ABSTRACT

Thomson wrote so well about his own works-incisively and yet modestly-that it is regrettable that such texts are so few.

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O N P O R T R A I T S A N D O P E R A S ( N . D . )

The making of musical portraits dates from at least the eighteenth century, when François Couperin drew hundreds of them for harpischord, chiefly of ladies denominated L’Audacieuse, L’Aimable Thérèse, and the like. Robert Schumann in his Carnaval for piano (1837) lightly sketched the composer Frédéric Chopin, and maybe others. Later in the century Anton Rubinstein made twenty-three piano portraits of the guests at an island house-party, toward the end of these adding a picture of the locale itself, Kamennoi-Ostrow. The best known twentieth-century group is Edward Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations for orchestra, each of which, though not identified, is the likeness of some friend.