erformer or group in mind who he was composing for. Bach continued this work until 1741, when he went to visit his son again at the court of Fredrick the Great, and then returned to Leipzig. For a time he withdrew into himself and produced some truly profound music of the baroque musical form. He soon joined the Mitzler society, a society devoted to the promotion of musical science. Even after Bach retired he continued to live in Leipzig. He did musical works for the Mitzler society of which he had been persuaded to join. This was when Bach started his work within the Collegium Musicum, in which he composed music for two types of concerts given in Leipzig: the ordinaire and extraordinaire. Not much is known about the ordinaire concerts, but there are many newspaper accounts about the extraordinaire concerts. These concerts charged admission and sometimes featured distinguished visiting artists. Bachs eyesight started to severely decline in the last few years of his life. This is thought to be due to the fact that he spent many nights working on his musical compositions by poor candlelight. Even after two cataract surgeries his eyesight never improved much. His last piece was Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of the Fugue). After that the deterioration of his eyesight inhibited him from composing on his own any longer. The two surgeries he had didnt help any, they in fact made his eyesight worse and he got an infection from one of the operations. He spent the last few years of his life going over his many compositions and perfecting them with the help of Altnikol, his son-in-law. He died while in the middle of composing a final fugue. Bach has created a huge multitude of musical compositions. It has been said that it would take one of todays competent music copyists - writing continuously - some forty years to replicate the hundreds of works and thousands of manuscript pages which represent the totality of Bachs lifetime achievements. He creat...
