What does a great opera owe to its words, and what to its music? This sparkling dialogue sets that ancient question alight in the hands of one of Romanticism's boldest musical thinkers.
First published in 1813 and later folded into The Serapion Brethren, The Poet and the Composer (Der Dichter und der Komponist) is a witty, searching conversation between two friends – one who writes verse, one who sets it – on how true operatic drama should be made. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), the Konigsberg-born jurist, critic, and composer of the opera Undine, was among the founders of Romantic music criticism, and this piece is a cornerstone of his thinking on the German operatic ideal.
This edition features:
- A lively Socratic dialogue on the making of opera, staged as a conversation between a writer of words and a writer of song.
- One of the founding statements of German Romantic opera, prized by scholars of Wagner's later theories of music-drama.
- A key text from Hoffmann's musical writings, revealing the mind behind his own opera Undine.
- A concise, self-contained piece, perfect for admirers of operatic history, aesthetics, and Romantic thought.