Mann, building on Nietzsche’s notion of the affirmative relationship between art and life, probes the vulnerability of music itself, and by implication the vulnerability of liberal humanism as it descends into an era of barbarism in Germany. Rolland explores the vulnerability of musical genius when stifled by hardship, personal tragedy and intense human suffering. Music’s ineffability however brings it into a relationship with vulnerability. In so doing, they entwine the fate of humanity with art, the pinnacle of which for both is represented by German music.
Rolland and Mann, in telling the tumultuous story of their age, make the protagonists of their respective novels, Jean-Christophe and Doctor Faustus, composers. Stefan Zweig, in his biography of Rolland, called music "the wordless speech of humanity".
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