Goethe im Schlachthof
- Dror Feiler

For those gathered dutifully round the bed, the death rattle of a dying man is so boring that they fall asleep. But their snores sound so much like the death rattle that it is di cult to ascertain who is actually dying. Such is the relationship between bourgeois society and modern music. 

Of course, music is a remarkable art. Its muse has a bodily defect. She lacks both legs and so cannot stand or walk on earth. She is forced, by means of a pair of extremely dilapidated wings, to move in “higher regions.” But now up there, too, there is the inconvenience of airplanes and smoke from factories, and radio listeners curse the disturbance and static. Yet the somewhat disabled muse utters bravely on and, in spite of everything, assists a multitude of people to produce a host of questionable things; questionable because they have almost nothing to do with anybody, not even those who produce them; questionable because mostly they aren’t worth the question... 

Hanns Eisler

(Über moderne Musik – Die Rote Fahne – 15 October 1927)