Meeting the Music Makers

Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s 1874 poem"Ode"opens with the lines,"We are the music makers/And we are the dreamers of dreams."The words capture an association between music and dreaming that has inspired numerous subsequent poets and musicians,from Edward Elgar to W.B.Yeats,and even Aphex Twin.Indeed,in his sorrowful poem"The Adorned Zither"(锦瑟Jǐn sè),Tang poet Li Shangyin