Schumann and Literature

Abstract Or Much Of The Nineteenth Century, The Interest Of Composers Not just in music but in all the arts was truly extraordinary. An interrelationship among the arts was commonly recognized. “The well-educated musician,” wrote Schumann, “can study a Madonna by Raphael, the painter a symphony by Mozart, with equal benefit. Yet more: in sculpture the actor becomes a silent statue while he brings the sculptor’s work to life-the painter transforms a poem into an image, the musician sets a painting to music.” ‘ Coupled with a broad interest in the arts was a preoccupation with the “extramusical” properties of music itsel( It was a literary age, and program music flourished. That may, to a certain extent, help explain the interest many composers had in literature. Not a few were distinguished writers themselves: Berlioz as critic, essayist, and autobiographer; Liszt as critic and essayist; Wagner as dramatist, essayist, and theoretician; and Weber as critic and author of an unfinished novel. Musical life in Leipzig was unusually rich. The venerable Gewandhaus concerts, created in 1781, were among the earliest and most eminent in Europe. At the time of Schumann’s residence in Leipzig, the series comprised twenty concerts per season. Other concert series included the Euterpe (orchestral concerts founded in 1824), as well as a chamber music series featuring the Matthai Quartet.