which, Undine, is arguably the first Romantic work in that form) two symphonies, two masses, several cantatas, much incidental music and dozens of chamber works. He was also a capable conductor, know for his productions of Mozart and Gluck, as well as a brilliant music critic. Hoffmann's essays on Beethoven, at a time when the public had yet to acquire a taste for him, as well as on the idea of music as an autonomous spiritual world helped, more than anything else, to create the image of the composer as the hierophant of a higher, ideal realm. With Coleridge and Baudelaire, Hoffmann is one of those rare writers who turn criticism into an art. His essays and reviews arguing for an appreciation of music as a self-sufficient non-representational art form - for the superiority of instrumental against vocal music, a preference practically unheard of in his day - would influence important musical theorists like Schumann, Wagner and Schopenhauer, and would later feed the aesthetic doctrine of Symbolism, which would dominate the late 19th century. This is not surprising: music, and the `superior world' that it depicted, was the central experience of Hoffmann's life. In "Beethoven's Instrumental Music," Hoffmann expressed the reason for this in a succinct formula. "Music," he wrote, "reveals to man an unknown realm, a world quite separate from the outer sensual world surrounding him, a world in which he leaves behind all precise feelings in order to embrace an inexpressible longing."
Like Novalis, Hoffmann too knew Sehnsucht. Yet it was not only in his writings on music that Hoffmann spoke of another world. If it already seems that he was gifted enough for several people - and to some extent Hoffmann was several people - he was also the author of some of the most bizarre and beloved stories and novels of the 19th century. In many ways Hoffmann is like a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Hans Christian Andersen, both of whom read his tales with profit. His stories have the glitter and dazzle of fairy tales, yet are often shot through with a disturbing, macabre sensibility. Yet, like Goethe, he is one of those German authors that have never really got across to an English readership. Most people know Hoffmann today, if at all, in a form that would have pleased him: as the inspiration for Offenbach's light opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and for Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker. Yet Hoffmann's weird tales of magical initiation, alchemy, strange states of consciousness and other occult themes display a psychological insight comparable to Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka.
Ernst Theodore Wilhelm Hoffmann was born in Konigs- berg in 1776; later he adopted the name Amadeus in honour of his beloved Mozart. He had an unhappy childhood, and the neglect he suffered at the hands of his parents was exacerbated by their early separation and divorce. Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by strict relatives in a household made up of a grandmother, three aunts and a puritanical uncle. Perhaps the sudden loss of his parents and the absence of a personal golden age led to his love of music and its promise of an `ideal' realm. At any rate, his fascination with it began early, and an encounter with Mozart's Magic Flute set the stage for his later creations. Mozart's musical Masonic fairy tale of initiation and the eternal war between good and evil, symbolized by the magus Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, became the blueprint for Hoffmann's own tales. All of Hoffmann's stories engage this archetypal theme, which is the romantic conundrum par excellence: the clash between the dull world of routine necessity, and the pressing claims of the imagination. Hoffmann, who had a foot in both worlds, felt the stress and friction between them throughout his life, and it took its toll; he was known for his sudden shifts in temperament, plunging from childlike gaiety into dark introversion, from warm conviviality into silent isolation. He was a man of
Like Novalis, Hoffmann too knew Sehnsucht. Yet it was not only in his writings on music that Hoffmann spoke of another world. If it already seems that he was gifted enough for several people - and to some extent Hoffmann was several people - he was also the author of some of the most bizarre and beloved stories and novels of the 19th century. In many ways Hoffmann is like a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Hans Christian Andersen, both of whom read his tales with profit. His stories have the glitter and dazzle of fairy tales, yet are often shot through with a disturbing, macabre sensibility. Yet, like Goethe, he is one of those German authors that have never really got across to an English readership. Most people know Hoffmann today, if at all, in a form that would have pleased him: as the inspiration for Offenbach's light opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and for Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker. Yet Hoffmann's weird tales of magical initiation, alchemy, strange states of consciousness and other occult themes display a psychological insight comparable to Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka.
Ernst Theodore Wilhelm Hoffmann was born in Konigs- berg in 1776; later he adopted the name Amadeus in honour of his beloved Mozart. He had an unhappy childhood, and the neglect he suffered at the hands of his parents was exacerbated by their early separation and divorce. Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by strict relatives in a household made up of a grandmother, three aunts and a puritanical uncle. Perhaps the sudden loss of his parents and the absence of a personal golden age led to his love of music and its promise of an `ideal' realm. At any rate, his fascination with it began early, and an encounter with Mozart's Magic Flute set the stage for his later creations. Mozart's musical Masonic fairy tale of initiation and the eternal war between good and evil, symbolized by the magus Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, became the blueprint for Hoffmann's own tales. All of Hoffmann's stories engage this archetypal theme, which is the romantic conundrum par excellence: the clash between the dull world of routine necessity, and the pressing claims of the imagination. Hoffmann, who had a foot in both worlds, felt the stress and friction between them throughout his life, and it took its toll; he was known for his sudden shifts in temperament, plunging from childlike gaiety into dark introversion, from warm conviviality into silent isolation. He was a man of
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