There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.
The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.
Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.
A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.
The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.
But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.