Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg: His Short Biography and Aesthetic Representation of His Works

truth of expression and its definite emphasis, it becomes, out of the innermost feeling, true melody—pure song, in which art seems to have nothing to do but to give feeling its appropriate expression.

When the composer drags words and sensations back and forth over a multitude of notes, and lets the voice perform the most difficult leaps and runs, is that pure song? Truly, with most ordinary composers, the text seems to be there only because of the notes, and poetry exists so that one can make a musical mold over it, like the spruce branch on a Christmas tree, in order to hang the colorful play and light-show upon it. Zumsteeg did not obscure the poet; he sought what every accompanying musical artist should do—only to explain him, to reinforce the concept of the words he presented through the tonal feeling uniquely belonging to them, and thus to bring forth the required total impression, while the poet’s words occupy the mind with representations and move the soul with appropriate feeling; and in this way, the musical artist is truly the interpreter of the poet. While the poet can only create feelings through the successions of his periods through the representational subject,