“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)
