ABSTRACT
Searching through Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's work, it is easy to trace an apparent love of music in his activities, thoughts and writing. From his childhood, music played a significant role in Goethe's life. Goethe's correspondence with the composer is an important source for his understanding of music, and it testifies to his musical interest and intelligence. One of the most interesting documents in Goethe's communication with Carl Friedrich Zelter is his discussion of major and minor tonalities. Throughout his life, Goethe experienced an immense variety of cultural influences, yet he never surrendered himself totally to any one agency. Schubert's fruitless relationship with Goethe is often taken by musicologists as a rejection by the poet of the direction of nineteenth-century music as taken by Franz Schubert. Consequently, though Goethe's response to Schubert is usually read as a 'lack of musical discernment', his recognition of the composer is in fact quite remarkable for his time.
