dt Ernst Theodor Amadeus, short and commonly known as ETA, Hoffmann himself chose his middle name in honor of Mozart is perhaps still known. However, the enormous importance that music had in the life of the writer, who achieved worldwide fame through his fantastically ghostly stories such as “The Sandman” or “The Devil’s Elixir”, is often underestimated. Born in Königsberg in 1776, he received early piano lessons, probably also violin and organ lessons, and learned the basso continuo and counterpoint with the cathedral organist. He soon began composing and his list of musical works includes Singspiele, a mass, piano and instrumental music. The great success was and still is not granted to him. Only rarely are his Miserere in B flat minor or his Piano Trio in E major performed. There’s a strange contrast between his progressive lyrics and his conservative music.
As Kapellmeister in Bamberg, Hoffman failed miserably through intrigue, which he transformed in the grotesquely delightful stories of his “Kreisleriana” into what happened to Kapellmeister Kreisler, his alter ego. As a writer of music, he fared reasonably well and left behind numerous reviews of his works, which are an important source for the change in understanding of the music of his time. In his observation of the fifth symphony of his contemporary Beethoven, who was seven years his senior, he describes purely instrumental music as “the most romantic of all the arts”. In the Romantic Museum in Frankfurt, this text is a great introduction to the tour of the music department.
