went over to Schopenhauer (persuaded thereto, as one knows, by a poet, Herwegh), went over so completely that there ensued the cleavage of a complete theoretic contradiction between his earlier and his later aesthetic faiths⁠—the earlier, for example, being expressed in Opera and Drama , the later in the writings which he published from 1870 onwards. In particular, Wagner from that time onwards (and this is the volte-face which alienates us the most) had no scruples about changing his judgment concerning the value and position of music itself. What did he care if up to that time he had made of music a means, a medium, a “woman,” that in order to thrive needed an end, a man⁠—that is, the drama? He suddenly realised that more could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian theory in majorem musicae gloriam ⁠—that is to say, by means of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music abstracted from and opposed to all the other arts, music as the independent art-in-itself,