After Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian revolutionary and sometime anarchist, had heard [Beethoven's Ninth Symphony] for the first time, in Dresden in 1849, he told the conductor, Richard Wagner, that "if all the music that has ever been written were lost in the expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge ourselves to rescue this symphony, even at the peril of our own lives."
Sachs, Harvey. The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011, 5.
Amen, brother Mikhail. Amen.
