After 17 minutes of divine music in four movements (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue) which already uncovered for you the peaks of musical perfection, Bach suddenly takes you in an unexpected fifth movement to the ultimate summit, the Everest of musical composition, unmatched over the last 300 years (Beethoven came close in the Arietta of his last piano sonata), the Chaconne.
For another 15 minutes, you wander through the imaginings of Bach's beautiful mind. His musical ideas assert and question the value and meaning of life in infinite meanderings of unspeakable beauty and grandeur ... you are left exhausted but entirely satisfied after listening to this masterpiece.
As Dawkins would say, 'Who needs God when one has Bach?'
As a lover of music, and of Bach's music in particular, I am quite sympathetic to that rethorical question, and would gladly embrace the obvious answer that one indeed does not need God, if all one is longing for is perfect beauty and harmony. These are all in Bach's music.
But, as great as he is, and as happy as he makes me listening to his music, Bach does not help me getting reconciled with the all too final fact of death. The Grim Reaper has the last word and only the belief in God can sustain you in the happy delusion that you will still, after death, hear the music of the spheres.
That faith, however, is unfortunately beyond my grasp. But still, one must be content that there is Bach ... life without his music would be much grimmer.
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