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Bach could express himself perfectly well through his style; the new galant style didn't offer anything to him. If you compare the music of the galant or early classical period vs the music of the baroque, history is on Bach's side. – Apprentice Queue Apr 18 '15 at 1:24

If you take a look at the St John's Passion by Bach, it is surprisingly operatic with its use of turba choirs and the kind of introductory chorus and the dying scenes.

It is true that Bach was employed by churches for large stretches of his time (as opposed to his time in Köthen, for example), including his final years.

But if you take a look at his magnum opus, the last completed major work before his death, it was the Mass in B Minor, a mass in old Catholic Rite, utterly unsuitable for performance in either Protestant (his own faith!) or Catholic churches of the time. He was dead longer than he had been alive before it was actually performed in full.

So when he wrote a work close to the end of his life that was absolutely without commercial interest (since it was unperformable for his life time and any foreseeable future), it still was a deeply religious work, with at best loose connections to the churches of his time.

True, the next large work he started (and never finished) was "Die Kunst der Fuge", not inherently a religious work.

But he clearly loved the music he was doing (and had a lot of trouble with his employers when stepping over the lines of musical conventions while doing his job). And it was clear that to him, the potential of that music was still not exhausted. Many musicians keep doing weaker copies of the stuff they became famous for when they age. Bach did some of his deepest works right before his death.

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