Thus, even at an early time, the great think­ers of man­kind sought to pre­serve the pu­rity of mu­sic.

The Egyp­tians, for ex­ample, adopted the view that only such mu­sic be tol­er­ated which tames the pas­sions, but not that which only stimu­lates the senses.

The great think­ers of the hellenic cul­ture re­garded melody and rhythm as the ex­pres­sion of ethi­cal at­ti­tudes. Thus, they em­pha­sized the na­ture-given task of mu­sic to cre­ate and guar­an­tee the or­derly, moral dis­po­si­tion of the soul. There­fore, mu­sic to them was the basis for suc­cess­ful cog­ni­tion of truth, for edu­ca­tion and for learn­ing.

In our time, most an­cient knowl­edge is break­ing through, as new truths are com­ing to light in our sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal day-to-day life, and it urges eve­ry­one of us to as­sume a clear at­ti­tude in shap­ing our world.

Just as one only sees the top of an iceberg – that part which is above the wa­ter – while the larg­est, heaviest part, the sup­port­ing base, lies hid­den in the depths of the wa­ter, like­wise in mu­si­cal edu­ca­tion only the tip, only the small­est part of the phe­nome­non of mu­sic has been pre­sented to us. Up to now, the sup­port­ing foun­da­tion of the iceberg of mu­sic has gen­er­ally re­mained in­visi­ble – hid­den within the hearts of our great mu­si­cal art­ists who have passed on the se­cret of mu­sic only to their equals. There­fore, the es­sence of mu­sic has been, and still re­mains, un­known and in­ac­ces­si­ble to the masses of mu­sic con­sumers – but also to mu­sic lovers and even to prac­tis­ing mu­si­cians.

It is the pur­pose of this book to raise the en­tire iceberg of mu­sic to the wa­ter sur­face and to in­spire eve­ry man, the mu­sic ex­pert as well as the mighty mu­sic lover, to gain truth­ful in­sight into the un­earthly abode of the Queen of Arts.

There­fore, all such in­for­ma­tion, which may be found in stan­dard mu­sic books, was dis­missed from this se­ries of books, and only that as­pect of mu­sic was con­sid­ered which makes mu­sic im­mor­tal.