"The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working"
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Newman flips the romantic myth of inspiration into something closer to carpentry: the “great composer” isn’t a thunderstruck genius waiting for lightning, but a worker who earns lightning by showing up. The sting is in the first clause. “Does not set to work because he is inspired” isn’t just advice; it’s a rebuke to a culture that treats art as a mystical mood rather than a discipline. Newman’s target is the alibi of the amateur and the vanity of the poseur: if inspiration is the prerequisite, then not producing can always be framed as bad weather in the soul.
As a critic writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Newman sits amid the long afterglow of Romanticism, when composers were marketed as prophets and audiences were trained to hear genius as transcendence. His line punctures that marketing without denying greatness. He keeps the word “great,” but relocates what makes greatness possible: not the purity of the inner flame, but the habit of striking the match. The subtext is almost managerial: process generates feeling. Creativity is less a visitation than a feedback loop between effort, constraint, and discovery.
The rhetoric works because it uses a clean reversal to produce a moral: inspiration is an outcome, not a precondition. It’s also quietly democratic. If the spark comes from working, then work is the door into art’s private room - not pedigree, not temperament, not suffering. Newman isn’t de-mystifying to cheapen music; he’s de-mystifying to protect it from excuses.
As a critic writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Newman sits amid the long afterglow of Romanticism, when composers were marketed as prophets and audiences were trained to hear genius as transcendence. His line punctures that marketing without denying greatness. He keeps the word “great,” but relocates what makes greatness possible: not the purity of the inner flame, but the habit of striking the match. The subtext is almost managerial: process generates feeling. Creativity is less a visitation than a feedback loop between effort, constraint, and discovery.
The rhetoric works because it uses a clean reversal to produce a moral: inspiration is an outcome, not a precondition. It’s also quietly democratic. If the spark comes from working, then work is the door into art’s private room - not pedigree, not temperament, not suffering. Newman isn’t de-mystifying to cheapen music; he’s de-mystifying to protect it from excuses.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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