gambarra

This work shows the formidable artistic intuition Balzac had already developed in le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu, la Bourse, his habit of taking on the guise of a painter and of searching the soul and meandering thoughts of a sculptor in Sarrasine. With Gambara, Balzac addressed the musical world with the character of an instrument-maker who becomes a composer of mad music, as a substitute for himself as an author composing a work - he has Gambara say:

Music is at once a science and an art. The roots it has in physics and mathematics makes it a science; it becomes an art by the inspiration that it uses whilst insulated from science's theorems. It owes physics the essence of the substance it employs, the sound of modified air; the air is composed of principals, which certainly find in us the main analogues which respond to them, sympathise with them, and magnify them by the power of thought. Air also has to contain particles of different elasticities and able to vibrate at as many different durations as there are tones of sound bodies, and these particles piece our ear ear, put to work by the musician, replying to ideas following our organisation.