The previous pages were created at the end of the year 1864, and certainly at an unusual moment of my life.

With the idea of writing down my music history and musicology after more than thirty years of preparation, I was seized by a nervous morbidity, the result of an overload of work, and of a life full of inner storminess, and thus hindered in the completion of this work for the time being, or so I was assured unanimously by the doctors whom I consulted.

That which appeared in the form of severe unhappiness, would then be unveiled to me as a blessing. In this involuntary leisure time my opinions and thoughts were broadened and deepened so considerably that I, if this work were to appear to me now, as I had managed it up to my breakdown in spirit, I would have to turn away from it, entirely dissatisfied.

In my silent return to myself, the pictures of my past returned to me, so sharply etched and in living colors in my soul, that it was as if I experienced my life a second time. Thus, I wanted to know that it was depicted for my own recollection and that of my friends. Then, however, I was directed by this thought: it might be that what I experienced would also resonate in wider circles.

Full of longing, but entirely unconcerned, I look forward now to the day which will lead me back to that work, the highest task of my scholarly career. Unconcerned! — for in my life, as in that career, which has become clear to me, I have learned that no one dies until he has completed the duty assigned to him; I have already endeavored to show this for Beethoven and Gluck. If these works have meaning for the world, so I will live and write them. If I should die first, then their completion was not commanded.

It was my Therese, however, with the insightful and friendship-true advice of excellent doctors, who stepped forward to protect me against the frightening onset of the disease, which at the beginning made it seem that I was losing my sight. For my wife's love will stretch up to heaven and does not hesitate before the horrors of hell, if this means refreshing and rescuing her husband.