Bach and The Tuning of the World. Jens Johler

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       March 1722

      He opened his eyes and stared at the beams on the ceiling. The moon threw a pale, bluish light through the window.

      He wanted to get up, get out of bed, go to his study, make a little music, play something – anything to drive away the ghosts that had haunted him in his dream; but he found he couldn’t move. His legs didn’t obey him, nor did his arms, not even a single finger.

       What’s wrong with me?

      He still felt pressure on his chest. Somebody had set their booted foot on it in his dream and pressed down. It felt like the boot were still pressing down; his chest was constricted; he struggled for breath.

      I can’t breathe.

      He listened to her breath. It was calm and even. When she exhaled, she made a soft whistling sound, a high G sharp. He wanted to wake her and ask her to help him get up; he opened his mouth to say, ‘Please help me, I can’t move, I can’t breathe,’ but no sound came. He couldn’t do a thing; not a thing. All he could do was lie there, staring at the beams on the ceiling.

      Dear God, please don’t let me be paralysed.

      He closed his eyes and tried to put himself back into the dream. Who was it who had put his boot on his chest? And how did it come about? He felt that something must have happened in the dream to cause his paralysis. He had a notion that he must get himself back into the dream so it would take a different course, with a different outcome.

      Only to this world.

      Erdmann had not said as much, but he had meant it.

      Your work belongs only to this world.

      He had to go back.

      Images from his dream arose in him. The carriage. The street. The canal. Now he remembered the horror that had seized him when the carriage began to go under, further and further, deeper and deeper, until he was submerged in the water. But the water did not penetrate the carriage; it continued on its way, unfettered, under the surface of the water. It was as though he were sitting in the belly of a fish, like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

      I went in the wrong direction, he thought, and opened his eyes. No revelation of heaven on Earth. No Jacob’s ladder reaching upwards. Only earthly music – that’s all it is. No. It’s worse than that.

      The pressure on his chest increased. A dark figure suddenly stood at the foot of his bed, ramrod straight, his right hand pointing to the heavens. A prophet. A messiah. A ruler over the tuning of the world. The others surrounding him looked up to him in terror, at his fiery eyes and the arm stretched high into the heavens.

      Only she didn’t look up.

      Bach followed her gaze, his eyes wandering down from the prophet’s black coat to his equally black trousers and leather boots. But no … only his right foot wore a boot. Bach stared, with incredulous horror, at his left foot.