# Repost: Albert Einstein on Various Composers



## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Was just reading the Pianoworld forums and stumbled upon something that I thought might be interesting for the people who don't frequent those forums.



> Was reading through posts on the web until I came across this. "[Johannes Sebastian] Bach, [Wolfgang Amadeus] Mozart, and some old Italian and English composers are my favorites in music. [Ludwig van] Beethoven considerably less-but certainly [Franz] Schubert.
> 
> "It is impossible for me to say whether Bach or Mozart means more to me. In music I do not look for logic. I am quite intuitive on the whole and know no theories. I never like a work if I cannot intuitively grasp its inner unity.
> 
> ...


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## Guest (Jan 14, 2012)

"A peak(sic) outside the "lablife" of Einstein makes one realize that music had indeed been a potent inspiration for one of the most mathematical minds who ever lived."

Well, whatever else music was for him, this collection of quotes does not demonstrate anything like inspiration. Words like "inspiration" lose their goodness by being used, sloppily and decadently )), to mean something vaguely good. Inspiration is a good thing, so it gets used whenever someone wants to express goodness. "Potent" is the same. So what we've got here is that music was vaguely a goodly goodness for Einstein.

And, speaking of decadence, here's Jacques Barzun on "The fetish of form." I've tried to present this in a length suitable for internet forums (i.e., one liners), but best if you can read this chapter in its entirety. (You can read the first two and a half paragraphs online at JSTOR, but you cannot read the rest unless you are "affiliated with a participating library or publisher." Or, unless you can get a hold of the _Kenyon Review_ or volume two of _Berlioz and the Romantic Century,_ two places it's appeared.)

"More real harm has been done to art in recent years [1950] by indiscriminate talk about Form than has been due to any other type of Philistinism."

"Form is necessarily, inevitably, the creator's chief concern in any art; the artist does nothing but shape material things."

"To the priggish amateur it may seem very knowing to say in a depreciatory tone: ...'Very moving, I admit, but I find the architectonic somehow not --'; the truth is, such judgments betoken little more than airs and graces mixed with current critical cant."

"Even in more serious discussions, the dangerous assumption is made that a classified object belongs in its class by an act of God, not of man, and that consequently a moral obligation compels everyone to discountenance objects that lack some feature defining the class.... Thus earnest young men taught by certain pundits go about wondering if Pickwick Papers is or is not a novel, and persons culturally proud will declare that jazz is not music. _They do not see that the only hope of true culture is to make classifications broad and criticism particular._" [Emphasis mine.]

Einstein as presented here is what Nietzsche called a "Culture Philistine."


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Yeah Einstein, you idiot, with your stupid tastes and your unenlightened perception of structure. What a prat.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

_It was in 1963 that I first developed an interest in Wagner, or Wagner, as my speech synthesizer pronounces him. I had just been diagnosed as having ALS, or Motor Neuro Disease. and given a distinct impression I didn't have long to live. I regarded Wagner as music that was dark enough for my mood. My mother bought me tickets to go to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth in Germany, and I went with my sister, Philippa. It was magic. His personal use and conduct were pretty objectionable. But his music, though sometimes pompous and long-winded, reaches a level no one else does._

- Stephen Hawking


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Einstein vs. Hawking = Bach vs. Wagner

Should be self-evident which one reached a higher level, no?


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Einstein vs. Hawking vs. Polednice = Bach vs. Wagner vs. Brahms

Who will win?!


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Einstein vs. Hawking vs. Polednice vs. Webernite = Bach vs. Wagner vs. Brahms vs. Young Schumann

Who will win?! eekeek


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Einstein vs. Hawking vs. Polednice vs. Webernite = Bach vs. Wagner vs. Brahms vs. Young Schumann
> 
> Who will win?! eekeek


Care to add Freud to the mix? He said himself that he was completely "amusical" save for Mozart operas. Someone had to rep Mozart in that equation anyway.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Is this like tag team wrestling? So Brahms and me, in the first round, will fight... Hawking and Young Schumann. Yeah, that sounds fair.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think it should be a rap battle.


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## An Die Freude (Apr 23, 2011)

The Beethoven vs. Justin Bieber is legendary :lol:


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Einstein was not a philistine for crying out loud! These are just his tastes. I think he was a musical purist. *He was a man of profound perception and could only have his own particular definition of what is best.* That's the truth of the matter, I'll vouch. It doesn't mean the composers he discredited can't be felt deeply by others, its just that the composers listed in the first post, the ones he liked best, were what spoke to him and his natural or learned sensibilities. Take it or leave it.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

An Die Freude said:


> The Beethoven vs. Justin Bieber is legendary :lol:


Uh huh. I find myself quoting it all the time! "IN GERMANY, WE DON'T SLAP LITTLE GIRLS!"


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Einstein's opinions were then uncannily like mine.  Not to the _t_ but very very close.


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