Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. (Beethoven)
When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. (Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted by Bettina von Arnin, letter to Goethe, 1810.