Schumann on music

As to what concerns the knotty question in general of how far instrumental music may go in the representation of thoughts and events, many are here too anxious in their attitude. We are certainly wrong if we believe that composers set out pen and paper to realize the miserable intention of expressing, describing, or painting this or that. Yet let us not place too low a value on fortuitous external influences and impressions. Unconsciously alongside the musical fantasy an idea is often continuously active, alongside the car the eye, and this, the organ always active, then holds fast amidst the sounds and tones to certain contours that can condense and develop themselves into distinct forms with the advancing music. Now the more the thoughts or images produced with the tones carry within them elements related to music, the more poetic or plastic in expression the composition will be, — and the more fantastic or sharper the conception of the musician is, the more his work will exalt or arrest us. . . . Indeed even smaller, more particular images can lend so charming and definite a character to music that one is astonished at how it is able to express such traits. Thus a composer once told me that while he was writing, the image of a butterfly swimming along on a leaf in a brook intruded itself upon him; this had given the little piece the delicacy and naiveté that somehow only the image may possess in reality.

In this fine genre painting Franz Schubert in particular was a master, and I cannot forbear adducing from my experience how once during a Schubert March the friend with whom I was playing answered my question about whether he did not see very specific figures before him: “Indeed! I found myself in Seville, but over a hundred years ago, amidst Dons and Doñas walking up and down, wearing dresses with trains, pointed shoes, pointed swords,” and so on. Strangely enough we were one in our visions even to the city.

Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, pp.84-85.
Cited in: Lippman, Edward (1999) The Philosophy & Aesthetics of Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 163.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

,

Featured Content

What Cage couldn’t stand
“John Cage once said he couldn’t abide the Dominant Seventh, and the saxophone.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.65.
The value of education
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Derek Bok, American lawyer and educator Cited at: QuotationsBook
Prokofiev is evicted
Sergey Prokofiev was once evicted from his apartment for playing the same chord 218 times.  A tally was kept by the downstairs tenant. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.69.
Arthur Rubinstein’s youthful practice habits
Interviewer: So many children hate to take music lessons. Can you understand this? Rubinstein: Oh, yes, I was one of them. You see, music lessons mean always this horrible dictatorial attitude of the professors. They slap four fingers and aarh; they shout at you: “Can’t you learn that? You must practice scales!” I mean, it […]
A man’s money
“Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything is always a portrait of himself and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.” Samuel Butler, The Way of the Flesh  (1903). Forgotten books, p. 60. Cited at Google […]
Speed (1)
Go to more crosswords
Habit is stronger than willpower or inspiration
In writing, habit seems to be a stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never […]
The inexpressible depth of music
The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from […]
Older version of Molly Malone discovered
A tiny 18th-century book has turned up in Hay-on-Wye containing the earliest known version of Sweet Molly Malone, almost a century older than Dublin’s unofficial anthem. Maev Kennedy, “Tart with a cart? Older song shows Dublin’s Molly Malone in new light”, The Guardian, 18 July 2010. Click here to view article
At the core of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations, an esoteric and astonishing piano piece lasting some 50 minutes, is one of the intriguing mysteries of music history. Why did Beethoven, during the difficult last decade of his life, when he was deaf, chronically ill and often in financial straits, become nearly obsessed with writing an extensive […]