The Obituary begins

Emanuel Bach was familiar with the outlines of his family's musical history, since quite apart from any anecdotes about it that circulated amongst its members, his father spent time around the age of fifty compiling a selective genealogy. This is the ‘Origin of the musical-Bach family’, Ursprung der musicalisch-Bachischen Familie (Dok I, 255–61), a document known to Emanuel in whose household it was later copied. Though contributing little to published biographies of the day, Bach carefully compiled this genealogical list (sometimes referred to as a ‘table’) either from scratch after many enquiries or, more likely, revising and enlarging an older document begun by a previous member of this large family. Still an indispensable source of information, it numbers fifty-three Bachs in the course of two hundred years or more, many of them professional musicians well-known in Central Germany, though only a few became so in a larger Europe – Sebastian himself and, as perhaps he anticipated in part by then, one or two of his sons.

Emanuel added to the genealogy in which he and five brothers figured, and made use of it to begin the Obituary more tellingly, even proudly, than John Mainwaring was able to begin his biography of Handel (‘George Frederic Handel was born in Hall[e] …’).