The idea that one would build a chair or write a fugue for the sake of making the best chair or music one can is foreign to our culture, even our religious culture. When we ask "Will it fly?" we mean "Will it sell, will it catch on?" If we are being idealistic, we may translate that into "Does it have a message?"

Either way, it is taken for granted that the work must have some purpose outside itself. ... Which is why hardly anyone writes fugues anymore. Last year we celebrated Bach's 300th birthday and loaded him with all sorts of meretricious accolades--all because he was one of us and an aesthetic feather in the cap of the Protestant church. Yet Bach ... certainly could not make it at all today in the Amy Grant market. What kind of "message" does a fugue have, after all, except the precision and balance of its own form?