Musicon / Musical education / Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep learning
-Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep learning
Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep learning. These attributes are encouraged by the idea of privacy which is inseparable from the form. Composers find it the finest field for the display of their talents because their own skill in creating is to be paired with trained skill in hearing.
Its representative pieces are written for strings alone–trios, quartets, and quintets. With the strings are sometimes associated a pianoforte, or one or more of the solo wind instruments–oboe, clarinet, or French horn; and as a rule the compositions adhere to classical lines.
Of necessity the modesty of the apparatus compels it to forego nearly all the adventitious helps with which other forms of composition gain public approval. In the delineative arts Chamber music shows analogy with correct drawing and good composition, the absence of which cannot be atoned for by the most gorgeous coloring.
In no other style is sympathy between performers and listeners so necessary, and for that reason Chamber music should always be heard in a small room with performers and listeners joined in angelic wedlock. Communities in which it flourishes under such conditions are musical.
From: H. Krehbiel’s, How to Listen to Music; excerpts, edited by Musicon