"If Classical music is the data of a human census, Romantic music is the anecdotes, the telling of how things were . . ."

Great post on music, suffering, and consolation by George Grella at The Big City.

In the last song of his Neue Liebesliederwalzer, the moving Goethe setting "Zum Schluss," Brahms said it all:

Now, you Muses, enough!
In vain you strive to show
how misery and happiness
change places in the loving breast.
You cannot heal the wounds
that Love has caused,
but solace comes, dear ones,
only from you.