We squirm together.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/11091314/The-Company-of-Undertakers.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>William Hogarth’s print entitled The Company of Undertakers (A Consultation of Quacks) (1736). John Taylor is depicted at the upper left.<br> <br> <br> <br> (For our information: this same, self-styled “Chevalier” John Taylor performed the same operation on George Frederick Handel – blinding him as well – some months before Handel’s death in 1759!)<br> <br> <br> <br> After the second surgery Bach’s body fell apart. He went completely blind; inflammation and infection set in. On July 18 he suffered a stroke followed by what was called “a raging fever”. On Tuesday, July 28, at roughly 8:15 in the evening, the 65-year-old Bach gave up the ghost and, we can only hope, joined his beloved maker. His funeral took place three days later, on July 31. <br> <br> <br> <br> What followed remains a cultural tragedy of the first order,
