ABSTRACT
The "Musical Bach Family" is reputed to have been rooted to the soil; extended journeys—and in particular to places as remote as Italy—are considered newsworthy exceptions. According to an anecdote transmitted in the family and recorded by Johann Sebastian Bach, in the early seventeenth century three brothers—one of them bearing the nickname "Blind Jonah"—were sent at the expense of a Count of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt to Italy "the better to cultivate their music." 1 It has been impossible to find documentary evidence for these claims. The next traveler to Italy was the Jena town and university organist Johann Nikolaus Bach (1669–1753), whose journey took place sometime between 1690 and 1694. This can be inferred indirectly from a note in Johann Gottfried Walther's Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732, from certain stylistic features in his works, 2 and from his proven command of the Italian language, in which Johann Nikolaus Bach was able even to give lessons. 3
