I want some input from my fellow music-loving SOLOists on this. I think that ultimately, the measure of the greatness of music is in what it pulls out of people. I say "pulls" because, in my experience, the most magnificent music literally compels the listener to respond to it; we feel elated or grieved or amorous because the music reaches into us and draws it out, and it is a profoundly cathartic experience. For many music-lovers, it occupies the place that most people reserve for religion. I, for instance, have yet to find any real-life experience that mirrors the joy of Mimi and Rudolfo's first meeting in La Boheme. Some have called it a "loss of self," but I disagree; I think that having that kind of awe-inspiring experience makes us more ourselves, not less. It brings us closer to "what we might be and ought to be," because it opens up the full range of human emotion that mere day-to-day living so often lacks. It is, in familiar words, the total passion for the total height, allowing us to be fully human even when the rest of life does not. In familiar words, it brings us "the total passion for the total height," and for this it is nothing less than holy.