Painting and music

Art has been defined a hundred thousand times: it is the beautiful, the true, the good. Music, which is one of the branches of art, belongs entirely to the domain of sensation. Let us understand one another and try not to be obscure. Sensation is produced in man when he understands art in two distinct but closely linked ways; the sensation of thought, which has as its conclusion melancholy or philosophy, and then the sensation that belongs entirely to the heart. Music, in my view, is the art that goes most directly to the heart. Sensation — you will understand me — is entirely in the heart; painting, architecture, sculpture, painting above all, reach much more the cerebral sensation. In a word, music goes from the heart to the Spirit, painting from thought to the heart. Religious exaltation created the organ. When on Earth poetry plays the organ, the angels of heaven respond to it. Thus, serious, religious music elevates the soul and the thoughts. Vulgar music makes the nerves vibrate, nothing more. I would gladly indicate certain personalities, but I do not have that right: I am no longer on Earth. Love the Requiem of Mozart, which killed him. I do not desire, any more than the Spirits do, your death by music, the living death, however; therein lies the forgetting of all that is earthly, through moral elevation. Lamennais. n [1]

[v. Lamennais.]