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The Muse and the Fashion
Only too infrequently are we privileged to hear music discussed by those who stand at its fount. Creators are not prone to let us enter into their sanctum. Even the most effusive of them seem to eschew the subject of inspiration, or the acquisition of themes, or the processes of development to which these themes are subjected; and devote their writing to general aesthetic ideas (Wagner), matters of orchestration (Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov), or criticism of other composers (Schumann, Debussy). Medtner's book is a remarkable exception, dealing, as it does, with the essentials, foundations, the everlasting laws of musical creation.
146 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1951
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March 4, 2026
TLDR: While it would be cool if Medtner somehow could prove the essence of music, it’s far more probable to be an impossible problem; so the next best thing, is to give us a vision or image of music so powerful and convincing, that we fall in love with it and delight in exploring this new possibility of music, as we never saw it before. Unfortunately, Medtner’s poetic and metaphorical power is severely lacking. His capacity for bringing us into that deep understanding we need to comprehend his viewpoints, is rather pathetic.
Don't worry, I am not a Medtner hater. But one thing is obvious from this book: Medtner can't write, and can't justify his art through words. Medtner is NOT a poet and he is NOT an essayist.
But even so, one would have some hope for this book. Maybe Medtner will espouse some of that secret sauce, enlighten us in some secret composer knowledge -- the tricks of the craft. Unfortunately, it's not so -- it's worse than imaginable actually, this book is even beyond worthless. I feel it's actively harmful to art.
Here one must be very fastidious; for after careful deliberation I realized that I actually agree on 90% of Medtner's points on music. But because of Medtner's terrible argumentation, wavering logic, appeal to emotion, constant repetition, fatigue, poorness of metaphor and imaginative lack, one becomes confused and almost throws out the whole baby with the bathwater (i.e. what Medtner is arguing for, and to an extent, his music).
Still, I do not, and don't have the capacity for going through all of Medtner's errors and mistakes. It's simply too tiresome, and I love Medtner too much (I would rather listen to his music instead). And even the translater, in a hilarious fasion, constantly rebuffs Medtner and provides counterexamples, shows obvious contradictions, and point out Medtner's constant biases and dogmaticisms.
But still, it's not even this that I hate; it's more that the text is clearly badly thought out, unorganized; thoughts coming in and out without rhyme or reason. So what even is the book about, you may wonder? It's essentially Music Metaphysics. Nothing really wrong with that, though it's a dangerous path to speak of things mystical and beyond human comprehension. At first I was very confused; Medtner seemed like some Neoplatonist like Plotinus, lecturing us on "The One", "Unity" and "Simplicity". But towards the end, I became more convinced Medtner is a MOSTLY a casual Christian. Sometimes he does reach towards what I would call his idea of "Musical Gnosis"; sort of related to the ideas of Emerson. Something like "the oldest and best part in all of us"; but here it's limited to what Medtner calls "the original song"; some kind of primordial conception of music; a well from which everything has sprung. Reminds one of Platonism. And when one composes truly and tries to reach the muses -- without any fashions -- one comes closer to this "UTMOST SIMPLICITY", or whatever.
One problem here: even though I condone Medtner's so called "confession", this view of music is very sparingly described or justified. Medtner has limited metaphors, barely any myths! It's not convincing at all! Plato is convincing, has some of that superhuman vision to leave one breathless. Medtner feels like that guy that comes up to you and tells a second-hand story, but he's a terrible story-teller, so he can only say things like "The story was so amazing! I gasped over and over!" while leaving you only confused and underwhelmed. It does not work at all.
This sparseness and poorness of ideas and myths brings me to Medtner's repetition. Medtner has certain "idée fixe", like "gravitating towards a center" (planets in orbit metaphor). This one is so overused, and never explained. He just brings it in at the beginning like some Kant protege? His own categorical imperative for music... So then you almost find it in every paragraph; he tries to justify everything with it. And he always deduces the wrong things; not even a good sophist! It's all such a mess and a jumble of confusions!
I'm not a particular fan of Kant either, as his justifications often fall short of imaginative immediacy (i.e. they don't IMPOSE themselves onto you as obvious manifestations of yourself). And Medtner is like 1% as clear as Kant. Basically, Medtner always justifies himself as if the reader already agrees with him -- or as if the reader WAS him ...................
But what makes the text completely worthless then? It's that, Medtner doesn't even reveal anything REAL; he prefers to linger in shadows, abstractions and meaningless terms (repeated over and over, as if that would make it better). Does he provide an analysis of the supposed wrongdoings of modern music? Nope. Does he clarify what good music is? Sometimes ? he really likes to mention that Beethoven + Mozart are geniuses, but doesn't really expand upon the point -- everyone knows it so why bother? Instead Medtner has a far "grander" purpose in mind with this book. It's to kill his boogeyman, a boogeyman made up of real concerns -- yes -- but always constructed from the most pathetic straws. I don't even know what terrible things Medtner heard at the start of the 20th century; but I can imagine it was garbage -- random chords all over the place, polytonality and nonsense melodies. As someone reading this today -- it feels absurd that THIS is the main complaint of Medtner;;; what about, e.g., the future dying out of ALL of classical music? Of the radio replacing all interest in it with the most superficial and base music? It feels like Medtner is complaining about kids playing in his backyard, while German V2 rockets are dropping on his porch. And Medtner never considers nuance; he's always just attacking the most vulgar, base of the modernists. And because of this the reader never learns anything new. Medtner likes to turn everything particular into the universal; if one person misuses modern technique, all of it's uses are bad.
There are some good parts though, like the preface. And throughout you will find random paragraphs or sentences which bewilder you; and through this you may gleam some bits of Medtner as a human being. So to save any potential reader, I will provide you with all the good and funny bits:
- Medtner describes the book as a "painful confession", and says that it shouldn't be taken as a "pretentious, self-confident sermon". Unfortunately he fails.
- Two beautiful poems introduce the two parts. I wish everything else than the poems be removed, as the poems convey a feeling Medtner can't convey in words. His "explanations" of the poems don't even touch them.
- Medtner says "He to whom music itself is the most precise and exhaustive expression of feeling and thought, is incabable of talking about it". This is very ironic, and I wish Medtner wouldn't have written anything more after this.
- At one part Medtner seems to conclude that humans developed speech+language as a way to feel less lonely, to gain access to each other.
- Medtner at his most Neoplatonist (or gnostic), and probably his most beautiful vision: "In his humanity he deemed the inexpressible to be likewise in the souls of others and endeavored to coordinate the reflection of the inexpressible in those souls with its reflection in his own. He aimed not at the multiplicity itself of these reflections or at their diversity, but at the coordination of this multiplicity and diversity into ONE WHOLE."
- Medtner says that, as humans are "inperfect" beings of plurality and diversity, a base desire is to reach for that same thing; but this is not the path of the spirit (the oldest and best part of us), and instead we should strive to avoid chaos (+complexity) and reach unity+simplicity.
- After the initial chapters, one wonders if Medtner wouldn't have been a philosopher in another universe.
- Medtner maps musical dissonance to "complexity", and consonance to "simplicity". But here he does a brilliant turn which DOES reveal something interesting; he says: "Simplicity cannot be grasped SIMPLY. Such a simply grasped simplicity is always false." (his capitalization). A very revealing and poignant, yet hard to decipher or interpret, statement, about the nature of art and aesthetics.
- Medtner at his most Gnostic (and quite moving passage): "The first song that once upon a time resounded in the world, left in the human soul one single "living strain" and the strain of this song became the starting point for the coordination between each other of all other strains. This strain has become for us the living symbol of unity and simplicity. In it is contained the whole complexity, the whole diversity of human songs".
- Medtner at his worst, coming to bewildering and fruitless conclusions: 'According to the law of inertia (or, as people say, "evolution") we began to seek a further complication of the foundations in order to make the coordination still simpler and have thus arrived at polytonality, which admits any juxtapositions already within the limits of the chromatic scale. But we were not satisfied even with this. So we began to undermine our tempered tuning and have began to talk about quarter-tone systems'
- On harmony: Harmony is only justified through voice leading, and voice leading is only justified through harmony. I agree with the first statement, but I am not as "chord fundamentalist" as Medtner; I even like Sorabji's fugue, which have limited harmony but great voice leading.
- Medtner's thoughts on musical themes, his forte, should be the best part -- but it becomes a confusing mess of jargon instead. Medtner's conception of a "theme" is so abstract, nonsensical and underdescribed that one is left totally lost. He doesn't even provide examples! Oh, how highly Medtner thinks of his readers! But no, we don't comprehend him.
- A Medtner New Testament reference: 'The performer, the orchestrator, and even the composer himself have, strictly speaking, no right to the prefix or epithet "creator", that first big, very big, word that was "in the beginning", for in the light of that word the are all merely performers.'. I enjoy this quote; Medtner was not only spiritual but also theatrical, aware of the "actor" in all of us. (He mentions Shakespeare once in the book, for those curious).
- Medtner's idea of Science and the Arts: Science is a gradual unveiling of the laws; Art is even more troublesome, as it deals with the mystery of the laws subordination to the human spirit. A hunt which can never be exhausted or affixed.
- At one point Medtner mentions "self-sacrificing" as a virtue in art; and I was horrified over his abrubt and dogmatic Christian worldview. I personally prefer Nietzsche's vision of art more than Medtner's.
- Medtner says that humanity is currently hanging over a dissonant chord. (The time of the world wars)
- Medtner sees a nihilism in modern music; a breaking with tradition, like futurism etc... He doesn't like it
- Medtner's direct mention of God: "A person is wise along the lines where he is gifted. But everyone loses some of his wisdom and becomes shortsighted when he relinquishes the path shown him by God. He then recedes into the human 'in general', which is nothing but an abstraction, or chaos. But the more intently he looks into one focal point through the prism of the talent that is his, the greater depths open before him.". A very very ironic quote. It's obvious to us that with this book precisely, Medtner has strayed from God's vision for him. He has become chaos, the man "in general". He should instead focus on his music, that focal point through the prism of his talent.
I enjoy Medtner because he believes his preordained fate by God was to become a composer. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy in a way. But man, this book is a terrible way to learn about music, about composing, about being an artist, about doing art -- even about following God.
Don't worry, I am not a Medtner hater. But one thing is obvious from this book: Medtner can't write, and can't justify his art through words. Medtner is NOT a poet and he is NOT an essayist.
But even so, one would have some hope for this book. Maybe Medtner will espouse some of that secret sauce, enlighten us in some secret composer knowledge -- the tricks of the craft. Unfortunately, it's not so -- it's worse than imaginable actually, this book is even beyond worthless. I feel it's actively harmful to art.
Here one must be very fastidious; for after careful deliberation I realized that I actually agree on 90% of Medtner's points on music. But because of Medtner's terrible argumentation, wavering logic, appeal to emotion, constant repetition, fatigue, poorness of metaphor and imaginative lack, one becomes confused and almost throws out the whole baby with the bathwater (i.e. what Medtner is arguing for, and to an extent, his music).
Still, I do not, and don't have the capacity for going through all of Medtner's errors and mistakes. It's simply too tiresome, and I love Medtner too much (I would rather listen to his music instead). And even the translater, in a hilarious fasion, constantly rebuffs Medtner and provides counterexamples, shows obvious contradictions, and point out Medtner's constant biases and dogmaticisms.
But still, it's not even this that I hate; it's more that the text is clearly badly thought out, unorganized; thoughts coming in and out without rhyme or reason. So what even is the book about, you may wonder? It's essentially Music Metaphysics. Nothing really wrong with that, though it's a dangerous path to speak of things mystical and beyond human comprehension. At first I was very confused; Medtner seemed like some Neoplatonist like Plotinus, lecturing us on "The One", "Unity" and "Simplicity". But towards the end, I became more convinced Medtner is a MOSTLY a casual Christian. Sometimes he does reach towards what I would call his idea of "Musical Gnosis"; sort of related to the ideas of Emerson. Something like "the oldest and best part in all of us"; but here it's limited to what Medtner calls "the original song"; some kind of primordial conception of music; a well from which everything has sprung. Reminds one of Platonism. And when one composes truly and tries to reach the muses -- without any fashions -- one comes closer to this "UTMOST SIMPLICITY", or whatever.
One problem here: even though I condone Medtner's so called "confession", this view of music is very sparingly described or justified. Medtner has limited metaphors, barely any myths! It's not convincing at all! Plato is convincing, has some of that superhuman vision to leave one breathless. Medtner feels like that guy that comes up to you and tells a second-hand story, but he's a terrible story-teller, so he can only say things like "The story was so amazing! I gasped over and over!" while leaving you only confused and underwhelmed. It does not work at all.
This sparseness and poorness of ideas and myths brings me to Medtner's repetition. Medtner has certain "idée fixe", like "gravitating towards a center" (planets in orbit metaphor). This one is so overused, and never explained. He just brings it in at the beginning like some Kant protege? His own categorical imperative for music... So then you almost find it in every paragraph; he tries to justify everything with it. And he always deduces the wrong things; not even a good sophist! It's all such a mess and a jumble of confusions!
I'm not a particular fan of Kant either, as his justifications often fall short of imaginative immediacy (i.e. they don't IMPOSE themselves onto you as obvious manifestations of yourself). And Medtner is like 1% as clear as Kant. Basically, Medtner always justifies himself as if the reader already agrees with him -- or as if the reader WAS him ...................
But what makes the text completely worthless then? It's that, Medtner doesn't even reveal anything REAL; he prefers to linger in shadows, abstractions and meaningless terms (repeated over and over, as if that would make it better). Does he provide an analysis of the supposed wrongdoings of modern music? Nope. Does he clarify what good music is? Sometimes ? he really likes to mention that Beethoven + Mozart are geniuses, but doesn't really expand upon the point -- everyone knows it so why bother? Instead Medtner has a far "grander" purpose in mind with this book. It's to kill his boogeyman, a boogeyman made up of real concerns -- yes -- but always constructed from the most pathetic straws. I don't even know what terrible things Medtner heard at the start of the 20th century; but I can imagine it was garbage -- random chords all over the place, polytonality and nonsense melodies. As someone reading this today -- it feels absurd that THIS is the main complaint of Medtner;;; what about, e.g., the future dying out of ALL of classical music? Of the radio replacing all interest in it with the most superficial and base music? It feels like Medtner is complaining about kids playing in his backyard, while German V2 rockets are dropping on his porch. And Medtner never considers nuance; he's always just attacking the most vulgar, base of the modernists. And because of this the reader never learns anything new. Medtner likes to turn everything particular into the universal; if one person misuses modern technique, all of it's uses are bad.
There are some good parts though, like the preface. And throughout you will find random paragraphs or sentences which bewilder you; and through this you may gleam some bits of Medtner as a human being. So to save any potential reader, I will provide you with all the good and funny bits:
- Medtner describes the book as a "painful confession", and says that it shouldn't be taken as a "pretentious, self-confident sermon". Unfortunately he fails.
- Two beautiful poems introduce the two parts. I wish everything else than the poems be removed, as the poems convey a feeling Medtner can't convey in words. His "explanations" of the poems don't even touch them.
- Medtner says "He to whom music itself is the most precise and exhaustive expression of feeling and thought, is incabable of talking about it". This is very ironic, and I wish Medtner wouldn't have written anything more after this.
- At one part Medtner seems to conclude that humans developed speech+language as a way to feel less lonely, to gain access to each other.
- Medtner at his most Neoplatonist (or gnostic), and probably his most beautiful vision: "In his humanity he deemed the inexpressible to be likewise in the souls of others and endeavored to coordinate the reflection of the inexpressible in those souls with its reflection in his own. He aimed not at the multiplicity itself of these reflections or at their diversity, but at the coordination of this multiplicity and diversity into ONE WHOLE."
- Medtner says that, as humans are "inperfect" beings of plurality and diversity, a base desire is to reach for that same thing; but this is not the path of the spirit (the oldest and best part of us), and instead we should strive to avoid chaos (+complexity) and reach unity+simplicity.
- After the initial chapters, one wonders if Medtner wouldn't have been a philosopher in another universe.
- Medtner maps musical dissonance to "complexity", and consonance to "simplicity". But here he does a brilliant turn which DOES reveal something interesting; he says: "Simplicity cannot be grasped SIMPLY. Such a simply grasped simplicity is always false." (his capitalization). A very revealing and poignant, yet hard to decipher or interpret, statement, about the nature of art and aesthetics.
- Medtner at his most Gnostic (and quite moving passage): "The first song that once upon a time resounded in the world, left in the human soul one single "living strain" and the strain of this song became the starting point for the coordination between each other of all other strains. This strain has become for us the living symbol of unity and simplicity. In it is contained the whole complexity, the whole diversity of human songs".
- Medtner at his worst, coming to bewildering and fruitless conclusions: 'According to the law of inertia (or, as people say, "evolution") we began to seek a further complication of the foundations in order to make the coordination still simpler and have thus arrived at polytonality, which admits any juxtapositions already within the limits of the chromatic scale. But we were not satisfied even with this. So we began to undermine our tempered tuning and have began to talk about quarter-tone systems'
- On harmony: Harmony is only justified through voice leading, and voice leading is only justified through harmony. I agree with the first statement, but I am not as "chord fundamentalist" as Medtner; I even like Sorabji's fugue, which have limited harmony but great voice leading.
- Medtner's thoughts on musical themes, his forte, should be the best part -- but it becomes a confusing mess of jargon instead. Medtner's conception of a "theme" is so abstract, nonsensical and underdescribed that one is left totally lost. He doesn't even provide examples! Oh, how highly Medtner thinks of his readers! But no, we don't comprehend him.
- A Medtner New Testament reference: 'The performer, the orchestrator, and even the composer himself have, strictly speaking, no right to the prefix or epithet "creator", that first big, very big, word that was "in the beginning", for in the light of that word the are all merely performers.'. I enjoy this quote; Medtner was not only spiritual but also theatrical, aware of the "actor" in all of us. (He mentions Shakespeare once in the book, for those curious).
- Medtner's idea of Science and the Arts: Science is a gradual unveiling of the laws; Art is even more troublesome, as it deals with the mystery of the laws subordination to the human spirit. A hunt which can never be exhausted or affixed.
- At one point Medtner mentions "self-sacrificing" as a virtue in art; and I was horrified over his abrubt and dogmatic Christian worldview. I personally prefer Nietzsche's vision of art more than Medtner's.
- Medtner says that humanity is currently hanging over a dissonant chord. (The time of the world wars)
- Medtner sees a nihilism in modern music; a breaking with tradition, like futurism etc... He doesn't like it
- Medtner's direct mention of God: "A person is wise along the lines where he is gifted. But everyone loses some of his wisdom and becomes shortsighted when he relinquishes the path shown him by God. He then recedes into the human 'in general', which is nothing but an abstraction, or chaos. But the more intently he looks into one focal point through the prism of the talent that is his, the greater depths open before him.". A very very ironic quote. It's obvious to us that with this book precisely, Medtner has strayed from God's vision for him. He has become chaos, the man "in general". He should instead focus on his music, that focal point through the prism of his talent.
I enjoy Medtner because he believes his preordained fate by God was to become a composer. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy in a way. But man, this book is a terrible way to learn about music, about composing, about being an artist, about doing art -- even about following God.
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