Robert Peters wrote:

>What is the mysterious X which makes Bach's music so touching that even
>an agnostic guy like me feels like a Christian when listening to the St
>Matthew-Passion?

As an agnostic, I have always believed that no one really knows the
Truth of the Universe.  Anyone who claims to is merely kidding him/herself
and anyone who believes what he/she is claiming it to be.  I do not think
humans are capable of understanding such things, much as we are not
capable of emotionally understanding Infinity.  What I do think is that
some among us get flashes of it, and those rare few are our creative
geniuses.  The works they produce stand above those by the rest of us
for reasons we can explain with no more success than we can divinity or
Infinity.  If you can explain with complete understanding what makes
music great in the way Bach's is great, it's not really that great.

I was not that fond of the movie Amadeus, but I found this stated quite
well in an opening scene where Salieri "explains" the magic in a passage
of one of Mozart's wind serenades.  He can't of course, and he knows he
can't, which is the point.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying there is no answer to your
question.

Roger Hecht <[log in to unmask]>