Awesome!

Taken from the novel Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse:-

We consider classical music to be the epitome and quintessence of our culture, because it is that culture’s clearest, most significant gesture and expression. In this music we possess the heritage of cultural antiquity and Christianity, a spirit of serenely cheerful and brave piety, a superbly chivalric morality. For in the final analysis, every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behaviour concentrated into a gesture. As we know, between 1500 and 1800 a wide variety of music was made; styles and means of expression were extremely variegated; but the spirit, or rather the morality, was everywhere the same. The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel or Chopin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found I any Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, compose readiness for death in Bach- always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let the same note sound also in the whole of our lives acts and sufferings.