Using a photo of what historians believe to be Bach’s skeleton, Otte calculated the hand’s size—nearly 8½ inches from wrist to fingertips—and its reach, as much as 10¼ inches from thumb ...

Three days after Johann Sebastian Bach died from a stroke in July 1750, his body was laid in an oak coffin and hauled to a cemetery outside the city walls of Leipzig, Germany. Like many burials back ...