Jan Swafford in Slate discusses the new solo piano recording by Pierre-Laurent Aimard of Bach’s Art of the Fugue (Read Wikipedia): “It’s as if you told a physicist that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was topping the best-seller list. It’s not supposed to happen. This is because the 14 fugues and four canons that make up The Art of Fugue constitute one of the most esoteric musical works ever written.”

Harold Fromm doesn’t think we see Bach as a man, a personality. “Bach is in the very chemistry of Western musical blood, like red cells, white cells, and platelets in our material plasma. But if Bach is The Father, why hasn’t he fired the popular imagination?”