Never did music more sink into and soothe and fill me - never so prove its soul - rousing power, its impossibility of statement.
Especially in the rendering of one of Beethoven's master septets...
I was carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders. Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods - but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless- often the sentiment of the postures of naked children playing or sleeping.
It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly - every motion a study.
I allowed myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own pensiveness, joyousness.