For those too lazy to read the whole article (like me), I have pasted its most compelling argument:
I often wonder which art is greater: the words of Shakespeare or the music of Bach.There are reasons and then there are reasons, but, in Bach's case, there are six compelling reasons why he just may have been the greatest composer who ever lived.
1) Inventor or Inventive?
First, while Johann Sebastian Bach restricted himself to the structure of known genres and stylistic idioms (with the exception of the viola pomposa and his two-and three-part inventions, Bach did not invent anything) his music is yet unparalleled for its inventiveness. With the possible exception of the newly-discovered chorale preludes of his youth, virtually everything that he wrote is characterized by an highly individualistic stamp that makes it easily recognizable as "Bach". While he made use of the referential idioms of his day, his music is always fresh, highly creative, never clichéd and never hackneyed.
2) Nice Tunes
Second, Bach had a natural gift for writing beautiful melodies. It is sometimes said that Bach's music makes too many demands upon the listener, therefore it is accessible only to the dilettante. If it is true that Bach requires an initiation, he certainly does not require a college degree. What amateur has not been moved by such masterpieces of melody as "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," "Air on the G String," and "Sheep May Safely Graze"? Whatever be one's musical taste, there is a passionate expression that will reach out and grab any person within earshot of a good Bach tune.
3) Smart Stuff
Third, while Bach's music is accessible by the beginner it is probably the most intellectually rigorous music ever conceived by the human mind. There is an intellectual component to Bach, a logic, that fascinates musicians and non-musicians alike, but especially theorists and composers. For this reason Bach's chorale harmonizations have comprised the core material for the study of voice leading for a century. Bach-style counterpoint, while not entirely understood, has nevertheless served as a model for composers from the nineteenth century's Beethoven and Brahms to our own Stravinsky, Berg, Boulez, and Stockhausen.
4) Organic Too
Fourth, Bach's music, representing as it does the apotheosis of baroque style, manifests an integration of structural elements, an organicism, that the Germans call Fortspinnung--the "spinning out" of a single motive, usually stated within the first few seconds of a movement. Bach's music is organic in the sense that the whole is always related to its parts and would be dysfunctional were any of its parts to be omitted. Similarly, the parts of Bach's music are inextricably intertwined with each other and with the whole, so that no single part is entirely intelligible without the perception of that whole.
Not to trivialize non-organicist systems used by other cultures and composers (there are other ways to organize sounds), Bach's music has withstood the test of time because it is compellingly and lucidly structured. In terms of its form, counterpoint of harmony and melody, balance, completeness, and temporal elements, Bach's music represents the crowning achievement of architectonic principles and processes practiced by the western world for half a millennium.
5) You Have a Point
Fifth, if Bach accomplished no greater thing, it is enough to recommend him to future generations that he raised the art of counterpoint to a level never seen before nor since. When, late in their careers, Mozart and Beethoven both perceived a need for the infusion of new techniques and forms into their own compositional toolboxes, they embarked upon a systematic study of the most highly advanced contrapuntal procedure known to humankind: Bach fugues. From that study forward the music of both composers was decidedly contrapuntal. Not only so, but, in an ironic twist of association, because Bach, the consummate contrapuntist, was primarily remembered by them as Kapellmeister (church musician), fugue as a procedure came to be nearly synonymous with sacred as a style. Throughout the next century few composers would write a major sacred work--Mass or oratorio--without consecrating it in a liberal baptism of fugues.
6) Devout Lutheran
Finally, it is by no means the least of Bach's claims to greatness that he devoted his talents primarily to the service of the church. Of the nearly 1000 compositions in his oeuvre, roughly three-fourths of them were written expressly for use in the Lutheran liturgy; this repertory has withstood the test of time because it has profound spiritual substance. While it may antagonize modern criticism to invoke the intentions of the artist to explain his art, Bach himself would surely have resisted any attempt to magnify his memory without giving credit where he felt credit was due. Soli Deo Gloria was his belief not a bromide.
And you're right, of course. In fact, music was actually invented in anticipation of the coming of Bach! 300,000 years ago, a caveman named Grog accidentally dropped a rock onto a hollow log, and stood in wonder at the sound. At that moment, he became seer and oracle. He saw how music would unfold over the millennia. And most important, he saw Bach!! He saw the ultimate expression of music - the time when music would take its place beside mountains, oceans, forests, and the sky - the time when the gods would look down in wonder as humans surpassed them - the time when....
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