“Unlike scholars in the Bach field who have often succumbed to a bland attitude of continuous adulation towards the master, [Peter] Williams, who has died aged 78, never shirked from showing where Bach fell short of his own astonishing standards, observing, for instance, that certain of his pieces show ‘teeth-gritting dogma’ and that there is something alienating in the thoroughness of the Well-Tempered Clavier’s progress through all the major and minor keys twice over.”