Heine on music

What is music? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but it is spirit subject to the measurement of time. It is matter but it is matter that can dispense with space… Where words leave off, music begins. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) Quoted in Music Lovers Quotations, edited by Helen Exley.

Heine was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known today worldwide as the author of lyric poetry set to music by Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.