will. And the "slaves of the sound," whom he has conjured up, have
built him a palace more evanescent than Solomon's, but, as he describes
it, far more beautiful. They have laid its foundations below the earth.
They have carried its transparent walls up to the sky. They have tipped
each summit with meteoric fire. As earth strove upwards towards Heaven,
Heaven, in this enchanted structure, has yearned downwards towards the
earth. The great Dead came back; and those conceived for a happier
future walked before their time. New births of life and splendour united
far and near; the past, the present, and the to-come.

The vision has disappeared with the sounds which called it forth, and
the musician feels sorrowfully that it cannot be recalled: for the
effect was incommensurate with the cause; they had nothing in common
with each other. We can trace the processes of painting and verse; we
can explain their results. Art, however triumphant, is subject to
natural laws. But that which frames out of three notes of music "not a
fourth sound, but a star" is the Will, which is above law.

And, therefore, so Abt Vogler consoles himself, the music persists,
though it has passed from the sense of him who called it forth: for it
is an echo of the eternal life; a pledge of the reality of every
imagined good--of the continuance of whatever good has existed. Human
passion and aspiration are music sent up to Heaven, to be continued and
completed there. The secret of the scheme of creation is in the
musician's hands.

Having recognized this, Abt Vogler can subside, proudly and patiently,
on the common chord--the commonplace realities, of life.