Music is God’s gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

Landor’s aphorism elevates music above the other arts by giving it a double citizenship: it originates in the divine (“God’s gift,” “art of Heaven”) yet is experienced and practiced on earth. The final clause—“the only art of earth we take to Heaven”—suggests music’s unique power to outlast bodily life, whether understood theologically (as praise continuing in the afterlife) or metaphorically (as the most spiritually transporting art, capable of making listeners feel momentarily “heavenly”). The statement also implies a hierarchy of arts: painting, sculpture, and literature are bound to material media and mortal conditions, while music, being immaterial and temporal, seems closest to pure spirit.