ABSTRACT
The incomprehension of Schumann’s “provincial cantor” seems to have been a common critical response to nineteenth-century music. The transition from rhetorical to hermeneutic modes subsequently accentuated the importance of music criticism: it became a key element in the construction of musical meaning, effectively the complement of the compositional process. The development of Romantic aesthetics is, as Bonds describes and analyzes contemporaneous with the shift in mode of perception and reception of music. Schumann’s fictional cantor is presented in the review as an unsophisticated musical conservative, his liturgical role suggesting an emblematic function that represents the traditional values of the laity. The Romantic grandson, in contrast, can gain some understanding of the music. Analogous by implication with the “connoisseur” of the opening paragraph, he understands at least that Chopin “wasn’t so wrong after all,” recognizing the music as unmistakably Chopin’s. Incomprehensibility makes such linguistic paradoxes apparent, foregrounding the arbitrary, “systematic” nature of signification and making us aware of its limits.
