As I was writing this book, I was constantly entertained by the thought of all the heads—belonging to the many learned and distinguished Bach scholars around the world—exploding, one after the next, as they read what I have made of the historical figure of Johann Sebastian Bach.

But what I realized when I began researching this project was that while history can tell us the broad outline of Bach’s life—the positions he held, the places he lived and worked, the names and dates of his many children’s births and deaths, and the music he composed (even though the scholars will tell you that we have perhaps two-thirds of all the music Bach wrote in his life, maybe more, maybe less) history cannot tell us much about Bach the man.

    And that, of course, is gold for a historic novelist. I realized I had basically a blank slate upon which to write about Bach’s personality, his friends and relations, his likes and dislikes, his loves and feelings … history and the many biographies of Bach tell us very little of all that. Given that blank slate, I was able to fill in the blanks as I wished. And in this book, and the ones to follow, I decided to make Johann Sebastian Bach something of a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Keith Richards!

    Now any good historical novel (or in this case, a historical mystery) must hew fairly closely to an actual historical events in order to be held believable by the reader.  For this book, I saw a two-sentence historical nugget: “In 1732, Bach visited the town of Cassel in Hesse state to inspect the town’s new organ. He was accompanied by his wife, Anna Magdalena, and they were carried around town in a litter provided by the prince.”

    Wait a minute—carried around town in a litter?  Why not a coach or a simple horse and buggy? And why was Anna Magdalena there? Was that normal? We know that Bach earned a lot of side money by doing these organ jobs—he was, after all, one of the foremost experts in all of Germany on organs and how they work.  So as a historical novelist, I began to fill in the unknown parts of this story with my own conjecture and a story took shape. And so did the character of J.S. Bach, into whom it was my honor to breathe a little life.

    The reader should beware the impulse to ask “is this real?” Of course not: It is a work of fiction. Hopefully, the reader will find my story believable, that is, an account of a few days in the life of this great man that sounds like it could have happened. That’s what we storytellers do: We tell stories that are about people and their problems, activities, loves, and adventures, and hope our readers can relate, on a human level, to what the characters are going through.

    So: Bach did visit Cassel (which is the way that name of that city was spelled until after World War II, when the spelling was changed, for reasons I do not know, to ‘Kassel.’). We are told he was a good friend of Gottfried Silbermann, who was a famous constructor of organs and other keyboard instruments all around Saxony and other states of Germany. And Bach did have a nephew named Johann Elias Bach, who lived with him in Leipzig for a few years and worked as his secretary. Those facts are all true—the rest is my imagination at work.

    I should also confess to moving some dates around to fit my story. For instance, Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony, died in February 1732, and the cessation of all musical performances, including church cantatas, lasted for a five month mourning period. I wanted my Bach to visit Cassel in the fall, so I fudged the date of Augustus’s demise a bit. I don’t think he’ll mind. 

    For readers who want to plunge more deeply into the life and times of Johann Sebastian Bach, there are dozens of authoritative biographies in the stacks. I did not read the early biographies, by Forkel or Spitta or even Albert Schweitzer. Rather, I turned to books from this century. Christoph Wolff’s Bach: The Learned Musician is probably the most authoritative. John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven is quite good. I really enjoyed Klaus Eidam’s The True Life of J.S. Bach, written by an East German playwright and theater director who was not afraid to challenge all the hoary traditions about Bach and present a very different take on the Great Bach of history. And that’s just the start—my shelf of Bach research contains a dozen other books and there are websites galore that help provide deeper glimpses into the man’s life and works.