tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/romantic-period-37819/articlesRomantic period – The Conversation2021-09-29T15:14:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1687182021-09-29T15:14:04Z2021-09-29T15:14:04ZThe music of proteins is made audible through a computer program that learns from Chopin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423473/original/file-20210928-18-1783wgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C962%2C579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Training an algorithm to play proteins like Chopin can produce more melodious songs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FI_CHOPIN.jpg">Frederic Chopin/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the right computer program, proteins become pleasant music.</p>
<p>There are many surprising analogies between <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-protein-a-biologist-explains-152870">proteins</a>, the basic building blocks of life, and musical notation. These analogies can be used not only to help advance research, but also to make the complexity of proteins accessible to the public.</p>
<p>We’re <a href="https://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?user=Ic2nqDsAAAAJ&hl=en">computational</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=784B-f0AAAAJ&hl=en">biologists</a> who believe that hearing the sound of life at the molecular level could help inspire people to learn more about biology and the computational sciences. While creating music based on proteins <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2019/translating-proteins-music-0626">isn’t new</a>, different musical styles and composition algorithms had yet to be explored. So we led a team of high school students and other scholars to figure out how to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07933">create classical music from proteins</a>.</p>
<h2>The musical analogies of proteins</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/protein-structure-14122136/">Proteins</a> are structured like folded chains. These chains are composed of small units of 20 possible amino acids, each labeled by a letter of the alphabet. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of the four levels of protein structure." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423442/original/file-20210927-27-3uc4g3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aspects of potein structure can be analogous to musical notation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Main_protein_structure_levels_en.svg">LadyofHats/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>A protein chain can be represented as a string of these alphabetic letters, very much like a string of music notes in alphabetical notation.</p>
<p>Protein chains can also fold into wavy and curved patterns with ups, downs, turns and loops. Likewise, music consists of sound waves of higher and lower pitches, with changing tempos and repeating motifs. </p>
<p>Protein-to-music algorithms can thus map the structural and physiochemical features of a string of amino acids onto the musical features of a string of notes.</p>
<h2>Enhancing the musicality of protein mapping</h2>
<p>Protein-to-music mapping can be fine-tuned by basing it on the features of a specific music style. This enhances musicality, or the melodiousness of the song, when converting amino acid properties, such as sequence patterns and variations, into analogous musical properties, like pitch, note lengths and chords.</p>
<p>For our study, we specifically selected 19th-century <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicapp_historical/chapter/romantic-music/">Romantic period classical piano music</a>, which includes composers like Chopin and Schubert, as a guide because it typically spans a wide range of notes with more complex features such as <a href="https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/chromatic-scale/">chromaticism</a>, like playing both white and black keys on a piano in order of pitch, and chords. Music from this period also tends to have lighter and more graceful and emotive melodies. Songs are usually <a href="https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/homophonic-texture/">homophonic</a>, meaning they follow a central melody with accompaniment. These features allowed us to test out a greater range of notes in our protein-to-music mapping algorithm. In this case, we chose to analyze features of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gus4dnQuiGk">Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu”</a> to guide our development of the program. </p>
<p>To test the algorithm, we applied it to 18 proteins that play a key role in various biological functions. Each amino acid in the protein is mapped to a particular note based on how frequently they appear in the protein, and other aspects of their biochemistry correspond with other aspects of the music. A larger-sized amino acid, for instance, would have a shorter note length, and vice versa.</p>
<p>The resulting music is complex, with notable variations in pitch, loudness and rhythm. Because the algorithm was completely based on the amino acid sequence and no two proteins share the same amino acid sequence, each protein will produce a distinct song. This also means that there are variations in musicality across the different pieces, and interesting patterns can emerge. </p>
<p>For example, music generated from the receptor protein that binds to the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.2001.81.2.629">hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin</a> has some recurring motifs due to the repetition of certain small sequences of amino acids. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="215" data-image="" data-title="OXTR protein music" data-size="3436911" data-source="Zhang et al." data-source-url="https://EMBARGO.com" data-license="CC BY-NC-ND" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2282/music-oxtr.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
OXTR protein music.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://EMBARGO.com">Zhang et al.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a><span class="download"><span>3.28 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2282/music-oxtr.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oxytocin receptor protein structure" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423439/original/file-20210927-21-5qw03m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">OXTR, or the oxytocin receptor, has repeating sequences of amino acids.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/P30559">AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, music generated from <a href="https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/gene/tp53/">tumor antigen p53</a>, a protein that prevents cancer formation, is highly chromatic, producing particularly fascinating phrases where the music sounds almost <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/toccata">toccata-like</a>, a style that often features fast and virtuoso technique.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="139" data-image="" data-title="TP53 protein music" data-size="2223993" data-source="Zhang et al." data-source-url="https://PENDING EMBARGO.com" data-license="CC BY-NC-ND" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2281/music-tp53.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
TP53 protein music.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://PENDING%20EMBARGO.com">Zhang et al.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a><span class="download"><span>2.12 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2281/music-tp53.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tumor protein p53 protein structure" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423441/original/file-20210927-15-vgtzsi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">TP53, or tumor protein p53, produces chromatic music.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/entry/P04637">AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By guiding analysis of amino acid properties through specific music styles, protein music can sound much more pleasant to the ear. This can be further developed and applied to a wider variety of music styles, including pop and jazz.</p>
<p>Protein music is an example of how combining the biological and computational sciences can produce beautiful works of art. Our hope is that this work will encourage researchers to compose protein music of different styles and inspire the public to learn about the basic building blocks of life.</p>
<p><em>This study was collaboratively developed with Nicole Tay, Fanxi Liu, Chaoxin Wang and Hui Zhang.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many features of proteins are analogous to music. Mapping these features together creates new musical compositions that help researchers learn about proteins.Peng Zhang, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Biology, The Rockefeller UniversityYuzong Chen, Professor of Pharmacy, National University of SingaporeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174542019-06-06T11:56:50Z2019-06-06T11:56:50ZVegans and vegetarians: the history of how plant-based diets grew out of left-wing ideology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277639/original/file-20190603-69067-14xeu6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rise of the vegetarian and, more recently, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-veganism-receive-the-same-legal-protection-as-a-religion-114243">vegan diet</a> is generally perceived to be a new phenomenon. So, too, is their association with contemporary progressive ideas, politics and lifestyles. But plant-based diets have deep historical roots, and a longstanding connection with the political left.</p>
<p>From the time of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution">1789 French revolution</a>, when radical ideas were sweeping Europe, a political, ethical vegetarianism has grown alongside the British left. Advocated by major figures from the poet Percy Shelley to playwright <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/16/vegetarianism-george-bernard-shaw-1923">George Bernard Shaw</a> – as well as many more in pioneering leftist organisations and communities – contemporary writing demonstrates how a plant-based diet developed as an element of left-wing ideology, activism and identity.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-veganism-receive-the-same-legal-protection-as-a-religion-114243">Should veganism receive the same legal protection as a religion?</a>
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<p>During the 1790s, several British radicals adopted vegetarianism as part of their broader attempts to overturn the existing orthodoxy. Influenced by philosopher <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/">Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s</a> ideals regarding a “natural state” of freedom, peace and equality, people such as the Anglo-Jacobin revolutionary <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aHBjAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Oswald</a>, the radical scholar <a href="https://archive.org/details/anessayonabstin00ritsgoog/page/n5">Joseph Ritson</a>, and the publisher <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6jUCAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">George Nicholson</a> promoted the diet as a central element of their far-reaching arguments for justice and fellowship.</p>
<p>The diet had a significant presence in the Romantic period, especially within the circle of Percy and Mary Shelley. Percy Shelley wrote two essays advocating vegetarianism, one of which – <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38727">A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)</a> – was appended to his influential revolutionary poem <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Queen-Mab">Queen Mab</a>. </p>
<p>Queen Mab looked forward to a “paradise of peace”, a state of fellowship between all living beings, in which “man has lost / His terrible prerogative” to rob others of life. Depicting a simple, fulfilling existence led in harmony with nature, it illustrated a world “equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless”, devoid of needless conflict and division.</p>
<h2>Ethics and ecology</h2>
<p>Vegetarianism continued its association with the nascent left throughout the early to mid-19th century and became a common feature of socialism by the century’s close. Although largely grounded in ethics, arguments were also developed about its health and ecological benefits. These stressed the environmental burdens of meat production, and sought to counter a growing industrial-capitalist society of damaging over-consumption.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/going-veggie-would-cut-global-food-emissions-by-two-thirds-and-save-millions-of-lives-new-study-56655">Going veggie would cut global food emissions by two thirds and save millions of lives – new study</a>
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<p>Veganism was often acknowledged as the ideal, including by the fin-de-siècle socialist, humanitarian campaigner and pioneering animal rights advocate <a href="http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/life/biography">Henry Salt</a>. Influenced by the ideas of Shelley, as well as the anarcho-communism of Peter Kropotkin and the evolutionary theories of Alfred Russell Wallace – both of whom stressed the importance of cooperation, as opposed to competition, in nature – Salt <a href="http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/studies/reviews/the-creed-of-kinship">outlined</a> a vegetarian-leftist outlook typical of the period.</p>
<p>Arguing that all forms of oppression were interconnected, <a href="http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/studies/essays/humane-influences-of-henry-salt">he advocated</a> “not this or that humane reform, but all of them” simultaneously, for it was not a single specific symptom, but the root “disease” – society’s underlying ethic – that required treatment.</p>
<p>Salt identified this as one of selfish exploitation, and so <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49336">advocated</a> a consistent principle of humaneness to oppose it, campaigning for the causes of socialism, women’s liberation, pacifism, vegetarianism and animal rights. All were, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49336">he asserted</a>, “inseparably connected” and none could “be fully realised alone”. He thus promoted the extension of “compassion, love and justice” to “every living creature”, as part of a comprehensive ethical creed. <a href="http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/life/">He wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wholly disbelieve in the present established religion; but I have a very firm religious faith of my own – a Creed of Kinship, I call it – a belief that in years yet to come there will be a recognition of the brotherhood between man and man … when there will be no such barbarity as warfare, or the robbery of the poor by the rich, or the ill-usage of the lower animals by mankind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He was not alone in outlining such a vegetarian–leftist vision. Edward Carpenter, the influential LGBT pioneer, <a href="http://www.friendsofedwardcarpenter.co.uk/biography.htm">shared a similar outlook</a>, and many other significant figures likewise incorporated the diet into their broader politics.</p>
<h2>Violence begets violence</h2>
<p>Throughout this history, vegetarianism has been most associated with more holistic forms of leftist thought – those which look beyond economics to focus on the personal, moral and spiritual aspects of socialism. These “alternative” strands were particularly popular in the 19th century. Typically labelled “libertarian” or “ethical”, they emphasised the interconnection of individual and societal change, anti-authoritarianism and ideas of all-embracing liberation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277171/original/file-20190530-69087-rglixx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The victims of the pot and pan went forth against the tyrant man’. A bull carries the red flag surmounted by an upturned cooking pot in this image by the famous socialist artist, and vegetarian, Walter Crane (1911).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many adopted the vegetarian diet because they recognised that violence towards other animals, and meat eating in particular, was part and parcel of the violent, exploitative society surrounding them. A society, as described by Salt, characterised by predatory consumption and wherein individuals, particularly the elite, became “almost literally cannibals … devouring the flesh and blood of the non-human animals so closely akin to us, and indirectly cannibals, as living by the sweat and toil of the classes who do the hard work of the world.”</p>
<p>In the view of Salt and others, meat eating habituated predatory behaviours and attitudes, eroded humanity’s benevolent instincts, and undermined the very basis of an ideal peaceful, cooperative society. To oppose meat eating was thus to challenge existing society, and to attempt to change its underlying ethic of exploitation and predation to one of compassion and cooperation.</p>
<p>What was needed was the widespread awakening of a new mindset: a “compassionate consciousness” which combined an instinctive sense of compassion and fellowship with a freethinking rationalist outlook. Through the cultivation of this active ethic of fellowship and love – both the means and ends of social advance – a new sense of universal kinship would naturally develop. To be vegetarian was to attempt to embody and progress a particular vision of the future by enacting it in everyday life.</p>
<h2>A new way of being</h2>
<p>Epitomising universal peace and fellowship, vegetarianism represented a new way of being. For this reason, its practice by key figures in the history of non-violence, from Percy Shelley to <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/12/how-leo-tolstoy-became-a-vegetarian-and-jumpstarted-the-vegetarian-humanitarian-movements-in-the-19th-century.html">Leo Tolstoy</a> and <a href="https://ivu.org/index.php/blogs/john-davis/49-gandhi-and-the-launching-of-veganism">Mahatma Gandhi</a>, comes as little surprise.</p>
<p>Equally, meat eating came to embody a counter-form of this ideology, with meat consumption frequently associated with masculine, militaristic and nationalist politics – as exemplified by the 19th-century symbolism surrounding <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/John-Bull-English-symbol">John Bull</a>, the patriotic beef-eating English everyman.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277647/original/file-20190603-69095-395ll0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Gillray’s John Bull Taking a Luncheon. Bull often epitomised the meat-eating everyman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gillray_-_John_Bull_taking_a_Luncheon.jpg">James Gillray via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this light, the diet’s particular adoption by numerous pioneer feminists and suffragettes, especially those who also identified as socialists, such as <a href="https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/charlotte-despard/">Charlotte Despard</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612029700200144">Isabella Ford</a> and, in the US, <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/all-woman-the-utopian-feminism-of-charlotte-perkins-gilman">Charlotte Perkins Gilman</a>, served not only as a rejection of the exploitative violence of an unjust social order, but of patriarchy itself.</p>
<p>Through the 20th century, vegetarianism’s association with the left continued, with numerous prominent Labour MPs, including Fenner Brockway and Tony Benn, practising the diet. And today, to knowingly mention Jeremy Corbyn’s vegetarianism is almost a cliche.</p>
<p>But now it is gaining ground among younger generations, too. <a href="https://theconversation.com/going-veggie-would-cut-global-food-emissions-by-two-thirds-and-save-millions-of-lives-new-study-56655">Against the backdrop of the climate crisis</a>, and with a growing appetite for a new politics of tolerance, compassion and cooperation, which seeks to demolish blinding barriers and divisions, vegetarianism and veganism appear increasingly relevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sky Duthie is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>It’s not just a modern fad – plant-based diets have a long and colourful political past.Sky Duthie, PhD Candidate in History, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1002422018-07-25T20:09:00Z2018-07-25T20:09:00ZExplainer: how Romanticism rebelled against cold-hearted rationality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228754/original/file-20180723-189319-1tbymun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">William Blake, Pity, 1795, Tate.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WilliamBlakePity.jpeg">William Blake/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Romanticism is often fixed within a period running from the late-18th to early-19th century. But Romanticism as a cultural movement and as a set of ideas influencing visual art, literature, philosophy and politics, bleeds out beyond these designated boundaries. </p>
<p>Indeed, its influence continues in the 21st century. When we think about the qualities of imagination, the natural world or the composition of the self, we usually call upon an idea or two from what has come to be known as Romanticism. </p>
<p>In 21st-century culture, Romantic ideas usually appear when the human and the natural worlds are brought together. For example, the novels of Peter Carey or Tim Winton sometimes set up a type of metaphysical resonance between landscape and the formation (or dissipation) of the self.</p>
<p>Or, we see a fantasy of our integration with nature (tinged with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “nascent humanity”) in James Cameron’s film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/">Avatar</a>. Even the feedback loop of depression and apocalypse that appears in Lars von Trier’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Melancholia</a>, owes something to Romanticism. </p>
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<p>The term “Romanticism” derives from the attraction of some 18th-century German and English thinkers to the culture of the Middle Ages. “Romance” - such as that exhibited in the 13th-century French stories of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot-Grail">King Arthur</a>- provided a model of imaginative non-realism, intensity of feeling and decisiveness of action that appealed to young artistic rebels. The Middle Ages also offered an imagined community of integrated harmony that contrasted with the transformations and tumult of late 18th-century Europe. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-arthurian-legend-64289">Guide to the classics: the Arthurian legend</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Often, Romanticism is seen as a counterpoint to the Enlightenment. In 1784, Immanuel Kant suggested a slogan for the Enlightenment: “Have courage to use your own understanding!” This prompted the question: what is the nature of that understanding? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1226&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229217/original/file-20180725-194158-1pthlk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1226&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>The modern world can still be understood as swinging between, on one side, the cool work of quantification and observation in scientific rationality and, on the other, a desire for the heat of life lived with intensity, in the experience of emotion or of the ineffable. These latter qualities we find in imaginative and freedom-loving Romanticism, which made a home for itself in English poetry.</p>
<p>Poets such as Charlotte Smith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Clare presented artistic critiques of what they saw as the exploitative and cold-hearted rationality of their times. These English poets found a refuge for their idea of free and creative humanity in nature and the imagination.</p>
<p>Blake achieved this with his religiously inspired poetic transformations of London. Blake imagines indentured child chimney sweeps set free by angels, even as he sees everywhere the “mind-forg’d manacles” of poverty and exploitation. Blake skewers the wretched present and envisages a transcendent future through poetic imagination. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228755/original/file-20180723-189332-1t05pjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beatrice Addressing Dante by William Blake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beatrice_Addressing_Dante_(by_William_Blake).jpg">William Blake/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Romantic sublime</h2>
<p>Where Blake set out an idiosyncratic and radical religious revision, Wordsworth established a poetic interaction between imagination and nature in his landmark 1798 collection with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. In his poem Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth outlines the idea of the sublime that would come to characterise the Romantic relationship between humanity and nature. </p>
<p>Wordsworth encounters nature but in it hears the “sad music of humanity”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And I have felt
<br>
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
<br>
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
<br>
Of something far more deeply interfused,
<br>
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
<br>
And the round ocean and the living air,
<br>
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Romantic sublime here casts nature as a stern teacher ready to impart wisdom if only humanity could be still and listen carefully. Edmund Burke went a little further with his theory of the sublime, in which the teacher is more like a crazed god who might overwhelm and annihilate us. Surviving the encounter, however, we are endowed with wonder and insight. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229218/original/file-20180725-194124-1cvjgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Romantic sublime in Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey casts nature as as a stern teacher ready to impart wisdom if only humanity could be still and listen carefully.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wordsworth explained this control of the sublime experience in his poetic method. In his 1800 preface to Lyrical Ballads he describes the process of recreating the experience of nature and transforming it into poetry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wordsworth argues that it takes a special kind of “mind” to recall the intensity of emotion that accompanies an encounter with a mountain or the roiling sea. As Shelley would reiterate later, the Romantic poet is cast as an almost priestly figure, mediating between humanity and nature through “his” capacious imagination.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229219/original/file-20180725-194131-e66nik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1842 portrait of Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, of course, these “unacknowledged legislators” of human nature were not all men and not all so ready to present their special sensibilities. Charlotte Smith was an early Romantic poet who influenced Wordsworth. Smith’s melancholy nature poems present a less heroic vision of poetic imagination and the self. Her sonnet, To Night, includes a literary device that subsequent Romantic writers tended to neglect: irony. </p>
<p>Wordsworth and Shelley claim to access the transcendental voice of nature without conceding that they may, in fact, merely be hearing their own echo. Smith, on the other hand, acknowledges the vanity of communing with “the deaf cold elements”. It doesn’t stop her from anthropomorphising nature in its “sullen surges” and “viewless wind”. But she, at least, recognises the game she is playing.</p>
<p>Smith knows the human world is cruel and that nature can provide consolation, even when we admit it is actually indifferent to our suffering. In a way that Kant might not have anticipated, Smith presents a Romantic kind of enlightenment - a courage to use one’s own understanding of sorrow. </p>
<p>She addresses “Night” with some of the saddest and bravest lines in English poetry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I still enjoy thee — cheerless as thou art;
<br>
For in thy quiet gloom the exhausted heart
<br>
Is calm, tho’ wretched; hopeless, yet resign’d.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This Romantic voice takes responsibility for itself by artfully imagining nature as a cool but consoling companion, rather than a distant sage or annihilating god. It is a knowing projection of our capacity for calm, set against a frantic and unjust world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ryan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Romantics - including poets William Blake and William Wordsworth - lived in the 18th century, but their passionate ideas about imagination and nature are still influential today.Matthew Ryan, Lecturer in Literature, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847992017-10-18T11:03:32Z2017-10-18T11:03:32ZKeats’s ode To Autumn warns about mass surveillance and social sharing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190684/original/file-20171017-30436-oaui0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C280%2C937%2C612&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Keats, by Joseph Severn.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Keats,_portrait_by_Joseph_Severn.jpg">National Portrait Gallery/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>John Keats’s ode <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn">To Autumn</a> is one of the best-loved poems in the English language. Composed during a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/res/article/63/262/797/1537295/Keats-to-Autumn-and-the-New-Men-of-Winchester">walk to St Giles’s Hill</a>, Winchester, on September 19 1819, it depicts an apparently idyllic scene of harvest home, where drowsy, contented reapers “spare the next swath” beneath the “maturing sun”. </p>
<p>The atmosphere of calm finality and mellow ease has comforted generations of readers, and To Autumn is often anthologised as a poem of acceptance of death. But, until now, we may have been missing one of its most pressing themes: surveillance.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190688/original/file-20171017-30394-1nl5mup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Giles’s Hill, Winchester, in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St.Giles%27s_Hill,_Winchester_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1736323.jpg">Peter Trimming/Geograph.org</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opening of the second stanza appears to be a straightforward allusion to personified autumn: “Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?” But that negative is odd, and hints at a more troubling side to the famous poem. Keats, a London boy, was walking in Winchester’s rural environs to get away from it all – but rather than describing a peaceful stroll, the poem seems to form an anxious meditation on the impossibility of privacy. </p>
<h2>Seen thee</h2>
<p>We might assume mass surveillance is a modern phenomenon, but “surveillance” is a Romantic word, first introduced to English readers in 1799. It acquired a chilling sub-entry in 1816 in Charles James’s Military Dictionary: the condition of “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IrRCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR3&lpg=PR3&dq=charles+james+military+dictionary+1816&source=bl&ots=2Wh6oRaZcN&sig=VY3JRgV-Iw01UXh2DGvqxOeVLfI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwish8Goj8PWAhVKWxoKHdD3AVgQ6AEIWjAP#v=onepage&q=surveillance&f=false">existing under the eye of the police</a>”. </p>
<p>But why would Keats have been thinking about spies in the St Giles cornfield? Rewind six days to September 13, 1819, when Henry “Orator” Hunt was entering London to stand trial for treason. </p>
<p>The political reformer had been arrested in Manchester for speaking at the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-peterloo-massacre">Peterloo Massacre</a>. Hunt was welcomed to the capital by a crowd of 300,000, with Keats, whose literary circle <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics">included political radicals</a>, among those lining the streets to catch a glimpse of the government’s greatest bugbear. </p>
<p>London was on lock down. The Bank of England had closed its doors, the entrance to Mansion House was packed with constables and the artillery was on standby. Spies mingled with the Orator’s supporters, listening out for murmurs of popular uprising.</p>
<p>These were dangerous times, which To Autumn perhaps acknowledges with its opening allusion to close conspiracy and loading (weapons):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun</p>
<p>Conspiring with him how to load and bless</p>
<p>With fruit …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Usually a garrulous letter writer, Keats waited until September 18 – the day before he wrote his ode – to <a href="https://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/john-keats-letters-george-georgiana-keats-september-1819/">describe Hunt’s procession</a> to his brother and sister-in-law, and then in only the sketchiest terms. He notes the huge numbers but carefully distances himself from the cheering crowds, claiming it had taken him all day to feel “among men”. </p>
<p>Keats is uncharacteristically circumspect, almost as if he feared his correspondence might be intercepted – and perhaps for good reason.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190691/original/file-20171017-30394-8d1u0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Massacre of Peterloo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Peterloo_Massacre#/media/File:The_Massacre_of_Peterloo.jpg">George Cruikshank/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Keats posted two letters during Hunt’s pageant, to his fiancé Fanny Brawne, and to his friend Charles Brown. The first letter arrived without mishap, but Brown’s went missing for 11 days. Later, Keats told him he believed the letter “had been stopped from curiosity” – that is, read by third parties.</p>
<p>The truth was more mundane: Keats had got Brown’s address wrong, and the missive duly turned up on September 24. The letter has since been lost, and we can only guess at its contents, but it’s not inconceivable that, in the midst of Hunt’s maelstrom, Keats had been more candid about his support for the “hero of Peterloo”.</p>
<p>What we do know is that when Keats was writing his great ode on September 19, he suspected his private correspondence, posted during one of the most controversial political marches of the age, was in the hands of government spies.</p>
<h2>Spies and informers</h2>
<p>Keats’s creative antennae were already attuned to the issue of surveillance before this incident. His long poem <a href="http://www.keatsian.co.uk/keats-poetry-lamia.php">Lamia</a>, finished that same September, describes its heroine being tracked through the streets of Corinth by “most curious” spies (compare the phrase Keats used to refer to his missing letter: “stopped from curiosity”). That poem opens with a queasy scene in which Hermes transforms Lamia from serpent to woman. The price is information: Lamia agrees to give up the location of a nymph’s “secret bed” to the priapic god.</p>
<p>A rosy-hued Winchester cornfield might seem a long way from buzzing Corinth, or the violent scenes at Peterloo, or indeed the convulsed capital itself. But the field’s apparent calm is actually a fault line in Keats’s supposedly idyllic poem: the reapers, whose hooks lie idle, ought to be working flat out.</p>
<p>Landowners often grumbled about the laziness of Hampshire’s (poorly paid) casual labourers. It could be that Keats’s ode unwittingly drops the delinquent reapers in it, the poem’s lens giving them away at their “secret bed” (to recall Lamia’s betrayal of the sleeping nymph).</p>
<p>To Autumn is full of directed acts of invigilation: looking (patiently), watching (hours by hours), and seeking abroad (Keats’s first draft was more ominous: “whoever seeks for thee”). All the while those poor labourers were oblivious to the fact that their furtive nap was being observed, and carefully recorded.</p>
<p>Because let’s not forget, Keats is describing actual workers, real people whose slacking off he reports as unthinkingly as we might share our own peers’ political views or locations on social media. As casually as a Google car might capture a moonlighting worker up a ladder outside someone’s house.</p>
<p>When we take all this into account, To Autumn begins to read as an all-seeing optic, internalising the very surveillance culture Keats worried about, and itself becoming a spy transcript.</p>
<p>The ode is an early example of how art and literature process the psychological impacts of intrusive supervision. Written (in Keats’s mind) under surveillance, and bearing the marks of that imaginative pressure, the poem offers itself as a powerful document of what happens to communities, to social groups – to sociability itself – when watching, informing and being informed on become the norms of human interaction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A longer version of this essay will appear in John Keats’s Medical Imagination, ed. Nicholas Roe (Palgrave, 2017).</span></em></p>Keats’s Winchester walk was no idyllic stroll – he had espionage on his mind.Richard Marggraf-Turley, Professor of Engagement with the Public Imagination; Professor of English Literature, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843192017-09-28T10:53:06Z2017-09-28T10:53:06ZDavid Bowie, a latter-day Romantic, was a modern-day Lord Byron<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187829/original/file-20170927-24154-1ydjitw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jean-Luc via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38533901">died in January 2016</a>, David Bowie was universally regarded as one of the seminal rock stars of the modern age. He sold <a href="http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2017/08/david-bowie-has-been-streamed-more-that.html">millions of records</a>, won <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2017/02/12/david-bowie-grammy-awards-blackstar/97827398/">countless awards</a>, and influenced numberless followers. </p>
<p>Almost without fail, <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-bowie-innovator-extraordinaire-52998">tributes after his death</a> lauded Bowie as a pioneer, particularly when it came to questioning ideas about gender and identity. But although Bowie’s willingness to challenge norms and boldness in doing so are undeniable, his position as a pioneer is more questionable. </p>
<p>Bowie is, in fact, directly linked to the Romantics, the writers and intellectuals who challenged similar norms some 200 years ago. And this link reveals not only the weight of Bowie’s work, but also the continuing influence of Romantic thought today. </p>
<p>My favourite version of David Bowie is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2016/aug/25/david-bowie-tour-thin-white-duke-photos">Thin White Duke</a> of 1975 and 1976. As skinny as a thread and with a laser-cut profile, the Duke wore his snowy shirt and black waistcoat with an icy hauteur that inspired both my fascination and my envy. </p>
<p>But it wasn’t until recently that I realised that the Thin White Duke has roots that go deeper than David Bowie’s <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/bowies-last-single-said-to-be-a-tribute-to-kabbalah/">fascination with cocaine and kabbalah</a> (his 1976 album Station to Station makes direct use of kabbalistic words and concepts). He is also a direct descendant of English Romanticism’s most alluring poet, <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-letters-from-joyces-dirty-missive-to-keatss-paeans-37500">Lord Byron</a>. </p>
<p>Like Byron, Bowie lived and worked in a time of enormous social and intellectual upheaval. And also like Byron, he embraced that upheaval eagerly, becoming its best-known symbol. </p>
<p>Byron travelled to then-mysterious lands in the early 1800s, bringing back stories of exotic scenes and events. He wove this strangeness into tales whose fictional heroes – boldly and successfully defying moral and social expectations, embracing personal morality and liberty – seemed based on himself. Childe Harold, The Giaour, The Corsair were all poems whose eponymous heroes were taken as versions of Byron himself.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KYJgK13Wong?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Bowie picked up on precisely these elements of Byronism when he adopted the persona of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/ziggy-stardust-how-bowie-created-the-alter-ego-that-changed-rock-20160616">Ziggy Stardust</a>, alien liberator and 1970s counterculture personified, but who shared the physical characteristics of David Bowie.</p>
<p>Bowie’s connection to Byron runs deeper still. Both explored the question of identity in their works, while in their real lives suggesting that identity might be nothing more than a surface. They happily created themselves as brands, delighting in making fans puzzle over what was real and what was not, who was singing or speaking. </p>
<p>For this, both men earned accusations that their work was shallow. In fact, such frankness confronts the very deepest questions about how to define identity. Do people have a single “self”? What even is self, really? What if identity is really just a series of masks, donned at the appropriate moments?</p>
<p>The more I considered Bowie, the more I realised that he wasn’t linked just to Byron. Bowie is a prime example of how all of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism">Romanticism</a> continues to influence our culture. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187003/original/file-20170921-8199-1j24xzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Byron - lord of the romance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/lord-byron-1800s-252139615?src=_xA6yoE78G8wBIjoW4JexA-1-4">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bowie’s cross-dressing and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/jan/22/popandrock.davidbowie">his announcement</a> that he was “gay, and I always have been” were brave statements in England in the early 1970s. (The parents of Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson were publicly harassed simply because of their son’s association.) </p>
<p>But 150 years earlier, John Keats confused the gender boundaries of his time, and had his work dismissed with contempt and his career destroyed because <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1C0HDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=keats+and+effeminate&source=bl&ots=N2GD7sTBpP&sig=sg9rPYotsv9wOG71mH-SyouKaA4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ_-De-rXWAhVFKMAKHYUBBj4Q6AEIPTAH#v=onepage&q=keats%20and%20effeminate&f=false">critics thought</a> his poetry was effeminate. Bowie tapped into the same fear that Keats embodied, and his gender questioning links to concerns that lurk in the corners of many Romantic books and poems.</p>
<h2>Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes</h2>
<p>What’s more, while Bowie can be seen as rock ’n’ roll’s master of apocalypse and dystopia (his <a href="http://www.davidbowie.com/album/diamond-dogs-0">Diamond Dogs</a> album opens with an image of a world full of “fleas the size of rats sucking on rats the size of cats” and doesn’t get much more positive from there), that vision can trace its roots back to <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/blke/hd_blke.htm">William Blake’s highly symbolic</a> and post-apocalyptic poetic visions, detailed in works such as Jerusalem and The Four Zoas.</p>
<p>In fact, a great deal of Bowie’s work links back to the genre of so-called “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sublime-Conclusions-Last-Man-Narratives-from-Apocalypse-to-Death-of-God/Weninger/p/book/9781910887219">last-man narratives</a>”, which envisioned the end of the world through the eyes of a last survivor and were very popular in the Romantic period. The songs “Space Oddity” and “Ashes to Ashes”, for instance, are the spiritual children of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/ksr.1989.4.1.1">Mary Shelley’s The Last Man</a> and <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/alastor-by-p-b-shelley">Percy Shelley’s Alastor</a>. These connections to Romanticism show that Bowie’s work can’t be dismissed as “just” pop music. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Bowie’s work shows that Romanticism still has an influence on the contemporary world. The Romantic Era, that grand and distant epoch, is not remote history, but a continuing influence on how we understand our own world. Bowie demonstrates that in some cases we are still Romantics, wrestling with the same questions that writers and thinkers grappled with more than a century ago: Who am I? How many “selves” do I have? Am I sure if I’m a boy or a girl? What will become of my world, of <em>the</em> world? </p>
<p>In an intellectual game of Chinese Whispers, these same Romantic questions and concerns appear in Bowie’s songs, and sometimes in our own minds, just in different words. In this way, it turns out, the Thin White Duke’s slender thread ties the present to the past, knots Bowie to Romanticism, and shows that Romanticism is knitted into our contemporary selves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Bernhard Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The singer had Romantic notions in common with the poet – as well as with William Blake, Mary Shelley, and John Keats.Emily Bernhard Jackson, Lecturer in English, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/742432017-04-18T19:46:27Z2017-04-18T19:46:27ZDecoding the music masterpieces: Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165154/original/image-20170412-25870-wo5mpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Franz Liszt in his home in Weimar, 1884.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/4007692985">Bergen Public Library Norway/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara-Schumann">Clara Schumann</a>, the wife of the great composer Robert Schumann, <a href="http://www.henle.de/blog/en/2015/11/23/what%E2%80%99s-new-with-liszt%E2%80%99s-b-minor-sonata/">wrote in her diary</a> on 25 May 1854:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Liszt sent Robert today a sonata dedicated to him and several other things with a friendly letter to me. But the things are dreadful! [Johannes] Brahms played them for me, but they made me utterly wretched … This is nothing but sheer racket – not a single healthy idea, everything confused, no longer a clear harmonic sequence to be detected there! And now I still have to thank him – it’s really awful. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165156/original/image-20170412-25894-oxfnnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clara Schumann circa 1850.</span>
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<p>She was referring, of course, to Franz Liszt, the Hungarian composer, and his Piano Sonata in B minor, which soon became one of the most popular and influential works of the piano repertoire. </p>
<p>Proof of this is that, despite its mammoth technical difficulties, there are over 50 recordings of the Sonata listed in the catalogues. As a somewhat odd measure of success in our times, the Sonata is even featured in an <a href="http://lisztsonata.touchpress.com/">award-winning iPad app</a>.</p>
<p>A “sonata” in the 19th-century sense would generally refer to a three or four movement composition. Unlike most traditional piano sonatas, Liszt’s work consists of one giant arch of a single movement, lasting almost half an hour. While this was unusual in the middle of the Romantic era, it was not without precedent. </p>
<p>Liszt knew Austrian composer Franz Schubert’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnvkhyvg2o">Wanderer Fantasie in C major</a> well. Although Schubert’s themes in the Wanderer Fantasy run through four movements in varied forms, these four movements are played without a break – the parallels with Liszt’s later Sonata are obvious. </p>
<p>Robert Schumann’s own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5cmBah0F20">Fantasie in C major</a>, was also written to be played through, more or less hiding its three individual movements. Schumann dedicated this work to Liszt. Thus Liszt’s dedication of the B minor Sonata was a reciprocal gesture, which Schumann, sadly, could no longer appreciate.</p>
<p>Nor could Schumann play the Sonata as, by 1854, he was rather tragically committed to an asylum for the insane.</p>
<h2>‘Nothing but sheer racket’</h2>
<p>Liszt’s Sonata was publicly played for the first time a few years later in 1857, by one of his students, Hans von Bülow. The two of them grew even closer in the same year, when Bülow married Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. (Bülow was a great champion of compositions said to be unplayable. He also premiered Tschaikovsky’s famous first Piano Concerto in B flat minor in Boston.)</p>
<p>How Liszt, or for that matter, Bülow would have played the Sonata, we do not know. Fortunately though, two of Liszt’s students recorded the Sonata late in their lives and their performances survive on <a href="http://www.pianola.co.nz/public/index.php/web/about_piano_rolls">piano rolls</a> (a form of music storage commonly used in the first part of the 20th century).</p>
<p>We can gain a wealth of information about late 19th century performance practice, intriguing technical solutions, tempos, dynamics and other musical ideas through the recordings of these Liszt students, Arthur Friedheim and Eugene d’Albert. </p>
<p>Friedheim’s 1905 recording is the first complete one of the Sonata; his deeply musical, if often unusual playing of the first few minutes of this work is well worth listening to:</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="241" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 1 - Sonata in B" data-size="2837756" data-source="Liszt ~ Piano Sonata in B Minor ~ Premier recording by Arthur Friedheim ~ Leipzig 1905" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=0HMEt2x_zLQ" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/678/example-1-freidheim.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
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<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 1 - Sonata in B.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=0HMEt2x_zLQ">Liszt ~ Piano Sonata in B Minor ~ Premier recording by Arthur Friedheim ~ Leipzig 1905</a><span class="download"><span>2.71 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/678/example-1-freidheim.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [Liszt ~ Piano Sonata in B Minor ~ Premier recording by Arthur Friedheim ~ Leipzig 1905](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=0HMEt2x_zLQ) </span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Still, like Clara Schumann, others also had difficulties comprehending the astonishing musical journey of Liszt’s Sonata. </p>
<p>Upon hearing it for the first time, the enormously influential Viennese critic, <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100668140&fa=author&person_id=349%20p.148">Eduard Hanslick, opined</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>whoever has heard that, and finds it beautiful, is beyond help. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fortunately, such sentiments did not prevail for long.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165155/original/image-20170412-25878-1cu70xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liszt as painted by Henri Lehmann in 1839.</span>
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<p>The Sonata conquered, yet kept some of its secrets, despite numerous attempts to explain its enigmatic meaning. Among other theories, it has been suggested that it presents a musical portrait of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust">Faust legend</a>; or that it is, in fact, autobiographical, and the musical contrasts within spring from the conflicts of Liszt’s own personality. </p>
<p>Others propose that it is about the divine and the diabolical, as depicted in the Bible and, specifically, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, or that it is merely an allegory, set in the Garden of Eden, dealing with the Fall of Man and contains individual themes for “God”, “Lucifer”, “Serpent”, “Adam” and “Eve”. </p>
<p>On a simpler scale, it has also been said that the Sonata has no programmatic allusions at all and it is a piece of “expressive form” with no meaning beyond itself. </p>
<p>Any of these may appeal; whether they are true or not we’ll never know, as Liszt himself never offered an opinion.</p>
<h2>Stirring emotions</h2>
<p>Whatever its meaning, the Sonata is an incredibly powerful work, inspiring some performers to excessively emotional performances. One of the most vehement of them was recorded by the German Ludwig Hoffmann in 1977. </p>
<p>Here is his playing beginning from the same D major theme where we left off in the previous example, all the way to a tumultuous section that some analysts call the development section of the Sonata. (The main themes of a sonata movement are elaborated in various ways and keys in its middle section, called “development”)</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="460" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 2 - Sonata in B Minor" data-size="10015229" data-source="FRANZ LISZT - SONATA IN B MINOR - LUDWIG HOFFMANN" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfQrwn88a1w" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/679/example-2-hoffmann.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 2 - Sonata in B Minor.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfQrwn88a1w">FRANZ LISZT - SONATA IN B MINOR - LUDWIG HOFFMANN</a><span class="download"><span>9.55 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/679/example-2-hoffmann.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [FRANZ LISZT - SONATA IN B MINOR - LUDWIG HOFFMANN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfQrwn88a1w)</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Hoffmann’s is one of the fastest recordings, clocking just under 24 minutes. </p>
<p>In absolute contrast to that, the Croatian enfant terrible of piano stars, Ivo Pogorelich, played the same work a few years ago at a bewilderingly slow speed, taking almost exactly twice as long – an astonishing feat.</p>
<p>Some might call this performance a parody. Others admire it, and often for the very same reasons! The next example shows the same segment already heard on Hoffmann’s recording:</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="500" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 3 - Sonata in B Minor" data-size="11989810" data-source="Ivo Pogorelich plays Liszt Sonata - live 2012" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FHc84dsPKs" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/684/excerpt-3-reedit.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 3 - Sonata in B Minor.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FHc84dsPKs">Ivo Pogorelich plays Liszt Sonata - live 2012</a><span class="download"><span>11.4 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/684/excerpt-3-reedit.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [Ivo Pogorelich plays Liszt Sonata - live 2012](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FHc84dsPKs)</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Whatever our opinion, time seems to stand still at times in this recording, while Pogorelich’s extreme attention to minutiae brings out harmonic clashes, hidden internal melodies and many other particulars seldom audible in other recordings. Whether the listener needs to be conscious of these details is another question altogether.</p>
<h2>Four movements or one?</h2>
<p>One of the most fascinating aspects of Liszt’s Sonata is that, depending on how we look at the score (and more importantly, listen to the music), it can be convincingly argued that it abides by two completely different structures – and does so simultaneously! </p>
<p>Viewed from one angle, it can be explained as one giant movement in traditional “sonata form”, containing the three traditional sections of exposition, development and return (or recapitulation) of the themes. </p>
<p>But looking at it from a different perspective, some listeners can discover the hallmarks of a four-movement composition, albeit played without a break. The beginning and end are the usual movements of a sonata, which bookend a conventional slow movement and a scherzo - a fast, light movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165171/original/image-20170413-25888-f2q0en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of Liszt’s pianos from his apartment in Budapest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/FranzLisztPiano.jpg">Tamcgath/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Does a non-expert music lover have to know about this conundrum? Probably not. Yet listening to such details can be as mesmerising as the discussions they may provoke after the performance. </p>
<p>The intriguing problem of a two-dimensional form surfaces in other compositions of the Romantic period (lasting for most of the 19th century) and it is symptomatic with that era’s growing fascination with ambiguity in musical form.</p>
<p>The surviving manuscript of the Sonata reveals that Liszt originally composed a mighty, almost pretentious finish to it. Fortunately, at a later stage, he changed his mind and after a triumphant climax in B major, he returned to the melody of the “slow movement” and the Sonata not so much finishes but seems to evaporate through the last three ethereal chords.</p>
<p>One of the most moving performances of this final section (called a “coda”) was recorded by the Russian pianist, Sviatoslav Richter:</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="328" data-image="" data-title="Excerpt 4 - Sonata in B Minor" data-size="7094631" data-source="Liszt: Sonata in B minor - Sviatoslav Richter" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1438&v=Wc4hJtKm278" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/681/example-4-richter.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Excerpt 4 - Sonata in B Minor.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1438&v=Wc4hJtKm278">Liszt: Sonata in B minor - Sviatoslav Richter</a><span class="download"><span>6.77 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/681/example-4-richter.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure><figcaption><span class="caption">Source: [Liszt: Sonata in B minor - Sviatoslav Richter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1438&v=Wc4hJtKm278)</span></figcaption></figure>
<p>Nowadays, it is possible to follow the music of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor with the score, for example, on the following recording with Alfred Brendel as the pianist. This will also provide a chance to listen to the whole Sonata without interruption.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lRhU-R0RE-M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-bachs-the-art-of-fugue-73522">Read more here</a> in our series on classical music.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoltan Szabo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whoever finds it beautiful is beyond help, quipped critic Eduard Hanslick upon hearing Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor for the first time. Fortunately, posterity did not agree with him.Zoltan Szabo, Phd candidate and lecturer, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.