Without the slightest
diffidence I believed that I could write this needful music." He had up
to this time no special leaning toward music. He had not previously
entertained a thought of it as a career, but his first hearing of
Beethoven's music decided him to adopt it, such was the kinship between
these two minds. Through Beethoven he discovered that "music," to use
his own words, "is a new language in which that which is boundless can
express itself with a certainty impossible to be misunderstood."[G]
[G] Thoreau, in 1840, expressed himself similarly. We quote from the
recently published Service. "Music is a language, a mother tongue, a
more mellifluous and articulate language than words, in comparison with
which speech is recent and temporary. There is as much music in the
world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the
universal language and men greet each other in the fields in such
accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals at a distance."
The episode made a turning-point in his life.
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