Despite its concise title, this small treatise, completed by Wagner (1813-1883) in September 1870 on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Beethoven's birth, is not only about this great composer. It is equally about Schopenhauer and the metaphysics of will, music, dreams, and the vision of phantoms; it is about theater, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller; it is about opera, fashion, public opinion, and modern culture in other words; it is about the national culture of Germans and French, in the context of their ongoing war conflict and the impending completion of the German nation; it is about Art in contrast to artistic merchandise; but, fundamentally and primarily, it is about Wagner himself and the philosophical defense of his musical drama.

This is the most important theoretical writing of Wagner after "Opera and Drama" and it condenses the philosophical and aesthetic views of the great composer in the later period of his work and life. This first Greek translation is made on the occasion of the bicentennial anniversary of his birth.