The remains of mourning plays are called music. Perhaps there is a parallel here: just as tragedy marks the transition from historical to dramatic time, the mourning play represents the transition from dramatic time to musical time. — Walter Benjamin, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), 57. Benjamin wrote this text in 1916, at the age of 24, which was not published during his lifetime.