Music Is the Most Romantic of All Arts (Death Anniversary of Frédéric Chopin)

Frédéric Chopin died on the 17th October 1849 and this post is dedicated to his memory.

“Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing…“

George Roux, Spirit, 1885

I read a sentence in a schoolbook a few years ago which said that “music is the most romantic of all arts” and this line stuck with me. It awoke something inside me, it inspired me at school and at home, it was the most beautiful sentence I had read. The idea that music was the most romantic of all arts enchanted me beyond belief. Later I read the entire essay by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a study of Beethoven’s instrumental music which first appeared in 1810 and was revised in 1813. Perhaps in our day and age the word “romantic” is simplified, overused and misunderstood, it stands for something shallow and sugary, but when Hoffmann used it to describe Beethoven’s music, he used it to describe the powerful, unrestrained passion, emotions and expressiveness. As much as I love paintings and enjoy reading books, I must say that only music awakens that something within me, and I imagine most of you would agree with me. When I listen to Chopin’s Nocturnes and his Waltz in A minor, Debussy’s work for flute and harp, some Ravel, and even other music such as Tindersticks or Echo and the Bunnymen, it sends me into a trance, my imagination is awakened and images appear before my eyes, sentiments I never knew I had suddenly posses me and afterwards I feel a catharsis calmness and a new found love and inspiration. Even in visual arts this romantic nature of music is portrayed. In George Roux’s painting “Spirit” a gorgeous ghostly white lady is seen playing the piano. Her thin waist and ethereal form are aesthetically pleasing and the man’s face shows both shock and awe. Perhaps he is a widow and this is the ghost of his wife playing their favourite tune. Painting is open to interpretation, but one thing is certain; only the music has such power to move us, bring us to tears, purify us, infuse us with yearning and romance, and even make us fall in love with whoever is playing it or sharing our love for it.

John William Waterhouse, Saint Cecilia, 1895

Now here are E.T.A Hoffmann’s words:

“When music is discussed as an independent art, should it not be solely instrumental music that is intended, music that scorns every aid from and mixing with any other art (poetry), music that only expresses the distinctive and unique essence of this art? It is the most romantic of all arts, and we could almost say the only truly romantic one because its only subject is the infinite. Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing. . . .
Thus Beethoven’s instrumental music opens to us the realm of the monstrous and immeasurable. Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we sense giant shadows surging to and fro, closing in on us until they destroy us, but not the pain of unending longing in which every desire that has risen quickly in joyful tones sinks and expires. Only with this pain of love, hope, joy—which consumes but does not destroy, which would burst asunder our breasts with a mightily impassioned chord—we live on, enchanted seers of the ghostly world! Romantic taste is rare, romantic talent even rarer, and perhaps for this reason there are so few who are able to sweep the lyre with tones that unveil the wonderful realm of the romantic. Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life; he is more accommodating, more comprehensible for the common man. Mozart laid claim more to the superhuman, to the marvelous that dwells in the inner spirit. Beethoven’s music wields the lever of fear, awe, horror, and pain, and it awakens that eternal longing that is the essence of the romantic. Thus he is a purely romantic composer, and if he has had less success with vocal music, is this because vocal music excludes the character of indefinite longing and represents the emotions, which come from the realm of the infinite, only by the definite affects of words? . . .“

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Her Mother’s Voice, exhibited in 1888

Monotonous beige and yellow colours and a slightly sentimental mood of this late Victorian genre scene painted by English painter William Quiller Orchardson hides a more wistful theme. Evening has fallen and a lamp is casting a yellowish glow all over the sumptuous interior and yet, despite the richness of the interior, a certain sadness hangs like a cloud over the room. An old gentleman was sitting in his armchair and reading the newspapers until something happened… A familiar voice, a very dear voice, colours the stuffy air filled with memories and hopeless wistful reveries. The voice awakens old wounds and merry memories that he can never get back “And all the money in the world couldn’t bring back those days”, to quote the song “This is the Day” by The The (and later Manic Street Preachers). His daughter, dressed in a fashionable pale pink evening gown, is sitting at the piano, playing and singing while a young man is standing by her side. She has her mother’s voice, as the title of the painting suggests. It is through music, singing, but still music, that the inexplicable yearning enters the man’s heart and soul and awakens a river of emotions which usually remain buried deep within him.

Memories That Become Monstrous Lies!

“Dreams that roam between truth and untruth
Memories that become monstrous lies
So onward! And Onward! And Onward I go!
Onward! And Upward!
And I’m off to find love…“

(Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Do You Love Me Part 2)

Leonor Fini, Ophelia, 1963

For years now I have been living my life perpetually haunted by memories. I can scarcely remember how and when and why this has started in the first place, but I know that now it is so firmly here and that it is such a huge part of me. I scoff at the present and yet every single moment that passes is instantly beautiful, magical and precious to me. I am always half in the real world and half somewhere else. Whenever real life disappoints, and it always inevitably does because it is real and not magical, or when I am bored or dispirited, I always retreat back to my safe place; the oasis of memories. Now, at this present moment in time, – little by little, then suddenly all at once, – I have found myself at a point in life when everything is changing rapidly and in order to flourish and spread my wings I feel that I must shed myself of these demons once and for all. And yet I cling to them in desperation, for they are the only thing that I have that is familiar, that brings comfort, that nourishes me. My memories as a safe haven, a place to throw my anchor and find stability in the wild waves of the ever changing daily life. Memories are a banquet on which I feast. It certainly doesn’t help that I have the memory of an elephant, that I have an unwavering devotion to my diary, and that I am fond of wistful, nostalgia-inducing music. The tapestry of my life is woven with memories, dreams and fantasies and to let that go would be to let go of my life itself? What would be left of it? Once the precious jewels of memories and fantasies have been taken out? An empty shell?

Barry Windsor-Smith, Psyche, 1978

These days I find myself thinking more about this because the real life is, at long last, finally, – and seemingly happily, – opening itself up to me, alas! The moment I had been waiting on for a decade or so, but I am not sure whether I want it or not anymore. Whilst listening to Nick Cave’s song “Do you love me? (Part two)” the other day the lines “dreams that roam between the truth and untruth, memories that become monstrous lies” caught my attention and made me further sink into these thoughts. To leave the past once and for all, and embrace the present? I find myself almost unable to do it. And whenever I try, when I live and walk and laugh and love, I still constantly hear the sweet whispers from the darkest deepest depths of the abyss; the memories are calling out to me to drown in them once again, to sink into them like Ophelia, to pick those withered flowers instead of the living, blooming ones of the present moment. But as the Tindersticks song “Travelling Light” says; “it comes with the hurt and the guilt, and the memories/ If I had to take them with me I would never get up from my bed…” It is a heavy burden to carry all the regrets, and longings and memories on your back. That is no way to move forward in life.

Odilon Redon, Ophelia Among the Flowers, c. 1905-8

Like a drug addict, I succumb, oh, so very easily and all my determination crumbles to dust and I feel myself drifting off into my own little world made out of fragments of the past, mostly real, but also embellished, beautified, made more magical by the wand of my imagination, for nothing in memories is ever exactly as it had happened in real life. Memories are indeed monstrous lies! They are ghosts that approach you gently, with their sweet lips and alluring voices, and whisper to you to surrender… shhh… I yearn for memories that were not even real, I yearn for what never was the reality or truth in the first place, and yet I am attached to the state of yearning. I yearn for the “happy old days” which were not happy at all, in fact, they were often rather miserable. But my imagination has made them more beautiful and now that time has passed – I want them again! All too easily I turn my back on the present moment and it seems to offend, even sadden, the people who am I sharing the present moment with, and still I can’t help myself. The ghosts of memories haunt me at every step, they follow me like a shadow and I know not anymore where I end and where they begin.

Memories and Nostalgia: Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait On the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait Along the Boarder Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932

In 1932 Mexican painter Diego Rivera was working on a series of twenty-seven frescoes in the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. His wife Frida Kahlo accompanied him on this trip to the States, but she shared none of his enthusiasm for the modernity and industrialised landscape of this city, preferring the ancient ruins over factory chimneys, nature over industry. And she expressed her feelings beautifully in the painting “Self-Portrait Along the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States”. She expressed her disdain for the Americans and their lifestyle: “Although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States, I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They live as if in an enormous chicken coop that is dirty and uncomfortable. The houses look like bread ovens and all the comfort that they talk about is a myth.” But, as a painter, she expressed herself better visually then verbally and this painting is a direct a comment on the differences between the perceived idyll of her beloved Mexico and the coldness of the modern urban landscape.

The painting can almost be read as a story because it is filled with details and each detail has a something to tell. In the middle of the painting is the twenty-five year old Frida dressed in a pretty pink gown and white mittens. A cigarette in one hand and a Mexican flag in the other. On the left is an idealised landscape of Mexico, conjured from her memory and imagination, from her loyalty to her country and the nostalgia that she must have felt, especially in the contrast with the ugliness she felt all around her. On the left is a world led by the forces of nature, the power of sun, rain and soil. The fertile soil which gives birth to vibrant flowers and cactuses, their roots are deep and hard to pull out, just as Frida’s art was deeply rooted in the traditions of her homeland. Ruins of a temple and statues of ancient Gods represent the pre-Columbian Mexico. The sun and the moon represent the ancient gods of Mexico; Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

On the right is the industrial landscape; skyscrapers and tall factory chimneys; their smoke is slightly obscuring the flag of the United States and there are no clouds on the sky, the dirty chimney smoke has concealed them all. The word Ford is written on the four factory chimneys. There is an obvious contrast between the natural and artificial in the manner in which the buildings were made, ancient temples, although made by humans, were made from natural material, and are therefore still connected to the earth and nature. The colour scheme also conveys this contrast; the left side of the painting is painted in earthy tones, a bit of orange and green, and the right is greyish-blue representing coldness and sterility. American skyscrapers and ugly factories are the complete opposite of nature, they rise towards the sky as if they want to be as far away as possible from the earth. Precisionist painters such as Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth have portrayed the same industrial landscape in the same years with great fascination and admiration, but Frida doesn’t share their enthusiasm because she sees beyond the glossy facade of the industrial progress and she sees how disconnected from nature people can become.

Tired and weary, surrounded by people who don’t understand her and culture she doesn’t belong in, she is eager to return home. In 1933, Diego and Frida have indeed returned to Mexico, but not because of Frida’s yearning alone, but because by the irony of the faith, Rivera’s contract was cancelled after he incorporated an image of Lenin in one of the murals. Frida got what she wanted in the end, though probably not in a way she had imagined it to be. There is a page from her diary, a watercolour I assume, with the words “ruinas” inscribed bellow which shows a ruin of a temple which made me think of this painting so I included it in the end of the post. In a way, Frida’s love for nature and Mexico’s pagan past is a sentiment shared by many artists before her who have fantasised about an escape from the clutches of the civilisation; escape from everything artificial, cold and conventional; Delacroix’s travels to the vibrant and sunny Morrocco, Charles Baudelaire’s reveries of distant exotic lands and the “langorous island, where Nature abounds/ With exotic trees and luscious fruit” (from his poem “Exotic Perfume”), not to mention Paul Gauguin and his paintings painted during his stay in Tahiti.

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Edward Burne-Jones: Dorigen of Bretaigne longing for the Safe Return of her Husband

“Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed”
(Nick Cave, Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For?)

Edward Burne-Jones, Dorigen of Bretaigne Longing for the Safe Return of her Husband, 1871, watercolour

Pre-Raphaelite painters often drew their inspiration from literary sources and even more often the Medieval themes were the ones to catch their attention. Edward Burne-Jones’s 1871 watercolour “Dorigen of Bretaigne Longing for the Safe Return of Her Husband” depicts a scene from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Franklin’s Tale” from “The Canterbury Tales”. In “Franklin’s Tale”, Dorigen is happily married to Arveragus who had travelled to Britain to seek training in arms and he stayed there for two years. In those two years his faithful and devoted wife Dorigen had grown unbearably melancholy and filled with sadness. In the absence of her husband, tverything seemed meaningless to her; she lost her appetite and would spend her days in tears and sighs, desiring, longing and hurting. Sometimes, aiming to distract herself, she would take a walk by the sea but seeing those horrible black cliffs which had cause many a misfortune and death, served only to exacerbate her fears of her husband dying at sea. Burne-Jones’s watercolour wonderfully portrays Dorigen’s state of absolute yearning. In an elongated canvas with a somewhat unusual composition, Dorigen, the faithful and devoted wife, is painted kneeling down and leaning on the window, her arms spread as in a surrender, as she is watching without blinking as to not miss out the sight of his ship on the horizon. The sea is trecherous, wild and unpredictable, and Dorigen is feeling more and more hopeless as days, weeks, months, years are passing by. Wild with desire and shaken by fear, sick from this unbearable longing, she has fallen onto her knees in desperation and helplessness. Will her eyes meet his eyes again and will she read the love in his gaze, will she feel again his arms wrapped around her waist, will she feel again his lips pressed to hers, his voice whispering sweet nothings in her ear, or will the sea, so envious of all the love, claim him, and will the waves pull him into their embrace… Will she wait forever for him to come home? Will he return safely, or not at all? The space around her feels constricted, claustrophobic, as if all the unbearable longing is sucking the air out of the chamber and the heavy sense of doom is weighing the ceiling. The window is narrow and unusually elongated. The dress that she is wearing is painted in this particular, very Burne-Jones shade of blue that we see often in his paintings, though in this scene the blueness of her dress seems to echo the blueness of the sea. And those dark, sharp cliffs; are they the same that Monet had painted around the same time? There is a pair of ghostly, shadowy figures drawn on her portable organ, further emphasising her aloneness and her yearning for her husband. Even further, the instrument can only be played when the bellows are pumped by someone else; being so alone, she cannot even have music to soothe her. There are also some books opened on the floor, but what is the point; the books, the music, the walks, nothing can soothe her when her beloved is not there. Only the sounds of the waves, now distant, now close, but foreboding nonetheless…

Claude Monet, Rocks at Port-Goulphar, Belle-Île, 1886

Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolat Guarded the Sacred Shield of Lancelot

“Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where the morning’s earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk… (…)
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climbed
That eastern tower, and entering barred her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it…
(…) … so she lived in fantasy.”

(Lord Tennyson, Idyll of the Kings: Elaine and Lancelot, 1859)

Henry Peach Robinson, Elaine Watching the Shield of Lancelot, 1859

Lady of Shalott, also known as Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, is by far my favourite and most relatable character from the Arthurian legends. In the poem Lord Tennyson refers to her sweetly also as Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable. The Pre-Raphaelite artists seem to have had a particular penchant for portraying Elaine as well, inspired partly by her rather different depictions in Lord Tennyson’s poetry as well as by Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Mort D’Arthur”. Still, not only Victorian painters but photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson were inspired to portray the loneliness of Elaine’s life in the tower and her exceeding yearning for a knight. Elaine “hath no loyal knight and true”, as Lord Tennyson wrote in another poem about her. The poet also writes that she “lived in fantasy”, and that she is “half-sick of shadows”; hers is a lonely, lovelorn life filled with yearning and pining, and a lot of free time which she uses, it seems, to gaze day and night at Sir Lancelot’s shield. She not only gazes at it and traces its decorations with her pale fingers, but she also tends to it as if it were, and indeed it is in Elaine’s eyes, the most precious object in the world. It is something that belongs to the man she loves oh so desperately. These verses from Delmira Augustini’s poem “From Far Away” made me think of poor Elaine:

“Ah! When you are far away my whole life cries
And to the murmor of your steps even in dreams I smile.
I know you will return, that another dawn will shine.”

The basis for Robinson’s photograph seems to have been the Lord Tennyson’s description of Elaine’s obsession with Sir Lancelot’s shield. The poet writes that Elaine had placed the “sacred shield” in her chamber up a tower to the east where it can be bathed by the first rays of sun, and how she made a silk case for the shield so it doesn’t get rusty, and how she would leave her household all the time to climb the tower and gaze at the shield for hours, tracing every dint and scratch on it completely entranced, imagining all the battles and tournaments that Sir Lancelot had been in, and shivering at the thought that he may almost have died in some of them.

In Sir Thomas Malory’s telling of the events Elaine’s father, the Lord of Astolat, had organised a tournament to which King Arthur and his knights came. Sir Lancelot, who had not originally planned to attend, was persuaded to come and, upon seeing him, Elaine becamse enamoured of him and she begged him to wear her token at the torunament. Sir Lancelot, knowing how jealous Guinevere would be, decided to wear Elaine’s token and compete in the tournament but only under disguise so he takes a different shield, that of Elaine’s brother, and leaves his own shield to Elaine to keep. Here is what Lord Tennyson writes about that moment:

“(…) ’True, my child.
Well, I will wear it: fetch it out to me:
What is it?’ and she told him ’A red sleeve
Broidered with pearls,’ and brought it: then he bound
Her token on his helmet, with a smile
Saying, ’I never yet have done so much
For any maiden living,’ and the blood
Sprang to her face and filled her with delight”.

And then Lancelot tells Elaine:
’Do me this grace, my child, to have my shield
In keeping till I come.’ ’A grace to me,’
She answered.’”

Sir Lancelot gets injured in the tournament and Elaine tends to him in her chambers. When he gets better, he thanks Elaine and she returns the shield to him. Now he is aware of her affections for him but he departs nevertheless and Elain dies from a broken heart ten days later. Sir Lancelot later pays for a lavish funeral – as if that is a reparation enough for a broken heart. Hm!

Tin Ujević – Love unrequited gave no rest, so now you yearn for earth’s breast

Today I wanted to share a beautiful and sad poem by the Croatian poet Tin Ujević (1891-1955) called “Frailty” from his poetry collection “The Cry of a Slave” (1920), translated by Richard Berengarten. Ujević is considered by some to have been one of the last masters of European Symbolism and even the translator calls him “one of the finest South-Slavic poets”. In addition to being a poet, he was also an accomplished translator and translated the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Rimbaud, Arthur Gidé and many others. He spent his childhood living in different towns on the Croatian seaside and this love of the sea left a life-long trace on him, and it can be seen in this poem as well. In 1912 Ujević was a part of the Nationalist youth movement and was often imprisoned. From 1913 to 1919 he was in Montparnasse in Paris, where he was a notorius “anarchic bohemian” and he was a known frequenter of bars and cafes where he was often hanging out with fellow poets and artists from the Balkans, but he also moved in the art circles with artists such as Modigliani, Picasso, Cocteau and d’Annuzio. The poetry collection “The Cry of a Slave” represents the first phase in Ujević’s poetry and these poems are of intimate preocupations, woven with pessimism, a tragic sense of loneliness is intermingled with motives of metaphysical, spiritual love towards an imaginary woman.

Wilhelm Kotarbiński, Suicide’s grave, c 1900

Frailty

In this mist, in this rain –
oh drunken heart, don’t drown in pain.

Love unrequited gave no rest,
so now you yearn for earth’s breast,

And all your longing, cry of a slave,
is to find some quiet grave:

here my soul will soon expire
and here will wither my desire

on the waves of our blue, blue sea
and white, white pebbles cover me,

and my needs will all come home
under Blessed Heaven’s dome,

with sun, calm blue, and clarity,
beneath the ground that once bore me.

Bonnard: Rooftops and Nostalgia for the Life of Others

“Nostalgia for the life of others. This is because, seen from the outside, another’s life forms a unit. Whereas ours, seen from the inside, seems broken up. We are still chasing after an illusion of unity.”

(Camus, Notebook IV (August/September, 1942)

Pierre Bonnard, Rooftops, 1897

The voyeur in me delights in these two paintings by a French Post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard. Gazing at the building, or a house, on the other side of the road, counting all the windows and balconies, wondering what secrets do the fancy facade and flimsy curtains hide, is there anything that awakens more curiosity and longing both at once? Painting “Rooftops” isn’t that exciting on its own; it just shows a roof of some Parisian building, roof windows and a little bit of blue sky. The scene would be much more exciting if it showed a woman undressing at the window, a couple kissing, or a murder taking place, but with the aid of our imagination we can fantasise about anything taking place in one of those flats. When I see a painting like this, I couldn’t care less about the architecture! My mind instantly starts fantasising about the people living there. Who are they and are their lives more exciting than mine? What secrets do the windows of their flats hide? What are they thinking about when they gaze at the other side of street? Gazing at other people’s windows, at the houses on the other side of the street reminds me of something that a character played by Daniel Auteuil tells a sad young girl Adele, played by Vanessa Paradis, in the film “La fille sur le pont”: “I’m going to tell you a story. Long ago, I lived on the even side of the street, at number 22. I gazed at the houses across the street thinking that people were happier, their rooms sunnier, their parties more fun. But in fact their rooms were darker and smaller. And they too gazed across the street. Because we always think that luck is what we don’t have.” Naturally, I have no curiosity or envy for the lives of people I know well because I know that their lives are as banal and boring as mine, but the mysterious faces whose names I know not, oh they are the ones about whom I can weave fantasies and project all my yearning and envy on.

Pierre Bonnard, Rue Tholozé (Montmartre in the Rain), 1897

Another Bonnard’s painting “Montmartre in the Rain”, painted in the same year as the “Rooftops”, also shows the buildings on the other side of the street with their glowing yellow windows. Each window holds a secret and even though the windows with the lights on are captivating and vibrant, the windows left in the darkness are even more mysterious; who is there in the darkness, a sad poet sitting on his bed, or secret lovers whispering secret words into each other’s ear? Bonnard must have been on a very high floor, third or fourth perhaps, to capture the scene in that perspective. I love the way Bonnard captured the magical atmosphere of glowing yellow lights and the wet pavements after rain. The strollers in the street bellow look like black blots. In “Rooftops” and “Montmartre at Night” Bonnard painted a view on the buildings on the other side of the street, but what about the inside of the flat and the people who live in it? Another Bonnard’s painting “Woman at the Window (Among the Seamstresses)”, painted in 1895, and a lovely pastel by Pissarro “At the Window, rue des Trois Frères”, painted in 1878, offer a view on what goes inside the flats, what secrets are hidden behind the curtains and windows. I bet the little girl in Pissarro’s painting would rather be exploring the parks and streets outside her house than be sitting there above the book, I bet she is eager to feel the sun and wind on her face and to taste life and not just read about it. And those drab, gloomy probably underpaid seamstresses in Bonnard’s paintings, I bet they would rather be strolling around free, roaming the streets and not sewing the dresses for evening parties that they will never attend, touching the silk fabric that they will never get to wear. They must be gazing longingly at those free passers by and wondering where they are going? And thus the circle continues, there is always the illusion, as the title of Milan Kundera’s novel says, that life is elsewhere….

Camille Pissarro, At the Window, rue des Trois Frères, 1878, Pastel on cream wove pastel paper

Pierre Bonnard, Woman at the Window (Among the Seamstresses), c. 1895

Music Is the Most Romantic of All Arts

“Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing…“

George Roux, Spirit, 1885

I read a sentence in a schoolbook a few years ago which said that “music is the most romantic of all arts” and this line stuck with me. It awoke something inside me, it inspired me at school and at home, it was the most beautiful sentence I had read. The idea that music was the most romantic of all arts enchanted me beyond belief. Later I read the entire essay by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a study of Beethoven’s instrumental music which first appeared in 1810 and was revised in 1813. Perhaps in our day and age the word “romantic” is simplified, overused and misunderstood, it stands for something shallow and sugary, but when Hoffmann used it to describe Beethoven’s music, he used it to describe the powerful, unrestrained passion, emotions and expressiveness. As much as I love paintings and enjoy reading books, I must say that only music awakens that something within me, and I imagine most of you would agree with me. When I listen to Chopin’s Nocturnes and his Waltz in A minor, Debussy’s work for flute and harp, some Ravel, and even other music such as Tindersticks or Echo and the Bunnymen, it sends me into a trance, my imagination is awakened and images appear before my eyes, sentiments I never knew I had suddenly posses me and afterwards I feel a catharsis calmness and a new found love and inspiration. Even in visual arts this romantic nature of music is portrayed. In George Roux’s painting “Spirit” a gorgeous ghostly white lady is seen playing the piano. Her thin waist and ethereal form are aesthetically pleasing and the man’s face shows both shock and awe. Perhaps he is a widow and this is the ghost of his wife playing their favourite tune. Painting is open to interpretation, but one thing is certain; only the music has such power to move us, bring us to tears, purify us, infuse us with yearning and romance, and even make us fall in love with whoever is playing it or sharing our love for it.

John William Waterhouse, Saint Cecilia, 1895

Now here are E.T.A Hoffmann’s words:

“When music is discussed as an independent art, should it not be solely instrumental music that is intended, music that scorns every aid from and mixing with any other art (poetry), music that only expresses the distinctive and unique essence of this art? It is the most romantic of all arts, and we could almost say the only truly romantic one because its only subject is the infinite. Just as Orpheus’ lyre opened the gates of the underworld, music unlocks for mankind an unknown realm—a world with nothing in common with the surrounding outer world of the senses. Here we abandon definite feelings and surrender to an inexpressible longing. . . .
Thus Beethoven’s instrumental music opens to us the realm of the monstrous and immeasurable. Glowing rays shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we sense giant shadows surging to and fro, closing in on us until they destroy us, but not the pain of unending longing in which every desire that has risen quickly in joyful tones sinks and expires. Only with this pain of love, hope, joy—which consumes but does not destroy, which would burst asunder our breasts with a mightily impassioned chord—we live on, enchanted seers of the ghostly world! Romantic taste is rare, romantic talent even rarer, and perhaps for this reason there are so few who are able to sweep the lyre with tones that unveil the wonderful realm of the romantic. Haydn grasps romantically the human in human life; he is more accommodating, more comprehensible for the common man. Mozart laid claim more to the superhuman, to the marvelous that dwells in the inner spirit. Beethoven’s music wields the lever of fear, awe, horror, and pain, and it awakens that eternal longing that is the essence of the romantic. Thus he is a purely romantic composer, and if he has had less success with vocal music, is this because vocal music excludes the character of indefinite longing and represents the emotions, which come from the realm of the infinite, only by the definite affects of words? . . .”

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Her Mother’s Voice, exhibited in 1888

Monotonous beige and yellow colours and a slightly sentimental mood of this late Victorian genre scene painted by English painter William Quiller Orchardson hides a more wistful theme. Evening has fallen and a lamp is casting a yellowish glow all over the sumptuous interior and yet, despite the richness of the interior, a certain sadness hangs like a cloud over the room. An old gentleman was sitting in his armchair and reading the newspapers until something happened… A familiar voice, a very dear voice, colours the stuffy air filled with memories and hopeless wistful reveries. The voice awakens old wounds and merry memories that he can never get back “And all the money in the world couldn’t bring back those days”, to quote the song “This is the Day” by The The (and later Manic Street Preachers). His daughter, dressed in a fashionable pale pink evening gown, is sitting at the piano, playing and singing while a young man is standing by her side. She has her mother’s voice, as the title of the painting suggests. It is through music, singing, but still music, that the inexplicable yearning enters the man’s heart and soul and awakens a river of emotions which usually remain buried deep within him.

Lermontov: I see a coffin, black and sole, it waits: why to detain the world?

A beautiful melancholy poem that the Russian Romantic writer Mikhail Lermontov wrote in 1830 when he was fifteen going on his sixteenth year. This little poem already shows Lermontov’s sadness and disillusionment in life and the world around him, and, looking back, these kind of little teenage poems were the seed which eventually grew into his novel “A Hero of Our Time” which was published in 1840.

“Years pass me by like dreams.”

Friedrich von Amerling, Young girl, 1834

Loneliness

It’s Hell for us to draw the fetters

Of life in alienation, stiff.

All people prefer to share gladness,

And nobody – to share grief.

 

As a king of air, I’m lone here,

The pain lives in my heart, so grim,

And I can see that, to the fear

Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;

 

And comes again with, touched by gold,

The same dream, gloomy one and old.

I see a coffin, black and sole,

It waits: why to detain the world?

 

There will be not a sad reflection,

There will be (I am betting on)

Much more gaily celebration

When I am dead, than – born.

Poem found here.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Alas, So long!

Half-Italian and half-mad, the Pre-Rapahelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born on this day in 1828 in London, and here is one of his poems called “Alas, So Long!”. I felt the mood of John William Waterhouse’s painting “Miranda” carries the same melancholy mood of longing and hope.

John William Waterhouse, Miranda, 1875

Alas, So Long!

AH! dear one, we were young so long,
It seemed that youth would never go,
For skies and trees were ever in song
And water in singing flow
In the days we never again shall know.
Alas, so long!
Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
Nay, but we were young and together.
Ah! dear one, I’ve been old so long,
It seems that age is loth to part,
Though days and years have never a song,
And oh! have they still the art
That warmed the pulses of heart to heart?
Alas, so long!
Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
Nay, but we were young and together.
Ah! dear one, you’ve been dead so long,—
How long until we meet again,
Where hours may never lose their song
Nor flowers forget the rain
In glad noonlight that never shall wane?
Alas, so long!
Ah! shall it be then Spring weather,
And ah! shall we be young together?