Robert Browning's Taste in Music

One of the constant factors in Robert Browning's life was his love of music, a love which he repaid by devoting two of the finest examples of his poetic art to musical subjects. “Abt Vogler” and “A Toccata of Galuppi's” are among the most frequently studied and anthologized poems, the latter being a particular favorite with general reader and critic alike. Yet had Browning never written these two poems, his attachment to music would have been just as apparent through the numerous references to music, concerts, and musical personalities in his other poems and his letters. In fact, Browning's knowledge of music and his status as an amateur musician are commonplaces of the Browning legend, a part of the received Gospel. But while we know a great deal about Browning's youthful training in music, his technical knowledge of musical forms, and his philosophy of music, we know very little about the important matter of where his taste in music lay. If one reads Browning's poems and letters with the express purpose of discovering his musical likes and dislikes, the results are surprising and—in terms of his “musical” poems—rather revealing, for they indicate that Browning, living in the great age of musical Romanticism, was something of a musical reactionary who looked with disdain on the great composers of his era and on their musical styles, preferring instead the forms and performing techniques of the preceding century.