ABSTRACT
Music as such only knows of tones, not the causes that produce them. In any case, with the usual method, the words and actions of the text direct the composer to the affections of will underlying them, and call up in the feelings to be expressed; consequently are effectual as a means of exciting his musical imagination. According to familiar theory, music is not, like arithmetic, a means of making rational and irrational numerical relations comprehensible with the aid of concepts, but rather of bringing them to a sensory cognizance that is entirely immediate and simultaneous. By contrast, where in actual reality and its terrors our will itself is so excited and tormented, it is not a matter of tones and their numerical relations, but we are rather now ourselves the stretched, plucked, and vibrating string. Music is so endearing to our hearts precisely by virtue of the fact that it constantly mirrors the complete satisfaction of its desires.
