"Chopin is an artist, Schumann is a poet" – states André Gide in his Notes sur Chopin published in 1939. At first Gide planned to write an essay on both musicians, but then realized that his interest in Robert Schumann had much weakened and that he had little more to say about him. In the same essay he wrote: "I don't need the filter of literature or painting to appreciate music and I worry little about the meaning of a piece. The meaning restrains it and troubles me. And it is exactly for this reason that notwithstanding the glamorous adaptations of Schumann, Schubert and Fauré. I am mostly fond of a music without words or that, at most, has the pretext of a liturgical mysticism." In these words it is possible to find the key to the singular opposition artist vs poet through which Gide expressed the opposition between the two musicians.