| abstract | - Q.E.D. Bach was born in Weimar in 1744, and was the last work of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ. When the child cried and wouldn't sleep at night, his father wrote the Goldberg variations. Obviously, this scintillating keyboard work couldn't possibly put anyone to sleep, but the young boy usually became silent after the thick leather-bound manuscript hit his head. Little is known about his childhood. In the late 1750's he challenged G. F. Handel in an organ-playing competition. Handel couldn't stop laughing when Q.E.D. Bach started playing, and died shortly afterwards. His theological interests awakened in his twenties. The result was three long forgotten speeches: "The Christmas oratory", "The Ascension oratory" & "The Easter Bunny oratory". The audience disliked the latter and cut his tongue off. In the 1770's he worked abroad as a hotel interior designer. The Germans - never proud of this legacy - started two world wars to destroy it. The first world war saw the destruction of most of his surviving work, including six suites specifically designed for cellists and six suites designed for violinists. Unfortunately for the rest of us, a few were still intact. Therefore the second world war was started. Hitler's forces finally succeeded in destroying the last surviving buildings: some hotels in London ("The 6 English suites") and some in Paris ("The 6 French suites"). From the 1780's to his death he worked mostly as a composer. Unfortunately he never had a voice of his own (well, not after the Easter Bunny oratory), and none of his plagiarized compositions were played more than 3,1415 times. His admiration for Beethoven led him to believe the key to success was deafness. He died deaf, dumb, mute and poor in 1820. His last finished work was an unmusical offering: the cooking book "The art of fudge."
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