Who was Bach?

Not so much cicada singing today, though perhaps I'm just refusing to listen. I played today, it was a bit less satisfying but I think there will be profits to come. I played several measures that are particularly tangling of the fingers and I played them over and over. I realized that I need to have a pencil at hand and I really need to write down the fingering I like best. Otherwise, as is my wont, I'm always changing the fingering and sometimes that ends in complete disaster. One runs out of fingers and though one does some jumping of notes in Bach, you can't run out of fingers. Is it cheating to continue playing my favorite Prelude in C#? Because I run that every day too, but not in as careful a way as I do the new fugue.
I didn't thank the Maestro today, so I will have to go back and play some more and do a proper and polite thank you.
I read about Bach today, found my book, "Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician" by Christoph Wolff. It's a very dense accounting of Bach's life and music. But as the writer himself admits the biographical details aren't very exciting and they lack richness. Still today I gained some insight about the time in which he lived which was of course an exciting time in terms of science and philosophy. He was a musical scientist of sorts, though for Bach everything he wrote was a gift from and to God. Religion was the well spring, the ground bass of all his works.
Carl Phillip wrote after his father's death, many years later in 1774 that the 6 Clavier Trios, BWV 1014-1019 were among the most beautiful of his father's compositions. These pieces were not mentioned in Bach's obituary catalog of works. Much of his work has not been passed down, but scholarship is of course ongoing and undiscovered works and letters will probably continue coming to the light of day. As Wolff says though, we still have a basic understanding and a huge body of work to enjoy, and study, we can even though inadequately come to know this great Maestro, this great Kappellmeister.