In 1845, Richard Wagner traveled to Bohemia and took along Wolfram von Eschenbach's poem, Parzival as accompaniment reading. This inspired Wagner to start writing Parsifal; but the piece did not come together until Good Friday in 1857 when Wagner was deeply affected by the spring. Wagner wrote: "...the garden was breaking into leaf, the birds were singing, and I could rejoice in the fruitful quiet I had so long thirsted for. Suddenly, it came to me that this was Good Friday, and I remembered the great message it had once brought to me as I was reading Wolfram's Parzival....Its essence now became clear to me in overwhelming significance, and on the basis of the Good Friday idea I quickly conceived an entire drama of which I made a brief and hasty sketch in three acts."

When describing Parsifal, the program for the presentation puts it plainly: "Although it does contain many of the symbols of Christian ritual and belief, Parsifal is not a religious opera. In Wagner's mind, however, the Parsifal story bound together with Good Friday and the springtime symbolism of rebirth, especially spiritual rebirth through the sacrifice on the cross."

The second part of the presentation consisted of the contemporary John Adams’ Harmonielehre, written in 1985 for the San Francisco Symphony. Unlike Wagner, Adams’ Harmonielehre had nothing to do with Christ’s sacrifice or God, nor did Adams intend for it to have a religious theme. Instead, Adam’s Harmonielehre (the book of harmony) came about as a result of a dream Adams had. He writes: "The pounding E-minor chords at the beginning and end of the movement are the musical counterparts of a dream image I’d (experienced) shortly before starting the piece. In the dream, I’d watched a gigantic supertanker take off from the surface of San Francisco Bay and thrust itself into the sky like a Saturn rocket."

The last part of Harmonielehre titled Meister Eckhadrt and Quackie, is also based on a dream Adams had, in which his daughter Emily (also called Quackie) rides through space on the shoulders of Meister Eckhardt, a great Christian theologian. The piece was beautiful, almost divine. Who would have known that an American, contemporary nonetheless, can create such beautiful music?

Strangely and even ironically for me, this entire classical experience was neatly wrapped up by something Eckhardt said about God: "Whoever possesses God in their being, has him in a divine manner, and he shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see."

Then this whole thing started to make sense, and it hit me! Music, creativity and beauty are not as much about the person who creates them, or the person who hears them, as they are about God and His presence. God’s presence, being real and able to permeate all things will make all things taste of God, will it not? From the obvious Wagner, focusing on the rebirth of all things in Christ, to the not-so-obvious John Adams depicting supertankers taking off in San Francisco, they all taste of God and they all ultimately harmonize with and about God.