Quote of the Day (E.T.A. Hoffmann, on Music, ‘The Most Romantic of All the Arts’)

“Music… is the most romantic of all the arts—one might almost say, the only genuinely romantic one—for its sole subject is the infinite. The lyre of Orpheus opened the portals of Orcus—music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world that has nothing in common with the external sensual world that surrounds him, a world in which he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself to an inexpressible longing.”—Composer-music critic E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music” (1813)