Stieglitz, a pioneer of modern photographic vision, was a spiritual descendant of the German Romantics. He reread Goethe's Faust every summer, and often escaped his Fifth Avenue gallery "291" to attend Wagner matinées at the Metropolitan Opera. With the title of his 1922 series of photographs, Music, Stieglitz cued viewers to understand his photographs as expressive of nature yet free from its literal representation. Clouds, natural in origin and abstract in appearance, provided the perfect vehicle for his artistic quest. In Music No. 1, they collect and hover like unresolved chords over Stieglitz's country home, which itself is rendered as a triad glowing in the darkening landscape.
