His work lies far from all reflection and conscious intention, and flows directly from inspiration. The abstract conception is here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful. The composer reveals the inner nature of the world, and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language { 65} which his reason does not understand. In the same way, a person under the influence of mesmerism tells things of which he has no conception when he wakes. In the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
As quick transition from wish to satisfaction is well-being, so quick melodies are cheerful. Slow melodies are analogous to the delayed and hardly-won satisfaction, and are sad. Quick dance music seems to speak only of easily attained and common pleasure. Adagio movements speak of the pain of a great and noble striving, which despises all trivial happiness.
The effect of the major and the minor key is equally marked. In general, music consists of a constant succession of more or less disquieting chords, chords which excite "immortal longings," and also of more or less quieting and satisfying chords, just as the life of the heart is a constant succession of feelings of disquietude and of peace, following desire and satisfaction. Just as there are two general fundamental moods of the feelings, serenity and sadness, so music has two keys, which correspond to these, the major and the minor. Since music is founded deeply in the nature of man, the dominant national mood is reproduced invariably in a country's music. We find accordingly that the minor key prevails in Russian music, while allegro in the minor is characteristic of French music, "as if one danced while one's shoe pinched."
But in all these analogies music has no direct, but only an indirect relation to them. It does not express particular and definite joys, sorrows, pains, or horrors, but joy, sorrow, pain, or horror itself, the real, inner nature of each emotion. It is the essential character of these emotions that is represented, without disturbing { 66} accessories. Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never the events themselves. This inner meaning of life, the eternal truth of things, is felt and understood immediately when we listen to great music. "All things eternal," wrote Wagner, "can be expressed with unmistakable certainty in music." And in another passage, he says, "Music can never and in no possible alliance cease to be the highest, the redeeming art. It is of her nature, that what all the other arts but hint at, through her and in her becomes the most indubitable of certainties, the most direct and definite of truths."