This is the OP's opinion.

There is some amazing classical music, and there is some classical music that I have tried to listen to, given it my best shot, and it just doesn't do it for me. Some of that is the atonal, or anti-melody creations of musical academics, but some of it is the exact same musical piece or composer which someone else absolutely adores.

For example, I've never really related to most of Mozart's music, except that I love The Magic Flute opera. Play me just about any other Mozart piece and I'll just go, "Yeah, whatever!", but play me some Vivaldi or J.S. Bach and I am more likely to sit up and listen, and in some cases - hence the original posting - I am so transfixed that I am incapable of re-directing my brain, hands or feet into any other activity because I am totally focused on the music. I probably get watched now and then by my manager at work when I suddenly go dead still and forget to work because I am listening to a piece of music on the earphones.

Alternatively, as gillymor said, there are some other musical pieces outside of the classical genre which can also bring me to the same standstill. I can't possibly list them all but at the top of the list is Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, and a bunch of others in just about every musical genre you can name, including the electro-percussion duo I mentioned before, Leftfield.

To discuss the concept of "genius" would take a very large thread, and it wouldn't be confined to a thread about classical music. Maybe we could start that thread, but all I would say is that MY loose definition of a genius (off the top of my head, without asking Google) is someone with amazing mental and creative capabilities, with the capacity to bring together seemingly unrelated ideas, concepts or elements which generates among other people a new understanding of the field of study. That Eureka moment. An idea which, once formulated, changes the way that the field of study is evaluated from that time forward.

Having watched the wonderful documentary series called Jazz - directed by Ken Burns I believe that a process of genius was used to create jazz (including the influence on popular music even up to today) which used the genius of a lot of different musicians coming from a lot of social and musical backgrounds. So, in my opinion, the genius was not just one or a few people, but the sum of the parts, i.e. synergy between a lot of people not just in one group, but scattered geographically and socially.

I think that the word "genius" is bandied about without really evaluating the person and their capabilities against a real definition of genius, but personally I think that if you get a Eureka moment from a piece of music and you experience that shift in your concept of the musical world from that moment on, then you personally have identified a "genius" in your world and that's a wonderful and amazing experience. Far be it for anyone else to underrate your experience by saying that they don't agree. If it was a Eureka moment for you, then no one else should be able to take that away from you. Someone else can have a different opinion, but they cannot tell you what you think or feel.

Helen