[Music is] a language which we speak and understand but cannot translate - Eduard Hanslick

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.

You cannot imagine the wild enthusiasm that these two men created in Vienna. Newspapers went into raptures over each new waltz, and innumerable articles appeared about Lanner and Strauss.

(Referring to the music of Anton Bruckner) "Nightmarish hangover style" (traumverwirrten Katzenjammerstil)