Mu­sic bears many a se­cret; to some­one, there­fore, who is not prac­tised in gain­ing knowl­edge in mu­sic, mu­sic often ap­pears with­drawn and strange in many ways.
To the ini­ti­ate, how­ever, it is so fa­mil­iar in many ways be­cause it shares its se­crets with him.

The fa­mil­iarity with mu­sic comes about by the se­cret flow of truth be­tween the com­poser and his mu­sic lis­tener.

If mu­sic is a se­cret, then only in this sense; be­cause some­thing one does not know is not a se­cret but just some­thing un­known, while a se­cret is some knowl­edge one shares with some­one else or with a few, and which is not talked around in the gen­eral pub­lic.

The se­cret of mu­sic, there­fore, lies pri­mar­ily in the dis­creet as­so­cia­tion of a mu­sic lover with the crea­tive effluence of a true crea­tor of mu­sic, and it mani­fests it­self in that silent dia­logue which takes place be­tween the com­poser and his trustful mu­sic lis­tener, a dia­logue which escapes the mu­sic-con­sum­ing masses around the mu­sic lis­tener.

In his per­sonal ex­change of ex­peri­ences with the mu­si­cal crea­tor, for the true mu­sic lis­tener the neigh­bour­ing lis­tener sim­ply does not exist.
To the knower only his very per­sonal dia­logue with the crea­tive form of the great mas­ter of tones exists, who conveys to him, through the in­ter­preter, his in­sights into hu­man life.
How­ever, this is only the first stage of mu­sic lis­ten­ing, and the com­poser aims at some­thing more, some­thing higher.

With the help of his mu­si­cal state­ments the tone poet stimu­lates one af­ter an­other spe­cific spaces of cog­ni­tion within the lis­tener to vibrate and he de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of the re­ver­ber­at­ing spaces in such a man­ner that they vibrate har­mo­ni­ously to­wards each other and with each other.
When he cre­ated the mu­si­cal work, the mu­sic poet had set these in­ner, re­ver­ber­at­ing, cog­ni­tive spaces into vi­bra­tion within him­self, too, and so he knows their ef­fect on the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity, on the in­di­vid­ual soul.

Now, in his per­sonal ex­peri­ence while lis­ten­ing to the mu­sic, his lis­tener per­ceives these re­ver­ber­at­ing spaces as his own in­ner tone-world, as his own in­ner crea­tive world, as his own, very origi­nal, in­ner, liv­ing world, as his mani­fold self, as his one and all.
So, ac­cord­ing to the pat­tern laid down by the mu­si­cal crea­tor, he ex­am­ines his mani­fold crea­tive talent, his true crea­tive po­ten­tial in the swing­ing rounde­lay of his in­ner quali­ties, and he real­izes that he is crea­tive.

In that moment, the crea­tive form of the great mu­sic crea­tor speaks to him not from out­side any­more but speaks within the mu­sic lis­tener him­self – as the voice of his very own con­sci­ence, as the voice of his very own crea­tive power.

So, in a very dis­creet, se­cret man­ner, the mu­sic lis­tener dis­cov­ers the mul­ti­plic­ity of life spread be­fore him in his in­ner­most ex­peri­ence.
And the traced-out pat­tern of the outer poetry of tones shows him means and ways to har­mo­ni­ously stimu­late his own in­ner life, his own mighty, in­ner hu­man forces, for play­ful ac­tion and how to keep the wheel of the joy-giv­ing in­ner knowl­edge turn­ing with the quali­ties of the mu­si­cal mean­ing.