A single moment in time that would never recur

"Both deeply loved their native land. Each had devoted decades to collecting and perpetuating its musical traditions and had become Hungary's greatest musicians. Although now physically safe in America, they were keenly aware that the world they had left behind was on the brink of extinction. It was with that crushing burden that they transplanted their culture to a new, hopefully temporary home, in the symbolic form of a recital at the Library of Congress, the shrine of intellectual freedom. (Although Szigeti lived until 1973, Bartok would die in exile in New York in 1945, never again seeing his country.) Both the style and the content of the recital seethed with emotional significance. This concert was nothing less than a deeply personal plea for an entire culture that was about to evaporate."

from a review of The concert given by Bartok and Szigeti on April 13, 1940 at the Library of Congress. They performed the following program:

Beethoven: Sonata # 9 in A Major, Op. 47 ("Kreutzer")
Bartok: Rhapsody # 1 for Violin and Piano
Debussy: Sonata for Violin and Piano in g minor
Bartok: Second Sonata for Violin and Piano

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) in 1909
Joseph Szigeti (1892-1973)

Richard Wollheim

Paintings do not instantly disclose their meanings; and Wollheim has left us an amusing description of his own method of looking at paintings: "I evolved a way of looking at paintings which was massively time consuming and deeply rewarding. For I came to recognise that it often took the first hour or so in front of a painting for stray associations or motivated misperceptions to settle down, and it was only then, with the same amount of time or more to spend looking at it, that the picture could be relied upon to disclose itself as it was. I noticed that I became an object of suspicion to passers-by, and so did the picture that I was looking at."

Though he disclaimed any intention of psychoanalysing works of art, many of the remarkable interpretations in Painting As An Art seem to presuppose psychoanalytical ideas. In a virtuoso reading of a painting by Willem de Kooning, for example, he wrote: "The sensations that de Kooning cultivates are the most fundamental in our repertoire. They are those sensations which give us our first access to the external world, and they also, as they repeat themselves, bind us for ever to the elementary forms of pleasure into which they initiated us - sucking, touching, biting, excreting, retaining, smearing, sniffing, swallowing, gurgling, stroking, wetting."

The three threads of Wollheim's life and thought unite in this description: painting, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He argued that if painting presupposes a universal human nature, then "it must be absurd to bring to the understanding of art a conception of human nature less rich than what is required elsewhere." And he nails this thought down with the profound observation that "many art historians, in their scholarly work, make do with a psychology that, if they tried to live their lives by it, would leave them at the end of an ordinary day without lovers, friends, or any insight into how this came about."

from Richard Wollheim's obituary in The Guardian. Another item here.

Catharsis

taken from wiki:

The term in drama refers to a sudden emotional climax that evokes overwhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any other extreme change in emotion, resulting in restoration, renewal and revitalization in members of the audience.

Using the term "catharsis" to refer to a form of emotional cleansing was first done by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his work Poetics. It refers to the sensation, or literary effect, that would ideally overcome an audience upon finishing watching a tragedy (a release of pent-up emotion or energy). In his previous works, he used the term in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the "katamenia", the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material). Because of this, F. L. Lucas maintains that catharsis cannot be properly translated as purification or cleansing, but only as purgation. Since before Poetics catharsis was purely a medical term, Aristotle is employing it as a medical metaphor. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions." Lessing sidesteps the medical aspect of the issue and translates catharsis as a purification, an experience that brings pity and fear into their proper balance: "In real life, he explained, men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean." Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy the audience learns how to feel these emotions at the proper levels. Some modern interpreters of the work infer that catharsis is pleasurable because audience members felt ekstasis (Greek: ἔκστασις)(ecstacy)(literally: astonishment, meaning: trance) from the fact that there existed those who could suffer a worse fate than them was to them a relief.[citation needed] Any translator attempting to interpret Aristotle's meaning of the term should take into account that Poetics is largely a response to Plato's claim that poetry encourages men to be hysterical and uncontrolled. In response to Plato, Aristotle maintains that poetry makes them less, not more, emotional, by giving a periodic and healthy outlet to their feelings.

In literary aesthetics, catharsis is developed by the conjunction of stereotyped characters and unique or surprising actions. Throughout a play we do not expect the nature of a character to change significantly, rather pre-existing elements are revealed in a relatively straight-forward way as the character is confronted with unique actions in time. This can be clearly seen in Oedipus Rex where King Oedipus is confronted with ever more outrageous actions until emptying generated by the death of his mother-wife and his act of self-blinding.

In contemporary aesthetics catharsis may also refer to any emptying of emotion experienced by an audience in relation to drama. This exstasis can be perceived in comedy, melodrama and most other dramatic forms. Deliberate attempts, on political or aesthetic bases, to subvert the structure of catharsis in theatre have occurred. For example, Bertolt Brecht viewed catharsis as a pap for the bourgeois theatre audience, and designed dramas which left significant emotions unresolved, as a way to force social action upon the audience. In Brecht's theory, the absence of a cathartic resolving action would require the audience to take political action in the real world in order to fill the emotional gap they experience. This technique can be seen as early as his agit-prop play The Measures Taken.

here's the full article: "Catharsis"

A divided nature

"Whatever the chaos in Brahms's mind, he negotiated his life with extraordinary discipline, common sense, integrity and honesty. The chaos of emotion shackled and subdued by a relentless sense of form and discipline: that is Brahms's art in a nutshell. Likewise, his life. And the most familiar and beloved note in his art is the note of yearning"

from Jan Swafford's article, "Bittersweet symphonies", on Brahms in The Guardian.

"By the end of 1854, their intimacy was so advanced that Brahms felt able to end one of his letters to [Clara] with a quote from the Arabian Nights: 'Would to God that I were allowed this day instead of writing this letter to you to repeat to you with my own lips that I am dying of love for you. Tears prevent me from saying more.'"

from Steven Isserlis' article, "Dying of love for you", on Robert and Clara Schumann and Brahms in The Guardian.