ABSTRACT

Melancholy is the ground-mood of the soul. Melancholy grounds one's being. One's being grounds their doing. This is why one calls melancholy a ground-mood of the soul. Melancholy is the mood between the highs and lows that opens one to either direction. Melancholy is between content and discontent, joy and gloom. Melancholy grounds all other moods and ways of being—and it is itself grounding, for melancholy gives perspective. Melancholy is lush. One can hear the melancholy as the ground-mood for the levity. Franz Schubert was a prolific composer, producing new work continually. The opening notes of his sonata drench the soul in melancholy. The melancholy is different from the other two works by John Dowland and Antonio Vivaldi; it carries much more silence, much more knowledge. For Theodor Adorno, the height of sensibility will ever be a melancholy "crumbling" spectacle.