Continuing this week’s series of things I wish I’d written… this is from a 1934 article by the great English music critic Ernest Newman:
“We know rather more now about the psychology of artists than we used [to], and so we no longer incline to the naïve belief that if a composer has quarreled with his wife his next symphony will be a Pathétique, or that if his liver happens to be functioning normally he will produce a Hymn to Joy at the next [Choral] Festival.
We know now that the creative imagination of a great artist functions too deep down within him to be greatly affected by anything that may happen on the surface of his life or his being. The subconscious is of much more importance in the artist than the conscious, and the subconscious proceeds by its own mysterious inner chemistry and obeys its own mysterious inner laws.” The words of Ernest Newman.
A Minute with Miles is a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.
