"A Work of Art" is a science fiction short story by American writer James Blish.
Before the sculptors pronounce the formulation that will destroy the re-created mind and restore the mind of the donor – a man completely devoid of musical ability – he feels the satisfaction that the sculptors will never know that the music lacked any spark of genius: "the 'Strauss' [they] had created was as empty of genius as a hollow gourd."
His final regret is that he will not now be able to set to music Personae, a poem by Ezra Pound appropriate to the occasion that he had just discovered.
In The Worlds of Science Fiction, James Blish writes:[1] Ostensibly this is a story about the future of serious music, but actually it proposes no novelties in that field.
The story adopts a radical scientific assumption in order to make a philosophical and emotional point that could have been made in no other way.