Again, the performance of a work is also a transcription, and still, whatever liberties it may take, it can never annihilate the original.
For the musical art-work exists, before its tones resound and after they die away, complete and intact. It exists both within and outside of time, and through its nature we can obtain a definite conception of the otherwise intangible notion of the Ideality of Time.
For the rest, most of Beethoven's piano compositions sound like transcriptions of orchestral works; most of Schumann's orchestral compositions, like arrangements from pieces for the piano—and they are so, in a way.
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Strangely enough, the Variation-Form is highly esteemed by the Worshippers of the Letter. That is singular; for the variation-form—when built up on a borrowed theme—produces a whole series of “arrangements” which, besides, are least respectful when most ingenious.
So the arrangement is not good, because it varies the original; and the variation is good, although it “arranges” the original.
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WHAT IS MUSICAL?
The term “musikalisch” (musical) is used by the Germans in a sense foreign to that in which any other language employs it.[I] It is a conception belonging to the Germans, and not to culture in general; the expression is incorrect and untranslatable. “Musical” is derived from music, like “poetical” from poetry, or “physical” from physic(s). When I say, “Schubert was one of the most musical among men,” it is the same as if I should say, “Helmholtz was one of the most physical among men.” That is musical, which sounds in rhythms and intervals. A cupboard can be “musical,” if “music-works” be enclosed in it.[J] In a comparative sense, “musical” may have the further signification of “euphonious.”—“My verses are too musical to bear setting to music,” a noted poet once remarked to me.
“Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,”