...[W]e may term poetry the mind's transcendent recollection of the eternal. For the first and most ancient poetry, as the common memory of the human race—its higher organ of remembrance—passes on from century to century, and from nation to nation; and though ever dressing itself in the changing fashion of the day, yet, through all time, it refers us back to the primary and eternal.
Music, on the other hand, is eminently an art of longing. To this it owes all its ravishing enchantments—its magic and irresistible charms. In music, however, as in every other form of art, the higher and the earthly—the soul, as it were, and the body—the heavenly longing and the terrestrial are often blended together in the same note and tone, so as scarcely to be discriminated.
Friedrich von Schlegel, Philosophy of Language, Morrison, tr., p. 419.
