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Stuart Feder, in the opening chapter of this volume, attributes the generally poor showing of attempts to apply psychoanalysis to music not to the possible truth of Freud's oft-repeated utterance on the creative arts to the effect that the task is in essence impossible, but rather to Feder's own view that analysts who have attempted it in the past have often been insufficiently informed about music. There is little danger of such a deficiency here, for the theorists included in the present volume, a few of them primarily musicians, appear to be reasonably well informed in both fields.
The book is subdivided into four sections, in sequence, “On Music and Method,” “On Affect in Music,” “Studies of Composers and Compositions,” and “Historical Essays.”
To begin, Feder's chapter strikes a cautionary note, warning the theorist with intentions of applying psychoanalysis to art, music in particular, to avoid both the equivalent of “wild analysis” and the drawing of inferences that are too narrow and fixed. To this end, he spotlights form as offering the possibility of “a bridge between a work of art and the mental life of its creator” (p. 4), provides an interesting example using one of Schubert's Moments Musical, and lays down three principles from psychoanalysis intended to guide the theorist in making interpretations.
In chapter 2, Martin Nass (himself an estimable chamber music player) presents some solid evidence to back up the view that, whatever the personal troubles of composers, these are far less influential than their talents, ego functioning, and access to the unconscious in determining the character of their works. (This point of view is echoed by Gilbert Rose, who holds, correctly I believe, that there is no regression in creative work, as Ernst Kris maintained.)