All in Romanticism
The picture that emerges, in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men, of man’s original psychology is one highly idealised, you might even say romanticised: one in which our darker innate impulses are either minimised or discarded altogether.
For some, he was a God, for others, a tyrant. He was loved and loathed in equal measure, and often for the same reasons. So who was Gustav Mahler? And can we get to the bottom of this double man?
After Beethoven, it would no longer be acceptable for any serious artist to speak the same stylistic language as his influences. ‘Originality’ quickly diffused itself and became the norm. All artists working subsequently have operated within this paradigm. This is the Romantic legacy.
