During his lifetime, and for sometime thereafter, Bach was a contemporary com-poser. That means, among other things, that he had not yet acquired the status of immortality and was not beyond criticism. In the year 1737, at the very pin-nacle of his career, and only six months after having been conferred the lofty title of “Composer to the Court Chapel of His Royal Majesty in Poland” (Compositeur bey der Königlichen HofCapelle), Bach was taken severely to task, in print, by his former pupil, Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708–76), in the following terms:

Scheibe's critique, of course, is one of the most famous documents of its kind in the history of music, not least because it was far more than simply one man's opin-ion. It was also an ideological manifesto to which we shall return in due course.

Bach himself was by no means unaware of the unusual difficulty his music posed. Referring to his church compositions in an official document written less than a year before Scheibe's attack, Bach described them as “incomparably more difficult and more intricate” (ohngleich schwerer und intricater) than those by other composers.