Professional Bach singer here: member of American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Bach Collegium San Diego, Carmel Bach Festival.
It's actually not true that the "vast majority" of Bach's work had no texts. Bach wrote over 200 cantatas (with around 5-10 movements and separate texts each) plus an assortment of masses and 4 extremely large choral/orchestral works: the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, and the B Minor Mass.
Looking at the catalog of all of Bach's works, which I have here, BWV (Bach Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers 1 thru 1071, you get all the way to BWV 525 before you even get out of the vocal works. Numbers 1 thru 524 are all cantatas, masses, oratorios, lieder, the many chorales of course, secular and comic cantatas, etc. And of course many/most of these are far larger than the individual organ works.
(Bach actually wrote a lot more cantatas than this; but only around 224 of them survived. Another hundred or so were lost.)
It's actually not true that the "vast majority" of Bach's work had no texts. Bach wrote over 200 cantatas (with around 5-10 movements and separate texts each) plus an assortment of masses and 4 extremely large choral/orchestral works: the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, and the B Minor Mass.
Looking at the catalog of all of Bach's works, which I have here, BWV (Bach Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers 1 thru 1071, you get all the way to BWV 525 before you even get out of the vocal works. Numbers 1 thru 524 are all cantatas, masses, oratorios, lieder, the many chorales of course, secular and comic cantatas, etc. And of course many/most of these are far larger than the individual organ works.
(Bach actually wrote a lot more cantatas than this; but only around 224 of them survived. Another hundred or so were lost.)