Music is the mirror which most perfectly reflects man's inner being and
the essence of all things. Ruskin saw clearly that he alone can love art
well who loves better what art mirrors. This may especially be applied
to music, which offers, as a Beethoven has said, a more lofty revelation
than all wisdom and philosophy.
Having no model in nature, being neither an imitation of any actual
object, nor a repetition of anything experienced, music stands alone
among the arts. It represents the real thing, as Schopenhauer has it,
the thing itself, not the mere semblance. Were we able to give a
thoroughly satisfactory explanation of music, he declares, we should
have the true philosophy of the universe.
"Music is a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to
the edge of the Infinite, and impels us for a moment to gaze into it,"
exclaimed Carlyle. Wagner found in music the conscious language of
feeling, that which ennobles the sensual and realizes the spiritual.
"Music is the harmonious voice of creation, an echo of the invisible
world, one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is
destined one day to sound," wrote Mazzini.
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