It is not, however, the unfamiliarity or strangeness of a work or of a composer's manner that is a bar to understanding, but rather the disappearance… - Charles Rosen

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, act V, scene 1, we find this exchange between the two young lovers: <p>JESSICA: I am never merry when I hear sweet music
LORENZO: The reason is, your spirits are attentive<p>The opening of the finale of Beethoven' s 'Emperor' Concerto provides a splendid example of the kind of theme that is the inspiration for this book. A completely unified theme that hangs together beautifully, it nevertheless portrays vividly a series of contrasting sentiments in a succession that amounts to a small narrative ...

It is above all through landscape that music joins Romantic art and literature.

In almost every edition (and consequently most performances) of Chopin's Sonata in B flat Minor, Op. 35, there is a serious error that makes awkward nonsense of an important moment in the first movement. The repeat of the exposition begins in the wrong place.