NATIONAL OR UNIVERSAL?

Chapter:

CHAPTER 7 Self and Other

Source:

MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Schumann had bought enthusiastically into Herder's brotherly vision of human diversity, and expressed it in one of his own household maxims: “Listen closely to folk songs; they are an inexhaustible mine of the most beautiful melodies and will give you a glimpse into the character of different nations.”³ But in another maxim, and with no apparent sense of contradiction, Schumann also wrote that “Music speaks the most universal of languages, one by which the soul is freely, yet indefinably moved; only then is it at home.” To move the soul freely and indefinably, and so to realize its highest aim, music had to be “unmarked” by any defining (thus delimiting) national character. To Schumann, though probably not (at first) to Chopin, German music was unmarked. That is how one naturally tends to hear the music that surrounds one, until one is made aware of the existence of other musics. Thereafter one's own music can be heard as unmarked not by default but only by ideology.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 7 Self and Other." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-div1-007002.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 21 Jan. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-div1-007002.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 21 Jan. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume3/actrade-9780195384833-div1-007002.xml