Due to this in­fi­nitely subtle in­ner breath the mind, and there­fore also the com­po­si­tion, and the mu­si­cal per­form­ance as well, be­come enli­vened and blos­som into a work of art.

If this in­ner breath is only slightly ef­fec­tive on the level of the mind – which means that the co­or­di­na­tion be­tween in­ner breath and mind is only poorly de­vel­oped – then the in­tel­lec­tual in­ter­ests of man will gravi­tate all auto­mati­cally, and as if matter of course, rather to­wards the mun­dane sphere of the life­less, and will prin­ci­pally con­cern them­selves with ex­pres­sions of the ma­te­rial world.

If, on the other hand, the in­ner breath is very ef­fec­tive in the mind, which means that the mind and the in­ner breath are per­fectly in­te­grated, and are merged into one on the level of the self, then such a highly evolved spiri­tual per­son will pre­domi­nantly occupy him­self with the alive; he will real­ize that all of na­ture is but the ex­pres­sion of life it­self, and in his outer ac­tiv­ity, too, in his mu­si­cal per­form­ance, he will only ex­press life.

It is the in­ner breath which ba­si­cally con­sti­tutes the live­li­ness of the com­po­si­tion. And it de­pends on this live­li­ness, how much and how com­pre­hen­sively a com­po­si­tion is able to ap­peal to the lis­tener on a con­scious level.

This in­ner breath, and the life it brings, turns the mu­si­cal work into a very per­sonal state­ment of the soul – as op­posed to some su­per­fi­cial in­tel­lec­tual rea­son­ing. And also it is the in­ner breath, due to which mu­sic ap­pears so in­fi­nitely more fa­mil­iar to us than all outer, in­tel­lec­tual state­ment.

It is the con­scious, and only the con­scious por­tion of the in­ner breath that makes the ex­peri­ence of mu­sic so sat­is­fy­ing to the un­der­stand­ing, and so ful­fill­ing to the feel­ing. There­fore, the in­ner breath is the basis of mu­sic.

The in­ner breath of mu­sic is the to­tal­ity of space and time, of cau­sal­ity, and of free­dom from pur­pose; it is the to­tal­ity of free­dom for all the mo­tifs be­yond space and time and be­yond causal con­sid­era­tions; it is the to­tal­ity of free­dom be­yond space and time for all the se­quences – and yet it com­prises space and time in their sub­stance.

This in­ner breath is be­yond the birth and the pass­ing away of mu­sic. It is the in­fi­nitely con­densed mani­fold beauty of the com­po­si­tion. Com­pared to this ever lively con­tin­uum of re­al­ity a com­po­si­tion ap­pears, on the level of the mind, as a mere shadow.

Here lies the be­gin­ning­less and the end­less field of mu­sic which, through the crea­tiv­ity of the art­ist, radi­ates its light into the world of sounds, and the glory of which again reaches the ear of the lis­tener through the mu­si­cal per­form­ance.

So far, in con­ven­tional mu­sic the­ory this radi­ance of the light of life was com­pre­hended as a mere shadow. At all times, how­ever, the prac­ti­cal as­pect of mu­sic went fur­ther into depth than its theo­reti­cal as­pect. And thanks to this fact, love for mu­sic has been pre­served un­til to­day.