"Great music is a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depth the mystery of the past within us. Or we might say that it is a prodigious incantation, - every different instrument and voice making separable appeal to different billions of prenatal memories. There are tones that call up all ghosts of youth and joy and tenderness; - there are tones that evoke all phantom pain of perished passion; - there are tones that resurrect all dead sensations of majesty and might and glory, - all expired exultations, - all forgotten magnanimities. Well may the influence of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun."
- Lafcadio Hearn, 1899
