The career of a musician out to be — it is, actually, and in many ways — different from the careers of artists in other fields of art.  All comparisons of the other arts with music are necessarily somewhat superficial.  The art of music needs, essentially, not much contact with social groups, or concern with social problems.  By the art of music I understand here the comparatively very young art of absolute music, and never applied or auxiliary music.  This absolutely, autonomous, independent music has developed into what is perhaps the most exclusive medium for the spiritual exaltation of the active individual in an intimate, private sphere of personal experience.  Music is one of the performing arts with which, in practice, one can be alone, entirely alone.  Theatrical art is not comparable with music because the actor always reproduces what is in everybody’s orbit of experience.  He uses language, the means of communication of all men.  He can hardly act alone in his home.  He needs an ensemble, and he is part of the visible human acts.  Dancing can be abstract, or symbolic, but even then it remains sensual and technical.  As a creative art music is also different from other arts, from the literary, the pictorial, the architectural.  The writer describes and interprets what he has seen and experienced.  The painter also describes, or at least he did before abstract painting appeared, though even this is not to be compared to music. 

Artur Schnabel, in a lecture at the University of Chicago, 1945

W. Grünzweig and L. Matheson (ed.) Music, Wit, and Wisdom: The Autobiography of Artur Schnabel, Hofheim, Wolke Verlag, 2009.