CHAPTER 7 Self and Other
Chopin and Gottschalk as Exotics; Orientalism
Richard Taruskin
All these poets write as if they were ill, and as though the whole world were a hospital.
—Goethe to his amanuensis Eckermann, 20 september (1827)
Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” exclaimed Eusebius on Wednesday morning, 7 December 1831, in the dignified pages of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.1 With these words the twenty-one-year-old Schumann, making his critical debut three years before founding his own journal, welcomed the twenty-one-year-old piano virtuoso Frédéric Chopin into the ranks of published composers and introduced him to German music lovers, for whom previously he had hardly been a name. Also appearing for the first time in print were Schumann's Davidsbündler: the article would have been historic even were it not for the clairvoyance with which one genius had recognized another. But the opening has become a catchphrase; the composer it heralded soon proved to be the very embodiment of everything that the word genius implied in the early nineteenth century, and only Schumann spotted him—or even could have spotted him, one easily believes—so early.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 7 Self and Other." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-chapter-007.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 7 Self and Other. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Nineteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 12 Nov. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-chapter-007.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 7 Self and Other." In Music in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 12 Nov. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-chapter-007.xml