Johann Sebastian Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge, The Art of Fugue, ends with a fugue that breaks off. In the autograph, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote a note at that point. Ueber dieser Fuge, wo der Nahme BACH im Contrasubject angebracht worden, ist der Verfasser gestorben. Over this fugue, where the name BACH was placed in the countersubject, the author died. The first printed edition appeared in 1751. Its preface told buyers that the composer’s eye disease and death had kept him from finishing the work. The family added a chorale as compensation for the incomplete last fugue.

Scholars today consider it unlikely that Bach died while working on this fugue. The gap itself was never hidden.