For that matter, JS Bach himself very obscure as a composer during his lifetime, and for 50 years none of his works were in print... and many still weren't until the late 19th century.
Any fame he had during his life or the period after was for his virtuoso organ performance.
Up until the late 1800s, "Bach" referred to his son, CPE Bach. Liszt, Chopin, and other piano virtuosi of the time really helped revive the music of JS Bach, when a lot of his best works were previously thought of as "too hard" or "not worth it."
There is a great - and probably out of print - book called 'Men, Women and Pianos', by Arthur Loesser, 1954. Highly recommended to get better insight into how the piano was invented, worked its way into society and how the various composers rose to the spotlight and/or were forgotten again. It's the best researched book on the subject I've read.
I should have also added Mendelssohn to the list here. He loved playing JS Bach both on the violin and the piano, and edited a book of organ toccatas and fugues that is (suspiciously) the first known edition of the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (the one that all the movie villains like).
Personally, I suspect that Mendelssohn himself wrote the Toccata and Fugue in D minor based on a few fragments from Bach (particularly the subject of the fugue), and as a tribute to Bach. The Toccata is not really in JS Bach's style at all, making several harmonic choices that Bach makes in no other work - although I think the people who suggest that Bach himself wrote that piece would argue that it was likely a transcription of an improvised work, where the counterpoint could be a little less perfect.
>The composition has been deemed both "particularly suited to the organ"[14] and "strikingly unorganistic".[28] It has been seen as united by a single ground-thought,[29] but also as containing "passages which have no connection whatever with the chief idea".[14] It has been called "entirely a thing of virtuosity"[30] yet also described as being "not so difficult as it sounds".[21] It has been described as some sort of program music depicting a storm,[30] but also as abstract music, quite the opposite of program music depicting a storm.[31] It has been presented as an emanation of the galant style, yet too dramatic to be anything near that style.[22] Its period of origin has been assumed to have been as early as around 1704,[32] and as late as the 1750s.[10] Its defining characteristics have been associated with extant compositions by Bach (BWV 531, 549a, 578, 911, 914, 922 and several of the solo violin sonatas and partitas),[10][14][33][34][35] and by others (including Nicolaus Bruhns and Johann Heinrich Buttstett),[10] as well as with untraceable earlier versions for other instruments and/or by other composers.[10] It has been deemed too simplistic for it to have been written down by Bach,[10] and too much a stroke of genius to have been composed by anyone else but Bach.[36]
So much for consistency in writers. I think the message is that it is going to influence every listener in its own way, possibly informed by the preconceived notions of that listener.
Any fame he had during his life or the period after was for his virtuoso organ performance.