It is entirely possible that out of the whole history of the Western world, Bach is the single greatest creative genius.

The thing that essentially qualifies Bach's music is that though it's technically masterful and such, it maintains a humanity that is as natural as the Negro spiritual.  It's extraordinarily human music.  The thing that makes his music last is not its intellectualization but its consummate humanity and the fact that it is simple human emotion in extraordinary persistence and renaissance.  Every time it renews itself, it's a resurrection.

-- Robert Shaw