Morganmobile: Telling Fragments

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On Valentine’s Day, 1839, Hector Berlioz writes from Paris to his fellow composer—and fellow music critic—Robert Schumann. He mentions friends, including Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, and notes that the renowned pianist Clara Wieck, whom Schumann will soon marry, has arrived in Paris. Even while urging his German colleague to join her there, Berlioz remarks of his city: “There are few honest young men worthy of the name of artist, and many gnomes and a lot of morons and above all scoundrels (you see that I observe the law of crescendo).” At the end of the letter, perhaps to underline his crescendo of epithets, Berlioz renders an unidentified musical fragment consisting of a swelling series of harmonies.

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869), letter to composer Robert Schumann, 14 February 1839. Mary Flagler Cary Collection, MFC B515.S392.