I once heard that music is the closest thing we have to a time machine, and ever since, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how true that is.

Painter Agnes Martin expressed that music is the purest form of art, as it is responded to with emotion. “The best art is music as the highest arc, the highest form of art. It’s completely abstract, and we make about eight times as much response to music as to any other art. We respond to it emotionally, not intellectually at all.” 

Arthur Schopenhauer also argued that music is the purest art because it doesn’t imitate the world; it expresses the inner essence of reality itself. In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche believed music speaks directly to our instincts and emotions by transcending rational thought. However, it’s not entirely true that we respond only emotionally, not intellectually. Composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach built mathematically intricate structures. The Art of Fugue reveals a near-mathematical exploration of permutation and inversion, resulting in intense spiritual and emotional resonance. But whether it’s the “highest” art or not, it remains ultimately a philosophical question. One thing is undeniable: it stands among the most powerful of them all.