The his­tory of mu­sic spans al­most 6,000 years. Through­out this span of time the “Art of the Muse” often changed its costume but, just as in an­cient times, it con­tin­ues to re­sound in per­fec­tion.

To­day in a new age, at the dawn of a new day in the his­tory of man­kind, the Queen of Arts shines into our world like the light of the sun and wins the friend­ship of those who love life.

Even at the first glimpse of dawn the lucid shape of this queen ap­pears to us in the depth of her na­ture so fa­mil­iar that we are re­minded of an­cient re­cords that praise the power of her per­fect beauty.

From an­cient re­cords we know that the Chi­nese con­sid­ered mu­sic to be the source of their love of truth, of their knowl­edge of truth, and that they even looked upon mu­sic as the un­derly­ing power of the cos­mos.

Thus, to the Chi­nese, mu­sic elu­ci­dated the natu­ral or­der of the world and the stan­dards of their cul­tural evo­lu­tion – from man’s ar­du­ous quest for the mean­ing of life to the spiri­tual height of hu­man per­fec­tion.

To the Chi­nese, mu­sic was the prin­ci­ple un­derly­ing all world har­mony; to them, mu­sic de­ter­mined the bal­ance of hu­man-di­vine de­vel­op­ment as well as the equi­lib­rium of physi­cal forces.

In an­cient times the Egyp­tians thought mu­sic to be of di­vine ori­gin. So, mu­sic was the au­thor­ity on Egyp­tian ethi­cal teach­ing, and it rep­re­sented the com­pre­hen­sive foun­da­tion for their hu­man edu­ca­tion.

To the Egyp­tians, mu­sic was the great gift prom­is­ing in­di­vid­ual free­dom to the young striv­ing for per­fec­tion.

Thou­sands of years ago, the Baby­lonians, too, rec­og­nized the cosmologi­cal pur­pose of mu­sic. And, like the Chi­nese, they real­ized that in true clas­si­cal mu­sic they could find the prin­ci­ples of an all-em­brac­ing world or­der ful­filled.

In Greece, mu­sic was a gift of the gods given to man. It was also the golden key for gain­ing high­est hu­man knowl­edge.

To the Hellenes, mu­sic, like no other art, dis­played hu­man feel­ing and char­ac­ter both at their high­est level of per­fec­tion. And ac­cord­ingly, they em­ployed mu­sic as a means to glo­rify the hu­man-di­vine reve­la­tion.

To­day, the bliss­ful ec­stasy, which they ex­peri­enced dur­ing the boisterous fes­ti­val of Dionysos, ap­pears to us like a fertility rite. To the an­cient Greek, how­ever, this fes­ti­val was de­voted to the su­preme hu­man ex­peri­ence, the prin­ci­ple of duality on the level of unity – an idea we will later find real­ized in the sym­pho­nies of the great clas­si­cal com­pos­ers.