I despair of giving an idea of the devoutness of the audience [at a Good Friday service]. Generally speaking, most of the inhabitants of Leipzig, including nearly everyone I knew, were either exceedingly conventional churchgoers or unbelievers, but on this occasion the dull mist of religious indifference appeared to lift for the time being. It was not only that the church seemed flooded with the living presence of Bach, but you felt as if the Passion itself, in that heart-rending, consoling portrayal, was being lived through as at no other moment of their lives by every soul in the vast congregation. This is the divine part of listening to such music in company with people who have known and loved every note of it ever since they were born, whose natural language it is.