Music at Troynovant:
notes on music, music, song, dance, & composers;
listed by Title
  

References to the history and culture of music, both popular and classical, and including the lyrical or dramatic, and dance — even in silent films. Good music speaks to its time, but as with the best literature, the best music also is timeless.
  

... there is no Music of the spheres ... Plutarch speaks as if a man might very conveniently hear that harmony, if he were an inhabitant in the Moone. But I guess that he said this out of incogitancy, and did not well consider the necessary consequences upon his opinion.

However the world would have no great loss in being deprived of this Music, unless at some times we had the privilege to hear it ....

John Wilkins
The Discovery of a World in the Moone
or, A Discourse Tending to Prove
that 'tis probable there may be another habitable World in that Planet  (1638)

  
In the front row of the upper circle a woman with a restless starling-voice was discussing the work of a temporarily fashionable composer, chiefly in relation to her own emotions, which she seemed to think might prove generally interesting to those around her.

"Whenever I hear his music I feel that I want to go up into a mountain and pray. Can you understand that feeling?"

The girl to whom she was unburdening herself shook her head.

"You see, I've heard his music chiefly in Switzerland, and we were up among the mountains all the time, so it wouldn't have made any difference."

"In that case," said the woman, who seemed to have emergency emotions to suit all geographical conditions, "I should have wanted to be in a great silent plain by the side of a rushing river."

Saki  (H. H. Munro)
The Unbearable Bassington  (1912)

  
[Glendower's castle, Wales.]

Mortimer:

With all my heart, I'll sit and hear her sing.
By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.

Glendower:

Do so, and those musicians that shall play to you
Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,
And straight they shall be here. Sit and attend.

William Shakespeare
1 Henry IV, 3.1.218-222

  
The old gentleman complained that he had heard little music at home these days. To give him his fill for once, Felix played copiously — mornings for Goethe alone; evenings in a larger company. As always, Goethe was interested in the biological and historical aspects of music. As we know from his correspondence with Zelter and also from Felix's accounts, Goethe regarded music as something "evolvable"; it was to him a part of natural history and fascinated him in the same way as the growth of crystals. Indeed, why should not music be experienced in strata? At that very time Ludwig Spohr was experimenting with a Historical Symphony in which he intended to copy the styles of various eras. The experiment was a failure, of course, but it was an attempt in the spirit of Goethe.

Heinrich Eduard Jacob
"Parting with Goethe"
Felix Mendelssohn and his Times
translated by Richard and Clara Winston