Schumann, ou l’autre face de la mélomanie gidienne
Résumé
“Schumann, ou l’autre face de la mélomanie gidienne” [“Schumann, or the Other Side of Gidian Musicomania”], Sylvain Ledda and Augustin Voegele (Eds.), Écrire avec Schumann [Writing with Schumann], to be published in 2025. (Symposium. University of Haute-Alsace, 09-10/11/2023.)
André Gide initially associated Chopin and Schumann in the same admiration. But his liking for the former was to grow at the expense of the latter, to the point where, in the first version of his Notes sur Chopin [Notes on Chopin], he accompanied his praise of the Pole with attacks on the “vulgarity” of the German. Why such disenchantment, punctuated by sudden resurgences of passion? Precisely because, for Gide, Schumann embodied the disturbing side of passion in music, to which he preferred the serene partisans of beauty, led by Chopin.