Das ideale Musikerporträt

There are more than enough pictures of musicians – fictional, idealised, anecdotal, intimate or romanticised. The more recent the depiction, the richer the choice. It is all the more necessary to ask which of these pictures “hit the mark”. Which of them tell us about the things that defined the artist’s personality: their visions, dreams and desires, their successes and disappointments, the powers that motivated them, their principles and initial inspirations? Which of these pictures really deserve the name of “portrait”? In twenty-four individual studies of artistic personalities such as Lully, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner and Ravel, Ute Jung-Kaiser investigates these questions with the help of to some extent unknown or unfamiliar pictures. Musicological reservations about the expressive value of portraits are well known, but can be aesthetically refuted. Comparative examinations help us to decide when a portrait can be rejected and when it succeeds. The hypothetical portrait of the mythical singer Orpheus, the absolute ideal of the musician, achieves the status of a model and becomes the prototype of a sought-after ideal.