John Weeks Moore, Complete Encyclopaedia of Music… (1880)
“ In 1778 he settled at Hamburg, and afterwards went to Vienna, and then returned to Gotha, where he was rewarded for his musical talents with a pension, and where he died in 1795, aged seventy-four. He was the most absent man imaginable. It has been said that, on the very verge of death, Benda rose from his bed to finish a tune which a wayward boy, who had run away, had left unfinished. ”
