Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction 9780226768397

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Music in German Philosophy

Music in German Philosophy An Introduction

Edited by

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Oliver Fürbeth Translated by Susan H. Gillespie With a Preface by H. James Birx and With an Introduction to the English-Language Edition by Michael Spitzer

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

stefan lorenz sorgner

is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Erfurt.

oliver fürbeth is lecturer in music at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, and docent in musicology at the Music Academy of the City of Kassel.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2010 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2010 Printed in the United States of America 19  18  17  16  15  14  13  12  11  10  1  2  3  4  5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-76837-3  (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-76838-0  (paper) isbn-10: 0-226-76837-6  (cloth) isbn-10: 0-226-76838-4  (paper) Original German language edition: Musik in der deutschen Philosophie. Eine Einführung. Herausgegeben von Stefan Lorenz Sorgner und Oliver Fürbeth, published by J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH Stuttgart, Germany. Copyright © 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Musik in der deutschen Philosophie. English.   Music in German philosophy : an introduction / edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Oliver Fürbeth ; translated by Susan H. Gillespie ; with a foreword by H. James Birx and with an introduction to the English-language edition by Michael Spitzer.    p.  cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   isbn-13: 978-0-226-76837-3 (cloth : alk. paper)   isbn-13: 978-0-226-76837-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)   isbn-10: 0-226-76837-6 (cloth : alk. paper)   isbn-10: 0-226-76837-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Music—Philosophy and aesthetics. 2. Music and philosophy—Germany. 3. Philosophy, German 4. Philosophers—Germany. I. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. II. Fürbeth, Oliver, 1969– III. Title.   ML3800.M894413 2010   781.1'70943—dc22                          2010016937 ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Foreword 

vii

Preface H. James Birx  ix

Translator’s Note Susan H. Gillespie  xiii

Introduction to the English-Language Edition Michael Spitzer  xvii

Introduction Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Oliver Fürbeth  1



Kant

Christel Fricke  27

Schleiermacher

Gunter Scholtz  47



Hegel

Herbert Schnädelbach  69



Schelling



Schopenhauer



Nietzsche



Bloch

Francesca Vidal  165



Heidegger

Günther Pöltner  187



Gadamer



Adorno

Berbeli Wanning  95 Günter Zöller  121 Stefan Lorenz Sorgner  141

Beate Regina Suchla  211 Lucia Sziborsky  233

List of Contributors  Index 

255

253

Foreword

This collective volume provides an introduction to a hitherto neglected area of scholarly endeavor: the meaning and function of music in the thinking of significant German philosophers. It concentrates on German philosophy because of the long tradition that has tied the field closely to reflection on music. The individual chapters, each concentrating on a single philosopher’s views on music, are structured with two aims in mind. On the one hand they will allow students and general readers to develop a basic understanding of the issues. On the other hand they also serve to convey the further, deeper aspects that will be of importance to specialists in the field. In their introduction the editors discuss in some detail the historical context of the music philosophies here represented. Oliver Fürbeth is responsible for the section “Musicology in Germany after Kant” while the other sections are by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. Michael Spitzer’s introduction to the English-language edition places this book within the current climate of Anglo-American musicology, explaining what contributions it makes to the general debate. His bibliography provides up-to-date references to works in English in the relevant areas. Spitzer has also amplified and revised the bibliographies for the editors’ introduction and those of the individual chapters to make them more current and useful for readers of English.

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Susan Gillespie’s English translation ably confronts the problems of terminology and concepts in the areas of both philosophy and music that occur in these chapters. In prose that, as Spitzer has noted, is “clear, fluent, idiomatic, and consistent in tone and terminology, Gillespie renders material that is often linguistically and conceptually intractable a pleasure to read.” Adding to the usefulness of the text for English-language readers are her many translator’s notes, which serve especially to clarify philosophical concepts.

Preface H . Ja mes Bi r x

Music has had a very significant influence on the sociocultural evolution of our species, from prehistoric time to our present century. It has been used to enhance private and public ceremonies, to communicate with natural and spiritual beings, and to inspire lofty ideas and creative activities. Music has the unique power of penetrating deeply into human feelings and emotions, resulting in psychological reactions and philosophical insights that have had far-reaching consequences throughout human history. Therefore, it is not surprising that music has played a crucial role in political movements and magico-religious rituals. Likewise, major thinkers have critically reflected on the value of music for understanding and appreciating human existence within dynamic nature. Particularly in Germany, philosophers from Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel to Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor W. Adorno have been drawn to investigating music’s role in human awareness, which can be traced back thousands of years. Critically reflecting on the power of music, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato mistrusted it because of its psychological influence on human beings. The centuries following, however, gave rise to greatly differing interpretations of music’s value, and these become very apparent in the recent history of German philosophy. In general, the worldviews expressed by German thinkers from the era of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to modern times are comprehensive and systematic, giving priority to spirit or ideas or consciousness



H. James Birx

rather than the material world. Usually, these thinkers see nature as a process moving toward a perfect state in the future. Music has been assessed by important thinkers in Western thought as a crucial part of human sociocultural evolution. Philosophical judgments on the place of music in human society vary among German aestheticians from idealist to materialist. Some philosophers focus on what they maintain to be the metaphysical significance of music, while other thinkers see music as a human creation within cultural history. Themes of inquiry include the relationship between music and theory, aesthetics, social values, natural concepts, metaphysical ideas, and religious experiences. These themes are fully represented among the works of the ten German philosophers taken up in this book. In his philosophical writings, the Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) attempted to give a rigorous analysis of human ideas, beliefs, and values in terms of reason. He made a crucial distinction between the world of appearance and reality itself. His concern for a pervasive ethics resulted in his formulating the categorical imperative, a moral maxim that is grounded in practical reason free from human feelings and emotions. Concerning the arts, Kant distinguished between natural objects and artificial ones and claimed that the former are more beautiful than the latter. For him, after poetry and literature, music is best capable of setting free the human imagination. However, for Kant, music is merely the language of emotions and therefore not a major provider of human culture. Clearly, his rational orientation greatly influenced his evaluation of music as both a second-tier stimulus for the imagination and an insubstantial aspect of culture. Unlike Kant, Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834) focused on the religious and personal aspects of the arts, especially music. He stressed that music is an expression of the emotions but held that poetry is the highest art because it contains all the other arts within itself. Differing from Kant, the idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) held that artificial objects are more beautiful than natural ones. He interpreted human social history as the dialectical unfolding of an Absolute Spirit toward freedom, unity, and reason and claimed that the arts are a manifestation of this Absolute Spirit. Therefore, Hegel held that music belongs to the subjective experience of ideas by human beings independent of objective nature. Friedrich W. J. Schelling (1775–1854) also claimed that the Absolute is the foundation of nature in general and of self-consciousness in particular. He saw music as a real art but held drama to be an ideal one. In his series of “real” arts, Schelling held that music is the art of time because it is dependent upon succession. The pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) recognized the remarkable power of music to influence the psychological makeup

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of the human being. In his dynamic worldview, which emphasized pervasive change, he maintained that ultimate reality is an evolving cosmic Will. According to him music has a special significance since only music is capable of penetrating to the Will itself. As such, music links the world of appearance with metaphysical reality. In this evil world of ongoing striving, Schopenhauer argued that a life of asceticism is the best way for a person to find freedom from negativity. Yet, for him, the human being may also find temporary salvation through artistic contemplation. The critical visionary Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) wrote piano music and maintained that tragedy had its birth in the spirit of music as found within the ancient Greek plays. For him, music is represented by Dionysus, who reflects the world of continuous change (both creation and destruction). In sharp contrast, language is represented by Apollo, who reflects the realm of permanent stability. This controversial interpretation of Greek tragedy provoked academics of his time to dismiss Nietzsche’s viewpoint. Of special interest, however, is the complex relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche; both envisioned the revival of German culture through the symphonic musicdrama. As a total artwork, the music-drama is a synthesis of music and drama, i.e., a synthesis of Dionysus and Apollo. For Wagner and Nietzsche, operas would unite the public, elevate German culture, and give wise insights into the evolving human condition. Unfortunately, Wagner’s theatrical approach to his tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen and religious treatment of his last opera Parsifal contributed to ending the fragile friendship between these two geniuses. Even so, both Wagner and Nietzsche recognized that music has the power to change society and enhance culture. An example of optimism is offered by Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) in his philosophy of hope. He held that music, like language, communicates insights and therefore gives hope to human beings for a good life in the distant future. Among recent German philosophers, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) returned to the central question of being itself. His interest in metaphysics extended to music. For Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), the arts were an important part of Western cultural history. He saw music as contributing to the process of creating order and new worlds. An intense critic of entertainment, Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was concerned with both art and . H. James Birx, “Nietzsche, Friedrich,” in Encyclopedia of Anthropology, ed. H. James Birx (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 4:1741–45; H. James Birx, “Wagner, Richard,” ibid., 5:2293–95; H. James Birx, “Wagner, Richard,” in Encyclopedia of Time, ed. H. James Birx (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009), 3:1415–17; H. James Birx, “Evolution,” in Wagner und Nietzsche: Kultur—Werk—Wirkung, ed. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, H. James Birx, and Nikolaus Knoepffler (Reinbek bei Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt Verlag, 2008), 297–308.

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philosophy, focusing on the social significance of music for human culture. For him, both music and culture were in constant interaction and motion. This unique collection of essays clearly demonstrates the wide influence that music has had on major philosophers, whether for psychosocial or metaphysical reasons. The contributors to this volume analyze and evaluate the fascinating interaction between music and philosophy in German thought. The exceptional philosophers represented in the ten entries of this distinctive volume range from Kant to Adorno. The different orientations of these serious thinkers toward music range from naturalism to idealism. Music continues to play a major role in modern culture, from popular songs to film soundtracks. Its use ranges from sports events to religious ceremonies, from social functions to personal experiences. Because of its comprehensive use and pervasive influence, music will continue to interest those philosophers who investigate the ongoing relationship between abstract ideas and the creative arts. Moreover, in the future, one may anticipate a convergence of science and philosophy in order to grasp better the origin, emergence, and ongoing evolution of music in the human world.

Translator’s Note S us a n H . G illespie

Contrary to received opinion, it is not lyric poetry that poses the greatest difficulties for translation, but philosophy. While the translator of poetry and literary prose has at her disposal all the resources of assonance, rhythm, image, and allusion that are condensed in the original text, the translator of philosophy is generally working with language that, in its search for discursive truth, relies far more heavily on abstract concepts. This gives the translator much less room to play. If the terminology does not go easily into the new language, options are limited. Where consistency and formal precision seem most warranted, they are most difficult to achieve. It might, for example, seem logical to translate a foundational philosophical concept consistently by the same word. The notion that there is only one right way to translate a given word derives from Enlightenment thought with its reliance on the immediacy of intellectual cognition. It drew strength from systematic philosophy’s search for definitional rigor and systematic coherence. But no sooner does a translator actually begin to work with these texts than the notion of conceptual consistency runs into trouble. For as Michael Spitzer observes in his introduction to this volume, concepts evolve. The philosophers considered in Music in German Philosophy wrote over a period of several centuries, continuously interpreting and reinterpreting . In the Middle Ages, translation aimed at the sense behind words, not their exact reproduction in the new language.

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each other. The resulting shifts in the meaning of concepts implicitly challenge notions of absolute philosophical truth. When this conceptual slippage occurs within a single language, it may be possible to overlook it. Not so in the work of translation. For although the authors of the present volume emphasize the Germanness of the philosophical tradition they are describing, the discourse of philosophy is international from its inception. Not only do key concepts evolve from one thinker and generation to the next; their translation from one language to the next also acquires a history. Key texts of the philosophers considered in Music in German Philosophy have been translated into English before, some more than once—although as readers of this volume will discover, this does not necessarily apply to their writings on music. The translations that do exist are of variable provenance and quality. The result is a profusion of concepts, terminologies, and “authoritative” versions that must be simultaneously respected and untangled if the conversation—and the translation—are to proceed. An example of the way concepts can shift as a result of their translation history is the term Vorstellung. The word consists of two morphemes: vor, meaning “before” or “in front,” and stellen, meaning “to put or place.” The primary dictionary meaning of Vorstellung is “introduction” or “presentation,” as in presenting one person or thing to another. By extension, in the reflexive form of the verb, sich vorstellen, it also means “to place before the mind’s eye,” “to represent or imagine.” In German, both meanings may coexist in a single (ambiguous) use of the noun Vorstellung. In English, however, a consensus has developed whereby Vorstellung, in the epistemological sense in which objects “present to” or are “represented in” the mind, is translated as “presentation” in Kant and Hegel, but as “representation” elsewhere—for example in Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation). The difference in translation points to a distinct shift in epistemological perspective between Kant and Hegel and later German philosophers—a shift that must be both respected (in order not to disrupt the scholarly conversation) and noted. The appropriateness of translating some German concepts by different English words at different times is not the only such issue to claim the attention of the translator. The opposite situation can also occur, in which different German concepts correlate with a single English word. In this volume, the essay on Gadamer also refers to his concept of representation—but now the German original has Darstellung. As compared with Vorstellung, with its implied sense of introduction or presentation, Darstellung invokes the theatrical, role-playing—a highly appropriate and expressive difference given Gadamer’s breakthrough emphasis on play and performance. To mark this difference in

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meaning, one option for the translator (of which I have taken advantage) is to play with the context, for example by introducing the word “performative.” Concepts also vary their meaning depending on their place in the constellation of a particular text—something Schleiermacher already understood very well. An example is the German term Erkenntnis. The root kennen means to know or recognize, while the prefix er- adds a dimension of intensity and activity. In philosophical discourse, Erkenntnis is generally translated as “cognition,” a usage that emphasizes the active, process character of knowledge. For the most part, I have adhered to this convention. But sometimes the word Erkenntnis appears not in this definitional and quasi-doctrinal sense but in the more common, less technical meaning of “understanding.” To translate accurately in this case is to be attuned not only to the history of the concept and its translation but also to the extent to which it is woven into a formal argument or deployed in a more relaxed, everyday style. The difficulties of philosophical translation vary, of course, depending on the philosopher and the era being translated. I have found that starting with a relatively fixed vocabulary of philosophical terms and diverging from it when appropriate works well for Kant, and quite well for Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Schelling. As systematic philosophers, they all attempted to erect an edifice of thought on concepts that were stable. Luckily, their writing can also be quite rich in colorful examples and sophisticated rhetorical moves that allow greater freedom in translation. Hegel and Kant are masters at combining conceptual rigor with a rich store of metaphors and examples drawn from life and literature. (See Kant’s marvelous description of the sublime, p. 34 in this volume.) Later, philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bloch injected a different tone into German philosophical writing. These writers were no longer at ease with assumptions of immediate intellectual cognition. Socially and historically aware, alienated, ironic, poetic, openly emotional and rhetorical, they drew on expanded registers of rhythm, feeling, and imagery. The experience of reading them is full of intentionally exciting or meditative effects, and their more colorful, less systematic prose is a good deal more fun to translate. From time to time, it invites imitation in the material of the new language in much the same way that lyric poetry does. At the same time, of course, there are references to more “classical” philosophical terminology that must be treated responsibly. A special problem exists in the case of Heidegger, who in effect invented a new language, drawing imaginatively on German’s flexible system of prepositional prefixes and making equally imaginative use of its etymology. Avoiding Latin roots, he developed a self-consciously autochthonous Germanic idiom

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that intentionally resists translation. Even with the glossaries that careful students and other translators of Heidegger have helpfully provided, it is not possible to reproduce fully the resonances of this Heideggerian language, whose words at times resemble (truly untranslatable) puns and moreover seem to revel in a kind of über-Germanness that can have an unpleasantly folkish feel. Finally, Adorno and Gadamer, as inheritors of this varied tradition, combine a learned respect for the textual traditions of philosophy (especially Hegel in the first instance, Schleiermacher and Heidegger in the second) with a historically informed skepticism about the relation between language and truth. Both combine an appreciation for the necessary historicity and slipperiness of language (for Gadamer, its inescapable “prejudice”) with the attempt to achieve a maximum degree of precision through a process of interpretive critique. Translating these philosophers means drawing on all the conceptual and linguistic resources at hand. The original German version of this book, published by Metzler Verlag, is one of a series of modest compendia whose special appeal is their capacity to present the gist of important subjects in a concise and approachable format. In order to continue this laudable tradition and produce a work in English that is useful to students and scholars of philosophy and of music, it seemed important for the text to be as internally unified as possible. Thus, to achieve greater coherence and clarity, I have retranslated all quotations from the original philosophical texts, taking the tradition of translation—including contemporary retranslations—into account. The result has benefited greatly from the work of previous translations, which I have consulted and drawn on selectively. Terminological conundrums are addressed in the footnotes. Thanks are due to Susan Hohl and Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell for their considerable editorial labor in reworking the footnotes and bibliographies in order to provide the most useful and correct references to existing published translations and studies for the English-speaking audience. To facilitate comparison with the original German versions of the sources cited, particularly those less familiar, the notes may include double references, both to the German source and to a published English translation. Where existing English translations are well established (as in the case of Kant’s Critique of Judgment), the notes refer only to the translation, and a reader may thus compare my rendering with that of previous translators. In cases where published translations are less reliable or nonexistent, only the German source is cited. . I referred to Daniel Fidel Ferrer’s “Martin Heidegger: Glossary from German to English,” available at http://www.freewebs.com/m3smg2/ (accessed July 4 2009). . On Adorno, see Harro Müller, “Mimetic Rationality: Adorno’s Project of a Language of Philosophy,” New German Critique 36 (2009): 85–108.

Introduction to the English-Language Edition M ich a el S pi t z e r

Music in German Philosophy examines the place of music in the work of ten German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. Written by experts in their field (mostly professional philosophers, with a couple of musicologists), the book provides an authoritative and invaluable “one-stop-shop” for students new to the topic, while also affording more experienced readers a handy and often thought-provoking conspectus. The ten assembled essays add up to a tool that is currently unavailable in Anglo-American musicology: a guide to what the great German philosophers actually said about music. Up till now, we have had to settle for general discussions, even in the translated works of Carl Dahlhaus, the figure who has done the most for the assimilation of philosophy into musicology. A straight guide—rather than a broad survey—of music in German philosophy is sorely needed. Why hasn’t such a study emerged before? . Notable works include Esthetics of Music (1982); Analysis and Value Judgment (1983); The Foundations of Music History (1985); Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music (1985); The Idea of Absolute Music (1989); Between Romanticism and Modernism (1989); and his edition, with Ruth Katz, Contemplating Music (1987–94). . Good discussions include Fubini, History of Music Aesthetics; Lippman, History of Western Musical Aesthetics; and the collections: Bujic, Music in European Thought; Le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries; and Dahlhaus and Katz, Contemplating Music. For more specialized discussions, see: Neubauer, Emancipation of Music from Language; Goehr, Imaginary Museum of Musical Works; Daverio, Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology; Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century; Bonds, “Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”; Chua, Absolute Music and the

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The reason for this lack is partly addressed by Dahlhaus’s startling thesis, cited by Sorgner and Fürbeth in their introductory essay, that musicology is “nothing but its own history” (p. 18). This self-reflexivity is borne out particularly clearly by the course of Anglo-American musicology in the two decades since Joseph Kerman’s Contemplating Music (1986). To judge from a stream of recent publications, the contemplated object increasingly seems to be musicology itself, especially in its renovated form as (what used to be called) “New Musicology.” While it is always healthy for a discipline to be critical of its own tools and assumptions, this accelerating development also bespeaks an anxiety about borders. A defining border, according to the editors of the present volume, is the division between music and philosophy—two subjects that were intimately related in the nineteenth century and that drifted apart in the process of becoming institutionalized. A new field wins autonomy at the expense of a separation from previously kindred disciplines. After divorce comes rapprochement, which musicology in the 1990s sponsored by opening up the discipline to intellectual energies drawn from literary and cultural theory and the social sciences, as well as philosophy. Salutary and necessary as this step may have been, it was also extremely selective: by and large, these extramusical disciplines were postmodern rather than modernist, and French rather than German. Musicology today is more likely to appeal to Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan than to Jürgen Habermas, Hans Blumenberg, or Albrecht Wellmer (although with the interesting exception of Adorno). Consequently, staple concepts of German thought—such as reason, subjectivity, autonomy, and dialectic—are generally assumed to be no longer viable, whereas they are actually alive and well in a parallel tradition. This is all the more strange when we remember that Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan (as well as Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Louis Althusser, Julia Kristeva, and many others) articulated their positions chiefly in relation to thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Current scholarship in aesthetics recognizes the huge debt poststructuralist French philosophy owes to its German forebears; its originality has been overstated. It becomes all the more urgent to go back to the German sources. For musicians, this return is especially vital, since the linguistic orientation of structuralist and poststructuralist Construction of Meaning; Paddison, “Music as Ideal”; Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute; and Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought. . A mark of New Musicology’s success is that many of its innovations are now taken for granted and assimilated into the musicological mainstream. Recent studies of what might be better termed “current musicology” include Williams, Constructing Musicology; Korsyn, Decentering Music; Beard and Gloag, Musicology; and the collections Cook and Everist, Rethinking Music; Clayton, Herbert, and Middleton, Cultural Study of Music; and Dell’Antonio, Beyond Structural Listening? . See Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory, 3.

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philosophy does not fit music very comfortably. By contrast, a striking fact of German philosophy is how many writers put music at, or near, the center of their thought. Music occupies a vital place in the work of each of the ten philosophers represented here. This does not simply mean that music is an important object of reflection, side by side with other objects in the world. Rather, music helps to constitute the very nature of philosophy. German philosophy partakes of various qualities of music, and before we enter into these ten figures more deeply, it is interesting to briefly review how these qualities have variously “musicalized” philosophy. For Kant, music’s “beautiful play of sensations” echoed the model of aesthetic experience as a harmonious play of mental faculties. Schleiermacher singled out music’s ability to define a unique subjectivity. Hegel was inspired by music’s quality of inwardness. Schelling held up musical rhythm as an example for how philosophy might unite cognitive patterning with sensuous experience, as well as the “rhythms” of the universe. For Schopenhauer, it was melody that symbolized life’s dynamics (the “Will”). Music’s controlled ecstasy taught Nietzsche to critique abstraction. Bloch composed a philosophy of hope based on what he heard in Fidelio. Gadamer—drawn, like Kant, to music’s play—focused on the historical character of the rules of its games and on its temporal horizon. Metaphors of tuning and listening go to the heart of Heidegger’s ontology, in its account of subjects’ receptivity to being. Adorno modeled his prose on the holism of musical formal coherence, where the function of notes is defined by their context. And he epitomizes the German tradition’s view that music’s “aconceptual cognition” is a paradigm for philosophy. The musicality of German philosophy contrasts sharply with the “language character” (Sprachcharakter) of both French poststructuralism and AngloAmerican analytic philosophy. A basic quality of musical experience is the phenomenal unity between sound and the listener. On the other hand, the philosophy of language proceeds from disjunction (between signifier and signified) and plurality (of “language games”). If language is “arbitrary,” then music is “motivated.” Analytic philosophy is notoriously uninterested in music, being far better equipped to deal with questions of representation in the visual arts. When it does deal with music, as in the work of Peter Kivy, Stephen Davies, or Jerrold Levinson, then it talks mostly about emotion, passing over musical structure, as Wittgenstein might say, “in silence.” Is it the case, therefore, that in pursuing the philosophy of language, musicology is needlessly fighting a set of false problems flowing from an inappropriate model? The question turns on . Clifton, Music as Heard.

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the account of “language.” German philosophy is in fact extremely interested in language, and music’s Sprachcharakter runs like a red thread through Sorgner and Fürbeth’s collection. The difference is that thinkers such as Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century, and Manfred Frank today, engage with the problems of language without needing to throw out the most cherished achievements of the Enlightenment. That the subject is constructed or decentered by language does not necessarily lead to the death of subjectivity; reason need not be a casualty of cultural pluralism; ethical freedom and aesthetic autonomy may survive in the modern world as regulative ideas; to grasp the “work concept” as artificial and contingent can mean to value it all the more. Postmodern theory often casts these concepts in a negative light and shares with analytic philosophy the assumption that metaphysics, as well as much of the Enlightenment project, has passed into history. Yet from a different standpoint, “progressive” and “reactionary” exchange places. In Habermas’s shrewd phrase, theorists who appeal to “postmodernity” are really “cloaking their complicity with the venerable tradition of counter-Enlightenment in the garb of post-Enlightenment.” From this perspective, it is the philosophy of language that is conservative, and music that affords a philosophy of the future. An extreme, even shocking, corollary of this position is that music may actually be the only possible channel for metaphysics in modern times. From being an instrument, or organon, of philosophy (Schelling), music has ended up as a kind of “lifeboat,” keeping afloat a metaphysical kind of thinking under attack even in contemporary German philosophy itself. Habermas, the senior member of the generation of critical theorists who followed Adorno, is always careful to separate metaphysics—including aesthetics—from the Enlightenment project as a whole, arguing that the calamity of National Socialism was partly the result of an aestheticization of politics. With an eye on liberal democracy, “second-generation” critical theorists (including Albrecht Wellmer and Karl-Otto Apel) recast Enlightenment idealism in the form of a “communication model.” In its reliance on social frameworks and intersubjective consensus, this model converges with many of the tenets of American pragmatism. It would therefore seem that music truly is the last outpost of metaphysics. Adorno, in his Beethoven Nachlass, wrote that “Beethoven is really more Hegelian than Hegel”: indeed, he believed that music contained the truth of philosophy. If this is indeed the case, then it leaves us with two options for how to treat musical meaning. The more extreme choice is to celebrate music as a privileged mode of philosophi. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 5. . Adorno, Beethoven, 160.

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cal knowledge and to uphold it in the face of all other philosophies in the world. A more pragmatic course is the historical one. German metaphysics may have passed into history—but it is no more (and no less) historical than the musical canon between Haydn and Schoenberg. As long as we are interested in interpreting the meaning of this music, then German philosophy remains the privileged form of hermeneutics. This is no mean achievement. Of course, at this point the second option circles back into the first: just as Mozart and Mahler continue to speak to us because they partly transcend history, so there is something in metaphysics that remains forever contemporary.

Terminology German philosophy typically seeks to embrace every sphere of human experience within a holistic system, which is why it needs to resort to abstractions (such as “reason,” “spirit,” “being”) susceptible of wide interpretation. By drawing music into relation with the rational and moral domains, German philosophy gives it a truth and ethical content in excess of its aesthetic beauty, thus raising music’s dignity and widening its outreach. Anglo-American analytic philosophy, by contrast, reflects on individual problems rather than big ideas, focusing on the facts of the matter and their logical structure. From the German standpoint, the atomism of analytic philosophy partakes of the fragmentation of modern life and is a sign of its alienation. Both traditions are interested in questions of foundation—the principles that ground thought and behavior. Analytic truth is propositional and “verificationist,” determined by the picture-like fit of reality and its representations. Metaphysical truth is gained through “world-disclosure”—a performative act akin to aesthetic experience. Truth cannot be boxed into quasi-scientific concepts or propositions, so must be intuited through artistic or philosophical “feeling.” Thus Günter Zöller argues that when Anglo-American aesthetics talks about music’s “feeling,” as in the widespread reception of Schopenhauer, it generally detaches the cognitive dimension quintessential to its German sense (p. 132). Paradoxically, Anglo-American precision is belied by a loose handling of terms such as “concept,” “category,” “idea,” and “schema”—terms with very particular usage in the German tradition. Concepts, according to Kant, are predicates abstracted from the content (i.e., sense impressions) of knowledge. They are mediated through more foundational (a priori) categories of quantity, quality, relation, and modality, including innate knowledge of time, space, and causality. Unlike . Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 105–6. . Ibid., 113.

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concepts, ideas (such as the “idea of reason”) cannot be confined by experience,10 and thus go to the heart of Kant’s notion of freedom and individuality, as epitomized by his theory of art. A schema—generalized in cognitive science to mean any pattern of perception or bodily motion—specifies for Kant a faculty (a “transcendental mental image”) that connects concepts with intuitions. An added complexity is that these terms change meaning across the tradition. Romantic philosophers put schematism at the seat of artistic creativity,11 with the result that art—and especially music—becomes foundational for philosophy. Similarly concepts, which are purely regulative for Kant, assume with Hegel a more creative role. In an aesthetic context, concepts play a subtly dual function. After Kant, music was held to be “aconceptual,” yet Adorno’s notion of music’s “concept character” summarized the traditional view that it imitated reason while transcending or negating it. That is, music unfolds a logical argument and has formal unity but cannot be translated into a proposition. This tensive, or dialectical, character is lost in translation into the frequent references, in recent Anglo-American writings, to “conceptualization.” Music theory takes a schematic (i.e., nondialectical) pro/contra approach, either denying that music has concepts12 or identifying musical patterns with “concepts” fairly literally.13 Many other German terms are more embodied and dynamic than their Anglo-American counterparts. Mediation (Vermittlung) does not mean either the finding of a middle term or the reconciliation of opposites, as in its original Aristotelian and contemporary semiotic usage.14 It denotes, rather, a mixture of grounding and channeling, as in the grounding of musical style in cultural and historical forces, the dynamic interrelation of part and whole in musical structure, and the mediation of abstract ideas through concrete musical material. (Analytic aesthetics covers some of these meanings with its notion of “context-dependence”).15 Dialectic, as used by Hegel or Adorno, is never as rigid as its ternary schema of “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” suggests. More broadly, it refers to the dynamic of self-reflection, the oppositionality of thought, and how oppositions flip into each other on examination, so driving the argument forward. Consider the dialectic between music and language. 10. Ibid., 308. 11. Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory, 58. 12. DeBellis, Music and Conceptualization. 13. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music; Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought. 14. Lidov, Is Language a Music? 59–77. 15. For a discussion of mediation in Adorno, see Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, 108–48. Context dependence has become a prominent issue in semantics, where style tends to be discussed in relation to sociolinguistic issues of code switching and idiolect.

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Absolute music achieves its autonomy in the classical style by seceding from language.16 Paradoxically, it thereby gains an abstract grammar that makes it even more language-like than before. This formal grammar suggests, in its turn, a dialectic between form and expression, or between the conceptual and affective dimensions of language, and so on. The dialectic is never ending: it questions the discrete partitioning of the terms, by showing how the oppositions are implicated in each other. Adorno’s notion of “mimesis” is similarly hard to pin down.17 It can mean the expressive immediacy denied by concepts, as well as music’s mimicking (= mimesis) of concepts through its form. While the analytic tradition, in its search for clear categories, would regard this as confused, German philosophy treats such dialectics as vitally productive. Another case in point is the subject/object opposition. The “subject,” in English usage, is often the topic under review, whereas in German philosophy it is the human consciousness contemplating an “object.” Yet since mind can objectify itself in thinking, self-consciousness determines both how objects and subjects flow into each other, and how objects in the outside world can be an expression of subjectivity. Translating Hegel’s Geist as “spirit” or “mind” does not capture its universalizing aspects. Herbert Schnädelbach defines its “subjective” side as “psychological,” and its “objective” side as “social,” comparing their interaction to our generalized model of “culture” (p. 72). How different is this from current musicology’s habit of weaving music and ideas into a “web of culture” as “cultural practices”?18 Suddenly, one of German philosophy’s most exotic terms becomes all too familiar. Cultural differences between the two philosophical traditions also bear on attitudes to language. Wittgenstein and John Searle argued that philosophical problems frequently sprang from linguistic confusion. Once language was clarified, the “fly would be let out of the bottle” and we would be “cured” of the very need for philosophy. Yet the German language participates in philosophy as an equal partner, providing a material underpinning at odds with its image as an “abstract” discourse. Harnessing German’s concrete, earthy, practical, almost “thing-like” qualities, philosophers from Kant to Heidegger reactivate the etymological traces buried in concepts such as Grund (ground, basis), Begriff (concept; from greifen, to grasp), Dasein (existence, “being there”), or Gegenwart (presence; from warten, waiting, hence “waiting toward”). Grounding concepts in material objects serves to deepen the relationship between 16. Neubauer, Emancipation of Music from Language. 17. Despite its shadowy nature, the concept of mimesis functions as no less than “the obscure operator,” in Michael Taussig’s words, “of [Adorno’s] entire system”; Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 45. 18. Tomlinson, “Web of Culture”; Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice.

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objects and subjects, confirming that philosophy is part of the object-domain it describes (and not the “objectifying” reflection of “instrumental reason”).19 It also anchors dialectic within semantic interplay, especially when German philosophy exploits the multiple meanings condensed within single words. The word Schein mixes the notion of artistic “semblance” with the glimmer of the numinous in the romantic symbol and is cognate with Erscheinung, Kant’s term for “phenomenon” or “appearance.”20 When Hegel takes up this word, he brings out the processive sense of Erscheinung as a “coming-into-appearance,” thereby helping to deconstruct Kant’s distinction between appearance and reality (Ding an sich). By splitting “memory” down the middle (Er-Innerung), Hegel suggests how recalling a theme in a sonata also “internalizes” it. The word Inhalt is often used in opposition with the less idiomatic Gehalt, both denoting musical “content.” Inhalt conveys a sense of “holding in,” whereas the Ge- prefix of Gehalt bears connotations of the external (Gegen, against) or the social (Gesellschaft). Inhalt, then, is formalist, whereas Gehalt is extramusical in either a social or a metaphysical capacity. And then there are Adorno’s many neologisms. His term Floskel usefully combines the senses of cliché and flourish—connotations of both rigid convention and subjectivity as contour—thus communicating how form and expression are not easily separable. Durchbruch—one of Adorno’s most familiar concepts—is kindred with durchbrochene Arbeit, which is Guido Adler’s term for the textural mélange called stile brisé: contrapuntal lines literally break through the surface of the texture. Heidegger associates “hearing” (hören) with “belonging” (Zugehörigkeit), and “speech” (sprechen) with “correspondence” (Entsprechen). And consider how Heidegger richly counterpoints the various meanings implicit in the German word Stimmung, including “voice,” “tuning,” “mood,” “determination,” and “destiny”: “[Die] Stimme des Seins . . . be-stimmt unser Entsprechen”; or “Ereignet ist das Entsprechen, indem es von der lautlosen Stimme des Seins bestimmt ist. Dieser Be-stimmung entspricht die Ge-stimmtheit des Vernehmens” (quoted in Günther Pöltner’s essay, pp. 191–92). Music’s Stimmigkeit, on the other hand, is used by Adorno to denote its mixture of inner logic and historical validity. Such wordplay has the effect of endowing much of German aesthetics with an artistic quality in itself, which is why Adorno pointedly titled his magnum opus “Aesthetic Theory” (meaning an aesthetic theory, as well as a theory of aesthetics). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are read as literature, Schelling wrote poetry, and his co-founder (with Hegel) of the Jena School gave up philosophy to become one of the world’s greatest poets— 19. For a distinction between “objectifying” and “critical” theories, see Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture, 23; Geuss, Idea of A Critical Theory, 55. 20. Spitzer, Music as Philosophy, 4.

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Friedrich Hölderlin. How, then, could German philosophy ever be translated, without losing half its meaning?

The Problems of Translation In practice, rendering German philosophy into English has not been especially problematic, with some Germans believing that the process actually results in an improvement (or at least clarification). Proof of this, indeed, is the marvelous translation Susan Gillespie has achieved. Far more radical than translation is the habit, prevalent in Anglophone musicology, of lifting concepts out of context, leveling off the detail, and reifying or caricaturing them into absolutes. Concepts such as “autonomy,” “subjectivity,” and “symbol” have a history, and they carry systems around them. Reference to these concepts entails responsibility to think through their full implications, with sensitivity to tensions, or even conflicts, within the concepts themselves, within the system that organizes them, and between the rival systems of successive philosophers as part of an evolving tradition. The disagreements within this tradition are basic to its vitality and require its readers to make choices and value judgments. Regarding music’s autonomy, do we focus on its irreducibility to other spheres of life (Kant) or its critical “sovereignty” over them (Schopenhauer)?21 Is artistic knowledge a step toward philosophy (Hegel) or its goal (Schelling)? Should music’s “Will” be denied (Schopenhauer) or affirmed (Nietzsche)? Should concepts be denied (Heidegger) or affirmed (Adorno)? Are we to take musical “hope” positively (Bloch) or negatively (Adorno)? Is artistic interpretation primarily aesthetic (Schleiermacher), ontological (Heidegger), or historical (Gadamer)? The variety of argument, with the range of critical tools on offer, refines the grain of debate. Against this variety, the pragmatist argument that people do not need to fully understand the meaning of a term in order to use it successfully can be turned back on pragmatism itself: judging much musicology by its practical results, one can point to the frequent homogenizing of difference and dilution of critical discipline. (Often this dilution is intentional, with the populist goal of widening musicology’s readership.) Arguably the most serious misprision of all is of the family of terms clustering around the “work concept,” including notions of “aesthetic autonomy,” “absolute music,” and “musical material.” This tends to follow the form of “straw man” arguments, in which the musical work is reified into something far more abstract and rigid than it ever was, so that the critic can contrast it unfavorably with his or her own more socially mediated or performative definition. Music in German 21. I borrow the distinction between “sovereignty” and “autonomy” from Menke, Sovereignty of Art.

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Philosophy can help put the work concept on a far more worldly and personal footing. Art for Kant and Hegel is quintessentially a manufactured object, hence bearing the imprint of socialized humanity. But the art object is also situated in a continuum between natural and mental processes, as Hegel and Schelling demonstrate. Schleiermacher reminds us that musical emotion can be cognitive and subject-defining, while Schopenhauer and Nietzsche draw out feeling’s bodily dimension, with its trace of vocal intonation and mimetic gesture. Through Heidegger and Gadamer, we learn how music can project a “world” and how music’s function may be to educate us to navigate the space and time of our everyday lives. Bloch and Adorno illuminate the political aspects of musical material. That social meaning may be implicit within the very institution of musical form—rather than bolted on externally (semiotically “correlated”)—is one of Adorno’s most powerful messages. Adorno also circles back to Kant by stressing that engagement with an artwork must be a performative act. His theory of “exact imagination” (exakte Phantasie) suggests how music is mentally performed by listeners as they “imitate,” and inwardly reconstruct, music’s dynamic interplay.22 The cognitive and performative approaches in vogue today thus reinvent many German wheels. The advantage, of course, is not wholly on one side. Leonard Meyer’s methodological precision, derived from George Herbert Mead and John Dewey’s pragmatist tradition, is unmatched in German theory, and analytic and empirical approaches to musical meaning are currently resurgent.23 The cognitive and semiotic disciplines they draw on are as stringent, in their own way, as metaphysics. Perhaps the differences align ultimately into an opposition between materialist and idealist models of mind, disputing the extent to which knowledge is allowed to be mediated through objective frameworks and experi­ mental protocols (in Meyer’s terms, “exploiting limits” rather than “transcending” them). Be that as it may, one should not exaggerate the standoff, since contemporary philosophy has long been showing signs of cross-fertilization, with Robert Brandom24 (a hard-liner of inferential pragmatics) declaring an interest in Hegel’s social philosophy, and Karl-Otto Apel25 (a “secondgeneration” critical theorist) absorbing Peircian semiotics. In this same spirit of dialogue, and to pick just two from countless possible examples in musicology, one could imagine a stimulating conversation between, say, Arnie Cox’s cognitive “mimetic hypothesis”26 and Adorno’s theory of mimesis, and between Nicholas 22. See Nicholsen, Exact Imagination, Late Work, 4–5; Menke, Sovereignty of Art, 98. 23. See especially Cumming, Sonic Self; Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, Tropes. 24. Brandom, “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism.” 25. Apel, From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View. 26. Cox, “Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning.”

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Cook’s notion of performativity and the dynamic character of Kantian reflection.27 What, then, does German philosophy have to say?

Music in Music in German Philosophy The ten writers represented here are the preeminent names in modern German philosophy. Kant is by common consent the greatest Western philosopher since Aristotle, followed closely by Hegel. The ranking of the others is a matter of constant debate. More pertinent than hierarchy is the very different role music plays in each philosopher’s work. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, and Adorno wrote voluminously about music, Schelling a little, Kant and Hegel even less, and Schleiermacher, Heidegger, and Gadamer practically nothing. Nevertheless, the path of music in German philosophy is much more circuitous, oblique, and mediated than this ordering might suggest. Not forgetting the influence of Schopenhauer’s “Will” on Heinrich Schenker’s Tonwille, Kant and Hegel gave rise, albeit indirectly, to the central traditions of music theory. Eduard Hanslick has been variously associated with Hegel and Schopenhauer, but his formalism ultimately flows from Kant. The Kantian interplay of faculties is recalled also in the cognitivism of the Meyer school, which models our processing of classical play as an interaction of psychological principles with style knowledge. The “Beethovenian-Hegelian tradition,” memorably christened by Janet Schmalfeldt (1995), extends from E. T. A. Hoffmann, A. B. Marx, and August Halm through Schoenberg and Heinrich Schenker, Adorno, Erwin Ratz, and Dahlhaus, up to present-day theorists such as William Caplin and Schmalfeldt herself. All are united in seeing the music as a logical and self-reflective unfolding of an argument or zugrunde liegende Idee. Leaving aside the question of whether these theorists imbibed their philosophy from the zeitgeist or through personal reading of the texts, the crucial point is that the ideas came from Kant’s and Hegel’s mainstream work, not from their specific writings on music, which were very marginal. This indirectness puts into dramatic relief a structuring principle common to each of these ten chapters. All begin with a short biography of the philosopher and move concentrically from an outline of the philosophy in general, through the philosophy of art, homing in on his particular thoughts on music and these thoughts’ reception (if any). While this design is heuristically very helpful, influence has often flowed otherwise. The case of the three hermeneutic philosophers—Schleiermacher, Gadamer, and Heidegger—is even more extreme. Gunter Scholtz, Günther Pöltner, and Beate Suchla provide 27. Cook, “Music as Performance.”

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inestimable service to musicology by exposing writings that are as fascinating as they are, for most readers, completely unfamiliar. And yet these three philosophers have exerted an enormous influence on recent Anglo-American musicology through their general ideas on hermeneutics.28 Heidegger’s case is the most paradoxical of all. Heidegger, one could say, is both everywhere and nowhere. Several books have been written on Adorno and music29—not one in English on music and Heidegger. Yet as a source for poststructuralist ideas (including Derrida’s deconstruction), Heidegger is a powerful background presence in current musicology. Heidegger’s influence can be detected in music’s involvement with new historicism (including a resurgent history of theory), in research of alternative cultural practices and ontologies (including race and gender), in theories of embodiment (whether cognitively or culturally defined), in the phenomenology of perception, and in the general critique of subjectivity and the autonomy principle. Heidegger’s influence is just as pronounced in current German music theory, yet, ironically, for opposite reasons. In a landmark essay, Ludwig Holtmeier argues that unlike the body politic, postwar German theory was never de-Nazified.30 He detects the persistence of National Socialist ideology in the anti-intellectualism of contemporary German theory and in its fixation with folk song, orality, and practical pedagogy—aspects that were traditionally associated with Heidegger’s philosophy. Postwar academic music study in Germany never underwent either a “cultural” or an “analytical” turn (even Schenker is not taught widely). How is it possible for one philosopher’s work to be associated with both the most progressive and the most reactionary tendencies in contemporary music theory, while being conspicuously absent from it? (The exception that proves the rule is Heidegger’s strong showing in recent writings on electro-acoustic music.)31 Günther Pöltner’s essay in the collection makes the situation stranger yet, since it reveals that Heidegger’s thought is peculiarly suited to music—arguably more so than Adorno’s. Notwithstanding Adorno’s famous polemics against Heidegger, there is actually more to unite than divide these thinkers, especially in their joint critique of how Western society, driven by technology, “objectifies” artworks into commodities. The metaphor of “hearing” is seminal for Heidegger, in that the phenomenal identity between music and the listener 28. Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic, 20–33; Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, 2–27; Bent, “Plato-Beethoven.” 29. See Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music; Witkin, Adorno on Music; Adorno, Essays on Music; DeNora, After Adorno; Spitzer, Music as Philosophy. 30. Holtmeier, “From ‘Musiktheorie’ to ‘Tonsatz.’” 31. See Palombini, “Technology and Pierre Schaeffer,” and Manning, “Significance of Techné in Understanding the Art and Practice of Electroacoustic Composition.”

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suggests a more humane quality of relation between subjects and objects. By contrast, it could be argued that Adorno, despite his overtly greater interest in music, remained trapped in a visual paradigm of subject-object detachment and abstraction. In this light, whether a philosopher values or understands music, or even writes about it, is a contingent detail. That Adorno, as a pupil of Alban Berg and correspondent of Ernst Krenek, was incontrovertibly the more musical philosopher does not make his philosophy more “musical” than Heidegger’s. This conundrum is a sign of hope: it reinforces the fact that philosophy’s impact on musical thought is open to interpretation, often irrespective of the intention of the philosopher. Part of the excitement of discovering Schleiermacher’s or Gadamer’s thoughts on music is anticipating how these might feed into, or even interfere with, their established influence on musical hermeneutics and historiography. The same uncertainty principle besets Adorno too. So far, he is best known to musicians through his musical, rather than philosophical, writings: his great Aesthetic Theory ticks away, as Shierry Nicholsen suggests, like an unexploded bomb.32

The Ten Philosophers In this spirit, the contributors to Music in German Philosophy frequently read their philosophers against the grain, holding their sometimes off-center theories of music responsible to their core vision. With our historical hindsight and professional musical training, we can make Kant’s musical aesthetic even more “Kantian,” or align music better with Hegel’s philosophy of the other arts. To start with Kant, the primary question, however, is not what Kant said but why the story of aesthetics begins there. Germans wrote about music at least since Adam von Fulda (1445–1505), the starting point in the editors’ historical introduction. Moreover, historians of theory are particularly sensitive to how pre-Kantian music theory absorbs intellectual history: musicians did not really need to wait until the late eighteenth century to acquire a proper aesthetic.33 Seventeenth-century philosophies of musical emotion were developed by Athanasius Kircher in Italy and René Descartes in France. Peter Schleuning has convincingly traced the “beautiful” and “sublime” strands of Kant’s philosophy of natural beauty to the Lutheran musical tradition of J. S. Bach.34 In a sense, Bach was writing sublime music before this quality 32. Nicholsen, Exact Imagination, Late Work, 8. 33. Jairo Moreno’s Foucauldian history of theory, Musical Representations, Subjects, and Objects, raises the profile of Cartesian aesthetics. 34. Schleuning, Die Sprache der Natur.

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was philosophized, which is why Kantian disciples such as Christian Friedrich Michaelis retrospectively projected this term onto baroque music.35 On the other hand, Kant’s aesthetics is truly unprecedented in its ambition and coherence. Rather than superseding or invalidating earlier theories, it creates a grid-like intellectual space in which these earlier theories could be mapped. Hegel, for whom all theory was retrospective, famously wrote that “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”36 Kant’s aesthetics are retrospective not just to the history of art but to the history of previous aesthetics. There are four reasons for Kant’s preeminence. (1) He synthesized rationalism with empiricism (for instance, demonstrating that there could be a priori synthetic judgments). (2) His aesthetics are systematic. (3) His aesthetic system is integrated within the larger system of his three critiques. (4) These three critiques incepted the overarching narrative of modern Western philosophy, contributing to the dawn of the European Enlightenment. Simply put, nothing in earlier aesthetics can compare with this fourfold achievement. By developing a cognitive theory of artistic “judgment,” subject to the same rational principles as his two earlier critiques (of pure and practical reason), Kant put tension at the heart of his aesthetics, creating what we would nowadays call a “conflict model.” By analogy to freedom of thought and human action, beauty for Kant must comprise a form of knowledge that is not governed by the laws of the mechanical world. This tension between the cognitive and the autonomous is captured by Kant’s famous notion of art’s “purposiveness without purpose” (Zweckmässigkeit ohne Zweck), to describe our “disinterested liking” of this aconceptual, yet rational, mode of experience. Christel Fricke tracks this conflict model through Kant’s difficulties in deciding whether music, as a “beautiful play of sensations,” is truly a “fine art,” that is, whether music is a matter for “social judgment” or mere “private taste,” “more pleasure than culture.” If the former, then music’s “play of feeling” must have a cognitive content, to avoid slipping back into the baroque doctrine of imitation. To the extent that this play unfolds through categories of time and space, Kant endows music with a formal dimension. But Fricke counters the fallacy that this makes Kant a rigid formalist—an extremely common misconception about his music aesthetics. Fricke stresses, rather, that Kant is addressing points of connection between musical feelings and the cognitive play of our faculties, not the formal qualities of the music itself. His goal is to guarantee that this play has sufficient complexity. Play thus happens more in the mind than in the music—it is a function of the harmonious interplay of imagination, rea35. See Zenck, Die Bach-Rezeption des späten Beethoven, 74. 36. See the preface to his The Philosophy of Right, 13.

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son, and understanding, our Erkenntniskräfte. This gap between the cognitive subject and the musical object is absolutely crucial in safeguarding freedom of artistic creativity, especially in view of what happened next in the history of aesthetics, that is, a tendency, following Hegel’s “aesthetics of content,” for philosophy to impinge normatively on the formal constitution of artworks. To call Kant formal or stiff is the opposite of the truth. Another shibboleth Fricke buries is that the “harmoniousness” of this interplay makes Kant’s aesthetics static or organicist (in the pejorative sense modernism gives these qualities). For a listener to understand music requires an effort of aesthetic reflection whose difficulty can encompass the most radical kinds of art. This is why, as Adorno would later show, Kantian aesthetics are perfectly compatible with the avant-garde. Fricke locates this interpretive process in art’s sign character. As a “beautiful artifact,” a musical work bears its “purposiveness without purpose” as a “sign of a secret language,” which must be actively decoded—even constituted—by the listener. Fricke’s review of Kant’s reception shows that music’s sign character was seized upon by Christian Gottfried Körner in his essay “On the Representation of Character in Music” (1795), where music’s “character” is held to resolve its outward contradictions. After being ignored for two centuries, Körner’s ideas were taken up by Carl Dahlhaus. Just as phenomena are signs of things in themselves, Dahlhaus argued, so musical material is a “sign” of its aesthetic dimension. In between Körner and Dahlhaus, Kantian reception was indirect and often unacknowledged. Hanslick overtly rejected Kant, yet was an unwitting Kantian in his distinction between form and material. Kant helps us fill in the cognitive aesthetic underlying the concept of “play” prevalent in Anglo-American classical music studies and topic theory.37 Friedrich Schleiermacher—famous as the father of hermeneutics, but unknown as a writer on music—can provide a similar service to our dual notion of “style,” explaining it as a dialectic between the individual and the normative aspects of language.38 By Gunter Scholtz’s account, individuality was Schleiermacher’s starting point, playing an analogous role to Kantian “genius” as a legislator for aesthetics, but more democratically and with less mystique. The counterpole to individuality was culture, and Schleiermacher’s advance on Kant lay in stressing how philosophy was mediated through channels of communication and debate among the scientific or scholarly community. But Schleiermacher’s importance consists just as much in his commitment to the personal, through which he offers a cure for the modern structuralist fallacy that subjectivity is 37. Ratner, Classic Music; Agawu, Playing with Signs. 38. See Frank, Subject and the Text, 1–22.

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absorbed totally by sign systems or cultural context. The duality of the personal versus the social runs forcefully through every level of Schleiermacher’s system. Man is an innately signifying creature with a double relationship with nature, as both a material to be used and a means of symbolization and selffashioning. “Feeling” is likewise a synthesis of reason with nature, a form of knowledge without concepts: Schleiermacher has turned Kant’s definition of aesthetic beauty back upon reason itself. If reason operates with concepts, then feeling uses artistic “fantasy” as a means of self-individuation. Feeling, importantly, has a public, universal dimension, containing “the ground of all things and all thought” (der Grund aller Dinge und allen Denkens). With music, Scholtz shows us how Schleiermacher extends his duality to the “double character” of its material (Gehalt), in the negotiation between compositional intention and the natural materials of sound, between the personal element of musical style and the tradition of musical conventions. As a dialectic between these two poles, “music is an expression of dynamic self-consciousness.” Although Schleiermacher gets into difficulties with his thoughts on music as religion and his attempt to rank the arts in a ladder (culminating with poetry), his theory of style is extremely suggestive for musicology, which has tended to put undue stress on the intentional or historical aspects of hermeneutics. By contrast, Schleiermacher’s stylistic dialectic resonates with the dual model of style developed by Charles Rosen.39 With Hegel, we encounter the enigma of a philosopher who influenced musical thought most strongly of all, but whose remarks on music are colored by prejudice and ignorance. Herbert Schnädelbach skillfully exposes the tensions in Hegel’s system, revealing that his philosophy of freedom pulls music in opposite directions. In one direction, textless instrumental music epitomizes an emancipation from all external conditions, achieving an “interiority” (Innerlichkeit) that Hegel links with a subject’s inner sense of identity and uniqueness. Yet this same “interiority” distances music from the cognitive and social thrust of Hegel’s general art philosophy; ironically, in emphasizing music’s immediacy, Hegel follows romantic tenets that he generally despises. We take it for granted today (via the teachings of Hegelians such as A. B. Marx and Schoenberg) that music can argue and develop. But we also know that music’s “feelings” engage the body and thus are not as abstract as Hegel proposed. In this regard, Schnädelbach reads Hegel against himself, observing that Hegel elsewhere in his work defines feeling as a sense of personal motion (Sich-mitbewegen). Indeed, listeners forcefully suppress their instinct to move 39. Rosen’s The Classical Style explores the interdependence between the personal styles of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and the general style of the period.

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to the music. Similar contradictions beset Hegel’s privileging of melody as the site of freedom of invention. Far from modeling this ideal on Beethoven, as one might expect, Hegel actually had in mind Rossini, the autonomy of whose melodic writing—even more strangely—Hegel saw as marking a transition to absolute music. Hegel’s “eloquent silence” over Beethoven notwithstanding, this was a signal case of history correcting a philosopher’s misprision, for Beethoven rapidly became enshrined as the Hegelian philosopher par excellence.40 Beethovenian musical logic embodies the holism and oppositionality of Hegelian logic, where parameters have no validity divorced from the whole. Indeed, Hegel’s often mystifying mantra of the “identity of the identical with the nonidentical” is musical common sense (a sonata-form recapitulation reconciles the tonic with the dominant). Lest this be seen to vindicate Hegel, the charge for the prosecution holds that his “aesthetic of content” is overly normative, identifying aesthetic beauty with a narrow conception of “unity.” Hegel’s intolerance for “disunity,” or rather for more sophisticated or historically progressive forms of coherence, laid his aesthetics open to attack by a growing tradition of modernist aesthetics. Paradoxically, given that Hegel thought his system was freer and less dogmatic than Kant’s, the older philosopher left his definition of beauty far more open, by underdefining the aesthetic object. Berbeli Wanning’s essay on Schelling marks a turning point in Music in German Philosophy, introducing a thinker who put art at the center of his system and who wrote technically and sympathetically about music. Schelling is of particular interest for music theorists, since his praise of music showcases ideas gleaned from Johann Georg Sulzer’s article “Rhythm” from the widely influential General Theory of the Fine Arts (Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, 1777).41 This article is underappreciated by historians of theory, who have tended to focus instead on Sulzer’s articles on form. Its importance is that Sulzer makes the epoch-making connection between a psychologized theory of rhythm as a mental process and a cognitive theory of conceptualization that anticipates Kant. Through Schelling, Sulzer’s identification of metrical patterns with concepts enters the bloodstream of German philosophy. Rhythm follows through a series of dualisms in Schelling’s “identity philosophy,” beginning with the relationship between philosophy and art. Schelling calls art an “organon” of philosophy, by which he means that art is not a passive object of contemplation but an active expression of general philosophical principles. These principles bear on a pessimistic view of the limitations of human reason in the face of nature’s plenitude and potency—an attitude that anticipates 40. Schmalfeldt, “Form as the Process of Becoming”; Adorno, Beethoven, 10. 41. See Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 283–84.

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both the ontology of Heidegger and the critical theory of Adorno. Given that nature’s “Absolute” cannot be grasped by concepts, art for Schelling is a medium of communicating this Absolute in a way reason understands: it is a mode of nonconceptual thought. At the next level up, music is privileged by Schelling because its materiality (as a sonic art form) maintains this close link with nature. Since philosophers had traditionally opposed music to painting, Wanning emphasizes that for Schelling to group music with the “real” plastic arts (contra the “ideal” art of poetry) was a historical breakthrough in the theory of musical material. But musical material rises above painting because it unfolds in time—the medium of self-consciousness, and a category epitomized in rhythm. Uniting the ratios of the cosmos with the movements of the mind, rhythm stands on the interface between Schelling’s general system of nature philosophy and the particular art form. Hence “rhythm represents the musical in music,” because “rhythm, in music, performs the same work that conceptual thought does for self-consciousness” (p. 114). This is a striking idea, although a posthumous one, since Schelling’s Philosophie der Kunst was not published till 1859. Schopenhauer is the first philosopher who orients his thought not just to art but to music. Although his influence on music is both massive and direct, Günter Zöller argues that it is often misunderstood, especially in recent Anglo-American music criticism. Schopenhauer is drawn to music on account of its emotional immediacy: music is meaningful beyond individual experience because it is presented in the generic form of emotional prototypes. With their preference for discussing emotion over form, analytic music critics have predictably taken up Schopenhauer’s “expressionistic theory,” yet at the expense of uprooting it from the philosopher’s system. As a result of this hermetic approach, musical emotion is divorced from its connection with everyday life, and Schopenhauer’s “Will” is either silenced or confined to a merely psychic phenomenon, instead of the energetic principle embracing all of reality, including even the intellectual striving of philosophy. It is crucial, therefore, to respect the importance Schopenhauer places on analogical thinking, whereby music symbolizes metaphysical ideas. Thus, in an echo of the medieval chain of being, Schopenhauer draws an analogy between the ascent from bass to melody and the rise from inorganic nature through the vegetable and animal kingdoms up to human reason: the metaphor turns on the gradual animation of turgid lower material into freely moving upper natures. Zöller convincingly relates Schopenhauer’s metaphysical formalism, intrinsic to his notion of musical Gehalt (as opposed to Inhalt), to Hanslick’s theory of “sounding, moving forms” (tönend bewegte Formen). Absolute music, then, has a richer Gehalt than

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is normally realized (despite Schopenhauer’s dubious identification of absolute music with Rossini, a quirk he shares with Hegel). The critique of absolute music is one of Nietzsche’s most influential achievements. Although beholden to Schopenhauer’s theories, Nietzsche upturns his pessimistic philosophy into what Stefan Lorenz Sorgner calls a “life-affirming pessimism,” by which music is enjoyed not as therapeutic release from the Will but as tragic celebration. Nietzsche famously dressed up his music aesthetic, in The Birth of Tragedy, as a battle between Dionysus and Apollo—an attractive fable that, nonetheless, distracts from its radical message. Sorgner’s refreshingly defamiliarizing account carefully unpacks the meaning of this allegory, so that Nietzsche emerges as a progenitor of Enlightenment critique, with a materialist model of music that anticipates Bloch and Adorno. Dionysus symbolizes music’s various materialist tendencies. His principle of flow and protean change historicizes music, wresting it from Schopenhauer’s metaphysical realm to ground it in culture. He teases musical feeling away from Hegel’s Innerlichkeit, so that it impinges on the entire body. But the self-forgetting of Dionysian ecstasy also cancels the boundary between the body and the world, thus endowing music with a socially unifying dimension: unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche situates this Ur-Eine within the world, not in any Platonic beyond. Finally, in denying the solace of a Christian afterlife, music celebrates the facticity (Diesseitigkeit) of this life. Sorgner emphasizes that Nietzsche’s system is ternary, not dual as is often thought. That is, while Dionysus is abetted by the form-function of Apollo, the principium individuationis, his antagonist is Socrates, the “God” of modernity, civilization, Enlightenment, and abstraction. Nietzsche unmasks theory, epitomized in metaphysics, as Christian afterlife in disguise, and blames it for the life-denying decadence of modern society. He finds this decadence in the formalism of opera, and its cure in Wagnerian music drama, which promises to recuperate the ancient tragic vision, thus reconciling Dionysus with Socrates. Nietzsche thereby incepts a critique of musical commodification and the entertainment industry. Francesca Vidal’s essay on Ernst Bloch introduces perhaps the least familiar philosopher in this collection. Bloch’s inclusion registers the absence of the greatest German philosopher not involved with music aesthetics: Karl Marx. Given Marx’s suspicion of music’s utopian dimension as an “infantile disorder,”42 Bloch’s importance rests in being the first thinker to seriously attempt to apply Marxist critique to this field. Strikingly, Bloch approached the task with a competent understanding of music analysis and with reference to individual 42. Norris, “Utopian Deconstruction,” 305.

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works. As we have seen, music’s temporal character has afforded philosophers different insights. For Bloch, musical time is oriented toward the future as a token of hope. Music is hopeful both in its material—one tone succeeding another teleologically—and in the utopian vision expressed by masterworks such as the Ninth Symphony or Fidelio. It is future-oriented also in its dialectic with history, according to Bloch’s concept of “noncontemporaneity” (Ungleichzeitigkeit). Whereas Nietzsche collapses music into history, Bloch institutes a gap, since the very survival of artworks means that they transcend the material conditions of their contemporary societies. It is through this future-orientation that music feeds back to change the consciousness of its listeners. This is how an analysis of compositional technique could be “Marxist,” interpreting musical material both as an indicator of historical process and as a “social seismograph.” From Bloch’s Marxist perspective, artistic genius is defined as an ability to discover and mold the progressive potential buried in contemporary materials. Bloch thus presents composition as active labor and aligns the work concept with the processuality of history. On the listener’s part, this principle is communicated via “signs of hope” such as the trumpet signal in Fidelio. As both an archaic memory of Jericho’s angelic trumpets and a premonition of the Dies Irae, the trumpet signal is a paradoxical “memory of the future,” infolding temporal tenses in a way that leads the listening subject to encounter him- or herself dialectically. This is how utopian music can inspire critical self-consciousness. According to Vidal, Bloch’s ideas influenced his friend Otto Klemperer’s interpretation of Fidelio, although they were mostly rejected by musicologists and orthodox Marxists. Among the latter, only Georg Lukács and Adorno recognized their potential. Bloch truly is a philosopher of the future. What makes Heidegger such a difficult thinker is that he endeavored to do philosophy in a radically new form. That is, whereas earlier philosophers had looked to art as a model of an alternative means of thought, they had generally not let this interfere with the way they framed and organized their ideas. By contrast, Heidegger investigates the foundations and preconditions of thought in particular modes of existence and behavior. Contemplation objectifies and detaches things that are actually enmeshed in a web of dynamic relations. Thus philosophizing is understood as an activity like any other, and a peculiar one at that. This practical approach is developed systematically in Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927), and more poetically in “The Origin of the Work of Art” (“Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” 1935). The latter marked the onset of Heidegger’s “turn” (Kehre) to an aestheticized philosophy, once he realized that the system of his earlier writings was part of the problem. Although Heidegger’s sparse comments on music are concentrated

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in this later phase, Günther Pöltner draws concepts from his entire career in an effort to extrapolate a musical aesthetic. From one standpoint, Heidegger compares our receptivity to the particular “being” of the world with “hearing,” which suggests either that acoustic hearing is a special case of a general hearing or, on the contrary, that philosophy is music. In practice, however, Heidegger takes his examples from painters (such as van Gogh) and poets (especially Hölderlin). Increasingly mindful of the alienating effect of modern technology, Heidegger looks to art as the safeguard of a mode of being even more authentic than practical activity. To be sure, practical knowledge of “hammering” is more grounded and holistic than any abstract concept of a “hammer.” Nevertheless, hammering is still technological in that the metal is “used up” and the hammer used purposively. By contrast, the material in van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes is celebrated for its artistic quality and is absorbed neither by the experience of wearing shoes nor by any concept of them. Aesthetics can be assimilated neither by cultural practice nor by ideational theory; similarly, in its temporal dimension, the “presentness” of artistic effect, while depending on historical materials, resists the pull of both the past and the future (a point scored against Bloch). Heidegger terms this projected materiality the “earth” of an artwork, and he associates it with the phenomenon that artistic quality is “hidden” in the depths of this material so as to resist abstract interpretation. Conversely, the artwork’s vital presence he calls its “world.” According to Heidegger’s conflict model, “earth” and “world” remain locked in strife, in a dynamic tension between the artwork’s materiality and its truth, as its meaning alternately comes into view through “clearing” and retreats even deeper into “hiddenness.” This processuality leads Heidegger to emphasize art’s character as an “event” (Ereignis) rather than as a static object, which leads Pöltner to surmise that music is Heidegger’s ideal artform, on a par with poetry (his explicit ideal). Thus poetry and music are reciprocally related in expressing the event-character of being and a “response” (Entsprechen) to its “demand” (Anspruch), in complementary ways. Poetry is performative, yet foregrounds its response in articulate language. Music begins as response, but foregrounds the event-character of performance. Music’s performativity is as much a lesson to philosophy as its quality of “unobjectifiability” (Ungegenständlichkeit). Dynamic concepts such as “hearing,” “event,” the “earth/world” strife, and “unobjectifiability” are peculiarly suggestive for the avant-garde aesthetics of John Cage, electro-acoustic music, music theater, and Gebrauchsmusik, all of which situate music beyond the score, in listening or in practice. But they are arguably even more relevant for understanding the intrinsic performativity of the work concept as work. For philosophy to throw out the work concept would be a fundamental mistake.

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A student of Heidegger who died as recently as 2002 (aged 102), HansGeorg Gadamer is the most contemporary philosopher represented in this collection. His masterwork, Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode, 1960), follows in the hermeneutic tradition of Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Heidegger and is renowned for showing that mediation in culture and history renders notions of objectivity inappropriate for the human sciences. Gadamer is particularly famous for his concept of “fusion of horizons,” according to which historical understanding requires the subject to project herself into an alien value system, yet on the basis of her contemporary framework of presuppositions, or “prejudices.” In assembling Gadamer’s scattered remarks on music, Beate Regina Suchla achieves the important task of demonstrating that his hermeneutic method pays equally as rich dividends for aesthetics as for historiography. Crucially, Suchla reminds us that the very first section of Truth and Method deals with art. Art—and in particular music—is paradigmatic for Gadamer because of its extraordinary ability to bridge both cultures and historical epochs. In developing Gadamer’s aesthetic theory, Suchla also defends him against the standard charge that he dissolves subjectivity into historical tradition. On the contrary, Suchla argues that Gadamer locates the seat of interpretation within the subject, and art’s role is to set mental presuppositions (Voraussetzungen) into “play”—a position that echoes Kant’s, Schiller’s, and Schlegel’s theories of aesthetic play. Indeed, play (Spiel) is one of Gadamer’s three constitutive concepts of art, together with “composition” (Gebilde) and “simultaneity” (Gleichzeitigkeit). As with historical understanding, aesthetics for Gadamer is driven through a process of a “subject” appropriating an alien “object,” although conceiving the latter now not as a distant “horizon” but as an external framework of practical behavior—such as the rules of a game. In playing, the player submits to and internalizes the rules of the game. Artistic “composition” sublates this framework into something self-standing, and with a transformed relationship to reality. That is, whereas games merely represent reality, art discloses its hidden truth-content. Gadamer parallels the late Wittgenstein in highlighting this “language-game” quality of art, especially with the complex dependence of musical composition on acts of technical execution and instrumental performance. Nevertheless, the metaphysical Gadamer leaves pragmatist aesthetics behind with his goal concept of “simultaneity” (borrowed from Kierkegaard), whereby art culminates in a quasi-spatial quality of “presence.” This presence is not immediate—a common criticism of ontological aesthetics—but an emergent property effected through creative and interpretive effort. If Gadamer’s ultimate concern is with Man as a being subject to time both in its historical and phenomenological dimensions (after Edmund Husserl), then time also forms the horizon for his interpretation of

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music, which he appreciates as the most temporal art. Artistic “play,” “composition,” and “simultaneity” are particularized into musical “reflection” (Spiegel), “order” (Ordnung), and “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit). Developing Schelling’s notion of music as organon in a pragmatic direction, Gadamer argues that music impacts directly on human behavior and on the problem of how to live in the world. Like Heidegger, Gadamer sees art as supplying us with a more authentic model of existence in the face of modern technology. Surprisingly—and despite some questionable remarks on serialism—Gadamer actually embraces modernism, evinced in the experimentalism and fragmentation of modern art, as a hermeneutic starting point: it is as much a situation to be reckoned with as historical horizons or the rules of the game. He affirms the work concept as an expression of our capacity to order our own lives (Ordnung). This ordering pertains directly to an existential attitude to time perception. Anticipating Christopher Hasty’s defense of “rhythmic” experience against “metrical” (a polemic that goes back to Henri Bergson),43 Gadamer holds that music recuperates an experiential mode of time as dynamic flow from the industrialized model of time as discrete measurement. Music, in sum, is a sonic “means of orientation” (Orientierungsmittel), teaching us about the complex interrelationship of time and space and, on an existential level, how to deal with the indeterminate length of our life spans. Musical “play” even achieves a nihilistic modernist meaning, recalling the tragic baroque topos of “world as Trauerspiel”: in its transitoriness, music reflects the catastrophic ruptures and fleetingness of modern life. A trained composer and pianist, Adorno regarded music and philosophy as equally important in his career. His multifaceted research in philosophy, sociology, psychology, and cultural theory informed his innumerable works of musical analysis, including monographs on Wagner, Mahler, and Berg. Like Bloch, he saw music as a “seismograph” of social tensions, whereby compositional “material” was simultaneously a philosophical category of social history. Since material is “preformed” by compositional consciousness “congealed” (geronnen) within its formal conventions and handed down through tradition, it was the site a dialectic between artistic creativity and sedimented social Gehalt—between the individual and society, freedom and law, subjectivity and objectivity. The context for Adorno’s theory of material is his Marxist critique of modernity in its specific guise of the culture industry. The commodification of artworks hinders the production of new music as much as it deforms “structural hearing.” Lucia Sziborsky singles out Adorno’s most familiar expression of this theory, his critique of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in Philosophy 43. Hasty, Meter as Rhythm.

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of New Music (Philosophie der neuen Musik). Although Adorno appears to favor Schoenberg’s progressive aesthetic of the “suffering subject” over the reactionary “liquidation of the subject” decoded in Stravinsky’s style, Sziborsky is mindful that both positions are judged “authentic” in Adorno’s eyes, albeit the latter as a “negative truth.” In correcting Adorno reception’s tendency to isolate this text from his broader philosophical project, Sziborsky couples it with the late Aesthetic Theory (Ästhetische Theorie), arguing that musical concepts such as “structural hearing” prefigure as well as fulfill Adorno’s mature theory of “aesthetic experience” (with its notions of “truth content” and “puzzle character”). Sziborsky diagnoses Adorno’s music/philosophy pairing as part of the oscillation of materialism and metaphysics in his thought—a dialectic that admits of no Hegelian “determinate negation” to a higher, synthesizing, level. This “negative dialectic” is frozen, rather, by music’s paradoxically dual position, as both inside and outside of history. Music can critique and offer hope to society on account of its utopian quality; yet this same utopian aspect removes it from historical reality into the realms of the metaphysical or theological. The only possible course for philosophy is thus to push negation to extremes, to reveal the world in all its rifts and crevices, view it from the standpoint of the end of days in messianic light, and then flip the negative into a positive, as if reading “mirror writing.” Such mirror writing can be deciphered, however, only by authentic music such as Schoenberg’s, which redeems the negative by translating it into a style of formal fragmentation. Music thus recuperates the particularity subsumed by concepts and rescues a fallen nature paved over by civilization. Music stimulates philosophical reflection, through which the “nonexistent” (Nichtseiende) is enabled to appear (Erscheinen) mediated through the “existent” (Seienden). Adorno has pushed Schelling’s concept of music as philosophical organon to its limit. Without wishing to diminish Adorno’s preeminent position in modern music aesthetics, approaching him “from behind,” as the last philosopher in this collection, has the advantage of bringing to light his debt to an aesthetic tradition. Adorno borrows Kant’s cognitive conflict model; Schleiermacher’s theory of style; Hegel’s aesthetics of content; Schelling’s organon; Schopenhauer’s pessimism; Nietzsche’s historicism; Bloch’s future orientation; Heidegger’ critique of technology; he complements Gadamer’s phenomenology of time (to pull just a single strand from each precursor or contemporary). The many ideas that feature in this collection, and that are tabled in its index, crisscross its ten formal boundaries, since this tradition is as much a story of “philosophemes” as of individual philosophers. The discourse of music in German philosophy is a “Great Conversation,” and one that is more about learning

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to ask the correct question than framing definitive solutions. It is a conversation Anglo-American musicology needs to join.

References Adorno, Theodor W. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Oxford: Polity Press, 1998. ———. Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert. Trans. Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Agawu, V. Kofi. Playing with Signs. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Apel, Karl-Otto. From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View. Ed. Marianna Papastephanou. 1988; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Beard, David, and Kenneth Gloag. Musicology: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2005. Bent, Ian, ed. Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “Plato-Beethoven: A Hermeneutics for Nineteenth-Century Music?” In Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, ed. Bent, 105–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bonds, Mark Evan. “Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 50 (1997): 387–420. Bowie, Andrew. From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory. London: Routledge, 1997. Brandom, Robert. “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms.” European Journal of Philosophy 7, no. 2 (1999): 164–89. Bujic, Bohan, ed. Music in European Thought 1851–1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Chua, Daniel K. L. Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Clayton, Martin, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, eds. The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003. Clifton, Thomas. Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Cook, Nicholas. “Music as Performance.” In Clayton, Herbert, and Middleton, Cultural Study of Music, 204–14. Cook, Nicholas, and Mark Everist, eds. Rethinking Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Cox, Arnie. “The Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning.” Musicae Scientiae 5, no. 2 (2001): 195–212. Cumming, Naomi. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Dahlhaus, Carl. Analysis and Value Judgment. Trans. Siegmund Levarie. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 1983. ———. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the later Nineteenth Century. Trans. Mary Whittall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. ———. Esthetics of Music. Trans. William Austin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. The Foundations of Music History. Trans. J. B. Robinson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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———. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ———. Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music. Trans. Mary Whittall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Dahlhaus, Carl, and Ruth Katz, eds. Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music. New York: Pendragon Press, 1987–93. Daverio, John. Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology. New York: Schirmer Books, 1993. DeBellis, Mark. Music and Conceptualization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Dell’Antonio, Andrew, ed. Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. DeNora, Tia. After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Frank, Manfred. The Subject and the Text: Essays on Literary Theory and Philosophy. Ed. Andrew Bowie. Trans. Helen Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Fubini, Enrico. History of Music Aesthetics. Trans. Michael Hatwell. London: Macmillan, 1990. Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of A Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. 1981; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. 1985; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987. Hasty, Christopher. Meter as Rhythm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hatten, Robert. Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of Right [1821]. Trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Hoeckner, Berthold. Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Holtmeier, Ludwig. “From ‘Musiktheorie’ to ‘Tonsatz’: National Socialism and German Music Theory after 1945.” Music Analysis 23, nos. 2–3 (2004): 245–66. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason [1781]. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. 1965; London: Macmillan, 1986. Kerman, Joseph. Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Korsyn, Kevin. Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Kramer, Lawrence. Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Le Huray, Peter, and James Day, eds. Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lidov, David. Is Language a Music? Writings on Musical Form and Signification. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Lippman, Edward. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Manning, Peter. “The Significance of Techné in Understanding the Art and Practice of Electroacoustic Composition.” Organised Sound 11, no. 1 (2006): 81–90. Menke, Christoph. The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida. Trans. Neil Solomon. 1988; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Moreno, Jairo. Musical Representations, Subjects, and Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau, and Weber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

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Morrow, Mary Sue. German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Neubauer, David. The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in EighteenthCentury Aesthetics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Nicholsen, Shierry Weber. Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno’s Aesthetics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. Norris, Christopher. “Utopian Deconstruction: Ernst Bloch, Paul de Man and the Politics of Music.” In Music and the Politics of Culture, ed. Norris, 305–47. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989. Paddison, Max. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music. London: Kahn and Averill, 1996. ———. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. “Music as Ideal: The Aesthetics of Autonomy.” In The Cambridge History of NineteenthCentury Music, ed. Jim Samson, 318–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Palombini, Carlos. “Technology and Pierre Schaeffer: Pierre Schaeffer’s Arts-Relais, Walter Benjamin’s technische Reproduzierbarkeit and Martin Heidegger’s Ge-stell.” Organised Sound 3, no. 1 (1998): 35–43. Ratner, Leonard G. Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style. New York: Schirmer Books, 1980. Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. Schleuning, Peter. Die Sprache der Natur: Natur in der Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts. Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 1998. Schmalfeldt, Janet. “Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the ‘Tempest’ Sonata.” Beethoven Forum 4 (1995): 37–71. Spitzer, Michael. Metaphor and Musical Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge, 1993. Tomlinson, Gary. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ———. “The Web of Culture: A Context for Musicology.” Nineteenth-Century Music 7 (1984): 350–62. Williams, Alastair. Constructing Musicology. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Witkin, Robert W. Adorno on Music. London: Routledge, 1998. Zbikowski, Lawrence. Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Zenck, Martin. Die Bach-Rezeption des späten Beethoven: Zum Verhältnis von Musikhistoriographie und Rezeptionsgeschichtsschreibung der “Klassik.” Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 24. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1986.

Introduction S t efa n L o r e n z S o rg n e r and O li v e r F ü r be t h

This collection is concerned with German music philosophy. Among German philosophers, in particular, reflection on music has always occupied an important place. Moreover, the world of German thought forms a unity that is shaped by specific characteristics. Thus it was no arbitrary decision that occasioned this volume. Rather, the choice of theme was suggested by the considerable unity between the underlying intellectual stance and the importance given to music philosophy. The characteristics of German thought can be made more explicit. On the one hand, it is systematic. Even in apparently antisystematic thinkers like Nietzsche and Adorno, one finds a comprehensive completeness. This already points to the second characteristic that should be mentioned in this context: the holistic character of German thought. It always attempts to explain everything. Rather than being satisfied with exploring a specific problem, there is always an effort to take the global interconnectedness of the problem into account. There is talk of being, the absolute, the “nothing that nothings.” All this is part of an attempt to find out what holds the world together internally. This ambition has an impact on the dominant epistemology and methodology. To explain everything, it is necessary to think abstractly, which in turn means that a special significance is attached to the intellect, for it is the latter that makes it possible to comprehend objective relationships in such a way that all of the implications . This is a reference to Martin Heidegger.—trans.



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are taken into account. This phenomenon is also evident in the German legal system. In contrast to Anglo-Saxon law, in which reference is always made to the precedent of individual cases, in Germany there is an effort to grasp the laws so generally that all possibilities are covered. Since this kind of thinking is characterized by necessary conclusions, it is frequently also possible to find irreconcilable, radical consequences in the world of German thought. The poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist gave a clear impression of this phenomenon in 1810 in his short story “Michael Kohlhaas,” in which the protagonist destroys the entire country to impose his brand of justice. The fact that there is frequently reflection on thinking itself is another result of this logically consequential and radical tendency. This becomes especially evident in the work of the great German hermeneutic thinkers (Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer) and in the problem of the hermeneutic circle. All of these characteristics can easily be observed in the philosophies of the ten thinkers selected for this volume, each of whom has a central significance in the context of German music philosophy. Each of these philosophers has his own chapter in the present volume. Within each chapter the contents are organized as follows: a brief biographical introduction is followed by a section on the individual thinker’s understanding of philosophy, a section on the place of art in his thought, and a section on the position of music within his aesthetics. After this general overview of the thinker’s music philosophy, a specific problem is isolated and explored. Finally, there is a discussion of the reception of his music philosophy, followed by introductory bibliographic references. The bibliographic references are not the only part of this volume designed to have an introductory character. The articles themselves are written in such a way that they can be understood by students and readers who have no detailed knowledge of philosophy. Yet they should also be of considerable interest for specialists, since the authors, in working through the specific musicphilosophical problems, have developed original positions. Before moving on to the contributions, which can be read independently of each other, this introduction treats a number of thematic complexes that are helpful for understanding the chapters that follow. First, we look at German writing on music before Kant, in order to give an impression of the work of the intellectual precursors of the philosophers examined here. After the overview of the most important thinking on music before Kant comes an introductory explanation of the most important thematic strands in musicology after Kant. This section provides the thematic context for the work of the philosophers who follow. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the significance of the concept of a “musical work.”

Introduction



German Writing on Music before Kant The first thinker who must be mentioned in this brief overview is the composer and music theoretician Adam von Fulda (1445–1505), whose treatise De musica is an early example of humanist music theory in Germany, and thus marks the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Fulda makes clear that the human spirit attaches great significance to music. Music’s primary task is to afford joy, for without this the human spirit could scarcely survive. To drive out melancholy is another of music’s tasks. Since this basic stance overcame the moral strictures of the Middle Ages, it made it possible to pay increased attention to the psychological effects of music. In this way music theory acquired a more “natural” basis. The reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) also played an important role in the history of German music theory. Luther’s theologically motivated decision to give music greater significance in the church service had considerable consequences for Protestant sacred music. According to Luther, music drives out the devil, and from a theological perspective no other art is comparable to it. Since music is also the most effective means of uplifting humanity’s sad and suffering hearts and giving people joy, it cannot be praised too highly. For these reasons, Luther considered it essential to utilize music in education, for it makes people tender and virtuous and allows them to live with joy and without care. One implication of Luther’s perspective is that he did not support the development of musical specialists, but rather believed in the great value of music for all humankind. During the Renaissance the Catholic Church observed a strict separation between musicians and congregation. With Luther, however, the entire congregation sang, which explains why he himself even wrote words and music for hymns suitable for this purpose. In 1524, to bring the word of the Lord to life in human hearts, he published the first edition of the Wittenberg hymnal. In the preface, he mentioned the praiseworthy influence that music can have, to the extent that it serves God, who gave us music and created it. Luther’s thinking was particularly influential in the Protestant territories. He especially lauded the religious and world-affirming polyphonic music of Josquin des Prez (ca. 1440–1521). Shortly after Luther’s death, the composer and theoretician Joachim Burmeister (1564–1629) became the first person to examine systematically the relationship between music and rhetoric, in his Musica poetica. During the next two centuries almost all German writers on music based their work on Burmeister’s conception of musical-rhetorical figures. Some background is required to understand what these figures were. In the Middle Ages, music



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was considered one of the seven liberal arts (septem artes liberales), which were divided into two groups. The three arts composing the “trivium” represented the realm of language and included rhetoric, dialectics, and grammar; the remaining four composed the “quadrivium,” which stood for the realm of nature and included arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Together they were meant to embrace the entire world. Beside the septem artes liberales, there were additional artes mechanicae, which were used to perform specific tasks. In this context it is important to note that the quadrivium included only theoretical reflection on music, and not the practical activity of composing or performing. Music itself was subdivided into musica theoretica, musica practica, and musica poetica. Musica theoretica stood for reflection about music, musica practica for the teaching of singing, and musica poetica for the teaching of composition. Sometimes musica practica also embraced the theory of singing and composition, in which case musica poetica formed a subcategory of musica practica. It was possible to reflect on any one of these three aspects of music theory. All seven liberal arts are closely related; hence there was also a close link between music and rhetoric. For example, the phrase “descendit de coelis” (descended from heaven) was often set to a clearly falling melodic line, and at “resurrexit tertia die . . . et ascendit in coelum” (and rose from the dead on the third day . . . and ascended into heaven) the melody rose. Burmeister formulated such common practices of the day in theoretical terms, in his “poetics of music.” Burmeister organized a large number of different musical-rhetorical figures into various groups. The group “Emphasis” comprised figures of repetition; the group “Hypotyposis,” figures that included images—among them figures involving vocal and instrumental phrases and fugal figures. Other musical-rhetorical figures that he and other writers discussed included the special treatment of dissonances and the use of specific figures in instrumental music, so that instrumental music could resemble what the theorist Johann Matteson called “sounding speech” (Klangrede) and draw close to vocal music. In the Middle Ages art music was almost exclusively vocal music, and in ancient Greece, as well, scant attention was paid to instrumental music. Indeed, there was not even a separate concept for it, for the ancient Greek expression mousiké included dance, music, and lyric poetry. The reflections on music of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) are characteristic for the seventeenth century. In his work Harmonices mundi he repeated the view, which had been widespread in the Middle Ages but originally stemmed from the Pythagoreans, that the harmony of the cosmos corresponds to musical harmony. The meaning of this notion becomes especially clear in Kepler’s brief summary of the philosophy of music by the ancient Roman writer Boethius, according to which the following division of types of music had been

Introduction



handed down through the ages: musica mundana, musica humana, musica instrumentalis. Musica mundana signified the harmony of the macrocosm, which was created by the harmony of the spheres. Musica humana meant the harmony of the microcosm, i.e., the connection between body and soul. Music could have an ethical impact on the soul because the latter was supposedly composed of consonant numbers—an idea that was originally Pythagorean/Platonic. Musica instrumentalis comprised the harmony of perceptible tones. Seventeenth-century writers justified this tripartite division theoretically through their belief in the harmonious relation of the cosmic order, the human soul, and music. In contrast to ancient Greek music theory, in which such relations were treated mathematically, the baroque period tended to pay attention to music’s physical aspect. Kepler, who also introduced decisive improvements to the cosmology of Copernicus, grounded music in this kind of cosmic rationale. He criticized the Pythagoreans for relying exclusively on numbers and not trusting the evidence of their own ears, as he did. In this context, he was thinking primarily of the musical intervals of thirds (which have a frequency ratio of 5:4) and sixths (6:5), which had been excluded by the Pythagoreans but are nevertheless harmonious. Kepler derived major and minor intervals from the interval he allotted to the difference in the theoretical rise and fall of sound between the earth and Venus, which provided the foundation of his “planetary” chords. He characterized the sounds of the individual planets by calculating the difference between the planets’ closest approach to and their furthest distance from the sun. These calculations resulted for Mars in an approximate fourth (3:2) and for the earth in a halftone (16:15). Based on this reasoning, he considered the movements of the heavens to be nothing other than a continuous polyphony. He saw this all-encompassing harmony as a proof of the existence of God, for the revelation of which he thanked God at the end of Harmonices mundi. Kepler considered the treatise Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et dissoni, by the Jesuit and universal scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–80), to be of central significance. In it, Kircher treated the so-called theory of the affects in a new way. According to this theory, every human being possesses a character, and composers create their works on the basis of this character. Thus Kircher began by assuming a direct relationship between emotions (“affects”) and musical structures. But since listeners, as well as composers, differ both in their capacities for musical perception and in their temperaments, he cast doubt on the existence of a special character associated with each key. Kircher was also the first to articulate the baroque theory of affects, the doctrine that provided the basis for seventeenth-century opera and composition in general.



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Christoph Bernhard (1628–92) was a younger contemporary of Kircher. In his Tractatus compositionis augmentatus, Bernhard divided music into two large groups or styles: the stylus gravus or antiquus and the stylus luxurians or modernus. The stylus gravis consists in not overly “rapid notes” and “few kinds of use of dissonances”; it also “attends not so much to the text as to the harmony.” The stylus luxurians, in contrast, is composed of “rather rapid notes, strange leaps,” “more variation in the use of dissonances,” and “good melody that best suits the text.” In the latter style, Bernhard thought it was also possible to distinguish a “normal” usage, in which language and music enjoy equal rights, and the “theater style,” in which speech is transformed into music. In general, composition proceeded from counterpoint. Bernhard supplemented his theory of counterpoint with the theory of figures. He used the term figures to include various possibilities for the “use of dissonances, so that the latter are not only not offensive but become pleasant.” Shortly after Bernhard, the organist and theorist Andreas Werckmeister (1645–1706) exercised a lasting influence on the history of music with his treatise Musical Temperament (Musikalische Temperatur). He was the first to propose a “well-tempered tuning.” Temperament in music means the slight adjustment of acoustically pure (or “just”) intervals so that the impurity is spread over an entire scale. It is based on the fact that twelve consecutive fifths (each 3:2) exceed seven consecutive octaves by a small interval—the “Pythagorean comma.” Thus the purity of the octaves cannot be present in an instrument that is tuned in perfect fifths. Tempering compensates for this impurity. There are various possibilities for implementing such tempering. The one that eventually came to dominate was an equal distribution of the impurity among all twelve intervals within an octave, which is called equal temperament. Although Werckmeister’s tuning was not equal temperament (it tempered four of the fifths but retained eight pure fifths), it did enable keyboard players to move through all twelve keys of the chromatic scale with satisfactory musical results. It was thus the penultimate step before equal temperament, which makes it possible to compose in major and minor scales using all the tones and halftones in any key register. For the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), a contemporary of Werckmeister, music was the hidden arithmetical activity of the soul, which is unconscious of the fact that it is calculating (“Musica est exercitium arithmetica occultum nescientis se numerare animi”). Despite the fact that the soul is not conscious of its activity, he posited that it is aware of the effects—joy at concords and discomfiture (Beklemmung) at dissonances. For Leibniz, music primarily affected the senses, and the pleasurable perception of the sounds was decisive for him. Although he did not believe that music served

Introduction



a moral purpose, he thought that listening to music always engendered an elementary understanding of sonic harmony, which also revealed the harmony of the world. Thus music embodied the possibility of knowing the world through the help of the senses. The world order accessible to us via the intellect is also transmitted by the senses. Hence for Leibniz there was no contradiction between the senses and the intellect. Indeed, he affirmed, nothing satisfies the human senses more than musical harmony. On the whole, however, it is the wondrous harmony of nature that is the most fulfilling, and music already gives a good impression of this natural harmony. Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), a younger contemporary of Leibniz, was a writer and the cantor at the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, where J. S. Bach would later succeed him. Kuhnau claimed that no explanations are required for music that is understandable through association (birdsong, the chiming of bells). In contrast to the traditional theory of the affects, he argued in his satirical novel The Musical Quack (Der musikalische Quacksalber) that music that is not programmatic in nature does not always produce the same affective response in listeners. According to Kuhnau, no necessary link can exist between emotion and musical structure, as the theory of affects predicated. Therefore, for him, the musical program was important as a means of access to music. Following Kuhnau, the next important German writer was the music journalist and composer Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), also known by his pseudonym Aristoxenos Junior. Mattheson stood at the beginning of the turn toward a “galant” aesthetic that now concentrated not on the intensive expression of the passions but rather on clear, elegant melodies full of sensuality. This music, also known as stil galant or “galant style,” emerged in contrast to the polyphony of the early German baroque. Mathematics, which Mattheson attacked in his numerous writings, was counterposed to rhetoric and the craft of good taste that characterized the galant homme. This contradiction mirrored a social contradiction, namely, that between the clergy and the aristocracy. The stil galant was characterized by the predominance of melody with a simple homophonic accompaniment. Melody was regarded as natural and elaborate harmony as artificial, as Mattheson explained in The Core of Melodic Science (Kern melodischer Wissenschaft). In The Perfect Composer (Der vollkommene Capellmeister), he noted that a melody can exist without chords, but chords without a melody have little meaning. In this work, Mattheson also offered a detailed consideration of melodic beauty. Mattheson’s The Newly Discovered Orchestra (Das Neu-eröffnete Orchestre) clearly shows that he valued the senses above reason. The question of whether fourths are consonant or dissonant was decided, for him, by the musical context, not by any relation to mathematical or physical realities. His tendency to



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be critical of reason explains the high value he placed on opera, for in opera it is possible to represent a multiplicity of feelings in a very natural manner. In the same treatise Mattheson also provided a characterization of the different keys, relating them to specific emotions. Another work, The Discovering Orchestra (Das forschende Orchester), evinces the importance Mattheson granted the emotions, for the task of music, he maintained, is to provide joy, through which the soul becomes virtuous. These ethical effects are grounded in cosmic harmony. Mattheson also recognized the place of instrumental music but emphasized that the emotional responses that are meant to be transmitted should be made clear in the melody. The composer Johann Joachim Quantz (1697–1773) offered significant reflections on musical aesthetics in his On Playing the Flute (Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversière zu spielen). In opposition to the philosopher and art critic Gotthold Lessing, who continued to support the unity of emotion, i.e., the requirement that a work should reflect only a single affect, Quantz favored a variety of emotions (empfindsamer Stil, or a style of sensibility). He linked this style with the alternation of consonances and dissonances. For him, the constant excitation and quieting of the emotions was in fact the purpose of music, whereby he demanded both that the performing musician should have the feeling he was attempting to convey, and that the musician should imitate the passion that he sought to transmit. In contrast to the French encyclopédistes, who had little respect for instrumental music, Quantz upheld the position that all kinds of music can express feelings. He also compared the contradiction between art and nature to that between polyphonic and “galant” music. In the same period, a noteworthy dispute broke out between Johann Abraham Birnbaum (1702–62) and Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708–76). Scheibe, the publisher of the important journal The Critical Musician (Der critische Musikus), criticized Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music did not seem “galant” to him. Bach’s music, in his view, was not sufficiently natural, but much too artificial and confusing. One might be awed by the efforts that this music had evidently required, but those efforts would have been expended in vain. This was no way to reach listeners, Scheibe insisted. Birnbaum, a rhetorician and friend of Bach, responded to this criticism by defending Bach and putting forward the theory that art could beautify nature, that it was by no means true, as Scheibe maintained, that the beauty of nature was perfect and that all art could do was to imitate it. The philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) is credited as the founder of aesthetics, the science of sensual cognition. Beauty, according

Introduction



to Baumgarten’s Aesthetica, is sensual perfection. Music, painting, and poetry are “efforts to realize the perfection that enchants our senses and is judged by the understanding as a confused representation of the truth.” In contrast to Leibniz, for whom the cognitive faculty of the intellect coincided with that of aesthetics, in Baumgarten’s writing, as in Enlightenment discourse generally, intellect dominates. Baumgarten held that all cognition begins with sensual experience but that it was necessary to transcend it. Another contemporary of Baumgarten was the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87). In the foreword to his second reformist opera, Alceste (1767), Gluck explained that in opera the music was intended to support the emotions expressed in the vocal text and should not disturb listeners with pointless decoration or interrupt the action of the drama. Truth, clarity, and simplicity should rule. Expression should not be sought for its own sake, for to accomplish this required no art, but only observation of worldly events. On the other hand, Gluck attached quite a lot of importance to truth in expression, for the arts should not be only a means of satisfying desire. Music without expression counted for very little. Expression without melody was at least something, but not yet sufficient. Expression and melody should be unified, pure and simple; to accomplish this was art’s task and its problem. Gluck’s cautions in regard to opera were even more specific. For example, there should not be too great a difference between arias and recitative, so as not to inappropriately disturb the mood they evoked; and innovations should be introduced only if the situation naturally called for them. Shortly after Gluck, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–95) likewise wrote on aesthetic issues in opera. In the first issue of the journal he founded, the Critical Musician on the Spree (Der Critische Musikus an der Spree), Marpurg made clear that in operas the dramatic plot was of primary importance and the music should play only a supporting role. He criticized Italian opera for attaching too little importance to the dramatic element and placed great value on the musical possibilities of the German language. Gluck was orientated to the ideals of antiquity, which he understood in the sense of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, as demanding simplicity in musical style. Marpurg’s contemporary Christian Gottfried Krause (1719–70) was an important proponent of “galant” aesthetics. In his treatise On Musical Poetry (Von der musikalischen Poesie), which treats the relationship of poetry and music, he explained that music’s primary task was to spread joy. However, this . Winckelmann (1717–68) introduced the German public to classical Greek art, which he saw as embodying the ideal of “noble simplicity and silent grandeur.”—trans.

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effect could be achieved only by music created by thinking beings. To increase the pleasure afforded by a piece of music, either new melodic elements or repetitions would have to be added. The first procedure would, however, be more effective than the second. Since Krause attached great importance to pleasure, he valued the judgment of lay listeners, who in his view had no prejudices concerning technical characteristics and could therefore judge music purely on the basis of pleasure. What moved them would also please musicians. Krause also emphasized music’s ethical aspect, that is, its influence on the human character. Vocal music, in his view, had the strongest impact, since the ethical ideas that were contained in the text could be transmitted via the link to music, the emotional medium per se. Shortly thereafter, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), who was the grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809– 47), defined art, in his Observations on the Sources and Relations of the Fine Arts and Sciences (Betrachtungen über die Quellen und die Verbindung der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften), as the sensual expression of perfection. Works of art can be either natural or arbitrary (willkürlich) signs. Natural signs speak to the senses of sight and hearing, arbitrary ones to the spirit. Music, sculpture, painting, and dance produce natural signs, poetry and rhetoric arbitrary ones. The various arts can be united only if one of them dominates the others. The expression of feeling in music is intense. Yet it evokes only a vague feeling, which can be individualized by adding arbitrary signs like those that are present in poetry. In making any fundamental changes within an opera, one must observe the rules of composition, since in opera the main focus is on the music. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the first influential German music historian emerged in the person of Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818). Forkel’s major work was his General History of Music (Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik). Around 1800, people began for the first time to revive older works and to perform existing works continuously. Forkel recognized this developmental innovation and participated actively in the movement; he helped prepare the rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach by writing a biography of the composer. The biography clearly illustrates his ideal of a composer. The articles that he wrote for the compendium Music-Critical Library (Musikalisch-Kritische Bibliothek) show that he favored purely musical values and was against any form of imitation. At the same time, he continued to support certain aspects of traditional music theory. This mixture of old and new elements is characteristic of music aesthetics at the end of the eighteenth century.

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German Writing on Music after Kant In regard to reflections on music, as on art in general, the decisive consideration that shaped the musical landscape after Kant was the inclusion of aesthetics as a subdiscipline of philosophy. Originally, as its founder Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten defined it, aesthetics (Gr. Aesthesis, “perception, sensation”) was a gnoseologia inferior, i.e., an inferior form of cognition, whose task was to make sensuality, which had been denounced by the entire Cartesian tradition, socially acceptable, as it were. Sensuality, according to Baumgarten, may not be the primary medium of cognition, much less an ultimate means of establishing necessary boundaries for cognition, but cognition must start with sensuality—in order then to transcend it. Kant’s use of the term aesthetics must be seen against the background of the tradition established by Baumgarten. The “transcendental aesthetics” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), whose first edition appeared in 1781, is concerned not with art but with the so-called a priori forms of intuition, space and time, the preconditions of all cognition. Moreover, Kant’s own philosophy of art appeared not under the concept “aesthetics” but rather as part of a “critique of judgment.” At the center of this critique, which must be understood as no more than an exploration, is the “judgment of taste,” with which the viewer or listener encounters the artwork. Thus Kant still stands within the eighteenth-century—and specifically the French—tradition of judging works of art and art objects according to their external effect, which was viewed as their substance. For Kant, art is a prominent object of the faculty of judgment, but not the only one. The “critique of teleological judgment,” which forms the second part of Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), deals with the purposiveness of nature. This shows that in Kant aesthetics was as yet not a philosophy of art. The 1790s, which overlapped with the last remnants of the tradition of Baumgarten, were marked by the identification of the “idea of the beautiful” with the concept or discipline of aesthetics—an identification that nevertheless had its roots in the tradition Baumgarten had begun. The idea of the beautiful as the central object of aesthetics was launched not so much by post-Kantian idealist philosophy, whose chief representative Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762– 1814) gave art and aesthetics only a very subordinate role in his system, as by Friedrich Schiller, a nonphilosopher, who was exceptionally important in this regard. Schiller conceived the idea of the beautiful in the Platonic tradition, as a real spiritual essence that is the metaphysical substance, the embracing aspect of individually beautiful things—a conception that elicited Goethe’s opposition. Transcendent as such, i.e., supersensible, the idea of the beautiful

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becomes the object of a metaphysics of beauty that is not the same as the philosophy of art but that locates its principal field of inquiry within the latter. What is decisive in this paradigm change is the fact that art’s substance is no longer seen or sought in its external impact, i.e., the relation of the object to the viewer or listener, which can be further grounded in the requirement that it imitate nature. Instead, it is to be sought in something supersensible, quasi concealed, that reveals itself to the senses all the same. This concealed essence, the idea of the beautiful, is, once again in the tradition of Plato, interwoven with the idea of truth—truth understood not as a truth of something but as the truth—whose medium (and this is as un-Platonic as one can imagine) art now becomes. As a revelation of the world’s innermost relations, art is now accorded the highest metaphysical dignity—a train of thought that reaches its acme in idealist philosophy after Fichte, as practiced by Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775–1854) and the romantic philosophy of art. The central point of departure for romanticism is the notion of the unsayability of the absolute, a category that is decisive for romantic philosophy and aesthetics. The absolute, which must be understood as that which has its requirements only in itself and not in anything else (Lat. absolvere, “to separate”), and which, in other words, is not mediated by anything else but instead mediates everything else—this absolute is considered as something that conceptual knowledge is unable to grasp. For the romantics, art, as a phenomenon that is not subject to reason or discursive thought, now becomes the realm in which the world of the supersensible is revealed. Thus the romantics, adopting the all-embracing term Poesie, exalt art to the highest level, where it becomes cognition. Schelling calls it the “organon” of philosophy—a move that would have been unthinkable in the eighteenth century. In this context, it is not surprising that music, an art form that on account of its immaterial nature is particularly stubborn in its resistance to conceptual cognition, becomes especially important. The romantic philosophy of music, as it finds exemplary expression in such works as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s (1773–98) Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar (Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders), written in collaboration with Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), or E. T. A. Hoffmann’s (1776–1822) Beethoven reviews, regards music as the shattering revelation of a higher world, a world that calls forth divine tremors in its listener and remains concealed from everything else. As the now forgotten philosopher of art Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–66) put it, music celebrates a “religious service of art.” Thus, on the one hand, romantic music philosophy emphasized or conjured up the vocal music of the sixteenth century as a lost realm of purity. Its interest in this music—later known as classical vocal polyphony—was an aspect of its return to medieval Christianity in general. On

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the other hand, these developments crystallized the real essence of romantic music philosophy as a philosophy of purely instrumental music, for example in the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Until well into the eighteenth century, autonomous instrumental music, which had first sprung into existence within the consort music of the late sixteenth century, had been regarded as an impoverished phenomenon lacking verbal specificity. Philosophers of aesthetics looked askance at it. In general, composers and performers of instrumental music were advised to orient themselves toward vocal music, to imitate it. But in romantic music philosophy the lack of verbal specificity, which had previously been criticized as a deficiency, led instead to the enthronement of instrumental music as the medium of the ultimately boundless and utterly infinite, outstripping all earthly limitations. An art that is concerned with the unsayable, the divine, is incompatible with the notion of craft, of didacticism, i.e., with the idea that the essential techniques for the production of great works of art could be learnable and communicable. In the notion of the artist who is merely an organ through which a higher reality speaks, who, in other words, is a genius—for this is precisely what the concept of genius implies—romanticism proves to be the inheritor of the aesthetics of the so-called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) era. The concept of genius also essentially implies autonomy. This means that the artist, in creating, is subject only to his own artistic conscience and is emancipated from every sort of functionalism. It is no accident that the romantic reformulation of the concept of genius occurred at a time—the turn of the nineteenth century—when the first great composer appeared who was autonomous, that is, no longer in the service of a patron. It was Beethoven who, despite all economic need, embodied this autonomy like no other. (Haydn was still subject to various constraints.) Richard Wagner (1813–83), who was the perfect embodiment of the nineteenth century (not only in music), exemplified another aspect of the concept of genius as sharply opposed to any concept of craft or apprenticeship. This was the sometimes overwhelmingly strong tendency to avoid talking about music in technical terms. The technique of a work, its concrete structure, was viewed as something “merely” technical, incapable of capturing music’s spirit or metaphysical essence. The technical analysis of a work was looked down upon, along with all of music theory as a discipline; it not infrequently figured as something ignoble that sullied this essence. In reading Wagner’s writings—and Wagner was an ambitious and extremely productive writer—one is struck by the fact that all the thousands of pages he devotes to music, including his own, contain almost nothing about its compositional structures, about “how it is made.” That art, on the whole, is not presented as something made, that it should erase the traces of its emergence, is the core of the romantic philosophy of

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art, which—to state it pointedly—is philosophy and not art. In the service of perfect illusion, art is meant to abrogate itself as art and become immediate metaphysical reality. Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) also registered the increasing importance of instrumental music in his Lectures on Aesthetics (Vorlesungen zur Ästhetik), which he gave in the 1820s. He presented the lectures explicitly as a philosophy of art, as would later become customary. Hegel sees music’s gradual self-liberation from all prescribed content partly as a result of the necessary historical unfolding of the art form itself, which frees itself of all content, i.e., becomes free itself, as instrumental music. At the same time, he also sees in this development an increasing loss of substance, an arbitrariness, an emptiness of content and nonspecificity to which music is exposed. In other words, the necessary historical gain, which Hegel recognizes, also means a loss, a decline of music—this in sharp contrast to romanticism, which Hegel rejected. A forward-looking element of romantic art philosophy was the appearance, shortly after Hegel, of an aesthetic of ugliness. It came about in response to so-called “black romanticism,” a phenomenon of literary late romanticism that can be seen, for example, in the works of Lord Byron (1788–1824) or E. T. A. Hoffmann. This tendency saw in the transcendent world not only something divine but also something demonic, and it incorporated this darkness, undiluted, in its artistic representations. Traditional aesthetics had considered ugliness as an offense against good taste and moreover as nonartistic, unsuccessful, and meaningless. It was not Karl Rosenkranz’s (1805–79) explicitly titled Aesthetics of Ugliness (Ästhetik des Hässlichen) of 1853, but Christian Herrmann Weisse’s (1801–66) System of Aesthetics as the Science of the Idea of Beauty (System der Ästhetik als Wissenschaft von der Idee der Schönheit), which appeared in 1831 during Hegel’s lifetime, that launched ugliness as an essential, indispensable category of aesthetics. Weisse was the first aesthetic philosopher for whom ugliness was not fundamentally identical with nullity. Thus he took account of the artistic significance of “ugly” works such as those produced by Byron, for example, and laid the foundation for artistic modernity. That ugliness, for Weisse, still appears as a dialectical moment of the idea of the beautiful, in other words, is ultimately to be overcome by beauty, results from his transposition of Hegelian methodology onto aesthetic categories. Weisse’s epochal revaluation of the category of ugliness would become a generally accepted prerequisite of modernity, even if the modernists failed to acknowledge Weisse owing to his Hegelian provenance. The move was also of decisive significance for the reception of late nineteenth-century music (not to mention its twentieth-century variety), in which nonstylized, nonsoftened, open ugliness—at least according to the criteria of the eighteenth century—would play

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an ever greater role. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, which in its day elicited violent opposition, is an early case in point. From the romantic philosophy of art direct lines of development lead to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), the last great representative of German systematic philosophy, the notion of philosophy as a unified structure built on a single axiom. In Schopenhauer’s system as a metaphysics of the Will, Will, which is ultimately the will to life, is the innermost essence of the world, the Kantian Ding an sich. According to Schopenhauer, the arts represent ideas in the Platonic sense. Contemplation, that is, immersion in the artistic object, and with it the abandonment of the self that becomes one with it, redeems us momentarily from the raging, blind, irrational drive—the mode in which the Will manifests itself in us. Music occupies a special place in Schopenhauer. Based on its irrational structure, that is, its nature as something immaterial and nonreasonable (in terms of the criteria of discursive logic), it does not represent mere ideas, like the other arts, but becomes a copy of the Will, the innermost essence of the world itself. In the process, Schopenhauer also strongly emphasizes the concept of genius, of the artist as an organ through which this innermost nature of the world makes itself known. That artistic abilities are emphatically incapable of being learned is not only a romantic legacy for Schopenhauer but must also be seen in close connection with his conception of the unchanging nature of character and the merely apparent nature of the world’s historicity and development. The romantic philosophy of art, in its Schopenhauerian guise, is the immediate point of departure for the early aesthetic conception of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), as he laid it out in The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik), which appeared in 1871. For Nietzsche, art is the “actually metaphysical activity of man.” Consequently, his philosophy is an “artists’ metaphysics,” his conception of the Dionysian a prophetic statement, indeed an Annunciation, that is legitimized as the reconstruction of a lost archaic Greek culture. The individual who in Nietzsche’s view fulfilled this historically and philosophically loaded vision was Richard Wagner. Wagner himself was concerned with the restitution of the ancient Greek concept of mousiké, a restitution that was nevertheless meant to absorb aspects of an irreversible history as a part of its determining content. The Greek concept mousiké originally embraced the inseparable unity and mutual relationship of logos or language, expression, gesture or embodiment (dance), and sounding phenomena. That the later concept of music embraces only part of all this—the sounding phenomenon—may seem familiar to us, but historically it reflects a process of abstraction. Wagner understood the various individual arts as such historically evolved abstractions and countered with

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his conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork), by means of which he believed he had overcome that abstraction. In Wagner’s view, music history moves with historical-philosophical necessity toward the Gesamtkunstwerk. Thus the “abstract” art form of music becomes more and more conscious of its own inadequacy, its “incompleteness,” and points beyond itself as an art form. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a milestone in Wagner’s historicalphilosophical construction. Wagner saw Beethoven’s turn to language in the last movement as an instinctive recognition that the work had more to say than mere music could provide. Hence Wagner, who was polemically minded, denied the individual arts their historical-philosophical dignity, and even— this is hardly an exaggeration, if one takes his ideas seriously—denied them their right to exist. At the same time, it should not come as a surprise that he emphatically rejected the label “music drama,” which was already applied to his operas during his lifetime. To him “music drama” suggested a specific relationship and an equally specific weight assigned to the individual arts—not their overcoming in the new unity of the Gesamtkunstwerk. The concept of opera he thought stuck in mere genre, and a marginal one at that. Wagner himself spoke simply of “drama,” which for him was never a purely literary or poetic category. His “drama”—unromantically—is a historical-philosophical construction opposed to the first totalization of technological development, i.e., rationality, in the nineteenth century. In his view, drama speaks fundamentally to the audience’s feelings; it is not supposed to give the viewer anything to think about in a literal sense. He opposed immediate feeling, “common humanity,” to reason, as that which divides up, or separates. “The intellect is an agitator,” as Jakob Burkhardt said. Emotion was supposed to restore genuine community, real social identification, which in Wagner admittedly took on a national coloration. This approach is reflected, for example, in his detailed requirements that all the action reported by any of the actors onstage actually have taken place during the course of the “drama,” so that the events are not merely rationally perceived by the audience’s reason but emotionally charged and thus can be “felt” anew. The material medium of Wagner’s restoration is Germanic myth. Ultimately, the task of music in Wagnerian drama—and this is genuinely romantic—is to speak the unsayable, which exceeds the consciousness of the actors onstage. Wagner’s conception had an enormous impact. His notion of music as a phenomenon of abstraction that needed something else in order to come to itself provided the essential underpinnings for the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt (1811–86). Liszt saw his music less as a musical illustration of poetic material—of Goethe’s Faust, for example—than as a poetic continuation of the original subject matter, i.e., as creative activity in the most emphatic sense

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of the word. Wagner, Liszt, and the composers around them saw themselves as the “New German School” and provoked a bifurcation of the musical public that influenced nearly all writing and reflection on music in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. The opposing tendency was represented by the musicologist and critic Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904), whose book On the Musically Beautiful (1854) argued that music not only does not need an “extramusical” content but is not even capable, as music, of representing or articulating it. As Hanslick saw it, composing is “a work of the spirit in material that is capable of spirit,” and “tonally moving forms are the one and only content and subject of music.” His formalist conception could be considered a kind of classicism, as represented at the time by Brahms, whom Hanslick claimed for himself. Here the concept of classicism refers to Viennese classicism. The late nineteenth century was characterized, in general, by the establishment and institutionalization of isolated, specialized fields of research with narrowly defined subject areas. This trend was reflected philosophically in Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1833–1911) historicism, which introduced a sharp division between the natural sciences and the humanities, both methodologically and in regard to their content. He coined the term Geisteswissenschaften, literally “sciences of the spirit,” for what we today call the humanities. Historicism essentially means awareness of the fact that every phenomenon is something that has come to be, i.e., that is determined in a specific historical way; hence also awareness of its relativity. No longer are judgments made about phenomena without regard for the basis of such judgments; instead, the explanation of each individual phenomenon means its insertion into the system of historical coordinates, under exclusion of any claim to the absolute. Max Weber (1864– 1920), the great German sociologist, would later stand for the “value neutrality” (Wertfreiheit) of scientific research. For Dilthey himself, historicism, the awareness of the historical contingency of all existence, meant nothing less than the “liberation of mankind,” namely, its liberation from all ideology and from everything prescribed as absolute. With this, apart from marginal attempts at restoration, the era of systematic philosophy comes to an end. Philosophy itself becomes an increasingly specialized field that is urged to stay within its limits, a tendency that reaches its consummation in the twentieth century despite influential counterproposals such as the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) or the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger (1889–1967). The late nineteenth century was also the time in which musicology became institutionalized—and regimented. Its institutionaliza. The eighteenth-century epoch during which Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven lived and composed in Vienna is referred to as Viennese classicism.—trans.

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tion, following its recognition as a theoretical discipline beginning in the late eighteenth century with the appointment of university music directors, was essentially the achievement of Guido Adler (1855–1941). Adler’s programmatic essay of 1885 is entitled “Scope, Method, and Goal of Musicology” (“Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft”). What the separation into individual academic specialties—a result of the unceasing historical unfolding of rationality—means for music philosophy, in banal terms, is its division into music and philosophy. For academic philosophy, especially in the context of phenomenological and ontological conceptions, music is the object of a unique structural lawfulness that philosophy deals with descriptively; it is not a subject that has any immediate connection with the systematic questions and fundamental problems of philosophy. What the unleashing of a rationality oriented toward the natural sciences, and the simultaneous downfall of metaphysics, along with the extermination, with but few residues, of transcendence (a general characteristic of the twentieth century), seem to mean for music in its immateriality is no less than that its irrational, undefined character—once the basis of its “divine” destiny—renders it utterly unsuitable as a medium of philosophical cognition. It devolves into the immanent disciplines of musicology and music theory, which, in opposition to the nineteenth century, have a tendency to emphasize technical structures as the substance of music and to criticize music philosophy and even aesthetics as a whole as mere pointless speculation. In the twentieth century, in fact, hardly any conceptions emerge in which music forms an aspect of central philosophical intention. Where this does happen, among thinkers of Marxist provenance such as Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) or Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69), their point of departure presupposes a metacritique of scientific rationality. For Bloch, music, especially in its greatest works, points the way to a homeland that no one has ever visited—utopia, whose radical social otherness music, in its own otherness, i.e., its immateriality, anticipates. For Adorno as well, music’s aconceptuality is the decisive point of departure. The concept, in Adorno’s view, is not the objective, humanly cognized specific essence (Sosein) of an object or a thing but an instrument that exerts power over things so as to make use of them. The concept makes it seem as if the concept of a thing and the thing itself are immediately one and the same. In the service of the continuously increasing domination of nature, the concept, imposing its own dominance on phenomena, forces them into identity with it and thus distorts them—the structure of social totality. In contrast, music, as aconceptual cognition, is a medium that conserves the memory of those aspects of phenomena that the concept suppresses and exterminates—the nonidentical. Thus music becomes philosophical cognition in the most emphatic sense, cognition of what

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could ultimately be otherwise. In the process, Adorno’s conception responds particularly to the most decisive event in recent music history, the suspension of tonality by Arnold Schoenberg and his students around the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Technically, this means the suspension of an accepted system of relations that, as something preexisting, i.e., a priori, had always already guaranteed the fundamental constructs of meaning in a work, as a precondition of composing. For the “new,” atonal music, the question of meaningful structure is posed anew—this music asks the question of internal consistency in a fundamentally new way in each and every work. Each work must provide its own legitimization, since it does not only say something specific, as an individual work, but must also—systematically—create its own language, a language that would also have to be learned anew by each listener. In a society, however, in which tonality has become second nature, which in other words—ahistorically—identifies tonality with music itself, the new music is rejected and its reception replaced by denunciation. In other words, music becomes a marginal phenomenon. For Adorno, however, this very fact, the social taboo that surrounds it, becomes music’s chance. In refusing its total integration into a whole that forces everything to fit its own standards, music, in its resistance, preserves remnants of experience that suggest the image of something entirely different, something that Adorno, closing the historical gulf between form and content, wishes to find nowhere but in the “innermost cells of technique,” in individual works. Since even the reception of the great music of the past is preformed by the structures of social totality, so that the aspects of that music that might be decisive are rendered mute, it is only with the help of the new music that one can learn, or reconstruct, the meaning of the musical tradition, and hence of all music. Music philosophy is thus “possible only as philosophy of the new music.” In regard to the significance of music as the object of reflection, Adorno’s remark in Philosophy of New Music (Philosophie der Neuen Musik), which appeared in 1949, is telling. He said it should be read as an “excursus” to Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung), the central philosophical work of the Frankfurt School. The specialized limitation of academic musicology, on the one hand, and of philosophy itself, on the other, has assumed such logically complete form since Adorno’s death that all attempts at philosophy of music run the risk, from their inception, of being seen as mythical, or as bad speculation. That musicology is nothing but its own history, as Carl Dahlhaus (1928–89) never failed to emphasize (and Dahlhaus himself embodied it like no other), is less a scientifically oriented position within a specialized field than the objective reality of this scientifically oriented field itself. Whether this reality could change at a future time it is impossible to say at present.

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The Musical “Work” The work concept is of central significance for any reflection on music. Nowadays, when we speak of “pieces” of music, we generally think of them as musical “works.” And yet Gregorian chants, for example, may not be considered works, even if today we perform them in concert and they seem to possess many of the characteristics that would justify their classification as works. In order to make clear what should be understood by the concept of a musical “work,” a precise characterization follows. It will include an explanation of why not every piece of music is a musical work; there can also, for example, be functional music. Functional music embraces various types of music such as background music or sacred music. To make clear that there are other kinds of music besides the musical work, background music, and sacred music, we will briefly look at the meaning of such expressions as folk music, stochastic music, ritualistic music, and film music. A musical work has the following characteristics: it is autonomous, original, and unchangeable; was created by a composer who is also considered to be the decisive author; stands in the foreground when it is performed; and was created for eternity. What does this mean concretely? Let us first consider the concept of “autonomy.” The ancient Greek expression “autonomy” is composed of the third-person reflexive pronoun auton, which means him-, her-, or itself, and the substantive nomos, which can be translated as “rule,” “maxim,” or “law.” Thus autonomy means “a law unto itself.” As a corollary of being “a law unto itself,” musical pieces that are created in this way must be original. It is only on the basis of the requirement that music be autonomous that Vivaldi could be criticized for having written three hundred very similar concertos. In the eighteenth century, this requirement did not exist. At that time, a piece of music was meant to fulfill the formal requirements of its genre in an exemplary way. An autonomous piece of music, however, should represent its own genre and exceed the existing norms of the genre. Every work, in the ideal case, represents the specific solution of a specific aesthetic problem. The principle of autonomy is found in all musical works; by contrast, the fact that the principle of autonomy is present in a given composition does not make it possible to conclude that it is a musical work. Another type of music based on the principle of autonomy is “stochastic music.” This concept, which was introduced by the composer Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), refers to pieces of music that are created according to the autonomy principle but that provide only certain guidelines and leave other aspects to chance. Pieces produced in this way, such as Xenakis’s Metastasis, are not unchanging. Once a musical

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work is created, by contrast, it always remains identical to itself. Its unchanging character also refers to its independence from the constantly changing social circumstances that influence its reception. The possibility of the existence of such works is called into question by twentieth-century reception aesthetics, for example. The opposite of “autonomy” is “heteronomy,” which means “the law is given by another.” All functional music is heteronymous. However, there are different kinds of functional music. The musical background at dance festivals (or coronations) is heteronymous because this type of music is used as a means of affirming the dance (or glorification of the king). Film music is heteronymous because the music is used to enhance the effect of the individual film. Sacred and ritualistic music are heteronymous because in these forms the pieces are used as a means of praising God. Sacred music differs from music for ritual to the extent that the former produces fixed compositions (Palestrina), while the latter provides only certain requirements within which it is possible to improvise, for example in playing the ragas and talas of Indian music. Like music for ritual, folk music was variable until the nineteenth century, since it was generally transmitted orally until then. Folk music is also heteronymous, because it serves purposes such as enjoyable social gatherings. It should also be stressed that this kind of music was not created by a composer—another important characteristic of a musical work. Now that we have defined the concept of a musical work as differentiated from other types of music, we need to address the question of when this understanding—which remains dominant—became accepted and what practical changes it wrought for composers. Within musicological discourse, there are two dates that are usually given. One is the year 1537, when Nicolaus Listenius published his Musica. The second is the beginning of the nineteenth century. Musica, by Nicolaus Listenius, is mentioned because it arguably contains the first mention of the concept of a work. Scholars conventionally cite Listenius’s phrase “opus perfectum et absolutum,” which embraces all the important aspects of the work concept. The expression “absolute” (absolutum) implies all the characteristics that are later included in the concept “autonomous,” for example, originality; and the adjective “perfect” (perfectum) makes it clear that the piece in question has been created to be unchanging for all time, another important characteristic of musical works. The appearance of the work concept in Nicolaus Listenius’s Musica may indicate that it was already recognized at that time; yet if we look at music history and see what kind of music was being composed in the sixteenth century and what changes took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there can be no doubt that the work concept did not become dominant in

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practice until this much later period. A number of changes over time clearly indicate this development. Until well into the eighteenth century, music was very frequently linked to a particular purpose, in other words, there was an occasion for its composition such as a coronation, a great festival, or a church holiday at which the music played more of a background role. Concert halls, in which people gathered for the sole purpose of listening to music, did not become popular until the nineteenth century. Today, the particular significance of concert halls is most evident when blues, flamenco, or Gregorian chant is performed there. All these kinds of music were originally functional, and their performance in concert halls introduces them into a context that was created not for them but for the performance of musical works. Prior to the nineteenth century, music was generally not performed again after the occasion for which it had been specially composed. The idea that musical pieces outlive their composers was not yet generally accepted. In the paragraph on Forkel, we mentioned the turn toward music history and the revival of older works that began around 1800. In 1809, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy arranged for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to be performed for the first time since its premiere a hundred years earlier. Franz Liszt (1811–86) also had a decisive impact on the revival of older piano literature. Before 1800, no one paid much attention to composers. More important was the event or the person for whom the music was created in a given instance. Thus, published scores gave greater prominence to the music’s dedicatee and the date on which it was performed than to the composer. Composers acquired the rights to their pieces for the first time in 1793, in France; before that, the rights belonged to the publishing houses. In Germany and England, this development came even later. Around 1800, composers first gained the right to decide for themselves to whom a piece of music should be dedicated. Haydn only softly voiced the wish to be able to grace his own works with a dedication; many of his contemporaries would never have dared to go even that far. The fact that on printed scores the date of the music’s performance was more prominent than the date of its composition also illustrates the transformation from functional music to musical works. It was due to Liszt’s advocacy that more musicians’ names came to be printed in concert programs. Since musical pieces composed before 1800 generally had a function to fulfill, they also had to be playable. It was only with the emergence of the concept of the musical work that the possibility of unplayable or not yet playable works appeared. An example is Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier Sonata,” of which he himself said that pianists would be able to play it only in fifty years. Since every important event needed to have its own music and composers had very little time in which to create a piece of music, they often had

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recourse to musical material that was already available and that they wove in. This custom (the use of parody), which later came to be frowned upon, was long regarded as self-explanatory. Around 1800, Kant granted autonomy to aesthetic judgment. With this, he drew a clear line of demarcation between aesthetic judgment and morality. In his aesthetics, the new status of art, and thus also of music, was rendered significantly clearer than it could be in the formulation “opus perfectum et absolutum.” Thus, it is clear that the musical work achieved dominance only at the beginning of the nineteenth century; today it is still of central significance. In the twentieth century, however, the work concept was subjected to a radical critique—for example in aleatory procedures, which introduce the element of chance.

References

General Introductions Abert, Hermann. Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik: Ein Beitrag zur Musikästhetik des klassischen Altertums. 1899; Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1968. ———. Die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters und ihre Grundlage. 1905; Tutzing: Hans Schneider Verlag, 1964. Asmuth, Christoph, Gunter Scholtz, and Franz-Bernhard Stammkötter. Philosophischer Gedanke und musikalischer Klang: Zum Wechselverhältnis von Musik und Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1999. Bimberg, Siegfried, and Werner Kaden, eds. Handbuch der Musikästhetik. Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1979. Bowie, Andrew. Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. ———. From Romanticism to Critical Theory. London: Routledge, 1997. ———. Music, Philosophy, and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Feil, Arnold. Metzler Musik Chronik: Vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1993. Fubini, Enrico. History of Music Aesthetics. Trans. Michael Hatwell. London: Macmillan, 1990. Guanti, Giovanni. Estetica Musicale: La storia e le fonti. Milan: La nuova Italia, 1999. James, Jamie. The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe. London: Abacus, 1993. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. Trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Lippman, Edward. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Münxelhaus, Barbara. Pythagoras Musici: Zur Rezeption der pythagoreischen Musiktheorie als quadrivialer Wissenschaft im lateinischen Mittelalter. Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Verlag für systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1976.

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Pfrogner, Hermann. Musik: Geschichte ihrer Deutung. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1954. Simpson, David, ed. The Origins of Modern Critical Thought: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism from Lessing to Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Smits von Waesberghe, Joseph. Musikerziehung: Lehre und Theorie der Musik im Mittelalter. Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1969.

Musical Literature Bonds, Mark Evan. Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. ———. Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Butt, John. Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Chantler, Abigail. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Aesthetics. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Chua, Daniel K. L. Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Dahlhaus, Carl. Esthetics of Music. Trans. William W. Austin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ———. Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988. ———. “Plädoyer für eine romantische Kategorie.” In Schönberg und andere: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Neuen Musik. Mainz: Schott, 1978. Daverio, John. Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology. New York: Schirmer Books, 1993. Dilthey, Wilhelm. Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik: Aus den Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1957. Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich. Die Musik und das Schöne. Munich: Piper, 1997. ———. “Opusmusik.” In Musikalisches Denken: Aufsätze zur Theorie und Ästhetik der Musik. 3rd ed. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1999. Goehr, Lydia. The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. An Essay on the Philosophy of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gramit, David. Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Hamilton, Andy. Aesthetics and Music. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007. Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music. Trans. Geoffrey Payzant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. Hoeckner, Berthold. Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus. Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier: Blätter aus dem Tagebuch eines reisenden Enthusiasten. In Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Hans-Joachim Kruse. Vol. 1. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1976. Irwin, Joyce. L. Neither Voice nor Heart Alone: German Lutheran Theology of Music in the Age of the Baroque. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Kepler, Johannes. Harmonices mundi [Linz, 1619]. Translated into English as The Harmony of the World. Trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, and J. V. Field. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997. Lissa, Zofia. “Über das Wesen des Musikwerkes.” In Neue Aufsätze zur Musikästhetik. Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1975.

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Listenius, Nicolaus. Musica. Ed. George Schünemann. Berlin: Verlag von Martin Breslauer, 1927. Moreno, Jairo. Musical Representations, Subjects, and Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau, and Weber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Morrow, Mary Sue. German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Neubauer, John. The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in EighteenthCentury Aesthetics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Paddison, Max. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music. London: Kahn and Averill, 1996. ———. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. “Music as Ideal: The Aesthetics of Autonomy.” In The Cambridge History of NineteenthCentury Music, ed. Jim Samson, 318–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Spitzer, Michael. Metaphor and Musical Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Sulzer, Johann Georg, and Heinrich Christoph Koch. Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch. Ed. Nancy Baker and Thomas Christensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thomas, Downing A. Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Tomlinson, Gary. Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Wagner, Richard. Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Trans. William Ashton Ellis. 8 vols. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1892–99. Rpt., New York: Broude Brothers, 1966. Weisse, Christian Hermann. System der Ästhetik als Wissenschaft von der Idee der Schönheit [1830]. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1966. Wheelock, Gretchen A. Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humour. New York: Schirmer, 1992. Will, Richard. The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Kant C h r is t el F r icke

Brief Biography Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, as the fourth child in a journeyman’s family. He was a frail child, who enjoyed the special care and attention of his mother. He was raised in the spirit of Pietism, the Lutheran Protestant religious tendency that valued individual piety above participation in religious practices as prescribed by the church. After attending the Königsberg Latin School for eight years, he entered the University of Königsberg at age sixteen. There he studied the natural sciences along with philosophy. His family was barely able to support him during his seven years of study at the university, and he lived in very impoverished circumstances. After leaving the university without having sat for the final examination, he found work as a private tutor on remote East Prussian estates. Kant utilized the period of his employment as a private tutor to save the money he needed to embark on the scholarly career that he sought. In 1755, he submitted his master’s thesis, written in Latin, to the philosophical faculty of the University of Königsberg. In the same year, after defending a second academic thesis, also written in Latin, he joined the faculty as an instructor. For many years after that, Kant continued to teach as a lecturer while pursuing his academic projects. During his years as a lecturer he already achieved a certain fame as an author and academic teacher. Johann Gottfried . Now Kaliningrad in Russia.—trans.

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Herder was among the prominent individuals who attended his lectures (in 1762). Much later, his lectures were attended by Moses Mendelssohn (in 1777) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (in 1791). Kant declined invitations to teach at other universities (he was offered a position at Erlangen in 1769 and one in Jena in 1770), in the hope that he would be given a chair at the University of Königsberg. This ambition was realized in 1770, when he was named holder of a chair in logic and metaphysics. In connection with this promotion, he composed his third academic thesis. This thesis, which is known as Kant’s “inaugural dissertation,” bears the title “On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World” (“De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis”). It contains two cornerstones of Kant’s critical transcendental philosophy: (a) the distinction between a phenomenal, sensually perceptible, recognizable world and an intelligible and as such nonperceptible world, and (b) the subjectivization of space and time as “forms of intuition.” Kant’s thought, initially, had remained within the framework of German academic philosophy as established by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. He developed his own theory of human cognition and the corresponding capacity for moral action and the judgment of the beautiful, sublime, and organically purposive (the central themes of his philosophy) under the influence, above all, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. After the publication of his inaugural dissertation, however, Kant the scholar fell silent for ten years. This is the period during which he worked out his critical transcendental philosophy. In 1781, Kant at last published Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft). This was followed, alongside many other smaller publications, by Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1795), the second, significantly revised edition of Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1787), Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft,1788), and finally, in 1790, Kant’s third and final critique, Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft), which completed the system of his critical philosophy. The first section of Critique of Judgment contains the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment,” the Kantian theory of our judgment of the beautiful and the sublime. Kant had already concerned himself with the beautiful and the sublime in the precritical essay “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” which was first published in 1764 and went through eight editions during Kant’s lifetime. Additional remarks on the topic of aesthetics are also contained in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, 1798). The public response to the publication of Critique of Pure Reason and the following two critiques was rather disappointing for Kant. Some reviewers

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found fault with the obscurity of Kantian discourse; others criticized its content. But in the meantime Kant’s fame was growing; he was elected to membership in the Academies of Science of Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Siena. Nevertheless, Kant’s transcendental philosophy never became the basis of a real school. The critical encounter with his thought led to German idealism, whose chief representatives, apart from the above-mentioned Johann Gottlieb Fichte, were Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. But during his lifetime there were also some adherents of his philosophy, among them such prominent poets as Friedrich Schiller and Heinrich von Kleist. Kant never married. He died on February 12, 1804, in his house in Königsberg. He had never left East Prussia.

Philosophy and Art Kant places the theory of cognition at the beginning of his critical transcendental philosophy, in Critique of Pure Reason. He conceives this theory as a response to the question “How are a priori synthetic judgments possible?” What he understands by synthetic judgments are statements about a realm of objects whose truth depends on the objects’ constitution (Beschaffenheit). Such statements are a priori when the insight into their certainty (Gewissheit) does not rely on experience. Kant’s answer to the leading question of his theory of cognition is: By applying pure concepts of the understanding (Verstand) to pure intuitions (specific mental presentations in space and time), a priori synthetic judgments are possible. A priori synthetic judgments, whose object is the cognizable world, include the general principles of Newtonian mechanics, among others. Human beings, as cognizing subjects, impose these principles on the world that they recognize. The proof of the validity of these principles of natural law is the task of transcendental philosophy and must be brought independently of any experience. Kant grants these principles the status of natural laws, whose unrestricted validity for the world of cognition we can know with absolute certainty. The price of this guarantee is his distinction between the world that is the object of our cognition and is organized according to these laws (for Kant the so-called “world of appearances”), and the world of the things-in-themselves, which is not accessible to our cognition. Empirical, . Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 55. . The German word is Vorstellung. Although Vorstellung, in general usage, means “representation,” I here follow Werner S. Pluhar’s standard translation of Kant’s third critique as “presentation.” The latter gives a good sense of the technical meaning in which Kant uses Vorstellung to refer to a mental image that is presented to the mind for cognition.—trans. . Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 323 et al.

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objective knowledge of the world is possible, according to Kant, only within the framework of these a priori laws and presupposes their proven validity. However, according to Kant, there are diverse phenomena that we experience whose presence in the world of phenomena cannot be explained by these world-determining laws. These phenomena include the freedom of human action, the beauty of objects of our intuition, and the organic purposiveness (organische Zweckmässigkeit) of living beings. Human actions and their freedom are treated in Critique of Practical Reason; beauty and organic purposiveness in Critique of Judgment. The consciousness of the freedom of our will puts its impress on our selfunderstanding as moral subjects who act in the world. To the extent that a particular kind of causality is manifested in free will, free will is also subject to a law. However, the law in question is not one of the laws of nature, which apply only to the world of phenomena, but rather the moral law, which we, as autonomous beings, impose on ourselves and on the world of our free and moral actions. According to Kant, human beings are lawgivers not only as cognizing subjects but also as morally acting subjects. Moral law, however, does not refer to the world of phenomena, for that world is causally organized and therefore mechanistically determined; it permits no free actions. Rather, the rational determination of our free will to want only those things that correspond to the moral law is mediated by what Kant calls the feeling of “respect” (Achtung). We desire and act in accordance with moral law out of respect for this law. Unlike the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, the feeling of respect is “a feeling that is self-induced by means of a rational concept”; in this feeling we experience the determination of our will by pure practical reason in accordance with the moral law. The project of Kant’s third critique follows immediately from his theories of theoretical cognition and moral action. Since human beings appear as lawgivers not only in their role as cognizing subjects but also in their role as subjects of moral action, and yet, in the two cases, function as lawgivers in relation to quite different worlds, the problem arises of how to explain the possibility of free and, as such, moral action in the causally determined world of phenomena. To solve this problem and explain the phenomena of beauty and organic purposiveness, Kant, in Critique of Judgment, develops a theory of “purposiveness” (Zweckmässigkeit). What he understands by “purposiveness” is a structure or order that we observe, by means of our judgment, in objects of sensual intuition, and whose creation manifests purposes and processes that . See Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 104. . Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 202 (author’s emphasis).

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are nevertheless not explainable by mechanical rules. Objects of this kind are purposive in the sense that they appear to be “artifacts,” without our being able to give mechanical rules for their creation; their generation as “artifacts” is explainable, finally, only by recourse to a superhuman being, for example, God. Such an explanation has no basis in experience; hence every judgment about this kind of purposiveness of an object, about an object as “artifact,” betrays a certain hypothetical character. Purposively organized “artifacts” manifest intentionally rational actions on the one hand, and rule-governed behaviors on the other. This thought allows us to try to comprehend Kant’s hope of developing, on the basis of the purposiveness of “artifacts,” a possible way of holding together in the mind the incompatible orders of the causal/mechanistic world of phenomena and the free world of moral action. Evidence that such a project has prospects for success is provided by those objects that we use our faculty of judgment to judge as “artifacts”—the beautiful objects of nature on the one hand, and living organisms on the other. Kant’s theory of the beautiful is conceived as a theory of judging the beautiful by means of the faculty of judgment. Judgments made in this way are what Kant calls “judgments of taste.” These judgments, according to Kant, represent “something remarkable . . . for the transcendental philosopher.” They are remarkable because they unite in themselves two characteristic qualities that, taken individually, are associated with fundamentally different sorts of judgments. Like cognitive judgments, which are based on the application of objective concepts to intuitions, judgments of taste are linked to a claim of general validity. But at the same time, judgments of taste are not based on the application of objective concepts to intuitions, for “beauty is no concept of an object.” Rather, these judgments—and in this respect they resemble judgments about pleasure and displeasure, which are valid only for the subject who is doing the actual judging—are based on a feeling. Kant uses the term “disinterested liking” (interessenloses Wohlgefallen) to characterize the feeling that causes us to judge the object whose intuitive presentation transmits this feeling as beautiful.10 But how can a judgment of taste, which is based on a mere feeling, nevertheless be justifiably linked to a claim of general validity? This is the leading question of Kant’s aesthetics, and in answering it he takes his orientation from the model of the specific feeling of respect for the moral law. Like this feeling of respect, the disinterested liking induced by the beautiful is a feeling in which the feeling subject becomes conscious of an intellectual . Kant uses the Latinate term Artefakt here.—trans. . Critique of Judgment, § 8, 57f. . Ibid., § 17 N, 232. 10. Ibid., § 2, 45.

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achievement. While in the feeling of respect we become conscious of the determination of our will by pure reason in accordance with the moral law, in the disinterested liking that is induced by the beautiful we are conscious of the free play of the cognitive powers of the imagination and understanding. This thought holds the key to the answer to the above-mentioned leading question of Kant’s aesthetics. The aesthetic judgment of an object, as in the case of all cognitive judgments, is an achievement of our cognitive powers. The difference is that in the case of cognition these powers operate under the guidance of an objective concept, whereas in the case of judgments about beauty they may play freely, that is, without the guidance of a specific objective concept. In this “free play,”11 what is at issue is the judgment of the beauty of an object as intuitively presented, which Kant describes as a “form of purposiveness in the presentation of an object . . . without any purpose” for the object.12 In other words, what we experience as beautiful is that object whose intuitive presentation (anschauliche Vorstellung) seems to have been formed with a purpose in mind, but which we nevertheless cannot think in the form of an objective concept of a specific purpose. Where, in an object, we notice this form of purposiveness without a purpose, our freely playing powers of cognition enter into a state of harmony, and it is this state that we experience as disinterested liking and that causes us to judge the intuitively presented object to be beautiful. Kant also characterizes the beauty of an object as the “presentation [Vorstellung] of aesthetic ideas,” whereby he understands under “aesthetic idea . . . that presentation of the imagination that gives much to think about, without any determinate thought, i.e., concept, being able to be adequate to it, and that, consequently, no language reaches and can render understandable.”13 Judgments of taste concerning the beauty of an object, which rest on the free and playful activity of the cognitive powers, can justifiably be linked to a claim of general validity. That we nevertheless experience, time and again, that others do not agree with our judgments of taste concerning the beauty of objects is based on the difficulty of distinguishing between manifestations of real, intersubjective taste and of (merely) private taste, which Kant also calls “sensual taste” (Sinnengeschmack).14 Although he describes our experience of beauty as “disinterested liking,” Kant’s conception is cognitivist, and not emotivist. Kant avoids the now common expression “aesthetic experience” (Erfahrung); he reserves the word “experience” for empirical cognition. Beauty, for Kant, is a phenomenon that we 11. Ibid., § 9, 61. 12. Ibid., § 17, 232. 13. Ibid., § 49, 182–83. 14. See ibid., § 8, 57–58.

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experience primarily in natural objects. Initially, artworks do not play a central role in his aesthetics. One can adduce systematic reasons for this. Artworks are artifacts in the literal sense, and this applies especially to creations of the fine arts. The latter are objects produced by human beings according to mechanical rules—objects that were formed with a purpose in mind that we can very well think in the form of a specific, objective concept. But their character as artifacts in the literal sense works against their beauty. Natural objects, on the contrary, are not produced by humans according to a mechanical rule; therefore, as artifacts, they come close to the conditions required for beauty. Because they are not artifacts in the literal sense of the word, we can more easily experience them as “artifacts,” as purposively organized products of the rational activity of a nonhuman being. Nevertheless, Kant does not deny that there are beautiful objects in the realm of human artifacts, i.e., works of fine art. Kant explains the possibility of objects that are artifacts and that we nevertheless experience as beautiful with the help of his theory of genius. Geniuses are human beings who have a natural talent that allows them to be guided in their productive activity not by objective concepts and mechanical rules but rather by concepts and rules that are given to them by “nature,” in other words, by concepts and rules of the type manifested in beautiful natural objects: “Genius is the innate capacity [ingenium] through which nature gives to art its rule(s).”15 Insofar as artifacts that are produced by a genius manifest an order and a structure similar to those found in beautiful natural objects, these artifacts are beautiful and are thus works of fine art. From the perspective of the aesthetic experience of beauty, we consequently find, in Kant, a rapprochement between nature and art: “Nature was [called] beautiful if it simultaneously looked like art; and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of the fact that it is art, and yet it looks to us like nature.”16 With this move, the project of a rapprochement between the structures that organize the world of phenomena and the structures of the world of freedom and morality takes on a promising aspect. This applies to the aesthetic experience of beautiful objects of nature, in particular, but also to (genius-created) art. Kant does, then, speak of “beauty as a symbol of morality.”17 Along with the experience and judgment of the beautiful, Kant, in his aesthetics, deals with the experience and judgment of the sublime. This was quite customary in eighteenth-century aesthetics. In the sublime, according to Kant, we experience the limitlessness of an object (primarily nature). Kant characterized this experience as an ambiguous feeling: a feeling of aversion that 15. Ibid., § 46, 174–75. 16. Ibid., § 45, 173–74. 17. Ibid., § 59, 225–27.

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the nonpurposefulness of the sublime creates for judgment, but also a feeling of pleasure in experiencing the greatness and power of a sublimity in whose presence we nevertheless feel secure. Kant distinguishes between the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. Examples of what we experience as mathematically sublime include “formless mountain masses, piled up over each other in wild disorder, with their pyramids of ice, or the dark raging sea”;18 examples of what we experience as dynamically sublime include “bold, overhanging, as it were threatening cliffs, thunderclouds piling up in the sky, approaching with lightning bolts and thunder, volcanoes in their entire destructive power, hurricanes in all the devastation they leave behind, the limitless ocean in a state of fury, a mighty river’s tall waterfall, and the like.”19 Kant’s theory of art is not conceived as a phenomenology of the various arts. It is oriented toward determining the place that the judgment of beautiful objects in nature and art occupies in his system of transcendental philosophy. Accordingly, in working out his aesthetics, Kant was not very reliant on the authentic experience of art. His examples from the realms of the various arts do not reveal any great connoisseurship and provide citations of choice to those who deride and do not want to come to terms with the complicated system of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. This is particularly true of his on the whole brief comments on the art of music (in Critique of Judgment, in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in posthumous manuscripts, and in lecture notes by his students). Kant’s biographer Arsenij Gulyga describes Kant as a music lover who attended concerts but did not play an instrument himself.20 Kant mentions specifically that he was disturbed in his “business of thinking” by the singing of the prisoners in the jail that was located near his house.21 His remarks on music reveal no acquaintance with the composers of his time, although he would certainly have had the opportunity, in Königsberg, to hear works by Mozart or Haydn, for example.

Art and Music As was customary in eighteenth-century philosophical aesthetics, Kant, too, introduces a division of the arts in accordance with their various genres. In so doing, he proceeds according to the principle of the “analogy of art with the 18. Ibid., § 26, 112–3. 19. Ibid., § 28, 120ff. 20. Gulyga, Immanuel Kant, 230ff. 21. See Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 53, 200.

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type of expression that human beings utilize in speaking, in order to communicate with each other as completely and perfectly as possible, i.e., not only according to their concepts, but also according to [their] sensations [Empfindungen].”22 He himself admits that this distinction is not grounded in the system of transcendental philosophy or even in his theory of the judgment of the beautiful. The principle governing this distinction is one of several that are possible and is chosen from among them in an ad hoc manner. Kant distinguishes three moments in human speech: words (articulation), gesture (gesticulation), and tone (modulation). Accordingly, he distinguishes among three types of fine arts: the speaking arts (rhetoric and poetry or literature), the visual arts (sculpture and painting), and the “art of the play of sensations (as external sense impressions).”23 In the realm of the “art of the beautiful play of sensations (as external sense impressions),” he further distinguishes between the “artistic play of the sensation of hearing” and that of sight. The art of the beautiful play of the sensation of sight is “the art of color” (Farbenkunst); that of the beautiful play of the sensation of hearing “the art of sound” (Tonkunst).24 The characterization of the arts of color and sound as a “play of sensations” causes him to ask the question whether, in the case of the fine arts and music, we are even dealing with fine arts (schöne Künste), i.e., with works of art whose beauty we experience as disinterested liking, through the free play of our cognitive powers. For sensations, coming through the senses, are predestined to call forth feelings of pleasure or displeasure—feelings, in other words, that can be grounded only in privately valid judgments of sensual taste, not the generally valid judgments of taste that are mediated by the faculty of judgment. His answer to this question is not unambiguous: “one cannot say with certainty whether a color or tone (sound) are [sic] merely pleasant sensations or already, in themselves, a beautiful play of sensations and as such convey a liking for their form, in aesthetic judgment.”25 If the sensations of color and sound are understood only as material, physical effects on the respective receptor systems, then they can generate only feelings of pleasure or displeasure. If, on the contrary, these sensations are regarded as intuitions in the form of space or 22. Ibid., § 51, 189–90. [The word Empfindung, which Kant uses here et passim, was a key word of eighteenth-century philosophy and culture. Beyond the more narrow sense of physical sensation, which is the leading meaning in Kant’s writing on aesthetics, it also had a broader meeting, designating the cultivation of feeling. In this respect, Empfindung played a role very similar to that of the English word sensibility in the works of such writers as Shaftesbury and Thomas Hutcheson, and later, perhaps most famously, in Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.—trans.] 23. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 51, 190. 24. Ibid., § 51, 193. 25. Ibid., § 51, 194f.

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time, and hence as bearers of a formal structure, then they offer (as temporally proportioned vibrations of the air, in music, and as correspondingly spatially structured sensations, in color) sufficient points of contact to generate a play of sensations, a mental activity of the cognitive powers and thus of aesthetic judgment utilizing the faculty of judgment. Kant himself gives priority to an understanding of the sensations of sound and color as bearers of a formal structure, and hence to the opinion that in the arts of color and music we have to do with the fine arts (schöne Künste).26 According to Kant, not only can compositions of various colors and tones be artistically beautiful (this is not very controversial in any case), but so can single colors and sounds. At the same time, Kant does not exclude the possibility that simple and complex sensations of color and sound can also occasion pleasant feelings. Kant’s view that we can experience as beautiful only those physical sensations that exhibit a formal structure, i.e., a specific spatial or temporal order, has frequently caused him to be seen as representing a formalistic aesthetics. However, this is not convincing. What is important to Kant is to ascertain that only those sensations can be experienced as beautiful that provide sufficient points of contact to give free play to the cognitive powers. But free play can come about only when the given sensation exhibits a minimum of complexity, for free play is a playing of cognitive powers with diverse orders of the given complexity. This complexity comes with specific temporal (in the case of music) or spatial (in the case of colors) orders, since all sensations are given in the forms of intuition: space and time. However, this does not mean that Kant reduces the complexity of a sensation, which is the determining factor in the judgment of its beauty, to the complexity of spatial or temporal structures. With his distinction among literature, sculpture and architecture, music, and painting, Kant makes it possible to include music that lacks any accompanying words or gestures—absolute music—among the fine arts. In this context, he also speaks of “music without text” as a “free beauty.”27 At the same time, Kant does not exclude the possibility that various expressive possibilities could be combined in a single artwork, in other words in a Gesamtkunstwerk: “Oratory can be combined with a pictorial representation of its subjects and objects in drama; poetry with music in song; the latter, as well, with pictorial (theatrical) representation in an opera; the play of sensations in a musical work with the play of figures [Gestalten] in dance, etc.”28 On the basis of his distinction between various genres of the fine arts, Kant ultimately establishes the following rank among them: poetry or literature 26. See also Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 142–43. 27. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 16, 77. 28. Ibid., § 52, 195.

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takes first place, for “it expands the heart [Gemüt]29 by setting the imagination free; and within the limits of a given concept, among the unlimited variety of possible forms that harmonize with it, presents the one that combines its representation with a wealth of thoughts to which no use of language is fully adequate, and is thus elevated to the level of ideas.”30 Kant places music in second place, as that fine art that “comes closest [to poetry] and hence also allows itself to be combined with it very naturally.” He justifies this decision with the following consideration: “For although it (music, the art of sound) speaks through pure sensations without concepts, and thus does not, like poetry, leave something behind to think about, still it moves the heart [Gemüt] more variously and, although only in passing, yet more intimately; but is admittedly more enjoyment than culture (the play of thoughts that it arouses incidentally is merely the effect of a mechanical association, as it were) and has, judged by reason, less value than any of the other fine arts. For this reason, like every enjoyment, it requires frequent change and does not bear recurrent repetition without leading to weariness.”31 In this context, Kant characterizes music as a “language of the emotions,”32 in agreement with an opinion that was widespread among music theorists of the eighteenth century, namely, that the primary task of music is to give expression to emotional sensations or affects.33 Without completing this first ranking, Kant goes on to consider a second ranking of the fine arts according to the criterion “of the cultivation . . . that they provide to the heart.” In this ranking, music—on account of its lack of conceptually describable contents—comes out considerably lower, namely, in last place behind poetry, painting, and sculpture.34 In this context, Kant accuses music of a “lack of urbanity,” because it “spreads its influence (on the neighborhood) farther than is demanded, and thus imposes itself, so to speak, and impairs the freedom of others, outside the gathering of music lovers.”35 Against the background of the Kantian distinction between feelings of pleasure and displeasure and the merely private judgments of sensual taste 29. Pluhar consistently translates Gemüt as “mind,” an interpretation that is theoretically possible but difficult to justify within the normal range of meaning of the term in English and that is inconsistent with the thrust of this passage, in particular. “Heart” is both more usual and more accurate here.—trans. 30. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 53, 196. 31. Ibid., § 53, 198f. 32. Ibid., § 53, 198f. 33. On the theory of music in the eighteenth century as “expression of sensibilities,” see, for example, Forchert, “Vom Ausdruck der Empfindung in der Musik.” On the meaning of music as “language of mere sensibilities,” see also the corresponding comments in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 47–48. 34. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 53, 199f. 35. Ibid., § 53, 199.

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that are based on these, on the one hand, and the more generally communicable disinterested liking on which judgments of taste concerning the beautiful are based, on the other, his ambivalent evaluation of music as a fine art is not surprising.36 On the one hand, Kant accords to music the status of a fine art, whose works engage our cognitive powers in a state of free play. This he does by emphasizing the structural, formal aspects of musical sensations. On the other hand, he understands music as the expression and trigger of emotions and thus as something that is more likely to allow us to experience feelings of pleasure than to stimulate our cognitive powers to engage in free play. But as a source of mere pleasure music is not a fine art—and from this perspective it cannot altogether surprise us when Kant compares the effect of music on its listeners to the effect of perfumed handkerchiefs, with which, when someone pulls one out of his pocket, that person “maltreats everyone around and near him and . . . requires them, if they want to breathe, simultaneously to enjoy”— for which reason the use of such handkerchiefs “is no longer fashionable.”37

Kant as Theoretician of Art and Music Malgré Lui Kant himself confesses that his distinction among the various artistic genres and his establishment of a ranking among them are not compellingly justified by his theory of the judgment of the beautiful, which analyzes this judgment as grounded in reflection on the form of purposiveness of an intuitively presented object. The significance of his aesthetics for a theory of music lies less in his brief comments on music as the art of sound and its contradictory, partly beautiful, partly pleasant effect on its listeners than in his theory of the cognitive judgment of the beautiful in general, and of works of fine art in particular.38 By defining a cognitive achievement of reflection, not mere intuition or mere feeling, as constitutive for the experience of beauty, he smoothes the way for a conception of understanding art as an understanding of signs. For reflection on the form of purposiveness without purpose of an intuitively presented object 36. See also Forchert, “Vom Ausdruck der Empfindung in der Musik,” and Moos, Die Philosophie der Musik von Kant bis Eduard von Hartmann. Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, correctly observes that Kant’s definition of the function of music as an expression of affects is historically contingent and not systematically grounded in his aesthetics (346); Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 57, 219. 37. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 53, 200. 38. Schueller, “Immanuel Kant and the Aesthetics of Music,” and Seifert, Christian Gottfried Körner (esp. 79), come to similar conclusions. Kant himself was clear about the fact that his aesthetics provided only the foundation for theories of the individual arts and in a letter to Johann Friedrich Reichardt of October 15, 1790, expressly stated that he wished that corresponding experts might develop theories of the various arts on the basis of the foundation he had provided; Kant, Gesammelte Werke 11 (Briefwechsel 1789–1794): 228ff. Seifert also cites this letter (Seifert, Christian Gottfried Körner, 79ff.).

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by means of the free play of the cognitive powers can be interpreted as reflection on this object as the sign of a secret language that embodies its meaning—in a manner comparable to the way an artifact embodies the intention of its producer, and hence a specific function. The question of the beautiful is, for Kant, ultimately synonymous with the question of what a work of art is.39 Beautiful is what can be understood in aesthetic reflection as the embodiment of a form of purposiveness without a purpose. And a work of art is a beautiful artifact. When it comes to the beauty of an object or its status as a work of fine art, what is decisive, according to Kant, is not merely what is intuitively given in the artwork and its qualities as a phenomenon but also, and above all, what we make of it in aesthetic reflection, in other words, whether we succeed in discovering within it a form of purposiveness without a purpose. Kantian, cognitivist aesthetics offers a point of departure for a theory of art that seeks the artistic character of a work neither in its place within a particular artistic genre, nor in its material qualities, nor in its appearance as a phenomenon, but in its character as a sign. The latter, however, is not given but must first be constituted by the viewer or listener. In other words, just like the semiotic character of an object, the artistic character of an object is not ontological but pragmatic in nature. Kant’s implicit answer to the question of what an artwork (as distinguished from a nonartistic object) is in general, and what a work of music (as distinguished from a mere sequence of tones or noises) is in particular, is then the following: Nothing that is given has the status of an artwork, but only something that requires an effort of aesthetic reflection to discover and interpret as a sign.40 Developments in the visual arts in the course of which works of art lose their beauty, or come to have nonartistic counterparts, can be made comprehensible on the basis of Kant’s cognitivist aesthetics, as can corresponding developments in new and contemporary music, whose works are concerned with the question of what music is. Kant’s theory allows every aesthetically successful artwork to give a new answer to the question of what art is.41 39. On the question of the connection between the theory of beauty and the theory of art in Kant, see also De Duve, Kant after Duchamp. 40. On the semiotic character of musical works and the Kantian foundation of this understanding, see also Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music and Realism in Nineteenth Century Music. Kant notes expressly that the question of what constitutes the beauty of music, i.e., what makes it an art, can also be understood as the question of what a mere tone [of music as an art] is “as distinct from sound and noise.” Critique of Judgment, § 14, 69f. 41. On Kant’s theory of music, see above all Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music (there, also, an overview of the discussion in the first half of the twentieth century); Parret, “Kant on Music”; Schubert, “Zur Musikästhetik Kants”; Seidel, “Zwischen Immanuel Kant und der musikalischen Klassik”; and Weatherston, Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant.

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Reception Ever since the publication of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s transcendental philosophy has attracted more opponents than imitators. Critique of Judgment occupies a unique position in regard to the reception of Kantian transcendental philosophy. The project of this book, to develop, with the help of the theory of the purposiveness of nature, an intellectual perspective for judgment in which the apparently irreconcilable contradiction between nature as it is perceived and human freedom can be overcome, was taken up and further developed by the idealist philosophers. The mediation of natural and rational order was also the concern of the major figures of German classicism. They were inspired, above all, by the Kantian thesis that beautiful objects in nature and art manifest holistic structures that are closely related to the structures that distinguish living organisms. It was against the background of Kantian aesthetics and moral philosophy that Friedrich Schiller developed his theory of the aesthetic cultivation of humanity, whose goal was beauty as “freedom in appearance” (Freiheit in der Erscheinung).42 A central concern of the response to Kant’s aesthetics was to further develop his theory of works of fine art as the products of geniuses, by coming up with theories of the individual arts. In 1795, Christian Gottfried Körner’s essay “On the Representation of Character in Music” (“Über Charakterdarstellung in der Musik”) appeared in the journal Die Horen. Körner, a friend of Schiller’s, was employed as a Saxon official but played a central role in the musical life of his era, especially in the years after 1785, in Dresden. His writings on music are quite significant for the reception of Kant’s music aesthetics. Körner developed his ideas in close agreement with Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen), which also appeared in 1795, but which mentioned music only marginally.43 He read Kant’s aesthetics as a theory according to which beauty is not found in the objects of nature as such, but is generated, instead, through the free play of a subject’s cognitive powers with the intuited presentation of an object. Under the influence of Schiller’s aesthetics, he saw it as his task to objectivize beauty, which Kant had understood subjectively, in other words, to make it comprehensible as a natural phenomenon. In doing so, Körner could rely not only on Schiller but also on the other two main representatives of German classicism, Herder and Goethe. Körner conceives beauty not (like Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten before him, in his Aesthetika) as the perfec42. Schiller, “Kallias, or Concerning Beauty,” 151. 43. Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, 150f.

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tion of an object but as a harmonious union of material and form, in which the creative power of a living being is manifested. In accordance with the classical idea of humanity, he understands beauty as an anthropological ideal toward which humans should strive for moral reasons. Körner assigns the task of giving expression to the ideal of beauty not only to the more narrowly defined arts of representation but to music as well. He understands the musical work not primarily as the source of pleasant sensations in its listeners but as a sign. In order to make musical signs understandable as specifically aesthetic signs, he defines them as “representations of characters.” He explains the concept of “character” as follows: “What we term character we cannot perceive immediately either in the real world or in any artwork, but only deduce from what is contained in the identifying marks of individual states. . . . The concept of character presumes a moral life, varied in the use of freedom, and in this variety a unity, a rule in this arbitrariness. . . . These characteristic traits include, in particular, such actions as stand opposed to the external circumstances, and for which we consequently are forced to seek a ground within the person.”44 With the concept of “character,” Körner is evidently attempting to render understandable Kant’s explanation of beauty as a form of purposiveness without purpose in an object. In other words, we interpret as aesthetic signs or artworks those objects that represent characters, i.e., that allow us to divine a formative intent that we nevertheless cannot immediately make understandable. What enables a musical work, in particular, to function as a sign that represents a character is, according to Körner, its embodiment of movements in sequences of tones. Sequences of tones—in contrast to mere noises or successions of noises—allow us to conclude that there is compositional intent, and are, therefore, manifestations of creative freedom: “Movement belongs . . . to the expressions of our freedom.”45 According to Körner, music, as a fine art, needs no signs other than mere tones and sequences of tones—in other words neither words (song) nor gestures (dance). With this, Körner, like Kant himself, accords to absolute music an autonomous place among the fine arts. Despite broad agreement on the part of his significant friends and contemporaries (Wolfgang Seifert mentions Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gottfried Herder, and Friedrich Schlegel along with Schiller and Goethe),46 Körner’s book remained without noteworthy influence on the subsequent development of musical aesthetics.47 44. Körner, “On the Representation of Character in Music,” 41ff. Author’s emphasis. 45. Ibid., 39. 46. See Seifert, Christian Gottfried Körner, 136. 47. Schiller criticizes Körner’s essay “On the Representation of Character in Music” for concentrating too much on form and thus on music as a fine art and for having, in the process, neglected

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A further proposal for developing a musical aesthetics with Kantian means was made by Christian Friedrich Michaelis. In 1792–93, Michaelis attended Schiller’s lectures on aesthetics, which focused on Schiller’s engagement with Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Michaelis’s two-volume On the Spirit of Music, with Respect to Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Über den Geist der Tonkunst—Mit Rücksicht auf Kants Kritik der ästhetischen Urteils­kraft), appeared shortly thereafter, in 1795 (volume 1) and 1800 (volume 2). In this work, Michaelis first adopts Kant’s distinction between the pleasant and the beautiful and then attempts to prove that music is to be considered among the fine arts, whose appropriate understanding requires a mental process in the form of the free play of cognitive powers. To complete this proof, Michaelis marshals three building blocks of Kantian aesthetics: the theory of aesthetic ideas that achieve representation in a beautiful object; the emphasis on the formal structure of musical works in contrast to their potential for moving listeners and thus inducing in them a state of pleasant sensations; and, finally, the understanding of music as a language for the expression of human emotions. Thus he writes: “Composition is now, as it were, the form of a language, through which the aesthetic idea of the whole of an indescribable wealth of ideas is expressed in accordance with a specific theme, which constitutes the emotion that dominates in the piece. Melody is the combination of tones in sequence into an aesthetic whole. Harmony is the accordant union of diverse, simultaneously connected tones. . . . Music expresses the aesthetic idea of this whole of an indescribable wealth of ideas by means of a proportionate tuning [proportionierte Stimmung] of the sensibilities.”48 Michaelis attempts to cram everything that is plausible about Kantian aesthetics into his theory of music. This goes so far that he attempts to secure a place in music, and its aesthetic reception, for the sublime and for sensibilities of the morally good.49 Specifically, Michaelis also takes the idea of genius that emerges from Kantian aesthetics and applies it to music. Musical works are creations of a genius.50 In the composition of musical works, what counts is not imitation but originality,51 and the composer does not have recourse to any rules of art that could guide him in his artistic creation.52 In 1800, Johann Gottfried Herder published his book Kalligone. In it, Herder, in a polemical tone, criticizes Kant’s Critique of Judgment, specifically the material parts of music on which rests the actual power that music exercises over its listeners. See Schiller, “Kallias, or Concerning Beauty,” esp. 146. 48. Michaelis, Über den Geist der Tonkunst, 11. Author’s emphasis. 49. Ibid., 21ff. 50. Ibid., 36ff. 51. Ibid., 75f. 52. Ibid., 79.

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his aesthetics. In Kant’s definitions of judgments of taste Herder sees only “emptiness” and “contradictoriness.”53 Herder also gives vent to his criticism of those who, until then, had expressed agreement with Kant’s aesthetics. He rejects the distinction between the beautiful and the pleasant, which is constitutive for Kantian aesthetics. Correspondingly, he considers the question that was so pressing for Kant and his musical-aesthetic adherents Körner and Michaelis, namely, whether music is merely a pleasing or also a fine art, to be meaningless. Since he does not distinguish between the musically induced feelings that are, in Kant’s sense, actually aesthetic and those that are merely pleasant, there is also no reason for him to distinguish between the formal characteristics of musical works (as the possible objects of aesthetic reflection) and their material characteristics (as triggers of pleasant sensations). Herder goes on to develop his ideas on musical aesthetics in express rejection of Kantian aesthetics.54 In his critique of the foundations of Kant’s aesthetics, Herder did not rob them of all future impact on the history of ideas. The nineteenth century soon saw the emergence of new music-philosophical aesthetics embedded in philosophical systems. The new aesthetic ideas were more or less directly engaged with Kantian aesthetics, but in their own view they were concerned less with reformulating or further developing Kant’s ideas than with replacing them with alternative theories. Among the new philosophical aesthetic theories, the most influential were those of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer. In his work On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music (Vom Musikalisch-Schönen—Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst), which appeared in 1854 and has enjoyed equal measures of attention and controversy, Eduard Hanslick does not rely on Kant. On the other hand, a certain debt to Hegel’s aesthetics is evident. Hanslick supports the thesis that “sounding, moving forms . . . , and they alone, are the content and object of music.”55 He mentions Kant only once, as an opponent of the view that music that does not make use of words or gestures, in addition to mere tones, also has content.56 Hanslick overlooks the fact that he could very well have found support for his theses in Kant. When he defines the content of music as “sounding, moving forms,” he refers implicitly to the 53. See Herder, Kalligone, 685. 54. On Herder’s comments on music and its reception in Kalligone, see especially ibid., 698–708 and 810–22. 55. Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, 83. 56. Ibid., 83. [On the translation of Hanslick’s phrase “tönend bewegte Formen,” see the essay on Schopenhauer in this volume, note 11.—trans.]

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distinction between the form and the content, or material, of musical sensation, which plays a central role in Kant’s explanation of the artistic character of music, including absolute music. Hanslick’s debates with his critics, including Hugo Riemann and others, in which the latter accuse him of musical formalism, are a kind of replay of a discussion concerning music’s character as art that Kant, in Critique of Judgment, had already to some extent formulated. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century does a new engagement with Kant’s philosophy in general, and his aesthetics in particular, emerge. In the works on philosophical aesthetics of the neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer, to name only two examples, engagement with Kant’s aesthetics plays a central role. For the aesthetics of music, in particular, the works of Suzanne Langer, a student of Ernst Cassirer, deserve special mention. Carl Dahlhaus has pointed out that Kant, with his transcendental philosophy and his theory of cognition, in particular, created the central prerequisites for a cognitivist aesthetics.57 If it is not the world in itself that we recognize, but a world of appearances whose order bears the impress not only of nature, existing independently of human beings, but also of the forms of human intuition and thought, then it makes sense, alongside objective cognition of the world, to allow for other cognitive means of understanding the world—for example aesthetic or artistic means. On this basis, it must be conceded to the makers of art that they, too, in their works, are contributing to the mediation of our understanding of the world, although their means of artistic expression are different from those of everyday and scientific cognition. Dahlhaus argues for the validity of this view not only for literature and the fine arts, whose means of expression have obvious semiotic character, but also for music. Music has a semiotic character not only in the sense that it makes use of a system of writing, musical notation, but also in the sense that one can ascribe to musical sounds the character of signs. In their character as signs, musical sounds are related to other expressive means of art, such as natural language and graphic or painterly means. The basis for an understanding of the semiotic character of absolute music was provided, as well, by Kant’s transcendental philosophy and his cognitivist aesthetics.

57. On the debate over the formalism of Hanslick’s musical aesthetics and its Kantian roots, see also Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, and Abegg, Musikästhetik und Musikkritik.

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References

Kant’s Works Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Trans. and ed. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. Rev. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Gesammelte Werke. Edited by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. 29 vols. Berlin, 1902–83. Vols. 1–23 available on-line at: http://www.korpora.org/Kant/verzeichnisse-gesamt.html Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Arnulf Zweig. Ed. Thomas E. Hill and Arnulf Zweig. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

General Literature Cassirer, Ernst. Kant’s Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Crawford, Donald W. Kant’s Aesthetic Theory. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. De Duve, Thierry. Kant after Duchamp. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Guer, Paul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Gulyga, Arsenii. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans. Marijan Despalatović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Kalligone. In Werke, ed. Martin Bollacher et al. 10 vols. Vol. 8. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2000. Kemal, Salim. Kant and Fine Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pillow, Kirk. Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. Schiller, Friedrich. “Kallias, or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Gottfried Körner.” In Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics, trans. and ed. J. M. Bernstein, 145–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ———. On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Scruton, Roger. Kant: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Wenzel, Christian Helmut. An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

Musical Literature Abegg, Werner. Musikästhetik und Musikkritik bei Eduard Hanslick. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1974. Bonds, Mark Evan. “Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 44, no. 1 (1991): 57–91. Dahlhaus, Carl. Esthetics of Music. Trans. William W. Austin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ———. Realism in Nineteenth Century Music. Trans. Mary Whittall. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. ———. “Zu Kants Musikästhetik.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 10 (1953): 338–47. Forchert, Arno, “Vom Ausdruck der Empfindung in der Musik.” In Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Geschichte, Ästhetik, Theorie: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Danuser et al., 39–50. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988.

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Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music [1854]. Trans. Geoffrey Payzant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. Körner, Christian Gottfried. “On the Representation of Character in Music.” Trans. Robert Riggs. Musical Quarterly 81 (1997): 599–631. Michaelis, Christian Friedrich. Über den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften. Ed. Lothar Schmidt. Chemnitz: G. Schröder, 1997. Moos, Paul. Die Philosophie der Musik von Kant bis Eduard von Hartmann: Ein Jahrhundert deutscher Geistesarbeit. Stuttgart: Deutscher Verlags-Anstalt, 1922. Parret, Herman. “Kant on Music and the Hierarchy of the Arts.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 251–64. Reed, Arden. “The Debt of Disinterest: Kant’s Critique of Music.” Modern Language Notes 95, no. 3 [German Issue] (April 1980): 563–84. Schubert, Gieselher. “Zur Musikästhetik Kants.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 32 (1975): 12–25. Schueller, Herbert M. “Immanuel Kant and the Aesthetics of Music.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 14 (1955): 217–30. Seidel, Wilhelm. “Zwischen Immanuel Kant und der musikalischen Klassik: Die Ästhetick des musikalischen Kunstwerks um 1800.” In Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Danuser et al., 67–84. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988. Seifert, Wolfgang. Christian Gottfried Körner, ein Musikästhetiker der Deutschen Klassik. Forschungsbeiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 9. Regensburg: Bosse, 1960. Weatherston, Martin. Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant: Categories, Imagination, and Temporality. Renewing Philosophy. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

Schleiermacher G u n t e r S cholt z

Brief Biography Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768, the son of an army chaplain in Breslau. His early education was influenced by the Pietism of the Moravian Brethren or Herrnhüter, while his study of theology in Halle (1787–90) brought him into close contact with the Enlightenment. Although he did not become a direct adherent of either of these tendencies, both continued to have an influence on him, and later he would interpret heart and understanding as the two poles of a magnetic field. After a period spent working as a private tutor and assistant pastor, he served from 1796 to 1802 as chaplain at the Charité Hospital in Berlin. During this period he became acquainted with the circle of young romantics in Berlin; he even formed a close friendship with Henriette Herz and Friedrich Schlegel. His first book, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern, 1799) appeared during this period. It is considered the most important document of the romantic conception of religion and made him famous overnight. During his appointment as court chaplain in Stolp he published his greatest but also least approachable philosophical work, Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals (Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre, 1803), which prefigures his most important philosophical work, on ethics . Now Wrocław in Poland.—trans.

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as social and cultural philosophy. In 1804, his translation of Plato began to appear. The translation, which Friedrich Schlegel persuaded him to undertake, remains to this day the best-known translation into German. Following his appointment as professor of theology in Halle, he spent the years 1804–7 completing the edifice of his theological and philosophical thought. He was a frequent visitor to the home of composer Johann Friedrich Reinhardt; the musical experiences that resulted are recorded in his 1806 essay Christmas Eve (Die Weihnachtsfeier). After the university in Halle was shut down in 1807, Schleiermacher moved to Berlin, where he soon emerged as one of the most important figures in the Prussian reforms. From 1807, he was involved in the struggle to free Prussia from Napoleonic rule, an effort in which he collaborated, among others, with Karl Freiherr von Stein, Neithardt Gneisenau, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst. In 1810, Wilhelm von Humboldt appointed him to a position in the Ministry of Education. There he worked to advance Prussian school reform and was involved in establishing the University of Berlin, for which he wrote a foundational document, Occasional Thoughts on Universities (Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten, 1808). In 1811, he was appointed to one of the new university’s first professorships. His new, groundbreaking doctrine of theology, which he elaborated there, was documented, above all, in The Christian Faith (Der Christliche Glaube, 1st ed. 1821/22, 2nd rev. ed. 1830/31). The work takes account of the philosophical turn initiated by Kant by taking as its point of departure not God but religious consciousness. In church politics, Schleiermacher was committed to the union of Lutherans and Reform Protestants. From 1809, he served as pastor of the Church of the Trinity, in which capacity he strove for a broadly independent status for the church in relation to the monarchy. He was admitted to the Berlin Academy of Sciences and from 1814 served as secretary of the philosophy and philological history classes. As a member of the academy, he was also entitled to lecture in philosophy at the university. In these courses, which covered nearly all the philosophical disciplines—including aesthetics—he unpacked his philosophical thinking, which is otherwise accessible almost exclusively in the treatises he wrote for the academy. Schleiermacher, who had been married to Henriette von Willich since 1809, died in Berlin on February 2, 1834.

Philosophy and Art Since the nineteenth century, it has been customary to divide philosophy, which seeks to answer the most important, the “deep” questions of humanity, from the sciences, which have dispensed with this type of inquiry in favor of

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rational methods that make it possible to acquire factual, empirically verifiable knowledge. Schleiermacher, however, still worked within the older framework, distinguishing two forms of knowledge or science: theoretical (or “speculative”) knowledge, which owes its existence to reason alone; and empirical (or “historical”) knowledge, which is based on experience. The two realms, according to Schleiermacher, are not strictly separate and should become ever more closely interwoven. To this way of thinking, philosophy in the narrower sense is entirely coincidental with the theoretical knowledge that is productively created by the faculty of reason, while philosophy in the broader sense is “worldly wisdom,” namely, the essence of theoretical and empirical knowledge of the world. Following a division that goes back to classical antiquity, philosophy in the narrower sense concerns itself with three great complexes of questions: (1) it seeks to discover what knowledge and the conditions of knowledge are and shows how knowledge is arrived at; (2) it identifies the forms in which human reason unfolds and has been manifested historically, and in the process provides orientations for both ethical action and scientific work, thus also advancing the development of reason; (3) it seeks to understand the general structures and forces of nature. Schleiermacher dealt with the first complex of questions in his Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy (Dialektik) and with the second in his Ethics (Ethik) or in his Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals (Entwürfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre). He concluded that the third area, physics or natural philosophy, had been adequately addressed by Schelling’s students, particularly Henrich Steffens. Almost all the other philosophical subdisciplines with which he was concerned—state theory, pedagogy, philosophy of religion, hermeneutics, and aesthetics—derive from his philosophical ethics, for in its broad scope it is ethics that demonstrates how culture develops and how it should develop. It is a fundamental characteristic of Schleiermacher’s thought that philosophy, itself a science, can be perfected only in tandem with the experiential sciences, progressively. Therefore, while philosophy may take the form of a system, what it provides is only a preliminary framework. This philosophy does not draw a clear line of demarcation between facts and values, descriptive and normative statements, but instead attempts to articulate true reason insofar as it is in the process of coming into being in the various realms of human culture. In dynamic movement, philosophy strives to attain a goal that it can only approach ever more closely, namely, complete knowledge of the world and the establishment of a moral culture. The movement of knowledge is sustained . As Maciej Potepa confirms, Schleiermacher never wrote down his study of physics. See Potepa, Schleiermachers hermeneutische Dialektik, 38.

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primarily by communication; the partners in dialogue or discussion are every bit as important as the objects of knowledge. As a result, there also emerges the notion of an Erkenntnisgemeinschaft, a “community of knowledge”—what nowadays we call a scientific or academic community. Ultimately, however, thought and knowledge—like successful action—are made possible by the “absolute ground” (divinity, or God), which cannot be cognized or known but only felt. In this way, Schleiermacher’s philosophy occupies an intermediate position. It stands midway between the critical philosophy of Kant and the speculative idealism of Schelling and Hegel. With the former, Schleiermacher shares the idea of the unknowability of God; with the latter, the conviction that knowledge in the strict sense is possible only on the ground of the absolute, or God, without whom it would not achieve its object. However, departing from both of the other positions, Schleiermacher always attempts to mediate between philosophy and the experiential sciences, believing that both are ultimately reliant on each other. Departing from both, he then draws a distinction between theology and philosophy, while always attempting to prevent them from becoming mutually exclusive and contradictory—a muchdiscussed problem in nearly all Schleiermacher interpretations. Although Schleiermacher remained committed to the older, more allembracing concept of philosophy, nevertheless he held that humanity was defined not solely by its common faculty of reason but in equal measure by its feelings, a sort of individualized reason. Thus for him art, which is rooted in feeling, enjoys equal rights with science. In order to follow this line of reasoning, one must delve somewhat more deeply into the foundations of his philosophical ethics. Here, Schleiermacher starts from the premise that human beings enter into a reciprocal relationship with nature in two different ways. They use natural objects as “organs,” i.e., as means and tools for the realization of their purposes (for example to satisfy their natural needs). But, secondly, they also make use of nature as “symbols” and signs, in order to make themselves understood and to express their thoughts and emotions. Man’s own bodily nature gives him the immediate and principal means of doing this. He communicates his inner being with gestures, mimicry, and sounds; but then he can also develop many other kinds of signs (ornament, writing, monuments, etc.). The two activities—“organizing” and “symbolizing”—are not strictly separate from each other; they are merely two sides of the same coin. A house, for example, serves as shelter from the cold and the rain, while it also, through its style and construction, expresses the taste and technical skill of the builder or . Schleiermacher, Entwürfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre. For a general overview and orientation to the following, see Scholtz, Die Philosophie Schleiermachers, 114ff., 140ff.; and Schleiermachers Musikphilosophie, 57ff.

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owner. In this way it represents an organ or tool on the one hand and a sign and symbol on the other. While modern semiotics interprets culture essentially, and exclusively, as systems of signs, for Schleiermacher this, too, is only half the truth, merely one important aspect. Thus Schleiermacher—unlike semiotics—is concerned with individuality and the individual. All culture exists in a tension between general and individual interests or goals, and the moral character of a society consists in the balance between the two. Organizing activity can be the concern of the community (as, for example, in collectively organized work), or it can be left to be shaped entirely by the will of the individual (for example in the design and furnishing of a home). Similarly, the creation of symbols and signs sometimes has a more universal or identical character and sometimes more of an individual or differentiated one. For what is articulated in the symbols is both shared, common reason and individual emotion. The former is manifested in language, more precisely in the language of science, whereas the latter is manifested in art’s system of signs. Feeling (Gefühl) is a central concept in Schleiermacher, one that is addressed frequently in the literature but that is also controversial. In its primary meaning it refers neither to individual affects such as joy and fear nor to physical feelings like hunger and thirst. Rather, it refers above all to the form in which the individual becomes immediately aware of, possesses, and knows herself—as an individual unity of reason and nature. Feeling, in other words, is a relation to oneself, “immediate self-consciousness,” in Schleiermacher’s words. It is a form of cognition, but without concepts and without separating the subject and object of cognition. As reason generates and activates concepts, feeling mobilizes the imagination and, with its help, creates symbols, for example out of gestures and sounds. The result is a “unique and separate realm of signification of stimuli and of feeling.” This is the realm of art. The signs of the language of science do not refer immediately to objects; instead they refer to concepts and visual schemata. In an analogous way, artistic signs do not refer immediately to individual feeling; they refer to the imaginary figures that it generates. But the generative, productive ground of art is that “immediate self-consciousness.” When it is deepened and perfected, the human person becomes aware in it of her “unqualified dependence,” i.e., of her dependence on God. In art, in this way, the individual self, its individual self-cognition, is made manifest. Understanding this idea is not without its difficulties. For if, as we . Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 5ff. . Schleiermacher, Entwürfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre, 589.

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read, feeling, as inner, individual self-awareness, is ultimately “untranslatable” or “incommunicable” (unübertragbar), how can it produce comprehensible symbols? Indeed, why are its expressions even interesting and meaningful to others? The answer has to be that while the feeling, on the one hand, may be individual and bear witness to the specific state of an individual human bring, it simultaneously manifests the ground of all things and all thought, in other words, that which embraces all individuals. In some passages, Schleiermacher assumes that each individual bears the individuality of every other individual within, if only as a minimum, a capacity (Anlage), and that, therefore, art also always expresses something common to all humanity. But what is important for the possibility of understanding art, above all, is this: The imaginary products that are called forth by feeling cannot be cognized like mathematical ideas but must be “intuited” or “sensed” (geahnt). The individuality that is “revealed” in art therefore remains, for Schleiermacher, a “mystery” (Geheimnis)—a paradox of communication by means of artistic symbols. Nevertheless, mutual communicative exchange results in the construction of a certain commonality of feeling, in shared systems of symbols. The more precise relationship of art to science or philosophy is easier to grasp. In the same way that, in general, Schleiermacher recognizes only relative contradictions, these realms also overlap with each other. This is easy to demonstrate by means of an example. Even scientific treatises can be written in an artistic, perhaps even a poetic style—history comes to mind as an example— while on the other hand a work of art can express not only individual feeling but simultaneously also the world that people share in common. More difficult is the status of art in society. Schleiermacher’s ethical thought is not only a cultural but also a social philosophy. It seeks to identify the commonalities and the complex of institutions that result from the above-mentioned organizing and symbolizing activities. Organizing activity, viewed generally, leads to the state (the locus of right or law); viewed individually, it leads to the home (the locus of the family and sociability). General symbolization corresponds to scientific society, the academy; while individual symbolization corresponds to the church. In the latter, not only religion but also art is at home; Schleiermacher is not yet aware of any secular institutions devoted to art. Here there is an implicit problem that colors all of Schleiermacher’s reflections on art. Since religion is understood as a “feeling of unqualified dependence,” and feeling is also the ground of all art, religion and art enter into a close relationship and are assigned the same institutional role in society. Art—this must be said with . Ibid., 596ff.

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reference to the early On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, in particular—is at its core the language of religious feeling, and religiosity is at the root of all great, genuine art. This is theologically problematic for us, since it seems to be aestheticizing religion, but it is philosophically problematic as well, for one can doubt whether all significant works of art really express religiosity. We will return to this point with reference to the example of music.

Art and Music It was in the eighteenth century that a separate system of fine arts (schöne Künste, or “beautiful arts”) first emerged. Arts using very different media, derived from widely divergent realms, were brought together under one concept and distinguished from “mechanical arts,” such as handicrafts, on the one hand, and “free arts” in liberal arts—academic subjects—on the other. The new philosophy of art, for which the term “aesthetics” was in common usage following the work of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, took up the task of demonstrating what these arts had in common, what united them, as well as explicating their various genres and the differences among them. In 1746, Charles Batteux had already founded the fine arts on a single principle, the principle of the imitation of nature. But his work already contained a problem that cannot be overlooked: Can music, in the same way as, for example, painting, really be conceived of as imitation of nature? Ultimately, the concept of imitation must mean that the artwork contains a recognizable copy of an original image. Are the original images of music sounds of nature, for example birdsongs, or are they the affects of the human psyche? Does aesthetic pleasure consist in the re-recognition of these things? The discussion of the principle of imitation of nature devolves into questions such as these, and increasingly leads to the differentiation of three main realms within the fine arts: the visual arts (painting and sculpture), which represent objective, physically reproducible nature; music and dance, which express or awaken sensibilities (Empfindungen); and poetry, which represents thoughts and mental images (Vorstellungen) but can also express feelings. What unifies these arts is their freedom from purpose, their beauty, or the simple fact that they cause pleasure. Still, this does not yet reveal the common wellspring of all the arts, a question that focuses increasing attention on the artistic subject. The Kantian Karl Heinrich Heydenreich already says that art, in all its forms, is a “representation [Darstellung] . These or similar notions are already found in J. Harris, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Johann August Eberhard.

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of a specific state of sensation, or sensibility [Empfindsamkeit]”—whereby the various media relate to this content in ways that are still rather external. In contrast, August Wilhelm Schlegel writes in his lectures in The Theory of Art (Die Kunstlehre) that there are “only as many media in the arts . . . as types of expression through which man reveals his inner self in external things.” Schleiermacher, too, adopts this starting point as early as his ethics and then in his lectures on aesthetics—or develops it independently, as follows: 1. Man first reveals his inner, stimulated feeling by means of sounds and gestures. When these are cultivated and become artistic forms, music and mimicry are created and, with this, the first group of the arts. 2. But man’s individual inner being also appears when he produces imagined images (Vorstellungsbilder)—first in dreams, then in conscious representation (Vorstellung) and intuition (Anschauung);10 this is the basis of the second group of the arts, the visual arts (painting and sculpture). The two are related in the same way as the opposition, described in greater detail in Schleier­macher’s psychology, between subjective self-consciousness and consciousness of the objective world or of things. It is immediately evident that we have to do here with two very different spheres. For the first group presupposes only an emotional content, while the second also assumes a specific intuitional content referring to the objective world. Schleiermacher conceives the two sides as the two poles of the artistic system and demonstrates once again that they are only in relative contradiction. Mimicry and music also create representational images in the imagination, namely, imagined gestures and sequences of tones. On the other hand, the production of visual forms, and indeed the aesthetic perception of visual phenomena, already have their roots in feeling, i.e., in a “heart that has been moved” (ein bewegtes Gemüt). For if we are fascinated by a landscape, “what is that other than simply the foreshortened process of our own creation? We are glad to find what we would otherwise have created.” Landscape painting merely presents us with “a particular staging for our various states of sensibility.”11 Here, we can see clearly what it is that brings the arts together into a common system. It is the artistic, productive spirit, which in . Heydenreich, System der Aesthetik. [On Empfindung, see note 22 in the chapter on Kant in this volume.—trans.] . Schlegel, Die Kunstlehre, 84. 10. The philosophical term Anschauung is one of the most problematic to translate into English. The usage of “intuition” is by now widely accepted, particularly among Kant and Hegel scholars. What gets lost is the root of the word in the verb schauen, to see or gaze, with its sense of immediate and spontaneous visual perception of the material world, something that is far removed from the irrationality and invisibility commonly associated with the English term “intuition.” The connection to the visual is still strongly present in Schleiermacher, as is indicated by his association of Anschauung with the visual arts in the passage cited here.—trans. 11. Schleiermacher, Ästhetik, 172ff.

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one case transforms the immediate expression of feeling, sounds and gestures, into artistic forms, and in the other transforms dream images and the visual figures of perception into art—but which in both cases originates in excited feeling. 3. Schleiermacher assigns poetry, when he first approaches it, to the second group but then gives it its own, third form of artistic creation, since it joins the other two principles together on a new, linguistic level. Poetry (including prose fiction) can both connect with the world of intuition (Anschauung) and provide a plastic representation of individual things, and also organize itself into a “totality of harmonious sound.” Hence it has a relationship to the visual arts through its representational images and a close relationship to music through “rhythm and tonal inflection [Tonfall].” For this reason, poetry ultimately makes up the third and final part of his aesthetics. Since, for Schleiermacher, art is grounded in feeling, and music, free of all capacity for visual perception (Anschaulichkeit), expresses this emotion, one would expect music to be declared to be the first and highest form of art. But Schleiermacher makes poetry the high point of his system of art, as we also find it, for example, in Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Hegel, and many others. The reasons for this point of view are to be found both in Schleiermacher’s artistic ideal and in his position on modern culture. Since all human capacities should be cultivated, and a human being should represent herself in art as a whole, she needs all the art forms, and the greatest of these, consequently, is the one that, in a sense, contains the principles of the others within itself: poetry. Music alone is one-sided. Schleiermacher even calls it an “accompanying art,” along with mimicry and in contrast, for example, to painting. For historically, he says, it first appears only in combination with words or dance, and in general these arts attract and complement each other. Thus music, viewed systematically as the art of expressing feeling, ranks first, but it earns a lower place in the overall system of art. At the same time, Schleiermacher—in contrast to many of his contemporaries—expressly recognized free instrumental music as a great art. “Even where he [the composer] follows the poet, the best among them strives for independence. . . . But his greatest triumph, it is true, is when he bids adieu to language altogether and embodies, in this endlessly changing wealth of tonal sequences and harmonies, all the tremors of life that can pass through the soul.”12 We know how much Schleiermacher himself appreciated chamber music, in particular—not opera. He observed that in modernity, in principle, the arts by no means attract each other but, on the contrary, draw apart, and 12. Ibid., 179.

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each prefers to be alone by itself. He locates the reason for this in a fundamental change in religious consciousness. Namely, the art of classical antiquity, held together by myth, interpreted the world; while modern art, under the influence of Christianity, aims at divinity. The former was dominated by intuitions of the many individual phenomena in the world; the latter, by the feeling of a single, eternal God. Thus the history of art, once again, illustrates the contradiction between objective consciousness of the world and subjective consciousness of the self and of God—the contradiction that structures the entire system of the arts. Thus, it is also typical of the art of antiquity that it perfected sculpture, while in modern art free music emerged. The two put their imprint on their respective “artistic worlds,” the art of their epoch. “The entire type of modern art is musical, subjective; the entire type of antique art plastic, objective.”13 Schleiermacher is not alone in looking at things this way. Winckelmann had already declared that the classical sculptures, which were unsurpassed, could have emerged only in Greek antiquity. Herder had added that music could develop only on the ground of Judeo-Christian religion. This notion became a guiding idea for Schleiermacher. In many of his contemporaries, as well, we find the sculpture of classical antiquity placed in diametrical opposition to modern music. But Schleiermacher’s conclusion, drawn from his religions foundation, is more far-reaching and affects the whole system of the arts. In classical antiquity, namely, in order to capture the totality of all the world’s intuitional forms under the sign of myth, the arts became closely bound together; whereas in modernity, since the eternal, formless idea of God can be approached from many points, the individual arts have been able to isolate themselves. Thus the differentiation of the arts is ultimately a consequence of Christianity. Music, in particular, tends toward isolation in modernity; hence the effect of the religious foundation is most clearly perceptible in it, even when modern instrumental music presents itself as a secular or profane art. Since Schleiermacher was a Christian theologian, he might have welcomed this differentiation and specialization of the arts as progress, just as he himself valued free instrumental music. But he is critical. With the separation of the arts, he feels that their comprehensibility becomes endangered, that they lose their meaning for popular consciousness. This is no covert nostalgia for antique myth, but rather the hope of still more progress in modern Christian consciousness. For Schleiermacher’s theology and philosophy lead us to conclude that he found the orientation toward a world without a unifying ground and the search for a God without a world equally one-sided. Therefore, the 13. Odebrecht, Friedrich Schleiermachers Ästhetik, 145.

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sculpture of classical antiquity is as one-sided as modern instrumental music, although we find perfect works of art in both realms. What is to be wished for is their combination. Friedrich Schlegel had already placed classical and modern art in diametrical opposition and hoped for their future synthesis; Schleiermacher did the same. But the latter obviously imagines their possible conjoining on the ground of the Christian religion. His essay “Christmas Eve” already shows how language and figural representation take their place alongside music as expressions of religious feeling, and later on he always wants to see religious feeling connected to the word. For every true religion, in Schleiermacher’s mind, links consciousness of God to consciousness of the world and the self, and this should also find expression in art. Therefore, alongside music, the other arts are also needed. Schleiermacher accepted that there is great secular art, for example instrumental music, but for him it had, as its hidden ground, the force field of religion. In general, it should be noted that Schleiermacher’s evaluation of the relationship between religion and music underwent significant changes over time. This had to do in part with the intellectual tendencies with which he was contending.14 Against the Enlightenment, which transformed religion into morality and metaphysics, he initially, in On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, declared religion to be a feeling that is best expressed precisely in music. Against the then dominant tendency of romanticism to create a religiously transfigured art—especially when it came to music—he later emphasized religion’s need for language and wanted to see music, too, tied to language, which is why he called it an “accompanying art.”

Musical Content When one declares the content of music to be feeling or the emotions, important questions immediately arise. How can we think about the link between tones and feelings in more exact terms? How does spiritual significance enter into the acoustic signs? Are the feelings that music represents or elicits really the same feelings as those we experience outside art? And is it always the same feelings that, ultimately, all music expresses? Schleiermacher attempts to answer these questions with a theory of artistic production, of “art activity” (Kunsttätigkeit). For him, in keeping with the Aristotelian concept of poiesis (production), this means the construction of works (Werkbildung), a process that, on the one hand, is deeply anchored in the nature of man but that, on the other, also transforms that nature. This applies especially to music. Music’s 14. See Scholtz, “Musik und Religion,” 221–34.

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anthropological root actually does reach back to the emotions. But the abrupt, natural passions, which seek immediate expression in tone and gesture, lead to music only by a circuitous route. They must first be held in check and smoothed into a permanent “mood” or “attunement” (Stimmung),15 a process that our reason performs silently, freely, and internally. Only “calmed passion” (beruhigte Leidenschaft), for example joy as an already shaped, “formed desire” (gestaltete Begierde), and only mourning as a “resonance of pain” (Nachklang des Schmerzes), can lead to artistic activity.16 As a first step, the feelings are moderated and humanized, subjected to a “cleansing” (Reinigung), a catharsis, before music emerges from them. And what emerges from their transformation, on closer inspection, looks like that mood in which something is announced that underlies all individual temporal moments, namely, the “timeless oneness of life” (zeitlose Einheit des Lebens).17 It can be called the unity of individuality, that which is guaranteed by the ground of all being and thinking. Thus music, which Schleiermacher calls a “flowing” (fliessend), “flexible,” or “mobile” (bewegliche) art, also has a relationship to the timeless, absolute ground. As feeling and emotion want to be expressed, so too does mood. As “generative mood” (erzeugende Stimmung), it produces not only immediate tones and gestures but also, in a sort of displacement, the activity of the imagination. The imagination calls forth a colorful world of sounds, tones, colors, forms, words, and so on. Here, already, we can see how the imagination builds a bridge to the world of perception. It is closely linked with our sense organs, with the eye and the ear, and seems, as it were, to be playing with the material of their experiences, setting accents and structures and adding new elements. Schleiermacher calls this activity of the imagination artistic “enthusiasm” (Begeisterung). For the composer it is an enthusiasm for tone, “the continuous sounding [in his soul], in which the artist behaves like a vibrating body.”18 Schleiermacher assumes that emotional moods actually lead to an inner resonance in all human beings but that in musical individuals this occurs more often and more distinctly. Here we stand on the threshold of actual artistic activity, and the question of how series of tones are endowed with meaning must be answered, for the moment, as follows: The imagination, stimulated by a mood, produces sound images, in close contact with the sense of hearing; as musical imagination it is an “inner voice” (innere Stimme) and an “inner ear” (inneres Ohr). 15. The German word Stimmung is extraordinarily suggestive in the musical-aesthetic context. It means both “mood” and “tuning” (for example of an instrument) and is related to the word for the human voice (Stimme) as well as to a verb that means to agree or be correct (stimmen or übereinstimmen).—trans. 16. Schleiermacher, Ästhetik, 40–43. 17. Ibid., 64. 18. Ibid., 185.

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But the wild profusion of the imagination is not yet the whole of artistic activity. The latter, in addition to “enthusiasm,” also includes an ordering principle, “contemplation” (Besonnenheit). Only when both are present can a work of art come about—not yet as a physical form that is perceptible to others but at first only as an imagined inner image (inneres Vorstellungsbild); Schleiermacher calls it an Urbild, a primal image. This Urbild, in the case of music, is initially the thing that we call the “idea” of the work but then also the formally developed idea, i.e., the composition as it is heard by the inner ear of the composer. The Urbild, above all, is the organizational principle that forges the tones into a meaningful unity. Hence Schleiermacher also calls the Urbild the “actual work of art” (eigentliches Kunstwerk), and he does this with some justification, for what we hear as music is no mere sequence of tones but a structured whole. If we examine it more closely, the Urbild, or actual work of musical art, is distinguished from the product of an untamed imagination by two forms of perfection. First, the elements of music have their determinate measure (Mass); this is their “elementary perfection” (elementarische Vollkommenheit). Second, the entirety of the work forms a unity that gives a diversity of elements a specific, individual order: their “organic perfection” (organische Vollkommenheit).19 The first and most important perfect element of music is pure tone, which has its measure and its perfection by dint of its specific pitch and duration. It is not discovered as a datum of experience, for example in birdsong, but is created and brought forth by the musical imagination, through enthusiasm and contemplation. Every truly audible pure tone in music is preceded by a sound image (which Schleiermacher also terms an Urbild). Emotional moods, it is true, can sometimes also lead to pure tones, and this reveals that the latter are, at a minimum, implicit in nature. But the wealth of pure tones with their varied coloration is really created only by artistic activity, through music: “from which depths of nature they [composers] have brought forth a world of tones that would forever have slumbered in wood and metal without the premonitory urging of art.”20 Because music itself produces its most important elements, it is productive in a more comprehensive sense than the other arts, which find their material (colors, forms, language, etc.) already preexisting. In regard to all the elements of music (including meter or rhythm and harmony), Schleiermacher always strives to prove, on the one hand, that they are products of the imagination and, on the other, that they are more or less clearly present as capacities of nature. It is no more thinkable for him that the 19. Ibid., 94. 20. Schleiermacher, Ästhetik, 179ff.

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liberated imagination completely separates itself from nature than that nature, through its order, arranges the basic structure of its building blocks in any set way. Rather, art actualizes certain natural capabilities, choosing among them. This is particularly clear in Schleiermacher’s statements about scales. Only the octaves, as he sees it, are given as a framework; the steps in between are set differently by different cultures. But always, for him, the imagination works in mysterious correspondence with the objective possibilities of nature, which it senses and renders audible. In an older tradition, this correspondence, which is particularly evident in the phenomenon of consonance, would have been explained by mathematics. What fascinates us about the harmonies, tonal intervals, and rhythms would have been their mathematical order, which according to Leibniz is perceived by our “unconsciously counting soul” (unbewusst zählende Seele); in sounding music, the rational spirit intuitively recognizes something that is appropriate to it and enters, as it were, into resonance with it. But for Schleiermacher, this explanation no longer holds. Yes, the numerical relationships can be identified, but they are worthless when it comes to the proof of beauty in music. He anticipates the view that insights into the effects of consonance are more likely to come from psychology, which studies our acoustic perception. Ultimately, the harmony of musical imagination and tonal possibilities points, for him, to the intimate relationship between spirit and nature, which can be explained only by their common root, the absolute ground (absoluter Grund). This harmony is already evident in the pure tone, whose measure already embodies its “meaningfulness” (Bedeutsamkeit), for it renders audible the extent to which our inner selves, our musical intention, harmonizes with nature’s real tonal possibilities. For this reason, however, the content of music consists not merely in feelings or moods but above all in tones that would otherwise never be perceived, or, more precisely, in the mysterious correspondence of our spirit with the tones that are latent in nature. Equally important is “organic perfection,” the perfection of a composition in the narrower sense. It makes music into something that is always particular and individual, possessing its own character and form, by regulating the inner relationship of its elements. Here Schleiermacher speaks of an “internal limitedness” (innere Begrenztheit) of music, by which he means an immanent principle of organization through which “a specific relationship exists between each independent part of the whole and all the others, [so] that everything is perfectly determined by this mutuality of relations.”21 All references point to the fact that Schleiermacher conceives of this individual ordering principle in the tradition of Plotinus, that is of Neoplatonism, which lived on in aesthet21. Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, 250.

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ics via Lord Shaftesbury and Herder as “inner form” (innere Form), namely, as that principle of formal creation that does not consist in acoustic data and that can be perceived only by the imagination of the hearer—not by his ears. This principle of formal creation cannot be reduced to the possibilities of physical nature but can be understood only with reference to the individuality of the composer, of his musical imagination. At the same time, every inner form betrays a dual character, as it were. Individually, the forms of musical works belong to general formal types (i.e., sonata, symphony). These formal types derive from the achievement of creative artists and are necessary for a musical culture, to lead the anticipation of listeners in a specific direction and thus to make reception easier. But just as the general types of compositions are generated by geniuses, so they also—as conventions—act as fetters to constrain the latter. For this reason, every artist must discover his own style in the confrontation, indeed the “battle” (Kampf), with tradition. Thus every musical work refers to its musical context, the musical culture to which it belongs, from which it learns, against which it defines itself, and which it enriches. Schleiermacher’s own statements about the various musical forms are less interesting than his fundamental idea—that free instrumental music, in particular, focuses on perfecting its composition, since the work seeks to have its meaning and be understood only through itself and no longer through its relations with language and dance. In this process, every individual, completed work also refers back to interaction with a musical convention; it betrays the individual handwriting of the composer as well as the typical character of a specific musical culture. To shed light on this is a matter for reflective musicological understanding. Immediate musical understanding recognizes only the perfection of the work itself, namely, in its “total impression” (Totaleindruck). In other words, if we now turn back to the question of musical content, Schleiermacher once again points us to the individual web of relationships among the tones, the composition. Content is that “inner form,” the principle giving shape (Gestaltung) to the tones. Thus, our customary separation of form and content becomes blurred. For the real content is actually the form, the composition. Things are more clear if we go back to Aristotle, who distinguished not content and form but material and form. For example, in the case of a statue, the material can be marble and the form the shape of a god. Analogously, for Schleiermacher, the elements, above all the tones, represent the musical material, while form is the composition. When he demands perfection from both, he once again demonstrates his orientation to Plotinus, who had said that the beauty of an object resides not only in the whole but also in each of its parts. For Schleiermacher, the concept of the beautiful has

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become problematic; therefore he replaces it with the concept of perfection. The question is how the “organic perfection” of the work’s form is related to the realm of feeling. Schleiermacher does not retreat from his simplifying original thesis that music is the expression of self-consciousness moved by emotion and mood. But overall his reflections tend toward the position that this original world of feeling is transformed by productive artistic activity in such a way that not only the intimate relationship between spirit and nature but also the individual imagination of the artist is revealed. In reading through the available fragments of Schleiermacher’s lectures on aesthetics, we may sometimes have the impression that he is vacillating on the question of whether it is really feeling, content, or tones and composition that make music an art. In his final lecture, Schleiermacher, the theoretician of feeling, states that “the actual idea and tendency of the art” lies not in the relationship of the tones to specific feelings but rather in the “tonal masses in their very relationship.”22 Still, his whole approach and manner of proceeding quite clearly reveal his goal. A theory of art production, of artistic activity, should build a bridge and make comprehensible the way in which the two sides are connected—more precisely, how feelings are transformed into tones. The steps that are delineated may be understood, in the sense of Sigmund Freud, as a process of sublimation, as the energy of the immediate emotions diverted and refined into musical activity. But in the context of Schleiermacher’s thought, which is allied with the Platonic tradition, this procedure is not a covering over of the real emotional foundation but rather the emergence of the true self, which is otherwise concealed. Art, hence also music, is for Schleiermacher “self-representation” (Selbstdarstellung). One may ask whether Schleiermacher’s intellectual construct really leads to clear insights or only reveals their limits. For his hypothesis, in fact, only makes it evident to us that the fascination of music, its perfection, is grounded in two mysterious conformances or correspondences—first the harmony of feeling’s need for musical expression with physical nature, and then the harmony of musical elements conjoined in the whole of a composition. In both instances, imagination performs the act of connecting; it makes the transition from mood to tonal images as it does the composition (or com-position), the continuity of harmoniously combined tones. How imagination is able to accomplish these things is something into which the understanding has no insight. Understanding cannot observe and comprehend the transformation of feelings into tones, and Schleiermacher himself states that this is precisely 22. Ibid., 382.

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what is mysterious about music.23 Nor can the understanding recognize any rule to be followed by the imagination as it joins the tones together. There are only two things of which Schleiermacher is certain. Namely, philosophy must arrive at the insight that the artistic spirit and nature cannot be fundamentally alien to each other but must have a common ground; then, it is evident to him that the perfection of a composition is due not to rules that can be learned but to the activity of the individual artist alone. Its mystery is that of his or her individuality. In any case, the compositional process is important for the question of musical content. In his ethics, Schleiermacher says that content and form (Gestalt)24 are related to each other in the same way as production and product. What this means for art is that artistic activity is manifested in the form (Gestalt) of the artwork. In his hermeneutics, his theory of understanding and interpreting texts, he developed the consequences of this notion for the perfecting of understanding. Namely, the ideal interpreter would unlock the meaning of a text by reconstructing the emergence of the thought and the entire process of writing—in saying which Schleiermacher naturally knows very well how little this is possible. But literary studies and musicology have followed this path a fair distance, right up to the present, by attempting to ferret out the circumstances surrounding the creation of a work and the motivation that brings it into being. Moreover, in his literary hermeneutics, Schleiermacher also starts from the premise that the individuality of the author is manifested precisely in the “composition” of a text and its “tone.” Here the form in which something is said or written, be it ironic or accusatory or something else, is not external but is decisive for the content, the sense (think, for example, of Marc Antony’s famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). In Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics as well as his music aesthetics, we easily recognize some convictions of the romantic-idealist era that have lost their self-evident quality today (for example the orientation toward a closed, individual form of the work, and the individuality of the artist as its source). Thus, Schleiermacher’s thought is especially significant for the musical culture of his own time; it articulates opinions that also determined compositional practice. But, at the same time, one will have to admit that he began to address 23. Ibid., 383. 24. German has two words for “form”: Form and Gestalt. In general, the former is more abstract, the latter more closely tied to the physical appearance of the object; for example it is commonly used to refer to a human figure. In this volume, when translating from the works of individual philosophers, the choice between the two terms with their somewhat different implications is indicated by including the German original in parenthesis.—trans.

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questions that are still our own. For do we have any better idea why music fascinates us?

Reception Although in Schleiermacher there are ideas about the philosophy of music that are worthy of further exploration, one cannot really speak of a reception. The first reason for this is that he never achieved a final formulation of his aesthetics, which has come down to us only in inadequate form. The nineteenth century had access only to the lecture notes as edited by Carl Lommatzsch in the complicated version of 1832/33, which won over few historians of aesthetics. Wilhelm Dilthey said that these lectures “in their form are among the most unfortunate of Schleiermacher’s to have been preserved.” In his own comprehensive characterization of Schleiermacher, Dilthey left us only a brief, fragmentary text on the aesthetics.25 However, his own writings on understanding music show clear parallels to Schleiermacher; he conceives of music as an expression of life and also emphasizes that it is “more than expression,” that the musician lives in the world of tones and “not in his feelings.”26 Whether this betrays the influence of Schleiermacher or whether Dilthey was led in this direction by the subject itself, this is not the place to discuss. Benedetto Croce regretted that Schleiermacher’s aesthetic thought had too little resonance, since it was, in his opinion, the most remarkable of the entire epoch.27 Against this background, Rudolf Odebrecht performed a real service in 1931, when he produced a new edition based on the manuscript material. He also published a book on Schleiermacher’s system of aesthetics,28 which he recognized as one of the first to be systematic, and sought to update it, although he devoted little attention to the individual artistic genres. Hence it is not surprising that in historical studies of musical thought either Schleiermacher’s name is not mentioned at all or the presentation of his thought is severely inadequate.29 A further reason for this lies in the fact that the sections of his aesthetics lectures that are devoted to music are much less suggestive theoretically than his statements on music in the general, foundational part of his aesthetics. In 1981, this author therefore attempted to gather together all the scattered thoughts on music from the collected works, while Thomas Lehnerer, in 1987, focused on 25. Dilthey, “Leben Schleiermachers,” 431. 26. See Dilthey’s Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, 242. 27. Croce, Aesthetic as the Science of Expression & General Linguistic, 312. 28. Odebrecht, Schleiermachers System der Ästhetik. 29. Moos, Die Philosophie der Musik von Kant bis Eduard von Hartmann, 172; Serauky, Die musikalische Nachahmungsästhetik, 291–93; Meyer-Baer, Der Bedeutungswandel der Musik, 177–84.

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embedding the aesthetics in the theological-philosophical framework, a context in which, naturally, it was possible only to touch on music. From the vantage point of theology, special attention has been paid to the relationship of music to religion. Here Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, the representatives of dialogical theology, focusing on On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers and “Christmas Eve,” discovered and criticized a troublesome tendency to dissolve God’s word into music.30 Later, however, the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus proposed a different perspective. In his view, the “religion of art,” which Schleiermacher hoped to discover in the Speeches, and which has music as its center, should be accepted as a form of religion that was significant for romanticism and that is closely related to the elaboration of “absolute music.”31

References

Schleiermacher’s Works Ästhetik: Über den Begriff der Kunst [1831/32]. Ed. Thomas Lehnerer. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1984. The Christian Faith. [Translation of the 2nd German edition of Der christliche Glaube (1830–31).] Trans. H. R. Mackintosh and James Stuart Stewart. Foreword by B. A. Gerrish. 1929; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999. Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation. [Translation of Die Weihnachtsfeier.] Trans. Terrence N. Tice. San Francisco: EM Texts, 1990. Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy: A Study Edition of the 1811 Notes. Trans. Terrence N. Tice. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Entwürfe zu einem System der Sittenlehre. Ed. Otto Braun. Philosophische Bibliothek 137. Leipzig: Meiner, 1927. Ethik (1812/1813): mit späteren Fassungen der Einleitung, Güterlehre und Pflichtenlehre. Edited on the basis of the edition by Otto Braun, and with an introduction by Hans-Joachim Birkner. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1981. Friedrich Schleiermachers Ästhetik. Ed. Rudolf Odebrecht. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1931. Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn: Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu errichtende. Berlin: In der Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808. Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre. In Schleiermachers Werke: Auswahl in vier Bänden, ed. Otto Braun and Johannes Bauer. 2nd ed. Philosophische Bibliotek 136a. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1928. Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings. Trans. and ed. Andrew Bowie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Lectures on Philosophical Ethics. [Translation of Vorlesungen über Ethik (1812/13 and 1816/17).] Ed. Robert Louden. Trans. Louise Adey Huish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

30. Barth, “Schleiermachers Weihnachtsfeier”; Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort, 3 et passim. 31. Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music, 88–89.

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Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense with an Appendix Regarding a University Soon to Be Established [1808]. [Translation of Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn.] Trans. Terrence N. Tice, with Edwina Lawler. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. [Translation of the 1st German edition of Über die Religion.] Trans. and ed. Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. [Translation of the 3rd German edition of Über die Religion.] Trans. John Oman, with an introduction by Rudolf Otto. New York: Harper, 1958. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. [Translation of the 3rd German edition of Über die Religion.] Trans. John Oman, with a foreword by Jack Forstman. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994. Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern [1799]. Ed. Günter Meckenstock. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999. Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik. Ed. Carl Lommatzsch. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1842; rpt., Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974. Die Weihnachtsfeier: Ein Gespräch. Halle: Schimmelpfennig, 1806.

General Literature Barth, Karl. “Schleiermachers Weihnachtsfeier.” In Die Theologie und die Kirche: Gesammelte Vorträge, 2:106–35. Munich: C. Kaiser, 1928. Brunner, Emil. Die Mystik und das Wort. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1924. Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetic as Science of Expression & General Linguistic. Trans. Douglas Ainslie, with an introduction by John McCormick. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995. Crouter, Richard. Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Dilthey, Wilhelm. The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. [Translation of Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, in Wilhelm Diltheys gesammelte Schriften. 6th ed. Vol. 7. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1968.] In Selected Works, vol. 3. Trans. and ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. ———. “Leben Schleiermachers.” In Wilhelm Diltheys gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2: Schleiermachers System der Philosophie und Theologie, ed. Martin Redeker, 421–48. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1966. Heydenreich, Karl Heinrich. System der Aesthetik. Leipzig: G. J. Göschen, 1790. Mariña, Jacqueline, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Odebrecht, Rudolf. Schleiermachers System der Ästhetik; Grundlegung und problemgeshichtliche Sendung. Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1932. Potepa, Maciej. Schleiermachers hermeneutische Dialektik. Studies in Philosophical Theology. Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996.

Musical Literature Bent, Ian, ed. Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ———. “Plato-Beethoven: A Hermeneutics for Nineteenth-Century Music?” In Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, ed. Bent, 105–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Biller, G. “Zur Frage der funktionalen Aktualität hegelscher Musikästhetik.” Giornale italiano di metafisica 1–2 (1976): 55–62. Billeter, Bernard. “Die Musik in Hegels Ästhetik.” Die Musikforschung 26 (1973): 295–310. Blackwell, Albert L. “The Role of Music in Schleiermacher’s Writings.” In Internationaler Schleiermacher-Kongress Berlin, 1984, ed. Kurt-Victor Selge, 439–48. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1985.

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Bukofzer, Manfred. “Hegels Musikästhetik.” In Deuxième Congrès International d’Esthétique et de Science de l’Art, 2:32–35. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1937. Dahlhaus, Carl. “Hegel und die Musik seiner Zeit.” Hegel-Studien 22 (1983): 333–50. ———. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Döderlein, J. L. “Hegel und die Aufgabe der Musikphilosophie.” Hegel-Jahrbuch (1965): 65–69. Frotscher, Gotthold. “Schleiermachers Musikästhetik.” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 11 (1929): 562–67. Heimsoeth, Heinz. “Hegels Philosophie der Musik.” Hegel-Studien 2 (1963):161–201. Kuhlenkampf, Jens. “Musik bei Kant und Hegel.” Hegel-Studien 22 (1987): 143–63. Lehnerer, Thomas. Die Kunsttheorie Friedrich Schleiermachers. Stuttgart: Klet-Cotta, 1987. Lissa, Zofia. “Hegel und das Problem der Formintegration in der Musik.” In Festschrift für Walter Wiora zum 30. Dezember 1966, ed. Ludwig Finscher and Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, 112–19. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967. Meyer, G. “Hegel und die Musik.” Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 13, no. 2 (1971): 152–73. Meyer-Baer, Kathi. Bedeutung und Wesen der Musik, part 1: Der Bedeutungswandel der Musik. Strassburg: Heitz, 1932. Moos, Paul. Die Philosophie der Musik von Kant bis Eduard von Hartmann. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922. Nowak, Adolf. Hegels Musikästhetik. Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 25. Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1971. Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Die Kunstlehre. In Kritische Schriften und Briefe, vol. 2, ed. Edgar Lohner. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1963. Scholtz, Günter. “Musik und Religion.” In Ethik und Hermeneutik: Schleiermachers Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften, 221–34. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. ———. Die Philosophie Schleiermachers. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984. ———. Schleiermachers Musikphilosophie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1981. Schüttauf, Konrad. “Melos und Drama: Hegels Begriff der Oper.” Hegel-Studien 27 (1986): 183–94. Serauky, Walter. Die musikalische Nachahmungsästhetik im Zeitraum von 1700 bis 1850. Münster i. Westfalen: Helios-Verlag, 1929. Steinkrüger, August. “Die Ästhetik der Musik bei Schelling und Hegel: Ein Beitrag zur Musikästhetik der Romantik.” Ph.D. diss., Bonn, 1927. Wiora, Walter. “Einsichten Hegels in das Wesen der Musik.” In Festschrift Heinrich Besseler zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, 509–15. Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1961. Zoltai, Dénes. Ethos und Affekt: Geschichte der Philosophischen Musikästhetik von den Anfängen bis zu Hegel, 232–365. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970.

Hegel H e r be rt S ch nädelb ach

Brief Biography Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on August 27, 1770, in Stuttgart. In 1788, he entered the Tübinger Stift to study theology and philosophy at the university. There he became friends with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Friedrich Hölderlin. In 1793, he took a position as a private tutor in Bern, and in 1797 a similar position in Frankfurt am Main, where he again had close contact with Hölderlin. A small inheritance allowed him to take his second doctoral degree in Jena, where Schelling, as successor to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was teaching at the university. Together, Hegel and Schelling published the Critical Journal of Philosophy (Kritisches Journal der Philosophie) from 1802 to 1803. In 1805, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as the responsible minister, named Hegel to a professorship; however, Hegel left Jena in 1806 after the university was closed as a result of the war with France, which had ended with the famous battles near Jena and Auerstedt. In 1807, Hegel found a position as an editor in Bamburg. In 1808, he moved to Nuremberg to take a position at a Gymnasium, where he worked first as a teacher and then as principal. He was a professor at the University of Heidelberg in 1816–17, leaving in 1818 to assume the professorship previously held by Fichte at the recently established University of Berlin. After an unusually successful teaching career, Hegel died on November 18, 1831, in Berlin. Hegel’s works: 1801, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy (Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen

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Systems der Philosophie); 1802–3, further publications in the Critical Journal; 1807, Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes); 1812/16, Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik, 2 volumes); 1817/27/31, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften); 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts); 1832–45, first complete works, Georg Friedrich Hegel’s Works: Complete Edition by a Club of Friends of the Immortal Deceased (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Werke: Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten, 18 volumes).

Philosophy and Art When art becomes the object of theory, there are basically two contrasting points of departure, which in philosophical parlance are called “inductive” and “deductive.” Inductive theories of art start with the individual art object and attempt to arrive at universal statements from there, whereas for the deductive method the general principles of art are already established and are merely applied to concrete phenomena. This is also true of music. One should speak of inductive musical theories in cases where experiences, problems, and controversies that are integral to music necessarily lead to reflection on fundamental issues. One of the most famous and controversial examples of this is Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music (Vom musikalisch Schönen: Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 1854), a work in which the author reacted to the great popularity of program music at that time. The polar opposite of this is Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music in paragraph 52 of The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1819), in which Schopenhauer, elaborating on ideas put forward by romantic poets, elevates music to an immediate revelation of the “Will,” i.e., of the essence of the world—a move that follows not from any specialized knowledge but solely from the architecture of the philosophical system as a whole. In the realm of what may be considered music philosophy in the narrow sense, the deductive theoretical type is the rule. Even where it is as fully imbued with experience as in Ernst Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia (Der Geist der Utopie, 1918), or Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music (Philosophie der neuen Musik, 1949), the musical experiences, while they may have provided the occasion for the theory, do not constitute its foundation; rather, it is clear that the theory is the result of applying a preformed systematic theory to music. . See for instance Hegel, “Critical Journal, Introduction: On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism Generally and Its Relationship to the Present State of Philosophy.”

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Hegel’s phenomenology of music belongs in the category of deductive musical theories. Hegel himself was quite conscious of the limitation of his musical competence but saw himself compelled, in Lectures on Aesthetics (Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik), which he gave in Berlin in 1823, 1826, and 1828/29, to speak extensively about music. The reason for this is that Hegel conceived of “philosophy” in the singular; the existence of the numerous hyphenated philosophies with which we are familiar nowadays could not be the last word. Philosophy, for him, was possible only as a system that embraced the whole of reality; hence a part of the system had to deal with music. Conversely, the philosophy of music had to fit into the systematic theory as a whole, something that was possible only if it itself was systematically organized. Thus we have in Hegel an example of what Carl Dahlhaus could term “aesthetics as systematic philosophy.” But Dahlhaus noted that Hegel “never, although he was a concert and opera goer, claimed to be musically educated, and he allowed himself to be influenced by others . . . in the choice of musical works that he listened to as well as in his judgments about them. Nevertheless, the music aesthetics that he outlined is so rich in factual and truth content that the reproach that it remains mired in the realm of ‘philosophers’ aesthetics,’ that it lacks the vividness that is to be found in ‘musicians’ aesthetics,’ misses the mark.”

Art and Music In the following, I will not adhere to the order of the contents as found in Hegel’s text but will follow the order given in H. G. Hotho’s edition of the notes on Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. In this work, Hegel first addresses the general character of music, then the means of musical expression, and then the relation of the latter to musical content.

Music as an Art Hegel defines the subject of his Lectures on Aesthetics as the “spacious realm of the beautiful; its province is art, specifically fine art.” This very general definition has two consequences for music theory. First, there is absolutely no . See Hegel, Werke, 15:137 and 222, where Hegel admits to being a layperson in regard to music. . Compare Dahlhaus and Zimmerman, Musik zur Sprache Gebracht, 131. . Hegel, Werke, 15:150. [All passages from Hegel’s Aesthetics are newly translated here; where it seemed helpful I have drawn on the standard translation by T. M. Knox, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, without special mention—trans.] . On its problems, see Gethmann-Siefert, “Der Absolute Geist. Die Kunst,” 317ff. . See Hegel, Werke, 13:13. [Hegel uses the term schöne Kunst, which can also be translated as “art of the beautiful.”—trans.]

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possibility for the theory to confine itself to analyzing the subjective feelings and experiences (Greek aesthesis, ”feeling, sensation, perception”) that musical works evoke, as Hegel claims was the case with the new discipline that had been introduced in the eighteenth century (by Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Kant, et al.). Essentially, music philosophy must be a philosophy of the works of art themselves, albeit without excluding the “subject side” entirely. Second, everything that is not art is banished from philosophical reflection on music. The beauty of nature (das Naturschöne), which Kant had treated extensively, is dismissed in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics by dint of an argument that, all the same, goes on for forty-five printed pages. His argument is essentially that nature cannot be beautiful in itself, but only for us, for human consciousness; hence we can speak only about the subjective appearance of beauty, which, as philosophical truth in Hegel requires, does not correspond to the essence of objects. This verdict on natural beauty, which Adorno, in particular, contradicted with lasting effect, follows deductively from the premises of Hegel’s systematic theory, according to which art is spirit or mind (Geist), not nature. “Spirit” or “mind,” in Hegel, however, precisely does not mean the same thing as “consciousness,” as our preconceptions would suggest and as it appears in the name of the modern discipline “philosophy of mind.” For in this case Hegel would have no reason to distance himself from mere aesthetics. Rather, spirit, in Hegel, is the ideal (das Ideele), which has emerged and become separate from the natural. This is based on the thesis that nature is the idea’s own antithesis, or the form of its alienation. This is one of the most mysterious pieces of Hegelian theory; his goal is to tie nature into the system of absolute idealism in such a way that it, too, can be comprehended as a manifestation of the absolute idea outside of which nothing else exists, without, in the process, losing sight of nature’s evident independence of and strangeness vis-à-vis the merely ideal. The best way to approach the Hegelian concept of spirit is by translating Geist as “culture.” In this way, one falls somewhat short of Hegel’s concept but can nevertheless retain the most important characteristics of his philosophy of spirit. In Hegel, art is characterized more precisely as absolute spirit (absoluter Geist). While subjective spirit more or less corresponds to what we think of as the field of inquiry of psychology, Hegel conceives of the social and historical . Hegel, Werke, 13:167ff. . See Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 61ff. . The interpretation of Hegel’s term Geist as “culture” is interesting in the context of Hegel’s overall philosophy but does not hold for most usages. As a practical matter, Geist is generally best translated as “spirit” or “intelligence”—trans.

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world as objective spirit, i.e., as a reality that is no longer natural but points to human freedom, which is characterized by its own objectivity. According to Hegel, spirit is absolute in those cases when its objective being has shed all alienation, when it is and acts in a way that is independent (Latin absolutus, “absolved”) of all external conditions. This, in Hegel, applies not only to art but also to religion and above all to philosophy itself. But while in religion this absolute is present to human consciousness in the medium of mental images or presentations (Vorstellungen),10 and in philosophy in the medium of thought, in art it is experienced in the medium of Anschauung.11 Anschauung (aesthesis) in Hegel means not only optical presence, as the German word suggests, but sensual presence in general, so that music, as a merely acoustic phenomenon, also finds its place here. Hegel’s famous definition corresponds to this conception of Anschauung as sensual: “the beautiful is defined . . . as the sensual appearance of the idea [das sinnliche Scheinen der Idee].”12 In this way, the subjective aspect of artistic reality also receives its due, for the theory would be incomplete if it did not take account of the “sensual appearance” (sinnliches Scheinen), which after all can only be appearance for a subject. Thus the title with which Hegel, evidently following the spirit of the age, was in the habit of announcing his lectures on the philosophy of art, which included the word “Aesthetics,” is at least partially justified. The definition of art as absolute spirit has considerable deductive consequences for the characterization of music. First, “the principle of imitation of nature in the arts is immediately discredited”;13 and this applies to music as well. With this move, Hegel casts aside not only the old Aristotelian principle of art as mimesis but also the conception—widely discussed in the eighteenth century—of music as the imitation of inner nature.14 The dictum applies just as well to music. Music is no product of nature but the work of human beings, produced for human senses and having its purpose in itself.15 It does not have its measure or purpose in some nature previous to the artistic. None of this is gainsaid by Hegel’s linking of music, in an essential way, with the inner life of human beings (see below); it is just that this linkage may not be taken for something merely natural. To put it another way, even the “inner,” subjective,

10. The standard translations of Hegel render Vorstellung as “presentation” rather than “representation” in order to emphasize the fact that objects appear to the mind in a form that has already been shaped by space and time. See also note 3 in the chapter on Kant.—trans. 11. See Hegel, Werke, 10:367. 12. Ibid., 13:151. 13. Ibid., 10:368. 14. Cf. Dahlhaus and Zimmerman, Musik zur Sprache Gebracht, 11ff. 15. See Hegel, Werke, 13:44.

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and most private emotions and experiences of human beings are already “spiritual” (geistig) in nature, i.e., culturally and historically formed. Second, where the material of music is concerned, music’s spiritual character means that it cannot be a question of mere natural phenomena—no matter how “naturally beautiful” (naturschön) they may be, like the song of the nightingale or the soft rustling of the forest. What nature itself produces can never be beautiful in the true sense; this predicate belongs solely to what is made by human beings for human beings, “indeed for their meaningful sense [Sinn], more or less removed [entnommen] from the sensual.”16 Eduard Hanslick shows himself to be a good Hegelian when he writes, “Composing is a work of the spirit in material that is capable of spirit.”17 What is removed from the sensual must first, to Hegel’s way of thinking, become “capable of spirit”; for him, in other words, the material of music is itself always already culturally and historically produced.18 One can begin to form a more precise idea of this by looking at what Hegel has to say about the elementary component of music: the tone. Here Hegel refers back to his natural philosophy, which treats sound as a purely physical phenomenon19 and explains it by means of the inner vibrations of an elastic body. He explains the process itself, in terms that are not easily accessible to us nowadays, as the “double negation of externality.”20 The medium of natural externality, according to Hegel, is space, whose first negation is time;21 and time is the medium of music as the nonspatial art.22 But this time must be fulfilled in order for anything to happen in music. This cannot be accomplished by spatial means, but only through a process that involves the negation of the static-spatial character of a body and a second negation of its nonspatial aspect. This happens, according to Hegel, through the vibration of elastic bodies in time, which he describes as follows: “the cancellation [Aufhebung] of the spatial, therefore, consists here only in the fact that a specific sensual material gives up its peaceful external separateness [Aussereinander], enters into motion, yet vibrates in itself in such fashion that each part of the cohering body not only changes its place but also strives to return to its previous condition. The result of this oscillating vibration is the tone, the material of music.”23 But the single tone, thus described, is not yet music, and hence “the next question is how it became possible and necessary that the tones should be 16. Ibid. 17. Dahlhaus and Zimmerman, Musik zur Sprache Gebracht, 304. 18. This is a guiding principle of Adorno’s music philosophy. 19. Hegel, Werke, 9:170ff. 20. Ibid., 15:135. 21. Ibid., 9:47f. 22. Ibid., 15:156. 23. Ibid., 15:134.

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not a mere shriek of feeling but the cultivated artistic expression of the same. For feeling as such has a content, but the tone as a mere tone is contentless; hence it must be made capable, through artistic treatment, of absorbing the expression of an inner life.”24 Hegel answers this question in the section devoted to the means of music. But first, he must ask what it is that corresponds to the material of music, thus defined, on the part of the subject. How can the aesthetic reality of the musical work of art be more precisely defined? We must first remind ourselves that the musical work, as an acoustic phenomenon, addresses itself to the sense of hearing, and according to Hegel this means that just as sound requires the negation of the spatial by the temporal, so music departs from “the element of external form [Gestalt] and its intuited visibility”25 and addresses itself only to the purely internal in human beings. “For musical expression, therefore, only the wholly objectless inner self, abstract subjectivity as such, is suitable. This is our entirely empty self, the self without further content. The main task of music will therefore consist in making resound not the physical world itself but, to the contrary, the very way in which the innermost self is moved within itself in its subjectivity and ideal soul. . . . The same holds true of the effect of music. It lays claim to ultimate subjective interiority as such; it is the art of the feeling heart [Gemüt], which addresses itself immediately to the feeling heart.”26 And later, the text continues, “Music is spirit, soul, which resounds immediately for itself and feels satisfied in its self-perception.”27 Through the nexus that Hegel constructs between the acoustic and the inner, music appears to him as the ultimate romantic form of art, for the principle of the latter is “absolute interiority,” in contrast to classical art forms, which Hegel sees realized and perfected in Greek antiquity.28 For Hegel, painting also belongs to the romantic form of art, because in it the artificially generated illusion of space outweighs present reality.29 But according to Hegel, the “keynote of the romantic” is itself “musical . . . because the always enlarged universality and restlessly active depths of the feeling heart provide the principle.”30 Yet it must be asked how “objectless interiority” can become a possible site 24. Ibid., 15:159. 25. Ibid., 15:134. 26. Ibid., 15:135. 27. Ibid., 15:197f. 28. Ibid., 14:129. In this determination of the romantic, which differs in essential ways from the characterizations of the literary romantics (see Heimsoeth, “Hegels Philosophie der Musik,” 181ff.), Hegel took his orientation above all from Schiller’s distinction between naïve and sentimental poetry. See Billeter, “Die Musik in Hegels Ästhetik,” 299. 29. See Hegel, Werke, 15:15. 30. Ibid.,14:141.

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of publicly accessible art; are we, in music, really dealing only with our inner feelings? Hegel responds to this with an important distinction in the concept of interiority: “To take an object in its interiority can mean, on the one hand, to grasp it not in its external reality as a phenomenon but instead in its ideal signification; but, on the other hand, it can also mean expressing it in the very way in which it lives in the subjectivity of feeling. Both modes of appropriation are possible in music.”31 As a mere play of feelings, music would perhaps be “soul,” but indeed not “spirit.” What, then, makes musical material “capable of spirit” (Hanslick)?

Musical Means The first thing to be established is that tone in music is not natural, but “an element that is first made by art and purely artistic expression.”32 Musical tones are not part of natural beauty, and natural sounds are not suitable for music, for “the tone is no vague rustling and sounding; only through its specificity [Bestimmtheit] and the purity of the same” does it have “musical validity.”33 Thus Hegel writes in detail of the difficulties music has in preparing the material of its art, a difficulty he thinks is greater in music than in sculpture or painting. In the process, he comes to discuss the making of instruments and of musical sounds.34 He makes a noteworthy exception for the human voice, which, he claims, is “immediately” given by nature. He describes the human voice as “a sounding of the soul itself,” as the “sound that interiority, by nature, has for expressing itself, and whose utterance it governs directly.”35 He compares it to birdsong.36 There is no question but that here Hegel follows the romantic notion of the human voice as “pure nature” and fails to see that because human song itself is an art and no “pure product of nature”37 in the sense of a pure “sounding of the soul itself,” the human voice also requires vocal development, always in keeping with the sense of what, in diverse cultures, is considered to be singing and not just shouting. That this may come almost automatically to individuals who have what we call “natural talent” is no argument to the contrary. 31. Ibid., 15:192. 32. Ibid., 15:138. 33. Ibid., 15:160. 34. Ibid., 15:172 ff. 35. Ibid., 15:175. [The sentence is awkward in the German original.—trans.] 36. Ibid., 15: 199. 37. Ibid.

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Although Hegel also considers the single tone, to a limited extent, as capable of expression,38 the second essential definition of the musical tone is that it exists in relation to other tones and is given its “actual true specificity”39 by its difference from them. Here Hegel speaks of “totality,” i.e., of a relative whole to which a single tone must belong so that it “can be employed in keeping with art.”40 Hegel describes the purely temporal orders of these relationships in the section on “measure, beat, rhythm.”41 For the system of notating pitches, which Hegel discusses under the rubric of “harmony,” we nowadays use the term “tonality,”42 which does not appear in Hegel but can be interpolated as a designation for the structures of intervals, scales, and chords. “Melody,”43 finally, is for Hegel the place where “on these foundations of the rhythmically animated beat and the harmonic differences and movements, the realm of the tones coalesces into spiritually free expression.”44 After treating rhythm and harmony, he says, “the last area, now, in which the earlier elements join together as one and in this identity provide the foundation for the first truly free unfolding and unity of the tones, is melody.”45 Hegel, consequently, stands for a music aesthetics under the sign of the primacy of melody, to which harmony and rhythm are to be subordinated, because it is these two realms, in their unity, that first make melody possible. According to Hegel it is only here that music becomes capable of “spiritually free expression.” Hegel is interestingly ambivalent on the question of whether and to what extent our late Western system of tonality has a basis in nature or is artificial.46 On the one hand, Hegel refers quite positively to Pythagoras and the mathematical system of natural overtones,47 and this dependency of music’s tonal system on purely mathematical relationships places music, according to him, in the neighborhood of architecture.48 But at the same time, he admits that this “specificity of the tones and their combination consists in quantity, in numerical relationships, which, while grounded in the nature of tone itself, 38. Ibid., 15:160. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 15:162. 41. Ibid., 15:163ff. 42. Ibid., 15:171ff. 43. Ibid., 15:184ff. 44. Ibid., 15:163. 45. Ibid., 15:185. 46. Paul Hindemith tried to further develop this argument in his Craft of Musical Composition (Unterweisung im Tonsatz), in a dispute with Arnold Schoenberg. See Hindemith, Craft of Musical Composition, book 1: The Theoretical Part, and book 2: Exercises in Two-Part Writing. 47. Hegel, Werke, 15:177ff. 48. Ibid., 15:161.

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are nevertheless used by music in a way that was first discovered by art and is nuanced in the most various manner.”49 In this way, in keeping with Hegel, one can very well justify the different tempering systems of Pythagoras as “in keeping with art” and can distance oneself from those who even today are still searching for a “natural” and therefore uniquely correct tonality. Hegel, however, does not go so far as Schoenberg and his school, to conclude, from the artificial nature of tonality, that the difference between consonance and dissonance is entirely relative. For him this difference is essential and foundational for music as such.

The Reality of Music For Hegel, the reality of music cannot mean only what occurs in musical practice; rather it is a question of the “content” (Inhalt) of music, a content that, in Hegel, is always the unity of form and material—here the material of music, given form with musical means. At the same time, Hegel admits that it is not easy, in music, to speak of content at all, because of the way music points to the fleeting nature of time and on account of the purely acoustic existence that refers it, as an art, to the pure subjectivity of feeling and experience. “This objectless interiority in regard to content as well as means of expression constitutes music’s formal aspect. It does have content, too, but not in the sense of the visual arts or poetry; for what it lacks is precisely the creation of external forms, whether of real external phenomena or in the objectivity of mental intuitions [Anschauungen] and presentations [Vorstellungen].”50 At the same time, Hegel recognizes how difficult it is for philosophy to be concrete in this area: “Because the musical element of tone and of interiority, toward which the content strives, is so abstract and formal, it is not possible to pass over to the particular without immediately entering into technical details.”51 In this passage, Hegel refers only to the “quantitative relationships among the tones, . . . the differences of the instruments, the keys, chords, etc.,” and admits that he is “little versed” in this area.52 But substantively, Hegel’s comment also applies to our understanding of the specifics of musical works, which essentially determine their “content.” In fact, if we want to speak about musical works in a way that does justice to them, not noncommittally or in free association, we must first attend to how they are made; we must focus on the composition itself, and we can do this only in the technical language of compositional analysis. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 15:136. 51. Ibid., 15:137. 52. Ibid.

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Hegel also stands for the primacy of melody in the sense that it is only at this level that one can speak of a spiritual content in music. “Now that, with melody, we have entered the realm of free artistic invention and real musical creation, we immediately have to do with a content [Inhalt], which should find artistically appropriate expression in rhythm, harmony, and melody.”53 The formulation is ambiguous; one can understand it to mean that in music there is always a content that stands ready to receive its “artistically appropriate expression” through musical means; this is also how Hegel understands “accompanying music.”54 But then Hegel also acknowledges the contrary case: “But sometimes, on the contrary, music tears itself away from such ready-made content and makes itself autonomous in its own field, so that even if it continues to concern itself with a particular topic, it either submerges the latter immediately in melodies and their harmonic working through or, alternatively, knows how to be satisfied with entirely independent sounding as such, and its harmonic and melodic forms.”55 Hegel calls this “independent music” (selbständige Musik).56 Here, Hegel foreshadows the fight over “absolute” music that was to dominate the music-theoretical discussions of the entire nineteenth century.57 He also leaves no doubt as to the position he would have taken. For the eighteenth century, opera was the highest form of musical art;58 “independent” or purely instrumental music was seen as something abstracted from the lofty whole of opera, and hence secondary. This hierarchy would remain in place until it was undone by the musically inspired literary figures of romanticism. Although Hegel was no friend of the romantics, he does follow them in this one point: “The principle of music is subjective interiority. . . . If this subjectivity is to enjoy its full rights in music, too, it must free itself from a pregiven text and draw its content, forward movement [Gang], and manner of expression, the unity and unfolding of its work, the working through of a principal idea and the episodic introduction and ramification of others, etc., solely from itself, and thereby limit itself to purely musical means, since here the meaning of the whole is not expressed in spoken words.”59 In independent music, music becomes fully musical, entirely autonomous, entirely free; and because according to Hegel the medium of the spirit is freedom, the freest music is also the highest form of music. Literary models such as those found in Berlioz, Liszt, or Richard Strauss would seem to contradict this: “If music wants . . . 53. Ibid., 15:190. 54. Ibid., 15:195ff. 55. Ibid., 15:191. 56. Ibid., 15:213. 57. See Dahlhaus, Idea of Absolute Music. 58. See Dahlhaus and Zimmerman, Musik zur Sprache Gebracht, 57ff. 59. Hegel, Werke, 15:214.

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to be purely musical, it must distance from itself this element,60 which is not original to it, and emancipate itself, now—for the first time—completely free of the specificity of the word.”61 For Hegel, as for the theoreticians of “absolute” music, the medium of “independent” music is instrumental music, which is something for “connoisseurs,” while the “dilettante” or “layperson” “primarily loves the understandable expression, content,” and hence prefers “accompanying” music.62 The composer of “independent” music, with his “subjectivity in its unconstrained musical creation,” also ranks above the composer of “accompanying” music.63 It has often, and justifiably, been remarked that Hegel’s position on “independent” music is ambivalent. On the one hand, it fully develops the romantic principle of subjective interiority, abandoning all links to preexisting contents and texts. But, as Hegel’s positive examples from the realm of sacred music or opera show, this also entails a loss of “content,” and on the whole one can say that “accompanying” music, i.e., music tied to a text, proves to be the “paradigmatic case of [Hegel’s] musical aesthetic.”64 This suggests that in Hegel’s view music had already passed its historical zenith—another variation on his general thesis according to which art remains, “from the perspective of its highest determination [Bestimmung], something past.”65 In music, as in the other arts, the transition from classical to romantic art is seen as an abandonment of the harmony of opposites, the balance of subjectivity and objectivity, in the interest of a subjectively anguished (zerrissen) modernity. Finally, Hegel also turns briefly to the topic of “artistic execution,”66 which forms part of the reality of music because musical works, in contrast to sculpture or painting, always have to be produced anew; the score itself is not music. Hegel notes that, at least since the eighteenth century, the period of the flowering of Italian opera, the traditional union of musical composition and musical execution in a single individual had begun to fall apart—Mozart still performed almost exclusively works of his own composition. This creates a problem similar to that of the architect who relies on a builder for construction: “Similarly, the composer must now entrust his work to alien hands and throats, but with the difference that here the execution, in regard both to technique and to the inner, enlivening spirit, itself requires additional artistic and 60. I.e., poetry.—h.s. 61. Hegel, Werke, 15:214. 62. Ibid., 15:216; see also 145. 63. Ibid., 15:218. 64. Kulenkampff, “Musik bei Kant und Hegel,” 156. 65. Hegel, Werke, 13:25. 66. Ibid., 15:218 ff.

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not merely craftsmanlike activity.”67 Thus “conception” and “execution” can become separate and independent of each other; Hegel refers to this, in contrast to other arts in which no “new discoveries” have been made, as “two miracles”: “one of conception, and the other of virtuosic genius in execution; in this regard ever greater connoisseurs have increasingly expanded the concept of what music is and what it is capable of.”68 What for Hegel is new, on the one hand, is the miracle of pure conception, i.e., of the nonperforming composer, and here it is difficult not to think of Beethoven, although Hegel does not mention the name.69 Beethoven’s late works could also be implied by Hegel’s remark that in the newest productions of “independent music,” “subjective arbitrariness, with its inspirations, caprices, interruptions, clever mockeries, deceptive tensions, surprising turns, leaps, and flashes, eccentricities, and unheard-of effects, becomes the unfettered master, compared with the regular advance of melodic expression and textual content in accompanying music.”70 There was also, on the other hand, the new virtuosity that was embodied by Paganini and Liszt, in whose musical practice the conceptual aspect of music did not play a leading role and to which Hegel’s second “miracle” clearly refers; Hegel evidently heard Paganini, at least, in Berlin.71 But “virtuosic genius in execution” also includes the “reproductive” aspect of the “musical performing art”; the latter “immerses itself entirely in the given artwork and does not seek to reproduce anything other than what the existing work already contains.”72 The phenomenon of the virtuoso who performs the works of others was indeed a new one in the nineteenth century—it was Liszt who, in transcriptions in his concerts, first introduced the late piano sonatas of Beethoven or excerpts from Wagner’s operas. This also applies to noncomposing conductors such as Hans von Bülow. Among artists who do more than simply reproduce, Hegel is evidently also cognizant of music that is not composed in advance: “The other [principal type of performing musical art] is not merely reproductive but draws expression, performance style [Vortrag], actual spiritual life not only from the existing 67. Ibid., 15:194. 68. Ibid., 15:195. 69. Carl Dahlhaus interprets this as an “eloquent silence” and interprets Hegel’s passages on “independent music” as a “covert polemic” by Hegel against E. T. A. Hofmann’s euphoric response to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony of 1810, which the latter republished in the first volume of his Fantasy Pieces in Callot’s Manner. In fact it is improbable that Hegel would have been unfamiliar with it, especially considering that until 1821 Hofmann also lived in Berlin. Cf. Dahlhaus, “Hegel und die Musik seiner Zeit.” At the same time there can be no doubt that Hegel regarded “independent music” as the more progressive form. Hoffmann’s review can be found in his Musical Writings. 70. Hegel, Werke, 15:218. 71. We know this from a letter from G. Hermann Franck to Hegel dated April 15, 1829, in which he regrets not having been able to introduce himself to him at the Paganini concert. See Hegel, Briefe. 72. Hegel, Werke, 15:219.

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composition but principally from [the performer’s] own means.”73 Here one can hear echoes of the way the contemporaries of the classical composers, and of Beethoven in particular, were fascinated by creative extemporization on the part of composers who also performed. Later, this fascination would be restricted almost entirely to the performance, by virtuosos, of free cadences in instrumental concerts, although among organists it is still considered proper to close a concert with free improvisation.

Peculiar Characteristics of Hegel’s Musical Philosophy This explication of the basic lines of Hegel’s philosophy of music needs to be supplemented by reference to some of its particularities. This is also related to the question of its relevance for today. The first thing that must be mentioned is that Hegel’s analysis of musical means has many lacunae.74 He makes no reference at all to the opposition of major and minor keys; and he mentions the relationship between homophony and polyphony, and between harmony and counterpoint, only in a single passage in which he discusses the tension between melody and harmony, without using these terms. He mentions neither the musical form of the fugue nor those of the sonata or symphony—probably to avoid exposing himself to accusations of technical incompetence.75 Nor are there any signs of a historical approach76—this in striking contrast to his chapters on the other arts. Hegel seems to have experienced the history of music from Palestrina via Bach to Mozart and Rossini as a synchronous present, i.e., as contemporaneous phenomena that could be interpreted with essentially the same analytical tools. The deductive character of this theory becomes especially evident in the passages where Hegel interprets musical events as direct confirmation of purely philosophical ideas; according to him music is “spirit,” and so such correspondences are to be expected. Of the spirit, Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes) had already stated that “not that life which shies away from death and holds itself pure in the face of devastation, but that which suffers it and sustains itself in it, is the life of the spirit.”77 Hegel applies this thought to the relationship between consonance and dissonance; he interprets the addition to the triad of other notes of the scale as a destruction of the immediate unity of consonance, through which “now, for the first time, there 73. Ibid. 74. Schüttauf, “Melos und Drama,” 183ff. 75. Hegel, Werke, 15:137. 76. Cf. Schüttauf, “Melos und Drama,” 183ff. 77. Hegel, Werke, 3:36; Phenomenology of Spirit, 19.

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truly emerges a determinate difference, in the form of a contradiction. The actual profundity of what is heard consists in the fact that it also proceeds into essential contradictions and does not avoid sharpness and anguish. For the true concept is unity in itself; but a unity that is not merely immediate, rather one that is essentially divided in itself, fallen apart into contradictions.”78 In the text, Hegel himself then explains this structure by referring to the “science of logic.” Music, he says, must possess means with which to represent the “art of contradictions” if it is to have the capacity to express the profundity and meaning of spiritual content. Quite apart from systematic philosophy, Hegel has a good point here. Only through the interplay of consonance and dissonance has Western music, since the emergence of polyphony, acquired the expressive power that we admire in traditional works. A ceaseless reveling in harmonic triads soon dulls the ear, which is why church bells, to be effective, insert seconds or fourths into their striking. The question of whether the rejection of the difference between consonance and dissonance by the “atonal” composers of the early twentieth century represented an enrichment or an impoverishment of music’s capacity for expressivity must remain open here. Perhaps the loss that it may have introduced has long since been compensated for by the expansion of musical material beyond the well-articulated tone into the more expansive realm of musical sounds, with noises included as well. The underlying philosophical motif of spirit appears once again in Hegel’s view of the relationship between melody and harmony. Only in the tensionladen interplay of consonance and dissonance—admittedly under the primacy of consonance, which is breached only “in order to return back to it”79—does melody, to his way of thinking, acquire the “foundation” of its “profoundly penetrating movements”:80 “Boldness of musical composition therefore parts company with merely consonance-producing progression, strides onward into oppositions, summons all the starkest contradictions and dissonances, and gives proof of its own power by stirring up all the powers of harmony, all the while being certain of its capacity to calm these struggles and thus of celebrating the satisfying victory of melodic tranquility. This is a struggle between freedom and necessity, a struggle between imagination’s freedom to take wings and the necessity of those harmonic relationships that it requires for its expression and in which its own meaning lies.”81 In Hegel, true freedom is the union of freedom and necessity, and the “spirit of music” is yet another indication of this. 78. Hegel uses a neologism, zerschieden, in place of the usual geschieden, thus emphasizing the extreme splitting that occurs in the division.—trans. 79. Hegel, Werke, 15:189. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid.

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These passages also allow us to locate Hegel’s philosophy of music more precisely in a historical sense. When he defines music, like painting, as a romantic art, he does not feel compelled to deny that both already existed in antiquity or in other cultures.82 Similarly, he gives short shrift to Byzantine painting, barely mentioning it before launching into a discussion of Italian painting of the early Renaissance.83 Music appears on the horizon of his consciousness only as polyphonic; the earliest composer he mentions is Palestrina.84 Hegel is probably correct in thinking that the art music with which we are familiar, and panel painting (Tafelbildmalerei) as well, are both phenomena of modernity, and he links the “new era,”85 from the perspective of the philosophy of history, to the principle of subjectivity, which is why, for him, painting and music are essentially romantic art forms. It is also noteworthy that Hegel asserts the primacy of melody, in relation to rhythm and harmony, for the entire period of music history prior to Mozart and Rossini: “the free sounding of the soul in the realm of music first constitutes melody.”86 This even leads him, first, to defend Rossini against the reproach of “empty ear-tickling,”87 and then to put forward the astonishing thesis that Rossini, as a result of the growing independence of his melodic invention in relation to a preexisting text, marks the transition to “independent,” i.e., absolute music.88 From here it is not far to the supposition that, musically, Hegel’s thought moves essentially in the patterns of the era of thorough bass, i.e., according to the scheme “melody plus accompaniment.” In fact, following the blossoming of polyphonic music in the sixteenth century, monody became the modern musical form per se, something that one might, in Hegel’s sense, see as linked with the romantic principle of subjectivity. Nevertheless, Hegel arrives at a notion of equal weight between melody and harmony. After establishing that melodic expression can easily descend into “shallowness”89 if it is tied to overly simple sequences of chords, he offers as a further possibility for deepening the melodic element that it “is so tightly interwoven with the forward movement of the harmony that no such determinate distinction can be drawn between a self-grounding melody and a harmony that provides only the accompanying points of stability and the more solid ground and foundation for it. Harmony and melody, then, remain one and the same compact whole, 82. See, for music, ibid., 15:212; and for painting, 19ff. 83. Ibid.,15:110ff. 84. Ibid., 15:198. 85. Ibid., 12:491. 86. Ibid., 15:185. 87. Ibid., 15:210. 88. Ibid., 15:211 and 215. 89. Ibid., 15:187.

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and a change in the one also means a necessary change in the other side.”90 As examples of this balance of harmonic and melodic aspects, under the sign of the primacy of melody, Hegel mentions chorales with four voices. And then he continues, “Similarly, one and the same melody may so weave through several voices that this intertwining creates a harmonic progression; and even different melodies can be worked together in a similar manner, so that the coincidence of certain notes of these melodies produces a harmony, as frequently occurs in the works of Sebastian Bach, for example.”91 Thus the question arises how models like these can be made to agree with his thesis that “the free sounding of the soul in the field of music first constitutes melody.” Do they not speak much more for a primacy of the harmonic over the melodic? It is likely that in Hegel what we find is a certain ambiguity when it comes to the concept of harmony. When he defines the harmonic as the realm of musical “necessity,” he obviously means the subject of harmonic theory, i.e., the system of permissible chords and combinations—as late as 1900 the ninth chord and the fourth inversion of the ninth chord were quite simply “forbidden,” and there were prescribed modulations that had to be complied with when moving from one key to another. But harmony can also mean the entire field of invention related to the creation of chords and their combinations. There are purely harmonic bearers of meaning such as the “Tristan chord,” for example, or certain leitmotivs in the Ring of the Nibelung, i.e., the Tarnhelm-motif. Precursors of this autonomy of the harmonic can be identified as far back as Bach’s choral harmonies. They are necessarily absent from Hegel’s reflections, for according to him harmony is capable of musical expression only in combination with melody; in short, the balance between harmony and melody that he describes also exists under the sign of the primacy of melody. Hegel claims “that the beat, rhythm, and harmony, taken by themselves, are only abstractions that in their isolation have no musical value, but can acquire a truly musical existence only through and within melody, as moments and aspects of the melody itself. In this difference between harmony and melody, thus brought into accord, lies the principal secret of the great composers.”92 The mainly harmonic expression of Max Reger’s music would find as little place in this music theory as the emancipation of rhythm in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Further examples of aesthetic thinking in patterns of the unity of contradictions can be found in Hegel’s comments on the relation between melody 90. Ibid., 15:188. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid., 15:187.

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and recitative in vocal music.93 Here too, as in the relation between harmony and melody, it is necessary to bring about a “mediation [Vermittlung] of these elements.”94 Not so much mediation as compromise is what Hegel looks for in the realm of “accompanying music,” where the text, like the choruses of Aes­ chylus or Sophocles, can take on so much aesthetic weight that “there remains nothing for music to add”;95 or, like Schiller’s lyrics, can be “too burdened with thought” to be set to music.96 Thus,“the most suitable for music, in contrast, is a certain middling kind of poetry, which we Germans nowadays hardly allow to pass as poetry, but for which the Italians and the French have evidenced much appreciation and skill”97 (and, we might add, Franz Schubert with his Winterreise). Next, Hegel energetically defends Mozart’s Magic Flute against the “idle talk” that calls its text “really lamentable,” and claims, “and yet this shoddy piece of work is among the most praiseworthy librettos.”98 There follows a diatribe against “contemporary dramatic music” that can refer, paradigmatically, only to Carl Maria von Weber’s Freischütz, claiming that it frequently “[seeks] its effect in violent contrasts, by cleverly forcing contradictory passions, struggling, into one and the same musical movement. Thus it expresses, for example, gaiety, a wedding, brilliant festivity, and then simultaneously inserts hatred, revenge, enmity, so that in the midst of pleasure, joy, and dance music there also rage violent quarrels and a most repellant discord.”99 His criticism refers to the relationship between the characteristic and the melodic: “The main demand, in this regard, seems to me to be that victory always be accorded to the melodic, as the all-embracing unity, and not to the separation of characteristic traits scattered about indiscriminately.”100 Hegel admittedly falls beneath the level of his own musical aesthetic in his remarks about the identity of the theme in musical compositions. According to him “the meaning to be expressed in a musical theme is already exhausted in the theme itself.”101 Development and combination with other themes do not make any essential changes to it. Thus the theme, in its identity, also appears as a manifestation of the sovereignty of the artist over his material: “The recollection of the theme that has been adopted is, so to speak, a re-collection of the artist, i.e., an inner awareness that he is the artist and can venture forth at will 93. Ibid., 15:201ff. 94. Ibid., 15:203. 95. Ibid., 15:206. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid., 15:206ff. 98. Ibid., 15:207. 99. Ibid., 15:209. 100. Ibid., 15:208ff. 101. Ibid., 15:142.

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and allow himself to be borne hither and yon.”102 Here, Hegel is thinking of the practice of variation, then in common use, and most likely also of the development passages in the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. But it would actually have made a much better fit with his theoretically postulated unity of opposites if he had referred to the fact that the themes themselves are generally original compositions and not merely “adopted,” or to the genesis of Beethoven’s themes in the musical process itself, along with the latter’s principle of developing variation. For Hegel’s unity of contradictions is not, like an “adopted theme,” present at the inception, but is everywhere in his philosophy a result—only not in his philosophy of music. “Difference that has been brought into harmony,” “unity of opposites,” “harmony in disharmony”—the examples demonstrate that Hegel understands these and similar characterizations as not merely descriptive but also evaluative. His philosophy of music is essentially a philosophy of good, i.e., beautiful music, and basic philosophical assumptions provide the normative background for what can be considered a beautiful work of musical art. For him, what is beautiful is by no means a matter of taste—not even in the sense of Kant’s judgments of taste (Geschmacksurteile)—rather, it is an objectively identifiable quality belonging to the artworks themselves. Thus, Hegel reverts back to a pre-Kantian aesthetic of objective harmony or perfection, whereby the basic speculative figure of his thought, the identity of identity and nonidentity, or unity of opposites,103 provides the foundation for what, in aesthetic contexts, is meant by the value “beautiful.” In the end, Hegel represents a “metaphysical aesthetic of content.”104 For him, spirit, as the unity of contending opposites, is the theme and content of all art. This is also its truth, for “truth,” in Hegel, signifies “the true,”105 i.e., the coincidence of concept and thing, of form and content, as the accomplished “reconciliation and mediation of both.” From this it follows that “art’s vocation is to reveal the truth in the shape of sensuous artistic forming, to represent that reconciled contradiction.”106 “Truth in the shape of sensuous artistic forming” is nothing else but the beautiful. From this follow Hegel’s aesthetic value judgments, which altogether make a somewhat classical/pro-harmony impression; he seems to have experienced his musical present as the decay of an ideal.107 What separates Hegel from us is not only his metaphysics of spirit but also the “no longer beautiful arts” (die nicht mehr 102. Ibid., 15:14. 103. Cf. Schnädelbach, Hegel zur Einführung. 104. Heimsoeth, “Hegels Philosophie der Musik,” 167. 105. See Schnädelbach, “Hegels Lehre von der Wahrheit,” 64ff. 106. Hegel, Werke,13:81ff. 107. Schüttauf, “Melos und Drama,” 188.

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schönen Künste).108 Since the avant-garde of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the artistic theory that came along with it, artistic quality is no longer measured in terms of beauty. The clash between aesthetics in Kant’s sense and a philosophy of art that is more oriented to Hegel and to the object—a clash that took on fresh relevance with the emergence of the neo-Kantians— must today still be considered unresolved, especially since, as we know, Kant’s aesthetics by no means stopped at the analysis of aesthetic judgments but also had something to say about the works themselves. In principle, it must be asked whether Hegel is right in claiming that the reason why music is “the art of objectless interiority”109 is that it occurs in the realm of the acoustic and is addressed to the sense of hearing. He ties this to the separate thesis that music’s realm is that of “feeling” or “sensibility”110—a romantic cliché since the eighteenth century. Here Hegel is directly indebted to Kant, who called music, as he did painting, “an art of the beautiful play of sensations, or feelings [Empfindungen]”111 and then defined it more specifically as “the language of the emotions [Affekte].”112 One must, of course, ask what exactly was meant by “feeling”—something felt in a way that could be communicated intersubjectively, such as love, hate, fear, grief, and so on, as defined by the baroque theory of affects and figures that still determined Bach’s compositions; or the subjective, utterly private, and barely communicable emotional mood of the romantics. In fact, Hegel thinks that music, as art, relies on the “elevation of what is felt subjectively in a given case to an objectivity and spiritual form that belong to the sphere of pure interiority.”113 But “pure interiority,” which has become objective and spiritual, cannot be the end of the story. Hegel himself reckons the sense of hearing among the “theoretical senses,”114 along with the sense of sight. But precisely for this reason it is doubtful whether in the case of the loss of sight—for example the onset of blindness—consciousness reverts to pure, objectless interiority. There are also such things as acoustic objects, and there is no reason not to think that motifs, chords, themes, and so on exist in a way that is objective, i.e., publicly accessible. Thus it is not true that just because tones as the medium of music do not have the capacity to mimic visual realities, music is, “in comparison with the material of the visual 108. See Jauss, Die nicht mehr schönen Künste. 109. Hegel, Werke, 15:150ff. 110. Ibid. [Here and frequently throughout, Hegel uses the term Empfindung, which can be translated as either “feeling” or “sensibility.” On the particular nuance of the term Empfindung in nineteenth-century Germany, see note 22 in the chapter on Kant.—trans.] 111. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 195. 112. Ibid., 199. See also Kuhlenkampff, “Musik bei Kant und Hegel,” 143ff. 113. Heimsoeth, “Hegels Philosophie der Musik,” 174. 114. Hegel, Werke, 15:134.

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arts, entirely abstract,”115 and that therefore only the “wholly objectless inner self, abstract subjectivity as such,”116 is suitable for musical expression. Hegel completely overlooks the intimate relationship of music to motor and gestural behavior, a relationship that exists not only with rhythm but with harmony and melody as well. Even our “classical” music is not so utterly emancipated from the archaic connection to dance. In support of this thesis one can even cite Hegel’s own theory of feeling,117 according to which the “inner feelings” (innere Empfindungen) must assume a corporeal form before they can be felt: “Feeling in general is the healthy co-experiencing of the individual spirit in its corporeality.”118 “Feelings’ link to corporeality is evidenced in a tendency, which may be suppressed but is probably never absent, toward bodily movement or mimetic behavior not only of facial expression but also of the voice. It is mimetic behavior through which we feel ourselves.”119 In fact, it is the mimetic element “that makes the concept of feeling so interesting for musical aesthetics. Feeling [Empfindung] is a self-feeling [ein Sich-fühlen], which originally takes the form of a self-movement. Every self-movement is a self-feeling. Now every music represents . . . for the listener an offer to accompany, to co-vibrate, indeed more precisely to move oneself in tandem. In effect, sitting still while listening to music is an artificial posture that suppresses the natural tendency somehow to move with it, and in consequence somehow to feel oneself.”120 Thus, music is not “the art of the feeling heart, which addresses itself immediately to the feeling heart.”121 When we hear Beethoven, Beethoven does not speak immediately to our heart but instead addresses himself, with his works, to our hopefully musically cultivated sense of hearing, inviting us to active, i.e., mimetic listening, with the goal, in the process, of challenging our musical intelligence. It is simply untrue that aesthetic experience, even in the imageless medium of tones and sounds, remains imprisoned in the “inner” realm of feelings. Music’s unmistakable similarity with language also speaks against this— something that could be grasped conceptually only with the assistance of a more recent theory of symbols.122 Actually, it is impossible to comprehend why in passages like these Hegel follows the romantics, to whom he otherwise felt such antipathy, so blindly and does not recall his otherwise constant objection to them: “If it is correct (and it probably is correct) that what differentiates 115. Ibid., 15;135. 116. Ibid. 117. Cf. Kulenkampff, “Musik bei Kant und Hegel,” 160ff. 118. Hegel, Werke, 10:101; Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 241. 119. Kulenkampff, “Musik bei Kant und Hegel,” 162. 120. Ibid, 162. 121. Hegel, Werke, 15:135. 122. Here it is necessary to point, above all, to Suzanne Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key.

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human beings from animals is thought, then everything human is human by dint and only by dint of the fact that it is brought about by thought.”123 Precisely because, according to Hegel, music is a human art, the conclusion is inescapable that there have to be musical thought and musical ideas—something that is quite undeniable but that he never mentions. Ultimately, there was no way Hegel could deny that composers who did not create epochal works of language, for example, Mozart, Schubert, or Bruckner, were also thinking something when they composed, even if not necessarily in a conceptual form. Hegel does not deny that composing, apart from the emotional moment that always plays a role, is a rational practice—one that admittedly, like every rational practice, requires talent and cultivation. But as soon as it becomes autonomous in relation to content, the suspicion of thoughtless virtuosity raises its head. “Tending in this direction, then, musical production can easily become something very thoughtless and devoid of feeling, requiring no otherwise profound consciousness of cultivation and the feeling heart. On account of this lack of substance, then, not only do we find the gift of composing developing in the most tender years, but composers endowed with a wealth of talent are often the most unconscious individuals, who never in their entire lives develop any substance.”124 At the beginning of Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel expresses himself even more forcefully: “Music . . . which occupies itself only with the completely undefined movement of spiritual interiority, with the sounding, as it were, of feeling without thought, requires little or no intellectual material to be present in consciousness. Therefore, musical talent usually appears in very early youth, when the head is still empty and the heart little moved, and can have reached very significant heights before the spirit and life have experience of themselves; as we then often enough observe a great virtuosity in musical composition and performance accompanied by a significant dearth of spirit and character.”125 Hegel can hardly have been referring to the young Mozart, the early Schubert, or the Berlin wunderkind Mendelssohn, but who else did he mean then? If he did, after all, mean this kind of wunderkind, it would be further evidence of the supposition that Hegel found “independent” music ultimately bereft of intelligence. Ultimately, Hegel does not succeed in bringing his theory of pure interiority and his objective content aesthetic together in a single harmonious whole. “Content, meaning, and expression” just don’t want to fit together with “interiority, subjectivity, and soul.”126 Yet in spite of all its shortcomings, Hegel’s 123. Hegel, Werke, 8:41f. 124. Ibid., 15:217. 125. Ibid., 13:47. 126. Cf. Kulenkampff, “Musik bei Kant und Hegel,” 159.

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philosophy of music has hardly any contemporary rivals; neither Kant nor Schopenhauer possessed greater expertise, and the romantics, although closer to music, lacked comparable conceptual tools. Hegel’s music philosophy need not be ashamed of its historical limitations; in fact it is an impressive example of a philosophy that “grasps its time in thought.”127 Hegel’s personal musical taste, which during a trip to Vienna sent him running to the Italian Opera night after night and even caused him to prefer Rossini’s Figaro to Mozart’s work—on account of the vocally “brilliant flights . . . , which it was so sweet to hear”128—is not relevant here. The theoretical weakness of Hegel’s music philosophy is to be found, rather, in the linking of the key words “hearing,” “interiority,” and “feeling” in his interpretation of music as an art form—an interpretation that in actuality resists the fundamental principles of his philosophy as a whole; evidently he was not able to resist entirely the suggestive power of contemporary patterns of thinking.

Reception In its historical impact, Hegel’s philosophy of music cannot compete with that of Schopenhauer, especially when it comes to its influence on composers. Thus there is only a single recorded remark by Franz Liszt in which he comments positively on Hegel. He calls instrumental music “the zenith, the freest and most absolute manifestation of our art . . . , defined so accurately by Hegel as a kind of liberation of the soul.”129 Among the philosophically systematic aestheticians of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Vischer and Eduard von Hartmann continued Hegel’s line of thinking; Vischer, together with Karl Reinhold von Köstlin, attempted to correct Hegel’s errors of judgment in the spirit of his work—above all as regards his silence on the subject of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Beethoven’s compositions, especially Fidelio.130 Occasionally, later commentators emphasize the quality of Hegelian music theory,131 but the two most significant music philosophers of the twentieth century, Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno, confine themselves to a few remarks. Even the more extended commentaries on Hegel’s aesthetics deal only marginally with the chapter on music.132 Thus one can say that even today Hegel still remains one of the unknown musical theoreticians of the past. 127. Hegel, Werke, 7:26; Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, 11. 128. Hegel to his wife, September 27, 1824. In Hegel, Briefe, 3:7ff. 129. Cited in Heimsoeth, “Hegels Philosophie der Musik,” 62. In a perfect antithesis to this, Hegel is criticized by Gervinus in 1867 as a protagonist of pure instrumental music. Ibid., 191. 130. Cited in Schüttauf, “Melos und Drama,” 192. 131. See Heimsoeth, “Hegels Philosophie der Musik,” 162. 132. Compare Gethmann-Siefert, Die Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte.

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Hegel’s Works Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. [Translation of Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik.] Trans. T. M. Knox. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1975. Briefe von und an Hegel. With Johannes Hoffmeister and Friedhelm Nicolin. Philosophische Studientexte. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970. “The Critical Journal, Introduction: On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism Generally, and Its Relationship to the Present State of Philosophy.” With Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Trans. and ed. H. S. Harris and George di Giovanni. In Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, 272–91. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. [Translation of “Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie.”] Trans. and ed. Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. [Translation of Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften.] Trans. A. V. Miller, Steven A. Taubeneck, and Diana Behler. New York: Continuum, 1990. Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. [Translation of Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte.] Trans. E. S. Haldane. New York: Humanities Press; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955. Hegel’s Science of Logic. [Translation of Wissenschaft der Logik.] Trans. A. V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1997. Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. [Translation of Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts.] Trans. T. M. Knox. Ed. Stephen Houlgate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Phenomenology of Spirit. [Translation of Phänomenologie des Geistes.] Trans. A. V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Werke. Ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. 21 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969–79. Vol. 2. Jenaer Schriften 1801–1807. Includes “Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie.” Vol. 3. Phänomenologie des Geistes. Vol. 7. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechtes. Vols. 8–10. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften. Vol. 12. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Vols. 13–15. Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik.

General Literature Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. Trans. and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Athlone Press, 1997. Bungay, Stephen. Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie. “Der Absolute Geist. Die Kunst.” In Hermann Drüe et al., Hegels “Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften” (1830): Ein Kommentar zum Systemgrundriss, 317 ff. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000. ———. Die Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte: Untersuchungen zu Hegels Ästhetik. Hegel-Studien Beiheft 25. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1984. Jauss, Hans Robert, ed. Die nicht mehr schönen Künste: Grenzphänomene des Ästhetischen. 2nd ed. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1968. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.

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Langer, Suzanne. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. Maker, William. Hegel and Aesthetics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Schnädelbach, Herbert. “Hegels Lehre von der Wahrheit.” In Philosophie in der modernen Kultur, Vorträge und Abhandlungen, 3:64ff. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000. ———. Hegel zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 1999. Singer, Peter. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Musical Literature Billeter, Bernhard. “Die Musik in Hegels Äesthetik.” Die Musikforschung 26 (1973): 295–310. Bonds, Mark Evan. “Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 50 (1997): 387–420. Dahlhaus, Carl. “Hegel und die Musik seiner Zeit.” Hegel-Studien 22 (1983): 337–42. ———. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Dahlhaus, Carl, and Michael Zimmerman, eds. Musik zur Sprache Gebracht: Musikästhetische Texte aus drei Jahrhunderten. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984. Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music [1854]. Trans. and ed. Geoffrey Payzant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. Heimsoeth, Heinz. “Hegels Philosophie der Musik.” Hegel-Studien 2 (1962): 161–201. Hindemith, Paul. The Craft of Musical Composition. Book 1: The Theoretical Part. Trans. Arthur Mendel. Book 2: Exercises in Two-Part Writing. Trans. Otto Ortmann. New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1941. Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus. Fantasy Pieces in Callot’s Manner: Pages from the Diary of a Traveling Romantic. Trans. Joseph M. Hayse. Schenectady: Union College Press, 1996. ———. Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism. Ed. David Charlton. Trans. Martyn Clarke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Johnson, Julian. “Music in Hegel’s Aesthetics: A Re-evaluation.” British Journal of Aesthetics 31, no. 2 (1991): 152–62. Kulenkampff, Jens. “Musik bei Kant und Hegel.” Hegel-Studien 2 (1987): 143–63. Schmalfeldt, Janet. “Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the ‘Tempest’ Sonata.” Beethoven Forum 4 (1995): 37–71. Schüttauf, Konrad. “Melos und Drama: Hegels Begriff der Oper.” Hegel-Studien 27 (1986): 183–94.

Schelling Be r beli Wa n n i n g

Brief Biography Science and art—for a systematic philosopher like Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, constructing a contradiction between this pair of concepts is unthinkable. For him, science and art are two paths to human knowledge, which should be trodden in parallel, which at best complement each other, and which cannot be forced into a hierarchical relationship. Here the true, there the beautiful—the philosopher of identity, one of the leading intellects of German idealism, does not accept the validity of this distinction. This explains the enormous breadth of his work as a whole, which covers epistemology and metaphysics as well as philosophy of nature and of art. His ideas, always subject to his own critical reflection, not only stimulated his contemporaries in important ways but have continued to influence philosophical discussion down to the present. What is less well known today is that Schelling also had poetic ambitions and wrote a number of poems and that he took part in the aesthetic debates of the famous Jena circle of romantics, an activity in which he did not steer clear of controversy. His love of art is therefore not merely the love of a philosophical problem. His interest in music derives from the same cast of thought, which sought to oppose fragmentation and to uncover, behind the manifold phenomena of art—music, painting, architecture, and sculpture, as well as literature—the idea of unity. . Documented in their entirety in Schelling, Durchs Herz der Erde.

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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born on January 27, 1775, in Leonberg, Württemberg, the intellectually precocious son of a pastor. In 1790, at only fifteen years of age, he entered the Tübinger Stift, where he intended to study philosophy first and then, building on that foundation, go on to study theology at the university. By chance, he shared a room with Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; their common philosophical interests helped forge a close friendship among the three. Five years later, Schelling concluded his studies. He had already written several important works, including Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus, 1795), which contain his first reflections on art in a philosophical context. This work already shows how his interest in epistemology was turning toward aesthetic questions. Thus, in the “Tenth Letter,” he discusses the relationship between freedom and necessity in light of the function of art, drawing on the example of Greek tragedy. However, Schelling did not immediately continue along the path he had in mind. Instead of entering the ministry, he chose to accompany the young barons von Riedesel to the University of Leipzig, as their private tutor. Here the young thinker, who until then had been thoroughly, but traditionally, educated, encountered the up-and-coming disciplines of mathematics, natural science, and medicine, with their more “modern” organization. His special talent for eliciting novel ideas from these sources and documenting them in significant texts, such as New Deduction of Natural Right (Neue Deduktion des Naturrechts, 1796), or Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: An Introduction to the Study of This Science (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797), did not go unrecognized. No less a personage than Goethe actively advocated on behalf of the young genius’s appointment as extraordinary professor at the University of Jena, which position Schelling assumed in 1798. Thus Schelling arrived at the center of early German romanticism, the circle surrounding Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, G. H. Schubert, and others. Here he also met his great love, Caroline, one of the most interesting women in the romantic movement, whom he married in 1803 after her divorce from August Wilhelm Schlegel. Six years later they were separated by death, which plunged Schelling into a deep existential crisis. His second marriage, to Pauline Gotter in 1812, brought the couple three sons; however, Pauline was never able to exert the important influence on Schelling’s philosophical creation that Caroline had. . Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 129–55. . Ibid., 156–218.

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At the turn of the century, Schelling was deeply immersed in aesthetic questions. In his early major work on epistemology, System of Transcendental Idealism (System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 1800), he assigns to art a position of unprecedented loftiness, placing it even above philosophical reflection, because art, in his mind, succeeds in opening up the “holy of holies, where there burns, in infinite and original unity, as if with One flame, what is divided in nature and history, and what in life and action, as well as in thought, must always flee from itself.” Here, as the two human capacities of reason and sensuality enter into a positively symbiotic relationship, art becomes “the only true and infinite organon and document of philosophy.” Simultaneously, Schelling, together with Hegel, published the Journal for Speculative Physics (Zeitschrift für speculative Physik), an example of the fact that he saw no contradiction between scientific and artistic cognition. In 1802, he gave lectures on the philosophy of art, constructing a complex system of the arts in which music assumes a unique position that is not at all in keeping with the previous tradition. We shall come back to this below. Schelling then resumed his academic career, first in Würzburg and then, in 1806, as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Science in Munich. There he served among other things as general secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts but did not do any academic teaching until 1820. His remarkable lecture “Concerning the Relationship of the Formative Arts to Nature” (“Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur,” 1807) marked the end of his philosophically significant speculative encounter with art. From then on, in his capacity as general secretary, he engaged with art in more practical ways. During these years, he wrote other noteworthy essays, such as “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom” (“Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit,” 1809), which show that his interest in the philosophy of art was gradually receding into the background. In 1808 he was given noble rank. With the exception of some private lectures that he gave in 1810 in Stuttgart, he resumed teaching only in 1820, in Erlangen, where he remained until 1827, when he accepted a professorship at

. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:627; Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 236. . Ibid. . [Bildende Künste is normally translated as “visual arts,” drawing on the root meaning of Bild—image. But in Schelling, as will be explained below, the term also includes music. In translating it as “formative” (meaning arts that are formed from some physical material), I follow Douglas W. Stott’s translation, in The Philosophy of Art. Bildend, in Schelling’s usage, is also sometimes translated as “plastic.” There are several English translations of Schelling’s “Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zur Natur” that bear the title “On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.”—trans.]

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the University of Munich. In his later years, along with studies of the history of philosophy, he was occupied with Philosophy of Mythology (Philosophie der Mythologie) and Philosophy of Revelation (Philosophie der Offenbarung)—works that remained unpublished in his lifetime. But his interest in natural science did not entirely vanish either; in 1832, he gave a talk at the academy on the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Michael Faraday. In 1841, he was offered the chair in Berlin that the late G. W. F. Hegel had occupied; their youthful friendship had ended in 1807 in a bitter philosophical quarrel. Lively debates concerning his relationship to Hegel, which also engaged the most important problems of German idealism, marked the period of his professorship in Berlin, from which Schelling retired in 1846. In his final years, he continued to lecture at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, of which he had been a member since 1842. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling died on August 20, 1854, while on vacation in Bad Ragaz.

Philosophy and Art The young Schelling set out to discover the first principle of philosophy, the principle from which all objective knowledge could be derived. Immanuel Kant, in his major work Critique of Pure Reason (1791), had argued that the latter can be achieved only through the interplay of sensual perception and the powers of reason. In this process, every theoretical insight is based on conditions that, as a priori principles of cognition, first constitute all the objects of possible experience. The forms of intuition space and time are supplemented by categories of the understanding, such as causality or unity and multiplicity; and only thus does it become possible for the perceptible world, in its causal nexus, to appear. A certain discomfort with this epistemological dualism of Kant’s led the early idealists to develop new points of departure for the solution of a central problem of metaphysics, namely, the problem of extracting from experience conclusions that transcend that experience itself. Schelling was initially influenced by Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s concept of the absolute I, which, prior to all experience, starting from the principle of absolute certainty (absolut gewisser Grundsatz), deduces everything else from it. But a philosophy that is centered entirely on a subject can easily slip into aporia, since one can hardly deduce from this principle the world and everything that is not the subject. Schelling acknowledges Fichte’s accomplishment, his desire to ground philosophy as a whole as something derived from the absolute. He also knows that one cannot arrive at this absolute by way of a continuously intensified analysis of the contingent, in other words, that it must be postulated. But in wrestling with

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the need for an adequate self-grounding of reason, he soon discards theorems that were central to subjective idealism of the Fichtean type. In their place, he sets the principle of absolute experience, which he terms “intellectual intuition” (intellektuelle Anschauung). This form of “experience” (Erfahrung) is, it must be said, completely different from everyday perception of the sensual world, nor is it directly linked to the latter. To Schelling’s way of thinking, transcendental idealism, as rooted exclusively in the I, does not penetrate deeply enough into the core of the problem, and this makes it urgently necessary to expand upon Fichte’s point of departure. Specifically, Schelling turns to the realms of the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of art. Schelling is convinced that art has philosophical significance; that it is not merely one object of reflection among others but is itself a part of philosophy, to the extent that the latter is embedded in a holistic system (Gesamtsystem). Departing from many other aesthetic texts of the period, Schelling is not primarily concerned with the empirical analysis of various works of art or with a descriptive representation of individual art forms. His starting point is to seek out the general in every specific aesthetic object. In other words, he wants to perceive the idea of the absolute in the form of the beautiful. It follows that the philosophy of art is a systematic science, and in this regard is the equal of natural science, and equally immediate in relation to its source. Early romanticism, around 1800, sees in nature the revelation of a hidden spirit, which it regards as the symbol of a lost unity. In this interpretation, nature appears as a system of meaning that must be newly discovered. Schelling’s speculative attempt to reunite nature and spirit corresponds to this. An inner structural principle is active in nature, an entelechy, i.e., the gift of realizing a capacity that is innate in a particular being. Schelling conceives nature not merely as an object of cognition but simultaneously as a subject, as a productive, self-generating reality, and inquires into the context of its mediation, in which human beings, with their cognition, actions, and artistic production, are included. The human being or individual subject and nature are therefore not separable. In taking the philosophy of nature as his starting point, Schelling wants to refound the dominant model of subjective reflectivity—in the process of which, to be sure, he makes a decisive change in its foundational function within the system. In this way, Schelling displaces the meaning of transcendental idealism, moving it from a more static theory of origins toward the . Fichte, Fichtes Werke, 1:463. Fichte was the first to employ the term “intellectual intuition” (intellektuelle Anschauung), in Second Introduction to the Theory of Science (Zweite Einleitung zur Wissenschaftslehre). However, Schelling gives it a different, more pointed interpretation and thus makes it functional in regard to the philosophy of art. . See Peetz, Die Freiheit im Wissen, 320.

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development of a productive principle as the wellspring of self-consciousness. In his work System of Transcendental Idealism, he now conceives the definition of the I as the unity of conscious and unconscious action, whose highest perfection is represented in art. The absolute is declared to be the ground of nature and self-consciousness, yet it remains hidden from thought and incapable of being captured in concepts. It can be recognized in its absolute simplicity or indifference only in art, by means of intellectual intuition. Thus, and only thus, can the absolute I become aware of itself. By dispensing with the argument of external influence, Schelling succeeds in grounding objectivity without any additional premises. In aesthetics, philosophy has made the relationship between philosophy and art an object of reflection that is uniquely its own. Initially, aesthetics had meant sensual perception in the literal meaning of aesthesis, but in such a way that in it insight or cognition is made visible. The concept of the beautiful had been regularly associated with aesthetics since the appearance of Alexander G. Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750) and Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), and was thus linked to the epistemological origin of the term. Philosophical aesthetics acted as a counterbalance to the abstract logic of the Enlightenment—the truth of the senses was meant to complement the truth of concepts. Baumgarten had already emphasized the productive aspect of this form of cognition, for what cannot be explained scientifically is brought forth poetically, in word and image, by the feeling sense (der empfindende Sinn).10 Thus, the aesthetic gaze at nature, in which, for Schelling, the divine is revealed, also touches on the ethical, on art and religion. By means of this conceptual slippage, art gains autonomy, because it is no longer determined primarily functionally, as exaltation or praise of nature and of God the creator. Instead, it is seen as being as close to the origin of things as nature is, as having an immediate relationship to God.11 Since this aesthetic turn in the eighteenth century, art has been interpreted in order to understand the world. Ever since, on epistemological and moral premises, art and the world have been seen in relation to each other—but a relation in which each retains its autonomy. The relation, however, is generally not seen as a compellingly necessary one; art has as little need of philosophy as philosophy has of art. Hence aesthetic schemas are much less robust and also more controversial in their reception than those that philosophy has developed in areas such as nature and history, soul and body, or society and the subject. . See Boenke, Transformation des Realitätsbegriffs, 317. 10. See Baumgarten, Aesthetica, § 429. 11. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:459; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 83.

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All this must be kept in mind by anyone who wants to evaluate the uniqueness of the position that Schelling, during a certain period of his thought, and then only for a limited time, accords to art. He wants to demonstrate the necessity of a relation between art and philosophy. Transcendental idealist considerations, in which philosophy reflects on its own foundations, led Schelling, in the years around 1800, to the idea of placing art in the most exalted position. Whereas in traditional aesthetics (including the contemporary teachings of Kant and Hegel), art is presented as only one of a variety of different objects of philosophy, Schelling emphasizes its function as an organon, making it one of philosophy’s essential components. Thus, he assigns it an instrumental function. Philosophy and art both rest on the productive capacity of human beings, but they unfold this productive power in different directions. What in art is formed toward the outside, in philosophy is turned immediately inward. “The actual sense in which this type of philosophy must be grasped is therefore the aesthetic, and for this very reason the philosophy of art [must be grasped as] the true organon of philosophy.”12 Art succeeds where philosophy fails—it unites productive and transcendental moments and makes vivid, in the artwork, what must remain ungraspable for conceptual thought. In other words, the creations of art not only show us the world and contribute to our understanding of it but simultaneously provide an objectivized picture of the productive power of the absolute I, as musical composition, image, or poetic language. However, this apparent multiplicity of works and forms of art is illusory and conceals the truth that there is only one absolute artwork, “which, indeed, can exist in quite different exemplars, and is yet but One.”13 It is created, in its multiple forms, by “genius,”14 i.e., by a human being who is in possession of that creative power through which the unconsciously working power of original divine creation flows into a consciously produced artistic product. This capacity, which is given only by the “free favor of nature” (die freie Gunst der Natur),15 is inborn and cannot be arrived at in any other way, for example through practice. It can be felt in melodies and rhythms as well as in the play of color in a painting or the words of a poem. The absolute that is revealed in the work of art is, therefore, not only a product of artistic freedom, but at the same time also an expression of necessity. The artistic genius succeeds where the philosopher, with his conceptual orientation, cannot, namely, in the “complete resolution of the contradiction” (vollständige Auflösung des Widerspruchs)

12. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:351; Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 14. 13. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:626; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 231. 14. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:616; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 223. 15. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:618; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 223–24.

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between nature and freedom.16 Because the latter remains bound to reflection, which divides, as well as to finite self-consciousness, he cannot adequately grasp the immediate unity of intellectual intuition with the object. To this extent, the aesthetic intuition of the genius surpasses the cognitive powers of the philosopher. The philosophy of art shows that, in its capacity as organon, the aesthetic realization of intellectual intuition, produced in the artwork by a genius, is also the foundation of all philosophical cognition. What art accomplishes in this way is nothing less than the objectivization of the highest principle of philosophy, that of the absolutely identical. The latter may be accessible to the intellectual intuition of subjective reflection but cannot be made visible by it. Art is the first form of consciousness in which knowledge—the certain cognition of absolute identity as wellspring—turns back upon itself and thus forms a completed whole, i.e., a system of knowledge. Consequently, the philosophy of art, as the apogee of transcendental philosophy, represents, in Schelling’s words, the “keystone of its entire vault” (Schlussstein ihres ganzen Gewölbes).17 It is simultaneously a foundation—only by means of the philosophy of art is philosophy as a whole reunited with its point of departure; only now is the system perfected.18 In regard to its content, art, for Schelling, is the representation of the infinite in the finite, the boundless in the limited, the universal in the particular, the absolute in appearance. This fundamental principle makes possible the differentiation of individual art forms and their systematic articulation into a dual order whose suborganization consists in a triune dialectic of degrees or powers (einer dreigliedrigen Potenzendialektik).19 This triune dialectic assigns all individual artworks, including the most subtly differentiated structures, a specific place within the system. The main aspect under which the arts are organized is the particular way each of them objectivizes the infinite. In other words, the differentiation of the arts is accomplished by means of the individually formed finite form in which, in each specific case, they represent the infinite. Schelling divides art into two series—real and ideal—according to whether they manifest the objective, physical aspect or the subjective, spiritual aspect. In this scheme, the real series includes all of the “formative arts” (bil-

16. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:617; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 223. 17. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:349; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 12. 18. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 3:628; System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), 231–32. 19. The German word Potenz can be translated as power (in the mathematical sense), exponent, or potential. Stott, in his translation of the lectures on aesthetics, prefers the term “potence,” which entered the English language through Coleridge’s reading of Schelling. While I have not adopted this particular usage, I am indebted to Stott for a variety of terminological clarifications and suggestions. On “potence,” see Stott’s introduction to Schelling, Philosophy of Art, xxxv–xxxvii.—trans.

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dende Künste), among which Schelling counts music, painting, and sculpture; while the ideal series contains the verbal arts, i.e., lyric poetry, the epic, and drama. Poetry is at once the consummation and highest form of art, because the mythic structures of art, which point to a divine origin, are nowhere better expressed. Because poetry is the apogee of the arts, it embraces within itself something of all the artistic forms but is, conversely, also present in all the other forms. In this, its universality and absoluteness, which unites the true and the good in beauty, poetry is superior even to philosophy. Schelling developed this concept, which is closely interwoven with his philosophical system of thought, in his lectures called Philosophy of Art (Philosophie der Kunst), which he gave in Jena in 1802/3 and again, in revised form, in 1804/5. He retains the core idea of his earlier aesthetic reflections, namely, that the absolute reveals itself in art, but modifies it. Philosophy of Art represents, as it were, the application of the premises that were developed in System of Transcendental Idealism. This necessarily involves a paradigm change, since applied cases always target the specific, while transcendental reflection aims at the absolute in its undivided universality. The turn toward the particular introduces difference, which would destroy the tendency toward identity that is meant to provide the solid foundation of everything cognizable and experienceable and, in its absolute form, of the universe itself. The key to Schelling’s identity-based system, by means of which he would like to circumvent this risk, is that he conceives of the individual or particular as a differentiation between subject and object that exists in degree only, a merely quantitative difference; while the identity of subject and object is assured and preserved under its qualitative aspect. Thus, the undivided subject-object appears in the individual products of art, which are all only manifestations of the one work of art, in varying degrees or powers. This concept allows Schelling to take the individual seriously, as something individual, and at the same time to understand it as an aspect or instance of the absolute. Thus, individual artworks can become immediate representations of the one absolute work of art. And thus it also becomes comprehensible that at their core all the various forms of art, broken down into the two series of the real and the ideal, in ascending order of degrees or powers, are One. It is not the phenomenal reality of works that is the central concern of Schelling’s artistic philosophy; rather, his philosophy attempts to approach the essence of art speculatively. In doing so, it relates to the whole of his system according to the principles of a dialectic of powers or degrees. Philosophy of Art forms part of his philosophy as a whole; in other words, it is an embodiment of philosophy taken to a particular degree or power. Schelling’s philosophy does not concern itself merely with cognition of the truth, reflection of morality, or rules of beauty—it conceives the absolute

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as the common source in which everything coincides. The true is always also good and beautiful (and vice versa). Compared with the intensive phase of Schelling’s aesthetic reflection from 1800 to 1807, the influence of aesthetic speculation declines in his later thought. It has been shown that Schelling’s philosophy reveals a definite continuity of methodological development in which the philosophy of art occupies not only a chronological but also a systematic place.20 In his later philosophy, Schelling increasingly turned to other problems, but even in the late works, which are no longer concerned primarily with the philosophy of art, he holds fast to some theorems. An example is the figure of thought of the productive dualism between conscious and unconscious creativity. In the posthumously published Ages of the World (Die Weltalter), on which he worked for many years beginning in 1810, he is convinced of the existence of a “blind power”21 that appears as the source of all poetic inspiration, not only in lyric poetry but in other art forms as well. Conscious creation is actually the unfolding of the unconscious—in the artwork they are united in an identity on which, alone, true art is grounded. He also mentions art in various passages of Philosophy of Mythology, which he worked on beginning in 1827. But these reflections are more in the nature of excurses; they come nowhere near the level of systematic theoretical reflection on the philosophy of art that Schelling produced in his earlier years, as described above.22

Art and Music In October 1807, Schelling was invited to give a lecture at a celebration of the forthcoming refounding of the Academy of Fine Arts. The talk, “Concerning the Relationship of the Formative Arts to Nature” (“Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur”), was positively received and broadly discussed; it introduced an interested public to important theorems of Schelling’s philosophy of art.23 Admittedly, the latter remained fragmentary for those listeners who were not acquainted with the lectures in Philosophy of Art—Schelling did not go into the details of this system in the talk. Nevertheless, central tenets of his philosophy of art entered the public discourse, including not only the concept of the simultaneous activity of conscious and unconscious forces in the creative process but also the notion of the one work 20. Cf. Jähnig, Schelling, 1:14ff. 21. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 8:337; Ages of the World, 227. 22. For additional information on this development, see Knatz, Geschichte—Kunst—Mythos, 175ff. 23. On the historical background, see Lucia Sziborsky’s introduction (“Einleitung”) in Schelling, Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur, vii–x.

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of art, along with the classification of art forms according to the premise of a dialectic of powers within a philosophy of identity, and the equal authenticity of nature and art in relation to the system as a whole. Since Schelling, in keeping with the occasion of the lecture, was concerned primarily with the formative arts (bildende Künste) and their relationship to nature, one can ask whether he also looked at music, which, as is well known, he had included in this category in his lectures in Jena. But he did not mention it, apart from a brief comment on the natural character of sonority.24 Thus it is not surprising that Schelling’s ideas about music as a formative art, as original and unusual as they may at first appear, became influential only after the posthumous publication of Philosophy of Art in 1859. This influence, however, is so considerable that a classical music aesthetics could later emerge from them.25 Music aesthetics has formed a part of philosophical aesthetics since the eighteenth century. Fundamentally, works of philosophical aesthetics are concerned with the creation of systems, i.e., with the classification of the arts and particularly, in this context, with the location of music within the system. Only in this context are the specific characteristics and unique qualities of music made thematic; as a consequence, musical questions in the narrow sense are usually addressed only peripherally. In Schelling’s work, as in every systematic aesthetics, the intended object is music as a whole (including the musical work of art). However, he approaches this art form neither by analyzing individual works, nor by engaging in reflection on genre, but via the transcendentalphilosophical consideration of music (and hence of musical works) as a form of cognition that still incorporates the unconscious side of its productive activity. As a specific art form, music belongs among those aesthetic phenomena in which the unity of subject and object, of I and thing, must be predicated as an essential element. At the same time, a constructive, clearly conscious order is also one of its necessary conditions. In keeping with the division of the lectures in Philosophy of Art into a general and a specific part, Schelling turns to the “construction of music” only after completing the general deduction of the forms of art in their opposition of real and ideal. The second part of Philosophy of Art, which is concerned with the typology of genres, contains Schelling’s aesthetics of music in the narrower sense. Along with these methodologically defined premises, Schelling’s thought is also subject to historical influences. Not only in his work but in the romantic era in general, music occupies a special place in the hierarchy of the arts. This culminates in the idea of an absolute music. It is absolute in a dual 24. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 7:304; Schelling, “On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature,” 335–36. 25. See Dahlhaus, Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik, 73ff.

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sense—as instrumental music it no longer necessarily refers to a text, and as vocal music it has liberated itself from the text to the extent that compositionally it approaches instrumental techniques. Thus, the formal schemata that are imposed on music from the outside become less and less significant.26 Yet, as noted above, Schelling does not take concrete, individual artworks as his point of departure but proceeds deductively. In the process, there is one respect in which he remains indebted to his era—the romantic conviction that the manifold of phenomena conceals a common origin transforms the simple ranking of artistic forms, formerly the basis of all the corresponding hierarchies, into a dialectical matrix. On account of the hidden and yet to be discovered correspondences among works of art from quite different genres, an absolute ranking is no longer possible; of this romanticism is convinced. Each concrete attempt at interpretation immediately refers back to the system from which it is derived. In this context, the location of music in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art is unusual. Because he ranks art forms in two series—real and ideal—music turns up together with painting and sculpture in a triad that at first seems disconcerting. Music is presented as one of the three fundamental forms of the formative arts (bildende Künste). Schelling is aware of the extravagance of the order he has created, for it rests on a conscious decision. He could have treated music together with the art that is accorded the parallel power in the ideal series, lyric poetry. This would have satisfied the tradition, which had always seen lyric poetry as the “most musical” form of literature. But he foregrounds the vertical view and thus opposes the historically dominant opinion, which saw music as strictly separate from the bildende Künste. Schelling also rejects the three-way division of the arts into the verbal arts, fine arts, and the “art of the play of feelings” (Kunst des Spiels der Empfindungen),27 as proposed by Kant. In principle, he opposes every aesthetic valuation that wants to reduce music to being exclusively an art of feeling.28 His systematic point of departure is the physical materiality of sonority, to which music is linked in an elementary way; it is the reason why music must be counted among the formative arts. In fact, from a “material” standpoint, music consists immediately of this formless, unorganized stuff—sonority—and is thus linked to nature in its most primal form. Hence, anyone who assumes that music belongs “at the bottom” of the hierarchy in the real series, in a derogatory sense, is quite mistaken. Instead, music’s position must be 26. See Schulte, Musik und Religion in der Frühromantik, 11. 27. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:487; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 103. 28. This fundamental critique of Johann Georg Sulzer is not necessarily contradicted by the fact that Schelling uses Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste as a source of information about musical facts, in particular the article on rhythm (cf. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, 5:94).

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evaluated according to its proximity to the origin, which could not be greater. Consequently, Schelling’s position appears more complex and ambiguous than it seemed at first. Starting from the fundamental paradigm according to which each work of art reveals the in-forming (Einbildung)29 of the infinite into the finite in its own specific form, Schelling defines this relationship, in the case of music, as sonority (Klang). He then proceeds to distinguish it from noise (Schall) and sound (Laut). While sound is characterized as discontinuous noise, in sonority its steady flow predominates. Here the second fundamental paradigm of intellectual and aesthetic intuition comes into play—the cognition or experience of the unity that is present in every diversity. In sonority (conceived as unity) it is present in principle, even when the trained ear hears a large number of tones in which the sonority is “enfolded” (eingehüllt) or, so to speak, “inborn” (eingeboren).30 Thus the sonority is nothing but “the body’s own intuition of the soul” (die Anschauung der Seele des Körpers selbst).31 By virtue of this determination it loses its “material” character and is immediately transformed into an inner principle. It unites with temporality (Zeitlichkeit), which is necessary in order to allow the “variety” of tones (Töne) to flow within the “unity” of sonority. From here, Schelling arrives at the definition of the form: “The necessary form of music is succession. For time is the general in-forming [Einbildung] of the infinite into the finite, thus far intuited as form, abstracted from the real.”32 Within the vertical hierarchy of the formative arts, music is the temporal art, the “real self-counting of the soul” (das reale Selbstzählen der Seele),33 while the other two forms, painting and sculpture, are spatial arts. In keeping with Schelling’s generally deduced premises, this distinction is possible only on the basis of quantitative degrees or powers; regarded absolutely or qualitatively, music as a form necessarily comprehends all unities within itself. This is the precondition that enables the structure to constantly reproduce itself within itself, thus reaching into the finest ramifications of the individual determinations, and externally guaranteeing the link between nature and art (here understood as a principle of self-consciousness). Schelling does not stop with the category of sonority but goes on to distinguish three degrees or powers in music: rhythm, modulation, and melody. One of the eccentricities of Schelling’s deductive system, as described above, is that he juxtaposes this finely articulated structure of music with the basic 29. In English it is not possible to reproduce the double meaning of Einbildung here, which comes close to “in-building” while not entirely losing its common meaning of “imagination.” I again draw on Stott in rendering it as “in-forming”—trans. 30. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:489; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 108. 31. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:490; Philosophy of Art, 108. 32. Ibid. 33. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:491; Philosophy of Art, 109.

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forms of the “real” series, which is thus, so to speak, reprojected onto itself. In this way he arrives at the definition, which appears odd without this context, that rhythm represents the musical, modulation the painterly, and melody the sculptural in music.34 Formally, he has set up parallels between the two series of concepts, which were both based on the dialectic of degrees or powers, and then read them vertically; this explains the attribution. In this basic schema, the third power or degree is always the unity of the first two, which in the case of music can be summarized in the handy formula: rhythm plus modulation equals melody. Given the evidential obviousness of this thesis, a proof hardly seems necessary. Yet music diverges in a decisive way from the supposedly inflexible mechanism of the movement of powers. Rhythm, as the first power, is the dominant principle; modulation and melody are subordinated to it. However, thanks to this prominent placement not only does rhythm become the decisive category for philosophical reflection on musicological definitions, but the temporality that is immanent within it links it with self-consciousness, while its equal meter (Gleichmass) links it with the elementary forces of nature. Thus, it stands at the intersection of universal system concept and individual example, as related to the particular art form. But before we engage more deeply with this complex of issues, we need to turn to the other categories that Schelling develops for the construction of music. The second power is modulation. Its task is a difficult one, for it is meant to reveal the identity in the qualitative difference between the various tones or sonorities. This thought undoubtedly harbors a threat to the system as a whole, for, by definition, identity philosophy excludes qualitative difference. If the ear can hear the variety of tones, or keys, in their difference but not the unity that they supposedly conceal, how can the constructive principle of identity philosophy be maintained with regard to music? But what the ear does not hear can still be transmitted to the understanding—by modulation. If, therefore, the sequence of musical tones, or keys, has the tendency to contradict the thought of identity, it is—metaphorically speaking—corralled and tamed by modulation. After this, the understanding recognizes the unity that underlies the tones and keys, even though they appear as qualitative differences. Modulation is the art of sustaining the identity of the key (Ton) that dominates in a given musical work, in its very qualitative difference, its appearance. In principle, it accomplishes the same thing as rhythm, when the latter, through its regular disruption of time, makes clear the underlying identity within its quantitative difference. But in accomplishing this, doesn’t modulation divide music into something that is heard by the ear and something that is reconstructed by the 34. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:496; Philosophy of Art, 112.

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understanding? On the contrary, as Schelling sees it, modulation gives music the capacity to demonstrate multiplicity—this also applies to aesthetic reception—as an art that is aimed at feeling, as well as at judgment.35 Together, as capacities of the subject, the two once again form a necessary unity in regard to self-consciousness (musically: rhythm). In this way, Schelling’s concept of modulation is completely desensualized and transformed into a mere instrument of the system. This very abstraction from sensuality marks its difference from all those theories that understand “modulation” as a category that is immanent in music.36 Schelling commits himself explicitly to the universal nature of his utilization of the concept of modulation and distances himself from all other meanings that the term can have in musicological discourse. This names the difference between a philosophy of music (more precisely, a philosophical construction of music) and a mere musicological theory. Moreover, it explains this philosophy’s distance from individual works, with the attendant reproach that Schelling’s philosophy lacks experiential content. Melody, as the third power of music, is, on the one hand, the sum of rhythm and modulation. As such, it is capable of transmitting not only ideas but also emotions and feelings, which, in the aesthetic imagination of the subject, are formed into “sculptural” impressions. The subject understands the melody like a language, a kind of sign language of subjectivity; this justifies its position as the third and highest power. On the other hand, melody is also subordinated to rhythm, as the dominant principle of music. At first glance, this seems to result in an imbalance that can be understood only by incorporating the complicated arithmetic underpinning Schelling’s identity thinking and his dialectic of powers. Since music is the first power in the first series of artistic forms, the first power dominates in it: rhythm. This is a purely formal derivation, but it also has a significance in regard to content that, from a historical point of view, is the equivalent of a paradigm shift—something we will discuss in more detail below. In order to avoid creating a contradiction with the placement of melody as the third (i.e., highest) power, Schelling makes both powers absolute, and thus “rhythm . . . and melody are, themselves, again one and the same thing.”37 But if both, taken in themselves, are at once the whole of music, then rhythm incorporates melody; in other words, it is the dominant power in music. Let us return to the subject of melody. Its placement in the system is determined by the dialectic of powers. To illustrate the validity of his formally 35. Ibid. 36. See Wanning, Konstruktion und Geschichte, 117. 37. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:496; Philosophy of Art, 112.

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deductive construction, Schelling brings in historical examples, thus incorporating empirical reality. In the process, he adheres to the dichotomy, widely accepted in romanticism, between ancient and modern art. We know little about the music of classical antiquity, but Schelling was convinced that the Greeks also achieved great things in their music because they “were great in all the arts.”38 The sculptural and heroic principles must have been predominant in the music of the ancients, precisely because everything was subordinated to rhythm. The essence of this music, of which only a rudimentary trace remains in the chorale, is therefore rhythmic melody, while modern music is primarily shaped by harmony. Schelling bases his conclusion concerning the dominant role of rhythm (or, alternatively, of melody, also taken as absolute) on this problematic analogy—a conclusion that is taken to be valid not only from the standpoint of systematic theory but also historically.39 Proceeding from this historical perspective, Schelling contrasts harmony with the concept of melody. However, he understands the latter not in its more narrowly musical meaning but more generally as a parameter that, because it is present in all individual art forms, subsumes them in an overarching way under the unitary concept of art. In the first part of Philosophy of Art, he already defines harmony as “the truly ethical” (wahre Sittlichkeit),40 as the ideal balancing of truth and beauty, with which he grasps the concept as a whole as an ethical one. Harmony is an ideal to be striven for, an expression of the reconciliation of contradictions. The power, or degree, of the various artistic forms indicates the extent to which they have realized this harmony. When it comes to music, harmony is presented as the opposite of melody, a circumstance that is also meant to reflect the real historical contradiction between classical antiquity and modernity. In this scheme, music would have become relatively more distant, by degree, from the symbolic resolution of universal harmony, understood as the principle of the reconciliation of contradictions. This observation can be integrated within identity philosophy in a noncontradictory way only by referring back to rhythm, whose complicated role in the systematic theory was discussed above, as the dominant principle in music. Under the dominance of rhythm, the contradiction between melody and harmony vanishes, and their relationship, originally sketched out as a pair of contradictions, is revealed, paradoxically, to be one of identity. Thus harmony can be conceived as difference, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, expressly in regard to melody, as 38. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:497; Philosophy of Art, 113. 39. For the two examples mentioned here, Schelling cites Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de Musique, which he describes as the “most thought-out work on this art,” as his authority. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:497; Philosophy of Art, 113. 40. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:385; Philosophy of Art, 31.

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identity. The distinction rests on the separation of form and essence, which in Schelling’s identity philosophy never exists in truth but only quantitatively. As form, harmony is unity, understood as absolute, in contradiction to melody; as essence—in other words from the standpoint of the ideal—it holds the three powers of rhythm, modulation, and melody within itself. Only in regard to form can harmony and melody be opposed to each other, not essentially. Thus, the contradiction between harmony and melody expresses nothing else but the (merely quantitative) contradiction between the ideal and the real, which, at the same time, is the basic pattern of Philosophy of Art. Each individual artwork brings the One principle of philosophy to aesthetic intuition, makes concrete and representable that which is denied to thought alone. What does this basic theorem mean for music? As pure forms, rhythm (as the dominant element) and harmony (as the ideal unity of the three powers) make this principle, which is not immediately accessible to conceptual thought, visible. Within the series of the real, music is wholly form, dissolved or liberated, as it were, from its material. But if we turn back to Schelling’s point of departure and the category of sonority in its physical materiality, then music consists of an amorphous “material.” Accordingly, music is located in the magnetic field between spirituality and sensuality, between pure form, in a highly complex formulation of its meaning, and material, in an immediate, rough state that is close to nature. Schelling therefore characterizes music as the most closed of all the arts and simultaneously as unbounded, for it can grasp figures that are indistinguishable in chaos and express them in pure form, i.e., without reference to the corporeal.41 The extent to which music is able to do this becomes understandable only if we look once more, in greater detail, at the meaning and function of rhythm within the dialectic of musical powers.

Universe of Rhythm—Rhythm of the Universe Schelling emphasizes the exceptional position of rhythm in his apodictic remark, “Rhythm is the music in music.”42 This is what makes it the dominant power, to which all of music must submit. In these reflections, Schelling performs a paradigm shift from the music theory of the eighteenth century, which was primarily oriented to harmony and melody, to a new philosophical dispensation oriented to rhythm as a form of consciousness in art.43 It was explained above that music, seen from the aspect of its materiality, consists in 41. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:504ff.; Philosophy of Art, 118ff. 42. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:494; Philosophy of Art, 111. 43. See Naumann, Musikalisches Ideen-Instrument, 149.

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the unformed “material” of sonority, which only with the addition of rhythm assumes a form that enables it to become a whole. As pure form, rhythm is as immediately derived from nature as is sonority. Its movement is that of the universe; rhythm rules the order of the planets. Their course is pure melody, whereas in the—supposedly—confused orbit of the comets, harmony dominates. This contradiction, which again is admittedly only quantitative, corresponds historically to that between antiquity (rhythm/planets) and modernity (harmony/comets). Conceived as pure form, this order finds its symbol in nature—although far away in cosmic space. One should not conceive of music as the aesthetic reflection of this constellation; rather it is “nothing other than the perceived rhythm and the harmony of the visible universe itself.”44 This, again, is the source of music’s specific ambivalence. If, on the one hand, it is the art that is closest to the material, on the other hand, and equally, it is the most abstract and spiritual art form, because it represents pure movement, the cosmic rhythm, the coming into being of things, and the unity of the manifold, and makes all these things available to human thought aconceptually (begriffslos). With this, it brings the extreme contradictions, material in its raw state and the pure form of spiritual movement, together in an identical unity. Schelling, here, sees a complete parallel to the order of nature, because the “cosmic bodies” (Weltkörper)45 were the first to emerge from the material of eternity and organized themselves according to principles of form that they created from within themselves (namely through contraction). Here the unity of nature arrives at its perfect self-intuition. The form of self-movement or self-organization of nature simultaneously symbolizes the reason that lies within it. This elaborately illustrated hypothesis becomes, for Schelling, an analog to music, whereby he bases his argument on historically long since discredited astronomical music theory as well as on natural philosophy of a romantic type. The ambivalent character of music, as pure form on the one hand and as unformed material on the other, is something that is to be overcome; only to the extent that rhythm is the dominant principle in music can the latter free itself of its materiality. “Music, to this extent, is that art that most fully strips away corporeality, by representing pure movement itself, as such, abstracted from the object, and is borne along by invisible, almost spiritual [geistig] wings.”46 As a result, in music the complete coincidence of materiality with ideas is realized. But the very choice of words with which Schelling attempts to convey this circumstance conceptually illustrates the difficulty that the image of pure form creates for thought. It can imitate only with difficulty, conceptually, what music 44. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:501; Philosophy of Art, 116. 45. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:504; Philosophy of Art, 117. 46. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:502; Philosophy of Art, 116.

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is supposed to represent immediately. With metaphors of quasi-cosmic scope, Schelling attempts to sketch the mood image that accompanies the pleasure of musical listening. There music, floating in space, weaves an audible universe, the body of sound and tone becomes transparent, and the cosmic bodies float about on wings of sonority, until music, in the world of the planets, transforms itself into the harmony of the spheres.47 Schelling also uses the planetary analogy to ground the placement of music in the system of the arts. Just as nature—seen cosmically—is the highest reality and therefore at the same time pure reason, so music is the most universal of the real arts and stands closest to the ideal series, in which speech and reason dominate. Because the other art forms of the real series can be unfolded from within the immediacy of this relation to nature, music is the first power in the sense of a base. As the art of time, whose essential characteristic is succession, it is—like speech—an aesthetic expression of self-consciousness. The answer to the question whether music transpires in time or is itself a form of time is implicit in Schelling’s definition of rhythm. Rhythm bears time within itself.48 Through the concepts of time and of rhythm, Schelling creates a link between music and the structure of consciousness. In fact, rhythm, as the archetype of music, is unity in diversity, as consciousness is the place where impressions gathered in time are synthesized. This dialectic can also be read in reverse. In emphasizing, vehemently, music’s temporality as its constitutive element, he simultaneously observes that it—and in it the rhythm of the universe itself—can be comprehended only thanks to its proximity to self-consciousness. Music reveals this elementary construction of the absolute from the beginning. It is a privileged art form precisely because it makes visible, in the same way, primary relationships to the foundational structures of both the universe and consciousness.49 It is through rhythm, which Schelling understands, in the narrow sense, simply as regular meter in its alternations, that unity, and through unity form, enter into the manifold of musical elements. In accordance with the tradition of antiquity, to which Schelling regularly refers, rhythm brings order into an unarticulated, continuously flowing movement. Through articulation, change, or, more appropriately expressed, multiplicity or variety, is created. Only the naive observer is surprised by the fact that the immediate result of the monotony of unarticulated movement should be its polar opposite, variety. 47. See Wanning, Konstruktion und Geschichte, 120. Schelling refers explicitly to the views on music of Pythagoras, the Platonic Socrates, and Kepler. Cf. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:502ff.; Philosophy of Art, 116ff. 48. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:493; Philosophy of Art, 111. 49. See Fubini, History of Music Aesthetics, 272–74.

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Identity philosophy, which always conceives difference within the absolute as a merely quantitative distinction, never asks this question. Music-theoretical definitions, in the narrow sense, are equally ignored. For Schelling, therefore, rhythm consists not merely in tempos and beats but also in the overarching relationship among groups of beats, subphrases, and periods. This concept of rhythm, which by modern musicological standards is quite narrow or crude,50 is, however, not employed to analyze individual works or perform other types of music theoretical reflection, but derives from a philosophical systems orientation that is always dominant, and in comparison to which the specific objects of aesthetic contemplation take a back seat. Thus there results—as with the concept of modulation—a radical desensualization with paradoxically practical consequences. By emphasizing form as grounded in rhythm, and thus accentuating music, overall, as a formal art, he turns away from the aesthetics of feeling. By concentrating on rhythm, Schelling abstracts from the affects that can be triggered by music, raising its value to that of an intelligible art form. With this, he distances himself from feeling as a merely subjective criterion, despite the fact that it had been an essential factor in the definition of music in earlier aesthetics, including Kant’s. Rhythm, in music, performs the same work that conceptual thought does for self-consciousness. Thus it has a primarily negative function, namely, to show the equal meter (Gleichmass) within unity by interrupting it. Only by means of the periodic division of the similar does it render the successive character conscious, for without rhythm this foundational structure would be imperceptible. At the same time, music, precisely through rhythm, comes to dominate time and as a result is able to inscribe an aesthetic structure onto it by means of varied meters and through modulation and melody. How, exactly, this is meant to occur seems to be shrouded in darkness for Schelling: “Rhythm belongs among the secrets of nature and art that are most deserving of admiration, and no invention of mankind seems to have been more immediately inspired by nature.”51 In fact, however, Schelling employs this supposedly cryptic assignment as a means of clarifying the meaning and function of rhythm within the system of music aesthetics. Rhythm, through its primal connection with nature and art, guarantees that the unpreconceivable One (the absolute) exists, even if, in its pure form, it eludes conceptual thought. Music, which Schelling, with a paradoxical superlative, calls the “most unbounded of all the arts,”52 symbolizes, on the one hand, a specific type of reason (namely, only for the first power), which, on the other hand, it does not require because it is any50. See Dahlhaus, Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik, 252. 51. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:492; Philosophy of Art, 110. 52. Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, 5:504; Philosophy of Art, 118.

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way capable of distinguishing figures (Gestalten) (concretely rhythm, harmony, and melody) even in chaos. This final characterization, in fact, identifies music as an unusual art form, one that has the capacity to accomplish what no other art, and certainly not conceptual thought, can do. At the same time, this final formula leaves us unsatisfied, for Schelling does not penetrate into the secret, or the magic, of music. This can be interpreted as a lack, a deficit that consequently devalues the entire complicated construction, which in view of this result appears much too elaborate and ultimately senseless. But on the other hand, one can see in this point, in particular, a strength of Schelling’s music philosophy, which explicitly does not want to be a theory of music. Hence, Schelling does not attempt to engage in a specialized music-aesthetical discourse that would rationally explain the conditions of production and reception to which music is subject. Rather, he ends at the point where his system can deliver no more reliable knowledge. He can do no more than refer to those things that exceed the bounds of his system; limiting himself to the essential is, for him, sufficient. One may understand and criticize this as exclusionary or acknowledge that with this negative determination Schelling integrates even that which transcends his system, and thus opens for thought a dialectical access to music that cannot be discovered by listening pleasure alone.

Reception With the end of the eighteenth century, and specifically in the era of romanticism, the aesthetic valuation of music underwent a noticeable turn that definitely amounts to a paradigm shift. From the previous disdainful view of music as mere sensual pleasure, the astonishing thesis emerges that music represents a spiritual content and is therefore an appropriate form of appearance of the absolute. Hence Schelling’s music-aesthetical reflections can be grasped, against a background of systematic aesthetic thought, as the attempt to do away with music’s lack of aesthetic legitimacy. Only as the critique of metaphysics, starting from the late nineteenth century, gradually casts doubt on the mythically guaranteed authority of the absolute does this conceptual starting point, which rests on the unimpeachable dignity of the absolute, succumb to the growing disapproval of idealist aesthetics.53 Nevertheless, when it comes to a concept of music that is oriented to the spiritual, classical-romantic aesthetics survives despite all the tendencies and attacks of realism, until it is eventually replaced by the epoch that proclaims itself as modernism.54 53. See Sponheuer, Music als Kunst und Nicht-Kunst, 149. 54. See Dahlhaus, Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik, 13.

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In the debates on the philosophy of art and the aesthetics of music that took place among contemporaries around the turn of the nineteenth century, it was above all Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel who seized upon Schelling’s ideas, which remained concealed from the broader public as a result of the publication problems mentioned above. In particular, Schelling’s theory of rhythm and its special relationship to temporality influenced Hegel’s views of music aesthetics, in which he unpacks central elements of the theory in a focused way. In the process, he alters them in order to make them better fit his own system. For example, he places stronger emphasis on the mediating aspect of the relationship between music and language, which Schelling, in keeping with the opposition he constructs between these art forms, located (at least quantitatively) in separate spheres in his real and ideal series. Schelling, in considering music under the primacy of sonority, arrives at a more mechanistic conception because he tends to see its naturalness in analogy to the movement of the planets. For Hegel, this is a secondary problem; his thought foregrounds the dialectic of the relations. Nonetheless, even this mediated form of engagement with Schelling’s philosophy contributed to the spread of his ideas and convictions. Among leading composers, Beethoven, who agreed with central notions of Schelling’s, deserves special mention. The idea of art as a form of revelation of the absolute, in particular, influenced his thought as well as his music. He also shared Schelling’s belief in the communicative power of music, which announces a timeless message from an eternity that seeks reconciliation with the temporal.55 Schelling, who at the high point of his philosophy of art recognized the infinite in the finite form of the particular work of art, produced by the simultaneously conscious and nonconscious activity of the artistic genius, had a similar view. The further spread of Schelling’s music philosophy beyond the context of its romantic reception was constrained by two phenomena. First, the modest impact that his work had at first certainly had to do with its delayed publication. Around 1850, the decay of speculative thinking already began to impact the reception of the whole of idealist philosophy. It is not surprising, then, that Schelling’s Philosophy of Art should already have appeared antiquated and that his music-theoretical reflections, within the architecture of his system, attracted little notice among a broader public that had already turned its attention toward an aesthetic that was more strongly indebted to positivism. At the same time, philosophers of the stripe of Johann Friedrich Herbart, in particular, with their critique of idealism, created a climate that encouraged 55. See Fubini, History of Music Aesthetics, 258.

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a critical engagement with idealist music aesthetics. Following the change in the conception of music from an art of mere feeling to one of expression, an epoch dawned that emphasized music’s formal aspects even more strongly. Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick became the protagonist of this modern view. With his work On the Musically Beautiful (1854), he founded a new, autonomous approach to music, according to which the originality of a work of art—including musical works—consists in the formal relations that exist and can be empirically identified within it. Aesthetic judgment is based on elements of form that are immanent in the work and may not allow itself to be influenced by any emotional and sentimental elements that may cling to it. The degree of the absolute that idealists were convinced was made manifest in artworks also vanished as a parameter of aesthetic judgment. For lack of empirical provability, it no longer played any role. The rejection of Schelling’s point of departure could not be more evident. Although, with the professionalization of music criticism, and—not last—the institutional establishment of musicology in the second half of the nineteenth century, Schelling’s philosophically oriented reflections on music theory receded into the background, still, two aspects of his aesthetic thought represent high points of his epoch. These are, first, his thesis of the organon function of art, through which art becomes the highest value, transcending the conceptual limits of philosophy—a notion that in our present era is respectfully acknowledged, for example, in the aesthetic works of Adorno. Second, his original scheme for ranking the fine arts earned Schelling a unique place in the history of music aesthetics, one that no subsequent thinker has been able to claim.

References

Schelling’s Works Ages of the World. [Translation of Die Weltalter.] In Slavoj Žižek, The Abyss of Freedom: An Essay. Trans. Judith Norman. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. “Concerning the Relationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature.” [Translation of “Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur.”] Trans. Michael Bullock. In The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English Romantic Poetry, ed. Herbert Read, 321–64. New York: Pantheon Books, 1953. Durchs Herz der Erde: Sämtliche deutschen Gedichte und poetischen Übersetzungen. Ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Ursula Schönwitz. Warmbronn: Ulrich Keicher, 1998. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke. Ed. Karl Friedrich August Schelling. 10 vols. in 14. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1856–61. Vol. 3 includes Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie: Für Vorlesungen, 1799, 1–268; System des transcendentalen Idealismus, 1800, 327–634.

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Vol. 5 includes Philosophie der Kunst, 353–736. Vol. 7 includes Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur, 289–329; Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände, 331–416. Vol. 8 includes Die Weltalter, 195–344. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature as an Introduction to the Study of This Science [1797]. [Trans. Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur: Als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft.] Trans. Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath, with an introduction by Robert Stern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. “On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.” [Translation of “Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur.”] In Critical Theory since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams, 457–67. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. [Translation of Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit.] Trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. The Philosophy of Art. [Translation of Philosophie der Kunst.] Ed. and trans. Douglas W. Stott. Foreword by David Simpson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. “The Philosophy of Mythology.” [Translation of Philosophie der Mythologie.] In Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology. Trans. Mason Richey and Markus Zisselsberger. With a foreword by Jason M. Wirth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. “The Philosophy of Revelation.” [Translation of Philosophie der Offenbarung.] In Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation: Three of Seven Books, trans. Victor C. Hayes. Armidale: Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1995. System of Transcendental Idealism [1800]. [Translation of System des transzendentalen Idealismus.] Trans. Peter Heath. With an introduction by Michael Vater. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978. Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur: Mit einer Bibliographie zu Schellings Kunstphilosophie. Ed. Lucia Sziborsky. Hamburg: Meiner, 1983. The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays [1794–96]. Trans. Fritz Marti. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Includes “On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy (1794)” [Über die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie überhaupt], 1–62; “Of the I as Principle of Philosophy, or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge (1795)” [Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie, oder Über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen], 63–128; “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (1795)” [Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus], 129–155; “New Deduction of Natural Right” [Neue Deduction des Naturrechts], 156–218.

General Literature Bowie, Andrew. Schelling and Modern European Philosophy. London: Taylor & Francis, 2002. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Fichtes Werke. [Reprint of Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke. Berlin: Veit & Comp., 1845–46.] Ed. Immanuel Hermann Fichte. 11 vols. Vol. 1: Zur theoretischen Philosophie II. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971. Frank, Manfred, and Gerhard Kurz, eds. Materialien zu Schellings philosophischen Anfängen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975. Jähnig, Dieter. Schelling: Die Kunst in der Philosophie. 2 vols. Vol. 1: Schellings Begründung von Natur und Geschichte. Vol. 2: Die Wahrheitsfunktion der Kunst. Pfullingen: Neske, 1966 and 1969. Nikolaus, Hendrik. Metaphysische Zeit: Schellings Theorie einer seelischen Zeit. Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Gaudin & Veit, 1999. Peetz, Siegbert. Die Freiheit im Wissen: Eine Untersuchung zu Schellings Konzept der Rationalität. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995.

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Salber, Dankel. “System und Kunst: Eine Untersuchung des Problems bei Kant und Schelling.” Diss., Aachen: Technische Hochschule, 1984. Sollbach, Armin. Erhabene Kunst der Vernunft. Aachen-Hahn: Hahner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996. Wanning, Berbeli. Konstruktion und Geschichte: Das Identitätsystem als Grundlage der Kunstphilosophie bei F. W. J. Schelling. Frankfurt am Main: Haag und Herchen, 1988. Watson, John. Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism: A Critical Exposition. Boston: Adamant Media Corporation, 2005. Wetz, Franz Josef. Friedrich W. J. Schelling: Zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 1996.

Musical Literature Barth, Bernhard. Schellings Philosophie der Kunst: Göttliche Imagination und ästhetische Einbildungskraft. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1991. Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. Aesthetica. Frankfurt, 1750–58. Rpt., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961. Biddle, Ian. “F. W. J. Schelling’s Philosophie der Kunst: An Emergent Semiology of Music.” In Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, ed. Ian Bent, 25–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Boenke, Michaela. Transformation des Realitätsbegriffs: Untersuchungen zur frühen Philosophie Schellings im Ausgang von Kant. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holboog, 1990. Dahlhaus, Carl. Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1988. Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich. Die Musik und das Schöne. Munich: Piper, 1997. Fubini, Enrico. History of Music Aesthetics. Trans. Michael Hatwell. London: Macmillan, 1990. Käuser, Andreas. Schreiben über Musik: Studien zum anthropologischen und musiktheoretischen Diskurs sowie zur literarischen Gattungstheorie. Munich: Fink, 1999. Knatz, Lothar. Geschichte—Kunst—Mythos: Schellings Philosophie und die Perspektive einer philosophischen Mythostheorie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999. Kuhlmann, Andreas, “Romantische Musikästhetik: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch.” Diss., Bielefeld University, 1989. Naumann, Barbara. Musikalisches Ideen-Instrument: Das Musikalische in Poetik und Sprachtheorie der Frühromantik. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990. Schueller, Herbert M. “Schelling’s Theory of the Metaphysics of Music.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 ( June 1957): 461–76. Schulte, Herbert. “Musik und Religion in der Frühromantik.” Ph.D. diss., Westfälische WilhelmsUniversität, 1992. Schumacher, Gerhard. Musikästhetik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973. Sponheuer, Bernd. Musik als Kunst und Nicht-Kunst: Untersuchungen zur Dichotomie “hoher” und “niederer” Musik im musikästhetischen Denken zwischen Kant und Hanslick. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1987. Sulzer, Johann Georg. Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch. Ed. Nancy Baker and Thomas Christensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste. 5 vols. Leipzig: Verlag Weidmann, 1771–74. Reprint ed., Hildesheim: Olms, 1967.

Schopenhauer G ü n t e r Z ö lle r

Brief Biography Arthur Schopenhauer’s role as a philosophical outsider in general, and in academic philosophy in particular, is grounded in his biography as a “gentleman scholar” with an independent income and an independent spirit. He was born on February 22, 1788, in the free city of Danzig (today Gdansk, Poland), as the only son of the successful wholesaler Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and his wife Johanna, who later gained fame as a novelist in Weimar. The sudden death of his father in the year 1805 (probably by suicide), followed by the sale of the firm, allowed Schopenhauer to break off his apprenticeship in business and to pursue his academic interests and inclinations. He studied natural sciences and philosophy in Göttingen (1809–11) and Berlin (1811–13) and passed his doctoral examination in 1813 at the University of Jena, in absentia, with a dissertation titled “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.” In 1818, he completed his philosophical magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), which appeared in 1819. The rest of Schopenhauer’s philosophical activity was devoted to expanding upon and supplementing this major work; a revised edition, including a new second volume, appeared in 1844. From 1819 to 1831, Schopenhauer held a position as lecturer in philosophy (Privatdozent) in Berlin, although he actually taught there only once, in the summer semester 1820. He spent a good deal of time traveling throughout Europe, including extended periods of

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residency in Dresden and Berlin, before settling down, in 1833, in Frankfurt am Main. In 1851, the two-volume collection of essays Parerga and Paralipomena appeared; it included the collection Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life (Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit), which would later appear frequently as a separate volume. When Schopenhauer died, on September 21, 1860, in Frankfurt, the decades-long neglect of his philosophical achievement and significance had already begun to be transformed into incipient European fame and academic attention. During the second half of the nineteenth century, he became the most globally influential philosopher. For a century and a half, Schopenhauer, with his philosophy in general and more specifically with his philosophy of art, has probably exercised a greater influence on artists and musicians than any other thinker or writer.

Philosophy and Art For Schopenhauer, philosophy is the “repetition” (Wiederholung) of the world in the medium of extended contemplation. By reflecting philosophically on the conditions of possible experience of ourselves, and of the objects we encounter, we arrive at insight into the dual character of the world. On the one hand, the world is the quintessence of the phenomena that emerge through us, by us, and for us—phenomena that without the cognitive achievement of our understanding would have no constancy and to this extent are only representations (Vorstellungen) “in us.” The world as representation exists only in correlation with the cognizing subject and is formally determined by the latter’s foundational functions of space and time and by the fundamental category of causality. On the other hand, the world, in its independent existence apart from any and all cognizing reference to it, is not something imagined or even imaginable but is of another order altogether. Our familiarity with this world, or better with this view of the world, is based in our noncognitive self-experiencing as embodied, need-driven beings. To name this always unique, only inwardly experienceable reality, Schopenhauer employs a psychological expression, “Will,” which he then expands cosmically into the essence of the world. Will, in Schopenhauer, is not only a specifically human psychic phenomenon but the arational foundational character of reality as an eternally existing drive and compulsion, which can never achieve long-term satisfaction and of which want and dissatisfaction, and to this extent suffering, are constitutive. In human beings, specifically, the cosmic Will achieves consciousness of itself. In thus conceiving the world as the self-recognition of the Will in human consciousness, Schopenhauer contrasts the self-affirmation of the self-conscious Will that is arrived at through ordinary knowledge and in ordinary life with

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the self-negation of the Will based on a “better cognition” or “better knowledge” (bessere Erkenntnis) that is achieved through art and religion. Thus art, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, takes on a saving, even a redemptive function— although one that endures only a short while in contrast to lasting religious redemption. Although in Schopenhauer’s epistemology the contradiction between the world of representation and the world of Will is indebted to Kant’s distinction, in Critique of Pure Reason (1781), between appearances and things-inthemselves, his philosophy of nature also reveals the influence of Plato’s theory of ideas as timeless essences that underlie as normative forms the things that exist in space and time. In this way, Schopenhauer arrives at a pyramid of reality that reaches from the primordial principle (Urprinzip) of the one Will, via this Will’s adequate objectification in plural “eternal” ideas and symbols (Urbilder) (the powers and laws of Nature), to the space- and time-limited individual things of the world as representation. This three-level ontology of Will, ideas, and representations is necessarily complemented by the dual role of the cognizing subject. On the one hand, the cognizing subject, with its foundational function for the knowability (Erkennbarkeit) of everything objective (ideas, representations) enters into competition with the Will and its foundational function for the being of everything objective. Yet, on the other hand, the cognizing subject, like everything that exists, is dependent on the Will. Schopenhauer stands for the primacy of the Will in relation to the intellect; he makes the latter subordinate to an “objective view,” in which it appears as a natural product (“brain function”) that belongs to the world. However, the cognitive subject’s subservience to the Will, and with it the resulting vital interestedness of all cognition, applies only to the ordinary human subject and its misapprehensions in individual acts of cognition. In the contemplation of ideas, by contrast, the cognitive subject is emancipated from domination by the Will, including the latter’s manifestation as individual will, and functions as a pure cognitive subject, independently of the Will. With this disappearance of the nature of the subject as Will, the emotional experience of neediness and dissatisfaction in suffering and pain also vanishes, to be replaced by a joyous state of happiness, satisfaction, and freedom from need. The exemplary instance of this kind of redemption from suffering through contemplation is the aesthetic contemplation of ideas in the production and reception of artworks. In a further development of the traditional aesthetic of mimesis, Schopenhauer understands the work of art as a representation . Schopenhauer uses the term Objektität, a neologism that might best be rendered in English with the equally strange term “objectity.”—trans.

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of ideas. In the artist, this task presumes the dual capacity (which is present in the genius) to both envision ideas and represent them adequately in a sensual medium. In the viewer or listener, the artwork stimulates the cognition of ideas that are already present within him, as well as the correlative state of rapture (Entrückung); however, it also presumes a susceptibility to extraordinary forms of cognition. In the framework of his cognitivist conception of art as “better cognition” or “better knowledge,” Schopenhauer emphasizes art’s proximity to philosophy. But while philosophy, like the individual scientific disciplines, plumbs the world conceptually, cognition of the world through art takes place intuitively. In contrast to the cumulative and fallible character of discursive knowledge, the genius’s cognition of art is complete in every (successful) artwork. Art is “everywhere at the goal.” But Schopenhauer also distinguishes among the cognitive achievements of the various arts. He situates each art (with the exception of music, which occupies a unique position) in an ascending sequence that corresponds to the increasing complexity of the ideas that it represents. First comes architecture; its object is nothing other than the encounter between the ideas (forces) of weight and rigidity. Next come the “beautiful art of water control” (die schöne Kunst der Wasserleitung) and the art of gardening, followed, in ascending order, by the objectively (and therefore also ideally) specified artistic forms of painting and sculpture—from still life, to landscape painting, to animal painting and sculpture, and from there on up to history painting and then sculpture, in particular the three-dimensional representation of the human body, which Schopenhauer considers to be the high point of achievement in the visual arts. Next comes poetry (Poesie), in a sequence marked by increasing objectivity of poetic cognition. This sequence begins with lyric poetry, which is still entirely subjective, and proceeds through the objective forms of the epic and novel to its high point in drama, specifically tragic drama (Trauerspiel), which more than any previous art manifests, recognizes, and represents the inner conflicts of the Will, portrayed as a struggle of individuals who are capable of willing. The emancipation of the creative genius or viewer/listener from the Will, in varying degrees, is reserved for but a very few fortunate moments in the life of a few. It is not accessible in any lasting way. Lasting—though never unchallenged—liberation from the Will, and with it from suffering, is to be found

. Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, 2:218 (World as Will and Representation). . “Poetry” is here conceived in an encompassing sense that includes literature of all kinds.—trans.

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not in aesthetic redemption through art but only in ethical-religious redemption, through asceticism, the voluntary avoidance of pleasure and the equally voluntary pursuit of the pleasant, and the resulting increasing relinquishment of all willing, or resignation. Schopenhauer distinguishes two paths that lead to this goal of nonwilling. The first is awareness of the identity of all existing things, great and small, with the Will, in other words, of the insignificance of individuality. This leads to sympathy or pity, in other words, to emotional identification with the suffering of others, and subsequently to abandonment of all individual efforts driven by the Will. The second path is the direct personal experience of suffering, through which the will is “broken.” In the overall conception of his philosophy as a theory of triumph over the world through negation of the Will, and in particular in his ethic of sympathy, Schopenhauer’s philosophy transcends the Western horizon that had been established by Plato and Kant. He does this by introducing Eastern, specifically Hindu and Buddhist, teachings about the illusory character of all reality and the goal of dissolution in nothingness. This is the first time that a European philosopher affirmatively and systematically adopts Eastern thought as part and parcel of his own position. Yet despite his affinity with the Eastern approach to life and reality, Schopenhauer remains true to Kant’s insight that our knowledge cannot transcend the limits of experience. Thus, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the worldly immanence of all cognition and willing is paired with an agnosticism, even indifferentism, toward the transcendent (God and gods). Schopenhauer’s metaphysics lacks any heaven or hell and knows nothing beyond the reality of experience, except for those elements that underlie the two foundational views of the world (as Will and representation): the Will, on the one hand, and the representing subject, on the other.

Art and Music Schopenhauer’s comments on the philosophy of music are found in three main places in his writing: § 52 in the third book of the first volume of The World as Will and Representation; chapter 39, entitled “On the Metaphysics of Music,” in the supplements to the third book in the second volume of this work; and §§ 218–20 in chapter 19 of the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena, entitled “Toward a Metaphysics of the Beautiful and Aesthetics.” . These references make it relatively easy to locate the relevant passages in all editions of Schopenhauer’s writings. Since we are concerned only with relatively few passages, the following does not identify them specifically. It is based essentially on § 52 (pp. 255–67) of Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation.

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For Schopenhauer, music occupies an exceptional place in the system of the arts. Music is not only radically different from the other arts but superior to them both aesthetically and metaphysically. First, music is distinguished from the other arts by its especially intensive “aesthetic effect.” It speaks to humans with greater immediacy and intensity and is also more immediately comprehensible than every other art. Second, music possesses a particular metaphysical significance, from which its especially intensive aesthetic effectiveness derives. Music shares with the other arts its fundamental nature as a copy that imitates an original image—its relation is that of a copy or imitation (Nachbildung) to something different from it. But music is unlike the other arts insofar as the extramusical thing that it represents does not consist in ideas or eternal essences and laws, which works of these arts render visible in an empirical way. Rather, for Schopenhauer, it is the Will itself, as such, that achieves representation in music. In other words, music exists as the relation of an imitative representation to something that, as such, can never be a representation. Therefore music itself, in its aesthetic effect and metaphysical significance, also lies outside representation. It is not experienced through representations, nor does it consist in representations that confront a subject with an object, as for example in the empirical cognition of individual things, or in the nonempirical cognition of ideas in the other arts. Instead, according to Schopenhauer, we experience music, and with it the Will, in a way that is not mediated by representation, and hence is utterly immediate. This is an affective mode of experiencing that resembles what Schopenhauer also claims exists in the inner experience of our body as uniquely our own. According to Schopenhauer, namely, we do not read the affective states of our own corporeal condition (feelings, moods, passions) from outside the body as a representational object in time and space. Rather, we experience these “modifications of the Will” inwardly and immediately. In an analogous way, music, too, rather than delivering representations of objects of any kind, presents us immediately and in an affective way with states of the Will. But the states of the Will that are represented in and immediately communicated to us through music are not our own feelings and passions; they are generic forms, in other words supra-individual structures of willing. This general character of the musical determinations of the Will explains, for Schopenhauer, the circumstance that music, despite its immediate relation to the Will, is experienced as the bearer not of suffering and pain but of joy and reconciliation. Schopenhauer readily concedes that he cannot actually adduce any proof of his metaphysical interpretation of music as the immediate representation

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of the Will as such, independent of mediating ideas and representations. He can do no more than “express that insight into the wonderful art of music that satisfies me.” It is up to each individual to determine what effect the experience of music, in combination with an awareness of Schopenhauer’s overall conception, will have. Schopenhauer thus takes for granted that to agree with his interpretation one must listen to music in a way that is philosophically reflective, in the context of the conception of the world as Will and representation. A partial, selective adoption of his music philosophy, or parts of it, without taking into account his philosophy as a whole, is not something that Schopenhauer contemplated. Schopenhauer’s interpretation of music according to the metaphysics of the Will has a weighty implication—namely, the parallelism of music and ideas in ontology, or the theory of being. Ontologically, as an immediate manifestation of the Will, music ranks alongside ideas, seen as the Will’s immediate objectification in the powers and laws of nature. The result, however, is not a similarity between music and ideas but a relation of analogy. Musical realities correspond structurally to relations between the ideal forces and laws of the natural world. As proof of this analogy, Schopenhauer compares the stepwise ascension of intervals from the bass to the treble voice in melody with ascending relationships in the various realms of nature, from nonorganic nature, to plants, animals, and ultimately humans. Here pitch in music corresponds to the degree of formal and qualitative determinateness (Bestimmtheit) in the ascending sequence of ideas. Schopenhauer develops a detailed comparison of the relative harmonic stability of voice leading in the bass region to the fixity of nonorganic material, and of the relative harmonic mobility of the middle voices, whose course is relatively loosely structured, to the increasingly free unfolding of powers in organic nature. Finally, Schopenhauer sees the much freer harmonic development of the upper voice, combined with the construction, through melody, of a more powerful uniformity in the succession of tones, with its suggestion of a purposeful overall course of tonal development, as analogous to the rationally guided, considered course of human life. Schopenhauer pushes the analogy to the point where he sees in the harmonic form of melody, which starts from the keynote and departs from it in various intervals before ultimately returning to it, a parallel with the manifold strivings of the Will, which strikes out in various directions and returns to the point of origin with a sense of temporary satisfaction. In the process, Schopenhauer formulates specific analogies between . Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, 2:303.

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the various lengths of time it takes to move from wish to satisfaction in willing and the different tempi in music. He sees changes of key as paralleling the death of the individual and the continuation of the Will in another form. Above all, however, the analogy between music, as an immediate manifestation of the Will, and the world, considered under the aspect of ideas, is revealed in the emotional quality of music, specifically its capacity to express feelings and passions. The real existence of all sorts of determinations of the Will (Willensbestimmungen) in sentient beings corresponds to the modifications of the Will that are experienced in music as affectively and emotionally expressive. At the same time, according to Schopenhauer, music conveys not specific emotions but instead types of feelings, indeed their prototypes—not some individual joy but joy itself, not some specific pain but pain itself, etc. This generically expressive character of music is grounded in the circumstance that it is not the (individually determined) will of an individual that is manifested but instead the pre-individual Will itself. In Schopenhauer’s estimation, music expresses only the essential or formal character of the determinations of the Will. The generically expressive character of music is also evidenced by the fact that the musical representation of suffering and pain normally does not elicit suffering and painful states in the listener, but instead enjoyment and pleasure. Schopenhauer also conceives of the capacity of music to express the Will itself, in its prototypical modifications, as music’s linguistic character. But music is not a language like other languages. Instead, for Schopenhauer, it is a “completely general language” (eine ganz allgemeine Sprache). It speaks not of this and that but of all and everything, and in doing so it reveals “the inmost essence of the world” (das innerste Wesen der Welt). According to Schopenhauer, the language of music is, on the one hand, immediately comprehensible and capable of moving every individual in the most profound way. But, on the other hand, the language of music eludes comprehension by reason. Thus, for music there can be no translation into other, particular languages. Moreover, music’s insights do not derive from rational reflection by the composer, translated in an intentional way into the language of music. Rather, the presence of metaphysical insight in music is due to compositional genius and its unconscious cognitive and linguistic achievement. The special capacity of music to comprehend and reflect the nature of everything real, as Will, places this art in analogy to the cognitive efforts of philosophy, and specifically to Schopenhauer’s own philosophical interpretation of the world as Will and representation. For, unlike the other arts, music does not remain captive to the world as representation, or to the medium of ideas,

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but enters the world as Will. On the basis of this epistemological parallelism between music and philosophy, Schopenhauer insists on the capacity of music to do in tones what philosophy does in concepts—to do metaphysics. In keeping with a long tradition that associated music and mathematical thought, Leibniz had characterized the cognitive achievement of music as the unconscious pursuit of mathematics. Schopenhauer takes this analogy a step further by characterizing music as the unconscious exercise of metaphysics: “Musica est exercitium metaphysica occultum nescientis se philosophari animi.” Counterfactually speaking, one could therefore say that true philosophy could also be achieved by translating the occult metaphysics of music into the language of philosophical concepts. The fundamental character of music as a generally understandable but inexplicable world-language is also manifested, for Schopenhauer, in music’s nostalgic effect—it speaks to us of something at once far and near. Music is very close to us because there is nothing we know more intimately than the stirrings of the Will within us, which are represented in music; and music is distant from us because its stirrings are not our own individual stirrings of the Will but the latter’s generic forms “entirely without reality and far from its torment.” Since for Schopenhauer pleasure and enjoyment are negations whose whole existence consists in the absence of suffering and pain, music’s ontological distance from reality also explains its consoling effect, which it shares with all the arts, but in which it surpasses them in intensity. Among the music-aesthetical consequences of Schopenhauer’s musical metaphysics are the primacy of melody in composition, the subordination of the text to the music in vocal music from song to opera, the critique of tone painting, and the metaphysical dignity of orchestral music and of the symphony in particular. The linguistic character of music is primarily revealed, for Schopenhauer, in melody, which is experienced as eloquent. Biographically, this is illustrated by his personal preference for the melodious music of Rossini, whose opera numbers he liked to play in arrangements for flute. For Schopenhauer, the “general language” of music is self-sufficient and requires no verbal clarification to make it effective and comprehensible. When the language of words forms part of a musical composition, in the form of a text that is recited or sung, it does not complete something that would otherwise be incomplete but rather supplements the abstract-emotional dimension of music as such with a . Ibid., 2:313. It can be translated as: “Music is an occult exercise in metaphysics, in which the soul does not know that it is philosophizing.” . Ibid., 2:312.

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contextual understanding of the motives for the appearance and disappearance of the emotional stirrings it elicits. Essentially, then, music does not illustrate a text, or words. On the contrary, the linguistic elements should be seen as illustrations and concretizations of the abstract and general in the music itself. Thus, even in vocal music, music is an “autonomous art” (selbständige Kunst). Schopenhauer considers Rossini to be exemplary even in this respect, insofar as his opera music has its effect even without the text, in purely instrumental performance. Schopenhauer rejects “actually imitative music” (eigentlich nachbildende Musik) in which empirical reality is imitated with musical means. This does not correspond to the essence of music, which is to reproduce the Will immediately, bypassing both ideas and empirical things. When it comes to genre, Schopenhauer criticizes opera and specifically its colossal contemporary French form, “grand opera,” for the accretion of quite heterogeneous artistic media and for relying on external effects. He remarks that, in general, there is no direct correlation between increased numbers of performers and increases in purely musical effect; and that there are cases in which an opera transcribed for quartet can be more profoundly affecting than its original version. At the same time, he concedes that small-group performances are associated with a narrowing of the tonal space (“harmony”). Purely instrumental music combines the advantage of a full orchestral apparatus with homogeneity of means. Schopenhauer refers to Beethoven’s symphonies, in particular, in which he foregrounds the alternation between chaos and order, struggle and tranquility. He sees this as “a true and perfect copy [Abbild] of the essence of the world,” insofar as, in both cases, the survival of the whole results from the destruction of its parts. Besides the symphony, Schopenhauer also sees the mass as a source of full musical enjoyment, since in a practical sense the liturgical texts, on account of their standardization, repetition, and frequent incomprehensibility, have lost their verbal character. On the whole, Schopenhauer’s reflections on music are contributions that either focus on the metaphysical significance of the art form or make factual and normative statements about the factors and forms of musical composition. Whereas the first type of contribution—concerning the privileged position of music in relation to the other arts, its intimacy with the Will, and its affinity to philosophy—is of great philosophical originality and broad significance, the second type of contributions consists mainly of statements and value judgments that reveal an aesthetically sensitive and musically quite cultivated man of the times, but no theoretician of music. . Ibid., 3:514. . On the relatively modest level of Schopenhauer’s knowledge of music theory, see Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on Music as the Embodiment of Will.”

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Absolute Music The scholarship on Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music basically proceeds along two lines. First, there is the response to Schopenhauer’s comments on music that occurs in the context of the reception, interpretation, and critique of his work as a whole. Second, there are historical and systematic works in aesthetics and the philosophy of art that include Schopenhauer’s thinking on music. Scholarly consideration of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music is typically exegetical in character and relatively noncontroversial. Controversial views and evaluations of Schopenhauer are more likely to be found in the realm of contemporary philosophical debates on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. In this regard, it is not unimportant that in recent decades music aesthetics has evolved into an autonomous, productive philosophical discipline that is rich in discussion. This is especially true in the Anglo-American sphere, where a discipline known as “philosophy of music,” in the spirit of analytical philosophy, has taken root.10 As a complement to the traditional philosophy of music, with its partly phenomenological, partly hermeneutic orientation, this trend has supported the introduction and observance of analytic standards of precision in the structure of concepts and arguments. One of analytic philosophy’s fundamental assumptions is the heterogeneous nature of music in the context of the arts as a whole, particularly when it comes to the status of the artwork and the way it affects the listener. Among the main questions posed by the discipline is how absolute music, i.e., music without any text or program, works. Schopenhauer’s reception in analytic philosophy has so far proceeded, for the most part, along predictable paths. The skepticism toward comprehensive theories and system constructs that generally predominates in analytic philosophy, its focus on individual problems, and its abstention from the great metaphysical themes of the tradition have led to a selective reception of Schopenhauer’s music philosophy. In particular, the integral nature of Schopenhauer’s musical aesthetics within the philosophical theory of the Will has been consistently bracketed. In the more recent relevant, generally analytically oriented literature, Schopenhauer is overwhelmingly regarded as the representative of an expressivist and emotivist music aesthetics, in which music is capable of expressing emotions and generating an emotional response in the listener. It is usually emphasized that music has to do not with everyday emotions but with “impersonal” 10. The leading representative of analytical music philosophy today is Peter Kivy. See in particular his The Corded Shell, Sound and Semblance, and Music Alone. For a good complement to Kivy’s thought, see Davies, Musical Meaning and Expression.

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or “universal feelings” ( Julian P. Young, Philip Alperson) or with “patterns” (Lydia Goehr). There are also those who, following Schopenhauer, point out that what finds expression in music is precisely the unsayable and inexpressible (T. J. Diffey, Goehr). On the central music-aesthetical issue of the object of musical meaning, Schopenhauer is consistently reckoned among those who hold music to be capable of representing the extramusical. The extramusical referent, in Schopenhauer, is typically identified as the emotional life of human beings, explicitly excluding the all-embracing dimension that Schopenhauer himself identifies as the exclusive realm of musical representation—the Will as a whole and as such (Alperson). Alternatively, reception focuses on the aesthetic cognitivism of Schopenhauer’s music philosophy, according to which music, like all art, is concerned with a mode of cognition, but fails to bring this notion into conformity with Schopenhauer’s conception of art as the metaphysical cognition of ideas or of the Will as such (Diffey). The potential of Schopenhauer’s reception for a theory of absolute music deserves additional attention, to supplement the selective reception he has received in contemporary, analytically oriented music aesthetics and to offset the latter’s neglect of metaphysics. The philosophical grounding he provides for the exceptional status of music in relation to the other arts, and of nonprogrammatic and text-free, “pure” instrumental music, places Schopenhauer among those thinkers who see music as an art that is in multiple senses “absolute,” emancipated, or radically liberated as well as liberating. In Schopenhauer, music is emancipated from the aesthetics of mimesis to which the other arts remain indebted right up to the threshold of aesthetic modernism in the early twentieth century. In Schopenhauer’s aesthetic ideal of purely instrumental music, in the genres of the sonata, concerto, and symphony, music is liberated from text and program. The exclusive relationship of music to the Will, as the equally unfathomable and impenetrable primal reality, signifies, for him, the freeing of music from the world as we know it. Linked to this is the liberating effect of music, absolved of any entanglement with the mundane, on the individual creator or listener. The reception of Schopenhauer’s music aesthetics in the context of his overall philosophy must do justice to the insight he claims that music, in its very existence and its essential effect, has no representation-related content but only content of a sort that eludes all representing and indeed everything that can be represented. Schopenhauer’s talk of “feelings” as the model (Vorlage), object, and effect of music must be understood in such a way that it remains compatible with the complete exclusion of cognition, including the cognition of ideas. When Schopenhauer situates music in direct relation to

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the Will, without any interposition of ideas, then the Will that achieves representation in music is not individuated but is, instead, willing itself as the foundational condition of reality. This means, however, that the relationship of music to feelings is not a relationship of resemblance. Rather, there exists an analogy between music and emotions; the rise and fall of emotional states corresponds to the modification of the tones in music. Music represents not feelings, or even their generic forms, but something that is completely unlike feelings—the Will, prior to the intellect and its achievement of individuation. Strictly speaking, therefore, one cannot speak of music in Schopenhauer as the representation of feelings. Rather, the object of music is the modifications of the Will in the medium of tones. With this, Schopenhauer’s understanding of the object of music moves strikingly close to the position of formalism in music aesthetics, as it goes back, in particular, to Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful (1854), in which the only object and content of music as an aesthetic phenomenon are “sounding, moving forms.”11 At the same time, music, for Schopenhauer, has a significance that exceeds its specific content and object, the sounding modifications of the Will, to the extent that music provides us with insight into the nature of the world as Will. But in following Schopenhauer, one does not need to imagine the specific cognitive achievement of music as an exceptional kind of knowledge. Rather, the musical experience of the world as Will is completely absorbed in the experience of dynamic sequences that manifest sonically what is manifested psycho-physically in our internal and external worlds—the movement of unceasingly various and variously intersecting strivings. Everything that Will is other than this, it is no longer as Will but under the form of representation. Beyond this, there is something about the metaphysical significance of music in Schopenhauer, where he reaches beyond the specifically aesthetic, that betrays a certain closeness to Hanslick’s philosophy. Hanslick, namely, after narrowing music’s object and content, considered aesthetically, to the formal movement of tones, goes on to explore the “meaningful content” (Gehalt) of music.12 Beyond the aesthetic dimension, Hanslick sees in the musical artwork a “sounding13 copy of the great movements in the universe” (ein tönendes Abbild der grossen Bewegungen im Weltall). He closes his essay with a phrase 11. “Tönend bewegte Formen,” cf. Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musicalisch-Schönen. [Geoffrey Payzant makes the case for translating the famous phrase as “tonally moving forms,” based on Hanslick’s use of Ton in context, although this meaning of tönend would have been unorthodox. Payzant’s translation of the entire work appeared as On the Musically Beautiful—trans.] 12. Hanslick uses the term Gehalt, as opposed to Inhalt, which appears in the previous phrase. Although the two words are often used interchangeably, Gehalt suggests a larger meaning—trans. 13. Tönend. As in the phrase tönend bewegte Formen, this might be thought of as “tonal.” Cf. note 11—trans.

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that could as easily have come from Schopenhauer: “thus man rediscovers, in music, the whole universe.”14 Taking Hanslick’s combination of formalism in musical content with extramusical meaning as a point of departure, one could conceive of Schopenhauer’s contribution to the philosophy of music as a combination of aesthetic formalism in regard to its object (Inhalt) with metaphysical cognitivism in regard to its meaningful content (Gehalt). This position corresponds most closely, in the history of music, to the piano, chamber, and orchestral works of Johannes Brahms and to the radically absolute music of Arnold Schoenberg—liberated even from tonality. Music like this approaches the purely formal as seriously as if it were the bearer of the highest possible meanings.

Reception The late, sudden, and rapidly expanding discovery of Schopenhauer’s philosophy toward the middle of the nineteenth century coincides closely with the radically changed intellectual climate in Europe following the failure of the bourgeois revolutions of 1848–49. The primacy of Will over reason, the ethical ideal of a resigned stance toward the world, and the disparagement of history and politics in Schopenhauer resonated with the experiences of the politically largely powerless but socially and especially economically flourishing bourgeoisie. Schopenhauer’s theory of redemption through art and of music’s closeness to metaphysical origins was warmly received by Europe’s cultivated bourgeoisie. In the process of bourgeois reception, Schopenhauer’s philosophical theory was transmuted into a religion of art and a cult of music that persist to this day, especially in Germany and Austria. A further factor in the reception of Schopenhauer’s writings was their eminently literary quality. He understood, as no philosopher before or after him, how to write well without becoming shallow, how to plumb the depths without becoming incomprehensible. The degree to which Schopenhauer was familiar to a broadly cultivated public is barely imaginable today. It also explains the extent of his influence on intellectuals and artists, including more than a few musicians—an influence that persisted well into the twentieth century. And this reception was not limited to philosophy. He and his work were often seen as possessing aesthetic significance in themselves. A central document of this aestheticization of Schopenhauer and his philosophy is the Schopenhauer book by Kuno 14. Hanslick, Vom Musicalisch-Schönen, 104. Hanslick, who was criticized for this passage in the original edition of his work, omitted it in all later editions; it therefore does not appear in the English translations. See Pederson, “Defining the Term ‘Absolute Music’ Historically,” 252.

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Fischer (1824–1907), a historian of philosophy in the Hegelian tradition. The influence of this book extended far beyond the realm of aesthetics. Fischer included Schopenhauer in the canon of great modern philosophers while simultaneously teaching that he should be regarded as an artist and his philosophy as a work of art and of genius. The list of writers who were demonstrably influenced by Schopenhauer during the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century includes, among the Russians, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1919) and Ivan Turgeniev (1818–83); among the French, Émile Zola (1840–1902), Guy de Maupassant (1850–93), and Marcel Proust (1871–1922); and among the English, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) and Joseph Conrad (1857–1924).15 Among German writers one must mention Thomas Mann (1875–1955) and more recently Thomas Bernhard (1931–89). The influence of Schopenhauer on the artistic philosophy and literary work of Samuel Beckett (1906–89) is especially marked. Schopenhauer’s philosophical reception was also greatest in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first person who must be mentioned here is Friedrich Nie­tzsche (1844–1900), who claimed Schopenhauer as his “teacher.” Under the impact of Richard Wagner’s music, Nie­tzsche began early on to build on Schopenhauer’s opposition between the visual (and linguistic) arts and music, turning it into the dynamic polarity of the Apollonian and Dionysian in Greek tragedy and Greek culture as a whole. Later, he would transform Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the Will into his fundamental theory of the “Will to Power” as the principle of all being and becoming. Other philosophical authors who absorbed Schopenhauer and continued his work in various forms included Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), whose “philosophy of the unconscious” (Philsophie des Unbewussten) (1869) synthesized Hegel and Schopenhauer, and through whom the latter probably indirectly influenced Sigmund Freud; as well as Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933), a Kant scholar whose Philosophy of As If (Philosophie des Als Ob, 1911) stood for the significance of fiction in mental life and life in general. Schopenhauer, together with Nie­tzsche, is also considered one of the main thinkers behind the tendency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century known as Lebensphilosophie, which sees life as an irrational and essentially intellectually inaccessible phenomenon. Its German representatives included the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918). In the twentieth century, Schopenhauer’s influence can be identified in the young Ludwig Wittgenstein 15. On this subject see the more detailed observations in Magee, Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 379–90.

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(1889–1951) and the late Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), through whom the Frankfurt philosopher finally gained access to the Frankfurt School. Schopenhauer’s philosophy had a special impact on German-speaking composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is especially true of the two intellectuals among them, who responded productively and/or polemically to Schopenhauer’s overall philosophy: Richard Wagner (1813– 83) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951). Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949) deserves mention here as well. Wagner was introduced to Schopenhauer’s magnum opus in 1854 by his friend Georg Herwegh. At the time, Wagner was living in exile in Zurich, where the former Hofkapellmeister and short-lived revolutionary had fled in 1849 to avoid arrest following the failure of the uprising in Dresden the preceding May. The early masterpieces Der Fliegende Holländer (1841), Tannhäuser (1845), and Lohengrin (1848) lay behind him. His essays calling for the reform of art, including “Art and the Revolution” (1849), “The Artwork of the Future” 1849), and “Opera and Drama” (1851), supplemented by “A Communication to My Friends” (1851) and “On Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poems” (1857), had promulgated the new cultural-political aesthetics of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner’s next objective was to bring his ideas to fruition by setting the already completed libretto of the Ring of the Nibelung to music. Wagner had finished composing Das Rheingold and was midway through Die Walküre when he encountered Schopenhauer’s philosophy. From that day forward until the day he died, Wagner’s engagement with Schopenhauer’s thought never ceased. Under Schopenhauer’s influence, the theoretical and compositional position of music in Wagner’s reformist opera aesthetics and practice was gradually transformed from a means within music drama to its center and goal. Now music stood at the center of the work both aesthetically and metaphysically. The librettos of Wagner’s later musical dramas Tristan and Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), and Parsifal (1882) bear the impress of the composer’s productive adoption and adaptation of Schopenhauer’s teachings. Tristan and Isolde transcend individuation in the “night of love”; Hans Sachs sees through the world’s illusion and renounces it; Parsifal, in an inversion of Schopenhauer’s theory, becomes not compassionate through wisdom, but rather wise through compassion, and redeems both Amfortas and Kundry from the sufferings of life. At the same time, one must also bear in mind that even before Wagner’s acquaintance with Schopenhauer, his thinking contained aspects of the latter’s weltanschauung. Thus, in Die Walküre (libretto 1852), Wotan’s will is “broken” and the god desires only an end to it all. Still, it is fair to say that Wagner’s knowledge of Schopenhauer enabled him to bring greater philosophical depth to the existing material, with its German late-romantic

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notions of artistic genius, sacrificial death, and world redemption. Schopenhauer himself thought Wagner was a better poet than composer. In Schoenberg’s case, the extent and tendency of the intellectual encounter with Schopenhauer can be documented relatively precisely with the aid of the underlinings, marginal notes, and handwritten slips of paper that are found in his copy of Schopenhauer’s complete works.16 From Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and philosophy of music, Schoenberg evidently absorbed the claims to special knowledge that Schopenhauer attributed to individuals of genius—especially composers. He also engaged in a critique of Schopenhauer’s views on the relationship of philosophy and religion, especially Judaism. In Schoenberg’s copy of the first volume of The World as Will and Representation, there is only one passage that is underlined; it is from the comments on music in § 52: “The composer reveals the inmost nature of the world and articulates the most profound wisdom in a language that his reason does not comprehend; as the somnambulist under the influence of Mesmerism gives insights into things of which, waking, she has no concept.”17 In Schoenberg’s early essay “The Relationship to the Text” (1912), which was later included in the essay collection Style and Idea, this statement is characterized as the core of Schopenhauer’s insights into the nature of music.18 In his copy of The World as Will and Representation, in volume 2, chapter 19, entitled “On the Primacy of the Will in Self-Consciousness,” there is a sentence next to which Schoenberg inserted numerous exclamation points, the word “splendid,” and a reference (“Jakobsleiter”) to the eponymous fragment based on his own libretto. In the sentence, Schopenhauer explains how most people, out of bitterness over their own intellectual failings, react with hostility to a “superior mind.”19 In the text that Schoenberg wrote for the oratorio fragment, the angel Gabriel calls for the extinguishment of the ego, and there is a prayer that asks, “Save us from our singularity!” (“Erlöse uns von unserer Einzelheit!”). Schoenberg owned a separate edition of Parerga and Paralipomena, in addition to the one contained in the collected works. Volume 2 shows numerous underlinings. Worth mentioning among his marginal notes is the quotation from the beginning of Hans Sachs’s monologue in the third act of Meistersinger, “Madness! Madness! Everywhere madness” (“Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!”), which is inserted next to a section in chapter 2 entitled “Additional 16. The following is based on research in Schoenberg’s private library, which is located in the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna. Thanks are due to the director, Dr. Christian Meyer, for his help and support. 17. Sämtliche Werke, 2:307. 18. Cf. Arnold Schoenberg, “The Relationship to the Text” (1912) in his Style and Idea, 141. The other references to Schopenhauer in Style and Idea are relatively insignificant. 19. Sämtliche Werke, 3:255ff.; World as Will and Representation, 2:201–44.

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Comments on the Theory of the Nullity [Nichtigkeit] of Existence,” specifically at § 147a, where Schopenhauer writes about the nullity of time.20 Of special interest are the folded pages that Schoenberg pasted into the volume of the collected works containing Parerga and Paralipomena. Here Schoenberg states his views on Schopenhauer’s critique of Judaism in chapter 15, “On Religion,” specifically with regard to § 179, which is entitled “Old and New Testament.”21 Schoenberg’s view is that Schopenhauer’s comments on the Jewish religion do not qualify as direct knowledge but are prejudicial notions. He then draws a parallel between Schopenhauer’s attitude in this matter and the latter’s prejudices against individual musical forms that Schopenhauer devalues and Schoenberg considers to be the best. Additional pasted-in slips in the volumes that contain the notes and the index to the collected works document Schoenberg’s focus, in his reception of Schopenhauer, on the question of the relationship between religion and philosophy. After the mid-twentieth century, there are no more examples of engagement with Schopenhauer’s weltanschauung comparable to those of Wagner or Schoenberg.

R EFE R ENCES

Schopenhauer’s Works Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays. Trans. Eric F. J. Payne. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Arthur Hübscher. 4th ed. 7 vols. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1988. Vol. 2: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I. Vol. 3: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II. Vol. 6: Parerga und Paralipomena: Kleine philosophische Schriften, I. The World as Will and Representation. [Translation of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.] Trans. Eric F. J. Payne. 2 vols. New York: Dover Press, 1959.

General Literature Diffey, T. J. “Metaphysics and Aesthetics: A Case Study of Schopenhauer and Thomas Hardy.” In Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts, ed. Dale Jacquette, 229–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. “Schopenhauer’s Account of Aesthetic Experience.” British Journal of Aesthetics 30 (1990): 132–42. Fischer, Kuno. Arthur Schopenhauer. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1893. Hartmann, Eduard von. Philosophy of the Unconscious: Speculative Results according to the Inductive Methods of Physical Science. New ed. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931. 20. Schopenhauer, “Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Vanity of Existence,” in Parerga and Paralipomena, 2:298–90. 21. Schopenhauer, “The Old and New Testaments,” in Parerga and Paralipomena, 2:378–86.

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Jacquette, Dale, ed. Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Knox, Israel. The Aesthetic Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. New York: Humanities Press, 1958. Magee, Bryan. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Malter, Rudolf. Der Eine Gedanke: Hinführung zur Philosophie Arthur Schopenhauers. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988. Paetzold, Heinz. Ästhetik des deutschen Idealismus: Zur Idee ästhetischer Rationalität bei Baumgarten, Kant, Schelling, Hegel und Schopenhauer. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983. Pothast, Ulrich. Die eigentlich metaphysische Tätigkeit: Über Schopenhauers Ästhetik und ihre Anwendung durch Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982. Vaihinger, Hans. The Philosophy of “As if ”: A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind. Trans. C. K. Ogden. 2nd ed. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1935. Young, Julian P. “The Standpoint of Eternity: Schopenhauer on Art.” Kant-Studien 78 (1987): 424–41. Zöller, Günther. “Schopenhauer and the Self.” In The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Christopher Janeway, 18–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Musical Literature Alperson, Philip. “Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1982):155–66. Davies, Stephen. Musical Meaning and Expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Ferrara, Lawrence. “Schopenhauer on Music as the Embodiment of Will.” In Jacquette, Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts, 183–99. Goehr, Lydia. “Schopenhauer and the Musicians: An Inquiry into the Sounds of Silence and the Limits of Philosophizing about Music.” In Jacquette, Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts, 200–228. Hanslick, Eduard. Vom Musicalisch-Schönen: Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Leipzig, 1854. Reprint ed., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Burggesellschaft, 1965. Translated as On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music. Trans. and ed. Geoffrey Payzant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. Kivy, Peter. The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. ———. Music Alone: Philosophical Reflection on the Purely Musical Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. ———. Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pederson, Sanna. “Defining the Term ‘Absolute Music’ Historically.” Music & Letters 90 (2009): 240–62. Schnitzler, Günter. “Die Musik in Schopenhauers Philosophie.” In Musik und Zahl: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Grenzbereich zwischen Musik und Mathematik, ed. Schnitzler, 13–157. Bonn: Verlag für systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1976. Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. Ed. Leonard Stein. Trans. Leo Black. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975. Wagner, Richard. The Art-Work of the Future and Other Works. [Originally published as vol. 1 of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works.] Trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Includes “Art and Revolution.” ———. Judaism in Music and Other Essays. [Originally published as vol. 3 of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works.] Trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Includes “On Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poems.”

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———. Opera and Drama. [Originally published as vol. 2 of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works.] Trans. William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. ———. Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Trans. William Ashton Ellis. 8 vols. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892–99. Wenzel, Wilfried. “Ist Schopenhauers Musikästhetik noch aktuell?” In Schopenhauer, Nie­tzsche und die Kunst, ed. Wolfgang Schirmacher, 161–68. Vienna: Passagenverlag, 1991. Weyers, Raymund. Arthur Schopenhauers Philosophie der Musik. Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung 88. Regensburg: Bosse, 1976.

Nietzsche S t efa n L o r e n z S o rg n e r

Brief Biography Friedrich Wilhelm Nie­tzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken (near Leipzig). His parents were Franziska Nie­tzsche née Oehler (1826–97) and the Lutheran minister Carl Ludwig Nie­ tzsche (1813–49). After his father’s death, Friedrich Nie­tzsche moved from Röcken to Naumburg (Saale) with his mother and his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nie­tzsche. He attended the famous private boarding school at Pforta (1858 to 1864), where the poet Novalis, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and the Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel also studied. In 1864, he began the study of theology and ancient languages in Bonn, but transferred to the University of Leipzig in 1865 in order to continue to study with his teacher F. W. Ritschl and to focus exclusively on classical philology. In the same year, he discovered the philosophy of Schopenhauer and began his friendship with Erwin Rohde. By 1869, on Ritschl’s recommendation, Nie­tzsche had already been awarded a professorship in classical philology at the University of Basel. In 1868, in Leipzig, he had his first face-to-face meeting with Richard Wagner. Their acquaintance developed into a deep friendship that was nurtured during Nie­tzsche’s visits to Wagner’s home in Triebschen, near Lucerne. In May 1872, Nie­tzsche was present at the laying of the cornerstone of the Festspiel Theater in Bayreuth, and in late July 1876 he attended Wagner’s festival premieres. That fall, Wagner and Nie­tzsche met for the last time, in Sorrento; their thinking had evolved in different

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directions. In 1879, Nie­tzsche was forced to step down from his professorship in Basel because of his poor health. From then on, he resided mainly in Switzerland, northern Italy, and southern France and discovered his beloved Sils Maria in Switzerland (1881). His health continued to deteriorate during the 1880s. His affection for Lou Salome was spurned (1882), and his loneliness increased. Nie­tzsche’s mental collapse occurred in January 1889, in Turin. He spent the last years of his life in a state of mental darkness, cared for primarily by his mother and sister in Weimar and Naumburg. He died on August 25, 1900, in Weimar. Three phases can be distinguished in Nie­tzsche’s philosophy. In the first, he published The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872) and the four “pieces” of his Unfashionable Observations (Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, 1873–76). The second phase, which saw the end of his friendship with Richard Wagner, is bracketed loosely by his books Human, All Too Human (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878–79) and Daybreak (Morgenröthe, 1881). This phase is marked by an increased absorption in the natural sciences. The third and final phase begins with the publication of The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882) and especially Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883–91) and concludes with his mental breakdown in early 1889. His philosophy reached its apex during this period, with the appearance of his mature works Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, 1886), and On the Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887). His posthumous works are crucial for understanding his philosophy. In the papers from his early period are to be found, among other things, noteworthy reflections on the philosophy of language. The later papers contain the clearest formulations and thought processes of his mature philosophy. Although the division of Nie­tzsche’s work into three phases is justified, it should be noted that the differences are much less momentous than they are sometimes considered to be.

Philosophy and Art Early on, Nie­tzsche makes explicit what tasks are incumbent on the philosopher, and what he understands by philosophy, when he says that philosophers seek to establish anew the value of existence and that all the great thinkers . There are numerous translations of The Birth of Tragedy. The most recent is by Ronald Spiers: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. I have referred to this translation in reviewing the text.—trans.

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have done this. What concerns philosophers is thus the question of the good, for nothing else is meant by value. Something is valuable if it is good for a person and without value if it is bad for him. A thing can either have instrumental value and be good as the means toward another end or be valuable in itself. When we inquire into the good, we want to know what is good in itself for our life as a whole; and philosophers, according to the early Nie­tzsche, are responsible for the establishment of values. Hence, his philosophy is frequently referred to as a Lebensphilosophie, or a “philosophy of life.” Here Nie­ tzsche, the classical philologist, is reviving an old tradition—the thinkers of antiquity and the Middle Ages placed the question of the good at the center of their philosophy, and their ideas can also be termed Lebensphilosophie. This is very explicit in Plato, for example, for whom the highest idea is the idea of the good. The later Nie­tzsche remains faithful to this basic understanding, when he emphasizes explicitly that the philosopher “should determine the hierarchy of values.” Nie­tzsche’s version of the relation between art and philosophy proceeds from this basic understanding. It is made explicit in the early works, especially The Birth of Tragedy, where it finds expression in the relationship between Socrates and Euripides. In this context, Nie­tzsche repeats the rumor, current in classical Athens, that “Socrates was in the habit of helping Euripides with his writing.” The reliance of the Greek poets not only on philosophy but also, and especially, on religion is conveyed in Nie­tzsche’s remark that “all the famous figures of the Greek theater, Prometheus, Oedipus, etc., are only masks of that original hero, Dionysus.” Dionysus, for Nie­tzsche, represents the foundation of Greek religion, for it is out of our awareness of ceaseless becoming and the terrors of existence—all embraced, for Nie­tzsche, in the concept “Dionysus”—that the gods of Olympus, whom he identifies with Apollonian semblance, are fashioned. In Nie­tzsche, consequently, Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s “noble simplicity and silent grandeur” were replaced by the dualism of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Since existence is rooted in the Dionysian, it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that “existence and the world [are] eternally justified.” With this position, which makes clear that art serves . Sämtliche Werke, 1:360 (Schopenhauer als Erzieher); Unfashionable Observations, third piece (Schopenhauer as Educator), 193. . Sämtliche Werke, 5:289; On the Genealogy of Morality, 25. . Sämtliche Werke, 1:88; Birth of Tragedy, 102. . Sämtliche Werke, 1:71; Birth of Tragedy, 81. . Sämtliche Werke, 1:35; Birth of Tragedy, 33. . On Winckelmann, see note 2 in the editors’ introduction.—trans. . Sämtliche Werke, 1:47, 152; Birth of Tragedy, 50, 183. Nie­tzsche’s italics.

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as a means of philosophy and religion, Nie­tzsche exercised an enormous influence on the understanding of Greek religion in twentieth-century studies of antiquity. Nie­tzsche remained true to this position in his late works as well, in which he informs us that artists have “at all times [been] servants of a morality, or philosophy, or religion.” This fundamental position is diametrically opposed to the aestheticism that emerged with modernism, according to which the central significance of an artwork is bound up with its artistic form. Nie­tzsche always argued against the importance, in art, of merely beautiful form. In his late work, Nie­tzsche, the great fighter against decadence and overcomer of nihilism, had this to say about artistic form: “The artists of décadence, whose stance toward life is basically nihilistic, flee into the beauty of form.”10 Thus, Nie­tzsche rejected the aestheticizing view that art is created for the beauty of its form, arguing that this was the position adopted by nihilistic artists of décadence. Since Nie­tzsche believed in the necessity of overcoming nihilism, meaning the devaluation of all values, it is clear from this passage that he himself was an opponent of aestheticism. This basic position can already be found in his early works. While, from the perspective of aestheticism, artworks are created for their beautiful form, so that viewers or listeners can experience pleasure in these beautiful forms, for Nie­tzsche, in contrast, art exists in the service of life. The luxurious “satisfaction of illusory needs,”11 or mere enjoyment of beautiful forms, is fundamentally at odds with Nie­tzsche’s position. It represents the degeneration of a decadent society, something he already opposed in his early writings. He says explicitly that he sees modern art as a luxury,12 and that luxury does not serve life. Nie­tzsche is always attentive to the surrounding cultural context, such as the above-mentioned décadence, and he also thinks that a culture is rooted in its dominant notions of the good life. Ultimately, culture can only “grow out of life.”13 In ancient Greece, accordingly, art was created on the basis of Greek religion; even in a decadent society, according to Nie­tzsche, art and artists are among the “slavish followers” of the dominant weltanschauung. For Nie­tzsche, therefore, the given cultural circumstances play a decisive role in determining the content of the artworks that are created. . Sämtliche Werke, 5:344–45; On the Genealogy of Morality, 63. 10. Sämtliche Werke, 12 (Nachlass): 557. 11. Sämtliche Werke, 1:475 (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth); Unfashionable Observations, fourth piece, 299. (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth), 159. 12. Ibid. 13. Sämtliche Werke, 1:326 (Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben); Unfashionable Observations, second piece (on the utility and liability of history for life), 159. (The Use and Abuse of History), 91.

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Art and Music Music plays a special role in Nie­tzsche’s life and thought. He played the piano,14 even after his mental breakdown; composed;15 had an intensive personal relationship with Richard Wagner;16 wrote in a very musical style;17 and at times would have preferred to see himself as a musician rather than a thinker.18 However, in this introduction to Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music I focus neither on the significance of music in his life, nor on his own compositions or the musicality of his language, but exclusively on his ideas concerning philosophy and music. The philosophy of music occupies a larger place in Nie­tzsche’s early work than in the two later phases. This may have to do, for one thing, with the fact that he was still friendly with Richard Wagner and, for another, with his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose thought privileges the significance of music. Nie­tzsche’s first work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, was dedicated to Richard Wagner. In 1886, Nie­tzsche removed this preface and changed the title to The Birth of Tragedy; or, The Greek Spirit and Pessimism.19 The terminology employed in the book clearly shows that the young Nie­tzsche had fallen under the sway of Schopenhauer. The cultural context and life itself always commanded a central position in Nie­tzsche’s thought; thus his ideas on the philosophy of music must also be understood in relation to these themes. Metaphysics also plays a significant role in Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music. It is a commonplace that during this period Nie­tzsche was philosophizing very much in the spirit of Schopenhauer.20 But this statement must be relativized. It is true that Nie­tzsche employs phrases reminiscent of Schopenhauer and that Schopenhauer’s presence can be sensed in the background. But Nie­tzsche already differs with his teacher on the decisive issues. The most important of these are the following: (1) While Nie­tzsche may agree with Schopenhauer that in life human beings must necessarily experience more suffering than joy, as expressed by the concept “pessimistic weltanschauung,” he does not think negation of the 14. “Outside of his official duties, he was passionately devoted to music and knew how to fantasize masterfully on the piano.” Janz, Friedrich Nie­tzsche, 1:42. 15. Janz, “Nie­tzsches Manfred-Meditation.” In the last few years, there have even been recordings of Friedrich Nie­tzsche’s works, and they are performed quite often, especially at philosophy conferences. 16. Borchmayer and Salaquarda, Nie­tzsche und Wagner: Stationen einer epochalen Begegnung. 17. “One may perhaps count the entire Zarathustra as belonging to music;—surely a rebirth of art could be heard there, a precondition for it.” Sämtliche Werke, 6:335 (Ecce Homo); Ecce Homo, 97. 18. “It should have sung, this ‘new soul’—and not spoken! What a pity I did not dare to say as a poet what I had to say: I might have been able to.” Sämtliche Werke, 1:15; Birth of Tragedy, 6. 19. Die Geburt der Tragödie: oder, Griechentum und Pessimismus, 167. 20. For example, Young, Nie­tzsche’s Philosophy of Art, 25–57.

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personal will and rejection of the world are the appropriate response. Instead, he defends the view that an individual, in affirming the Will,21 can justify suffering by orientating himself toward a self-created order. By giving form to his life through a self-created hierarchy of values, in other words, the individual lends legitimacy to suffering, and this, in turn, means an affirmation of the Will. (2) Schopenhauer comes out in favor of instrumental music as the highest musical genre; Nie­tzsche does not. For both, however, music occupies an especially prominent place. (3) In Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the realm of causality is distinguished from that of freedom. In Nie­tzsche, by contrast, there is only one realm, within which exist forces of order and forces of destruction.22 Still, the metaphysics of the young Nie­tzsche grew out of his engagement with Schopenhauer. (4) Schopenhauer does not engage in philosophy of culture or history. In Nie­tzsche these philosophical disciplines occupy a central position. These preliminary remarks are necessary for understanding Nie­tzsche’s early music philosophy. Let us now turn to Nie­tzsche’s metaphysics, for, as in Schopenhauer, his metaphysics is directly linked to his understanding of music. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nie­tzsche distinguishes three “gods.” Their names are Socrates,23 Dionysus, and Apollo. Each of these gods bears responsibility for a specific realm of earthly existence. Dionysus bears responsibility for change, Apollo for the complex order in individual things, and Socrates for an all-encompassing order. Since they are in the world, they are also in human beings, where they appear as basic instincts that, in turn, determine human actions. Since a god normally stands for a conception of the good, and thus for a fundamental basis of human action, we are compelled to reexamine the link between these two realms. Nie­tzsche’s three divinities stand for three types of culture, since different cultures are created when a sufficient number of people are driven primarily by the same instinct. Socrates stands for SocraticAlexandrine, Apollo for artistic-Hellenic, and Dionysus for tragic-Buddhist culture.24 The possibility exists, within Nie­tzsche’s conception, that a culture can be determined primarily by one god, as was the case in the Homeric era (by Apollo) and the pre-Hellenic era (by Dionysus).25 It can also happen that a culture is shaped by two divinities, for example Apollo and Dionysus dur21. In capitalizing “Will,” I follow the customary practice in translations of Schopenhauer, where the term, thus capitalized, refers to a force that is universal and is explicitly distinguished from the (lowercase) will of individual human beings.—trans. 22. Böning, Metaphysik, Kunst und Sprache beim frühen Nie­tzsche, 2–3. 23. Sämtliche Werke, 1:83; Birth of Tragedy, 95. 24. Sämtliche Werke, 1:116; Birth of Tragedy, 137. 25. Silk and Stern, Nie­tzsche on Tragedy, 185.

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ing the period when tragedy reached the highest stage of its development, in Aeschylus. Within a given culture, works of art are created, determined primarily by the drives that dominate within that culture. In a tragic culture, for example, artworks are primarily Dionysian. Thus the three gods, Socrates, Dionysus, and Apollo, exist in the world, in human beings, and in artworks. This division strongly recalls Boethius’s division of music, which was mentioned in the introduction to this volume, into musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. For Nie­tzsche, however, the various gods do not embody music to the same extent. Music is generally associated with Dionysus. True, one can speak of both Dionysian and Apollonian music, but music is primarily Apollonian only if, in the process of its creation, words have determined its melody and structure—as was the case, for example, in the folk music of Archilochus.26 But this type of music is merely an imitation of the true music, which can be created only through Dionysus,27 who is also the god of primal unity (des Ur-Einen) and therefore occupies a special place among the three divinities. When Nie­tzsche speaks of a primal unity that is characterized by contradictoriness, unceasing change, and the imperceptible, he is referring obliquely to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics; however, Schopenhauer’s primal unity is separate from the world of appearances, while in Nie­tzsche it is a necessary aspect of all phenomena. Nie­tzsche adduces many reasons for the close relationship between music and the Dionysian. First, there is the aspect of their flowing, since flowing and change play a large role in both music and the Dionysian, and Dionysus is ultimately the basis of every change.28 A musical score may not change, but ultimately music is impossible without performance, which necessarily involves change. At the same time, every work of art, including music, is created by a human being; thus it belongs to the world of phenomena and cannot be ascribed solely to Dionysus as the god of change. From this it follows that an exclusively Dionysian art is not possible. For analogous reasons, no purely Apollonian or Socratic work of art can exist either. Ultimately, an artwork is part of the world of existence, within which Dionysus is also everywhere present as primal unity. Hence everything that is created must also pass away, and everything is continuously subject to change. Every primarily Dionysian artwork must also have moments of rest within it—for example the score of 26. Sämtliche Werke, 1:48–52; Birth of Tragedy, 50–55. [Archilochus (seventh century BC) was a soldier and writer of rough verses. He is sometimes credited with the invention of lyric poetry.—trans.] 27. Sämtliche Werke, 1:25–30; Birth of Tragedy, 21–28. 28. Sämtliche Werke, 1:38–39; Birth of Tragedy, 38–40.

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a musical work—just as every primarily Apollonian artwork must also experience change and must at some point pass out of existence. An Apollonian artwork that was not subject to the Dionysian would come very close to the Platonic ideas, while the moment of change that is present in music is the primary reason for its close relationship to the Dionysian. One could argue that poetry is also a genre in which the aspect of change is very important, since poetry must be either read or declaimed. Nie­tzsche acknowledges the similarity between poets and composers,29 and he also observes that in ancient Greece there was actually no separation between the two. But what makes music more Dionysian than poetry is the fact that music is composed of tones, while poetry consists of words and words possess a higher degree of order and abstraction than tones. The greater the degree of abstraction, the closer something is to the principium individuationis, a principle that is diametrically opposed to the Dionysian and that Nie­tzsche identifies with Apollo.30 But the principium individuationis that is identified with Apollo is not, as in Schopenhauer, the only principle that is opposed to primal unity. Rather, there is a second element that is opposed to the Dionysian but that does not fall under the sway of the Apollonian. Nie­tzsche calls it “Socrates.” Another reason for the identification of music with the Dionysian is that contradiction and pain can be represented well in music, and both of these elements are also found in Dionysian primal unity.31 Contradiction in music is represented by dissonance.32 Dissonances, which are painful to our ear, represent contradictions in relation to the tonal system that is employed, just as consonances represent agreement within a tonal system. The dissonances that Nie­tzsche has in mind in this context are those found in the prelude to Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde,33 which premiered in Munich in 1865.34 Another reason for the close link between music and Dionysus involves two elements that are important for both concepts: intoxication and selfforgetfulness.35 In contrast to paintings and sculpture, which primarily address the sense of sight, music affects the whole body. True, we perceive music primarily with our ears, but we always experience music holistically—something of which we are especially conscious when we attend concerts. We experience

29. Sämtliche Werke, 1:43; Birth of Tragedy, 44–45. 30. Sämtliche Werke, 1:39; Birth of Tragedy, 40. 31. Sämtliche Werke, 1:43–44; Birth of Tragedy, 45. 32. Sämtliche Werke, 1:152; Birth of Tragedy, 183. 33. Sämtliche Werke, 1:135–40; Birth of Tragedy, 161. 34. This prelude also plays a significant role in music history, since a crucial passage prefigures the overthrow of tonality, using compositional tendencies that would later be perfected by Schoenberg. 35. Sämtliche Werke, 1:28–29; Birth of Tragedy, 25–26.

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music with our entire body, and when we are enjoying a good concert we are inside the music. In this case, we cannot distinguish between our body and the external world. Music makes it possible for us to dissolve the external boundaries of our body and to experience ourselves as embedded in the unity of the sounds. This is another reason why music and Dionysus go together, since Dionysus, as the representative of the primal unity of the world, is also contained in everything.36 Music must be performed—this accords with Dionysian accountability for change. It does not require words and thus, like the Dionysian, is distinguished from the world of appearances. Furthermore, music’s dissonances can represent the contradictoriness and pain that Nie­tzsche associates with Dionysus. Finally, with the help of music it is possible to experience a sense of oneness that has analogies with Dionysian intoxication and self-forgetfulness. These three analogies make clear the relationship between music and the god Dionysus. We have also already seen that Dionysus plays a fundamental role in the world. He is primal unity, and therefore he is present everywhere, which means that everything is always changing and that everything that comes into being must one day pass away. For this reason, Nie­tzsche connects Dionysus with tragic culture. In a tragic culture, human beings die and cannot hope to live on in another world, as they can in Christianity, in which dying is seen, instead, as a transitional phase that, with God’s assent, leads to a better life. Given the fundamental significance that Nie­tzsche accords to Dionysus, one might suppose that Nie­tzsche views Dionysus as the most important god. However, this is not the case. “Apollo could not live without Dionysus!”37 Nie­tzsche’s interpretation of the Oedipus story also shows clearly that in ancient Greece the Apollonian could not have existed without the Dionysian, and vice versa. The Dionysian, as primal unity, also represents the true. But man cannot live by truth alone. This realization, which plays an especially large role in Nie­tzsche’s late works, can already be seen in his Oedipus interpretation. Oedipus solves the riddle of nature and thus knows the world. But at the same time he kills his father and marries his mother, and this ultimately seals his doom. From this, Nie­tzsche concludes that one can very well know the truth and yet not be able to live with it. Thus, it is not either knowledge of the truth or, conversely, the Dionysian that takes center stage in Nie­tzsche; rather he stresses that it is precisely the unity of opposites, which are embodied in the Apollonian and the Dionysian, that, in ancient Greece, served life best. 36. Sämtliche Werke, 1:38–39; Birth of Tragedy, 38–40. 37. Sämtliche Werke, 1:40; Birth of Tragedy, 41.

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This insight can also be applied to Nie­tzsche’s early music philosophy. It is precisely not Dionysian instrumental music that is most conducive to life. Rather, Nie­tzsche calls for the combination of an ordering principle, i.e., words and beautiful appearances, with the Dionysian, i.e., music itself. Greek tragedy represented an appropriate combination of the Apollonian principle of order with the Dionysian principle. In this process, the two contradictory principles were not present simultaneously or with equal force. Instead, the Dionysian chorus and the Apollonian protagonists took turns onstage as the dominant focus of the tragedy. In other words, an appropriate synthesis of the two gods occurs only when one and the same aspect is not always dominant. The result is that sections of the tragedy that are determined by musical elements alternate with sections in which the protagonists’ text plays a more dominant role in the action. With this conception, Nie­tzsche clearly distanced himself from the musical ideas of Schopenhauer and the early Wagner. Schopenhauer argued in favor of instrumental music, and in early Wagner it was the dramatic aspect that was central to his musical theater. Nie­tzsche thus represents a synthesis of these two positions, since his version of the highest genre of art combines musical and dramatic elements in regular alternation. Nie­tzsche, it should be noted, praises the synthesis of Apollo and Dionysus only in regard to ancient Greece. In this early work, he is already cognizant of continuous cultural change.38 His remarks about the “music-making Socrates” must be understood against this background. Apart from Nie­tzsche’s negative comments about Socrates, The Birth of Tragedy contains the following statement: “If ancient tragedy was derailed by the dialectical drive toward knowledge and the optimism of science, we may conclude from this fact that there is an eternal struggle between the theoretical and the tragic worldview; and only after the spirit of science has been led to its limit, and its claim to universal validity has been demolished by the proof of those limits, may it be possible to hope for a rebirth of tragedy—for which cultural form we would have to posit the symbol of the music-making Socrates, in the sense discussed above. In this comparison, I understand by the spirit of science that belief in the fathomability of nature and the universal healing power of knowledge that first saw the light in the person of Socrates.”39 This comment shows that Nie­ tzsche hoped to see, in his time, a synthesis of the Dionysian and the Socratic, since the “music-making” aspect of this “music-making” Socrates clearly stands 38. Sämtliche Werke, 1:145; Birth of Tragedy, 173–74. 39. Sämtliche Werke, 1:111; Birth of Tragedy, 131.

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for the Dionysian. Thus, one must view the Socratic, like the Apollonian, as a principle that stands opposed to and gives order to the Dionysian. On closer inspection, it turns out that Apollo stands for the harmonious order of individual things and Socrates for the harmonious order of an entire weltanschauung. A world order based on Apollonian principles is thus shaped by individually formed ideals but is contradictory as a whole. A culture based on Socrates, in contrast, is free of contradictions when viewed as a whole but less detailed in the articulation of its parts. Applied to tragedy, this means that in music dramas that are based on a synthesis of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, some passages may be dominated by music (the Dionysian element) and others by the characters, which are developed in individual detail, and that in the plot as a whole there may very well be things that don’t conform (the Apollonian elements). In music dramas that are based on a synthesis of the Socratic and the Dionysian, on the other hand, there may also be individual passages determined mainly by music (the Dionysian element) and others based on an all-embracing, complete weltanschauung, within which the individual characters do not emerge clearly (the Socratic element). Nie­tzsche’s argument in favor of a synthesis of the Socratic and the Dionysian can be understood only against the background of his philosophy of culture and history as conceived at that time. The latter can be briefly summarized as follows. After Socrates put an end to the tragic era, European culture was primarily determined by him. It was only with the emergence of a number of German thinkers and musicians (Luther,40 Bach,41 Beethoven,42 Kant,43 Schopenhauer,44 Wagner)45 that, according to Nie­tzsche, a stronger tragic trend emerged in opposition to it. Nie­tzsche anticipates that the new trend will further develop the existing, Socratically determined culture in an integrative way. “Music-making Socrates” stands for this activity. He embraces the already existing Socratic aspect and adds the Dionysian tragic aspect. Thus, it is not Socrates himself who is rejected by Nie­tzsche but the presence of the Socratic without the Dionysian. The Dionysian is of eminent importance for him, for it stands for mortality and thus for this-worldliness. If, in a given culture, the Dionysian has forfeited all significance and the dominant weltanschauung claims to be in possession of the truth, it means that there is 40. Sämtliche Werke, 1:147; Birth of Tragedy, 176. 41. Sämtliche Werke, 1:127; Birth of Tragedy, 150–51. 42. Ibid. 43. Sämtliche Werke, 1:128; Birth of Tragedy, 152. 44. Ibid. 45. Sämtliche Werke, 1:127; Birth of Tragedy, 150–51.

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something present in it that transcends the merely earthly world. Since Nie­ tzsche emphatically rejects any such weltanschauung, he energetically opposes culture that is mainly Socratic. It follows that it is not Apollo and Dionysus whose combination Nie­tzsche considers to be of great contemporary importance for his era, but Socrates and Dionysus. On the plane of ideas, Nie­tzsche sees himself as furthering this synthesis. In the realm of art, at this point, he still saw Wagner as the individual charged with creating the corresponding artworks. The late Nie­tzsche no longer holds out such hopes for Wagner’s work. Indeed, he rejects Wagner’s music as decadent and accuses him of being a sickness and of making music sick as well.46 Once again, this reveals how intimate the relationship of culture, life, and music is in Nie­tzsche. Nie­tzsche describes Wagner’s music not only as “decadent” but also as “dramatic.” And he is outspoken in his opposition to dramatic music: “‘Dramatic music’—ridiculous! It is simply bad music.”47 The late Nie­tzsche sees melody as centrally significant for music, because it is through melody, he believes, that composers express themselves best, and it is through the appropriate treatment of melody that true music comes into being. However, it is not accurate to think that Nie­tzsche turned toward l’art pour l’art48 or thought that music should henceforth serve only as entertainment.49 In his late works, Nie­tzsche argues that every person should become who he is. Accordingly, a composer should be a composer, and a genuine composer creates melodies and is not dramatic. In this way, the composer can lend value to the ideals he stands for. As in early Nie­tzsche, music again stands in the service of life: “The essential thing in art remains its completion of existence, its creation of perfection and fullness—art is essentially affirmation, blessing, deification of existence.”50 Nie­tzsche characterizes existence-affirming, melodic music, which also corresponds to his other criteria, as “music of the South,” to which he contrasts the “music of the North.”51 The best representative of the music of the South, for him, is Bizet,52 and when he speaks of Bizet in this way53 he is thinking specifically of the opera Carmen, which Nie­tzsche, 46. Sämtliche Werke, 6:21; Complete Works, 8 (The Case of Wagner): 11. 47. Sämtliche Werke, 12 (Nachlass): 522. 48. Sämtliche Werke, 6:127; Twilight of the Idols, 79. 49. Sämtliche Werke, 6:26; Complete Works, 8 (The Case of Wagner): 17–18. 50. Sämtliche Werke, 13 (Nachlass): 241. 51. Sämtliche Werke, 5:200–201; Beyond Good and Evil, 216–17. 52. Sämtliche Werke, 5:200; Beyond Good and Evil, 216. 53. It is unclear how seriously Nie­tzsche took Bizet, and one should be aware of what Janz said about Nie­tzsche’s enthusiasm for Bizet ( Janz, Friedrich Nie­tzsche, 2:639).

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by his own admission, saw in May 1888 “for the twentieth time.”54 This work, for him, embodied strength and an affirmation of the earthly world, precisely those characteristics that are most significant in Nie­tzsche’s late work.55 Such music is not for simple tastes, or a form of anesthetization, but instead represents something for which it is worth living on earth, and for Nie­tzsche this is what is decisive. “The essential thing, ‘in heaven and on earth,’ seems, once again, to be that one should listen long and in one direction. In the process, something always emerges and has emerged, in the long run, for the sake of which it is worthwhile living on earth, for example virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality—something transfiguring, ingenious, mad, and divine.”56 Although Nie­tzsche appears to think very highly of Bizet, he hopes there will be yet greater, more significant music, for no composition yet produced is comparable in quality to what, for example, the Palazzo Pitti signified for Florentine architecture.57 If we take Nie­tzsche’s mature philosophical position on history into account, this is not surprising: “Music, among all the arts that are capable of flourishing on the ground of a given culture, appears last of all the plants, perhaps because it is the most inward and hence arrives latest—in the autumn and the last blossoming of the culture that, in every case, belongs to it.”58 Nie­tzsche, a critic of Christianity, cannot regard the music created at the end of the Christian era as his musical ideal. Yet this is the music of his cultural environment. So he knows that he himself will never experience the music he imagines. Nie­tzsche’s model of the philosophy of history, like Spengler’s, is cyclical. The rise and fall of ancient Greek culture was followed by the rise and fall of Christianity. In order to overcome the nihilism that resulted from the demise of Christianity, Nie­tzsche attempts to construct a this-worldly culture with new great values. The decline of the existing culture would take some time; but only at that point would its most significant music emerge.

Opera, Music Drama, and Socrates In The Birth of Tragedy, Nie­tzsche stands for a life-affirming pessimism. It is not correct that according to Nie­tzsche life is not worth living59 or that Nie­ tzsche’s solution to the problem of life is a denial of human life, as Julian Young 54. Sämtliche Werke, 6:13; Complete Works, 8 (The Case of Wagner): 1. 55. Sämtliche Werke, 5:200–201; Beyond Good and Evil, 216–17. 56. Sämtliche Werke, 5:108–9; Beyond Good and Evil, 107–8. 57. Sämtliche Werke, 13 (Nachlass): 247. 58. Sämtliche Werke, 6:423; Complete Works, 8 (Nie­tzsche contra Wagner): 63. 59. Young, Nie­tzsche’s Philosophy of Art, 48.

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claims in his book Nie­tzsche’s Philosophy of Art.60 Nie­tzsche’s theories of opera and of the music dramas of the future are based on his attitude toward life. In this connection, it is necessary to define more closely the role of “Socrates,” in particular, in The Birth of Tragedy, for his figure plays an important role both in Nie­tzsche’s theory of opera and in his theory of the music dramas of the future. We must also look at the relationship of Socrates to tragedy. In the following, my starting point is Peter Sloterdijk’s Thinker on Stage, in which he explains that the main theme of The Birth of Tragedy is the relationship between the tragic and the nontragic.61 In other respects, however, Sloterdijk’s interpretation of The Birth of Tragedy is not very reliable. For example, he states that Nie­tzsche does not support an anti-Enlightenment but rather takes the concept of Enlightenment to an extreme.62 This view is not accurate. Nie­tzsche is always conscious of the cultural embeddedness of every single thing. This also applies to opera. He even goes so far as to state that the entire Socratic culture that begins with Socrates and extends to the modern day is a “culture of opera,” since the decisive characteristics of this type of culture appear in opera.63 Nie­tzsche rejects this culture, which is determined solely by the Socratic drive, and thus rejects opera as well. To understand more precisely why he rejects Socratic culture, and with it opera, we must first analyze what “Socrates” and “the Socratic” stand for. Dieter Jähnig’s interpretation, according to which the Socratic “was obviously understood by Nie­tzsche as an absolute version of the ‘Apollonian tendency,’”64 cannot be accurate if, for example, we take seriously Nie­tzsche’s clear tripartite division of types of cultures, in which Nie­tzsche draws a clear line of demarcation between the Socratic, the Apollonian, and the Dionysian.65 The reason for the rejection and exclusion of the Socratic is the “optimism” that Nie­tzsche connects with opera and with Socratic culture in general.66 What Nie­tzsche understands by “optimism” is that virtue, which is identical with happiness, is tied to knowledge,67 and that such knowledge is possible. The possibility of knowledge, according to Nie­tzsche’s Socrates, implies that there can be another world separate from this one. Similarly, the possibility of a happy life makes the existence of such a world necessary. Very important for Nie­tzsche’s understanding of Socrates is

60. Ibid., 27. 61. Sloterdijk, Thinker on Stage, 52. 62. Ibid., 90–91. 63. Sämtliche Werke, 1:120; Birth of Tragedy, 142. 64. Jähnig, Welt-Geschichte, Kunst-Geschichte, 163. 65. Sämtliche Werke, 1:116; Birth of Tragedy, 136–37. 66. Sämtliche Werke, 1:126; Birth of Tragedy, 150. 67. Sämtliche Werke, 1:94; Birth of Tragedy, 110.

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the passage in Plato’s Phaedo68 where Socrates, shortly before his death, asks Crito to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius after his death.69 Nie­tzsche understands this passage as evidence that Socrates regards life in this world as a sickness from which he is healed by his death. While Nie­tzsche’s image of Socrates relies on literary sources, it represents a conscious exaggeration of his figure. Finally, in The Birth of Tragedy, Socrates is regarded as a god. Nie­tzsche’s interpretation of the Phaedo passage is plausible, for Asclepius is the god of health, and it was customary to sacrifice to him after someone recovered from an illness. From this, it can be concluded that Socrates regards life in this world as a sickness and hence cannot expect to achieve the good life in this world. Yet at the same time, Socrates also maintains that virtues bring a good life. Therefore, we must conclude that Socrates believes in another world, separate from this one, in which the promise of the good life is fulfilled. Another indication that the good life sought by Nie­tzsche’s Socrates was achievable only in another world is the fact that, for Nie­tzsche, Greek philosophy after Socrates represented a preparation for Christianity.70 Since one of the main elements of Christianity is the hope of a fulfilled, eternal life after death, this consideration offers yet another reason for linking Socrates with the two-world theory, at least in Nie­tzsche’s understanding of Socrates. A third consideration that speaks for this view of Socrates is that it gives Nie­ tzsche a reason to reject Socrates, which he clearly does, for example when he accuses him of destroying tragedy. The fact that Socrates is theoretical man per se cannot be responsible for Nie­tzsche’s rejection of Socrates—ultimately theory, reason, and understanding make our survival possible, just as the Apollonian powers do, and Nie­tzsche very much praises Apollo on this account.71 So Nie­tzsche must have had another reason for rejecting Socrates, and the likely conclusion is that he does so because Socrates defends life after death in a transcendental world. This is why Socrates could drink the cup of hemlock without fear.72 Nie­tzsche rejects this position, because for him there is only this one world, in which everything that comes into existence must pass away, for Dionysus is present in everything, and the latter is responsible for unceasing change. Nie­tzsche’s rejection of Socrates, however, is not based on his opinion that the Socratic worldview is an illusion. Rather, he insisted on the fact that it is a negation of life, since it puts all its hopes in a life that can never be achieved. 68. Sämtliche Werke, 3:569–70 and 6:67; Gay Science, 269–70, and Twilight of the Idols, 9. 69. Plato, Phaedo, 118a. 70. Sämtliche Werke, 12 (Nachlass): 202. 71. Sämtliche Werke, 1:28; Birth of Tragedy, 25. 72. Sämtliche Werke, 1:91; Birth of Tragedy, 106.

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The identification of Socrates with the opera results from the fact that the primacy of the soul over the body, which is an aspect of Socrates’ belief in life hereafter, is manifested in opera as the primacy of the words over the music. “Opera is the birth of theoretical man, of the critical layperson, not of the artist—one of the most disconcerting facts in the history of all the arts. It was the demand of actually quite unmusical listeners that one must above all understand the words—that a rebirth of music could be expected only when a sort of singing would be discovered in which the text would rule over the counterpoint like a master over a servant. For the words were nobler than the accompanying harmonic system in the same measure as the soul was nobler than the body.”73 The primacy of the soul (and thus of words) is grounded in the fact that it is immortal and that only it can experience the happiness of the other world. Here again, one may observe that Nie­tzsche’s understanding of opera is closely linked to his philosophy of culture. Nie­tzsche rejects Socratism, but only when it alone determines a culture. He does not exclude the possibility that the Socratic drive can become dominant in collaboration with another drive, and that optimism could be overcome in this way, meaning that the good life would no longer be sought in another world. This follows from the above-cited passage where he speaks of the “rebirth of tragedy” within a culture created by music-making Socrates.74 Since Socrates, Socratic culture has been dominant in Europe; it follows that the Socratic element is already present in society. The musical aspect of the “music-making Socrates” points in the direction of the Dionysian. Thus, in order to establish a Socratic-Dionysian culture, there would have to be a further development of the Socratic that would integrate the Dionysian. Nie­ tzsche believed he had identified an intensified turn toward the Dionysian specifically among the Germans75 and called for the encouragement of this movement.76 Luther, Bach, Beethoven, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Wagner had been, according to this view, the most influential German thinkers and composers for the furtherance of the Dionysian until then. Kant attacks Socratic culture because he demonstrates that it is impossible to grasp the essence of the world, the things in themselves. Schopenhauer argues against Socratism when he explains that reason and understanding are brought to life by the Will, which is itself irrational and chaotic.

73. Sämtliche Werke, 1:123; Birth of Tragedy, 145–46. 74. Sämtliche Werke, 1:111; Birth of Tragedy, 131. 75. Sämtliche Werke, 1:126–27; Birth of Tragedy, 150–51. 76. Sämtliche Werke, 1:132; Birth of Tragedy, 157.

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A powerful Dionysian element that is expressed in music, and that is particularly evident in Wagner, is the significance of musical dissonance.77 Dissonance represents contradictoriness, becoming, and change, i.e., the Dionysian. Out of the awareness that the world is a continuous becoming, and hence also suffering, the culture that Nie­tzsche defends creates an order that stands against the Dionysian. Nie­tzsche refers to this order when he speaks of the “justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.”78 In Greek antiquity, the “resplendent dream-born birth of the Olympians”79 was created by the introduction of the Apollonian. But what characterized the Apollonian was not only its order-creating aspect but also the fact that strict order could be found only in individual figures, while at the same time Greek mythology permitted many variations and contradictions within the whole. Here is where the difference between the Apollonian and the Socratic lies. Like the Apollonian, the Socratic is a force for order; but it requires freedom from contradiction within the whole, in an order that must be able to be reconstructed by the understanding.80 Musical dissonance conveys cognition of transience and continuous mutability; out of the shock of this knowledge, humans create forms. In Greek antiquity, these were Apollonian forms, and in Nie­tzsche’s era Socratic forms. These, in turn, are meant to convey an order with whose help humans can justify to themselves the suffering that is brought about by change: “The same drive that calls art into life, as the completion and perfection of existence that seduces us to live on, also gave rise to the Olympian world in which the Hellenic ‘Will’ held a transfiguring mirror up to itself. Thus the gods justify human life by living it themselves—the only satisfactory theodicy!”81 It is also important to note that one may not conclude, from Nie­tzsche’s support of dissonance and his insight into the significance of becoming, that he wanted, for example, to encourage active discord, or that humans should actively destroy everything. This is why Nie­tzsche distinguishes between Dionysian barbarians and Dionysian Greeks.82 “Dionysian barbarians,” whom he rejects, actively destroy themselves and others.“Dionysian Greeks,” by contrast, recognize and accept the destruction of all things, which makes them strong 77. Sämtliche Werke, 1:152; Birth of Tragedy, 183. 78. Ibid. 79. Sämtliche Werke, 1:35; Birth of Tragedy, 23. [For the translation of this phrase I am indebted to Ronald Spiers, 23 n. 1.—trans.] 80. Sämtliche Werke,1:92; Birth of Tragedy, 107–8. 81. Sämtliche Werke,1:36; Birth of Tragedy, 35. 82. Sämtliche Werke,1:31–32; Birth of Tragedy, 29.

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and enables them to create either a Socratic or an Apollonian order that can help humans to justify their lives. Against this background, one cannot agree with Bertram Schmidt when he states, “The differentiation between the Greek and the barbaric Dionysian serves Nie­tzsche as a means of distinguishing his concept of music from that of Hanslick and Wagner.”83 Equally implausible is the following statement by Theo Meyer: “The art that Nie­tzsche demands is ‘Dionysian,’ i.e., life-intensifying art.”84 As we have seen, it is not the Dionysian per se that is life-intensifying, but only the Greek Dionysian. After having clarified Nie­tzsche’s solution to the problem of suffering with the help of reflections on Nie­tzsche’s remarks on opera and German music (specifically Wagnerian music drama), we can establish that Julian Young is wrong when he says that life, in Nie­tzsche’s philosophy, is not worth living85 and that Nie­tzsche’s solution to the problem of life is a denial of human life.86 Denial of life, or life-denying pessimism, can be found in Schopenhauer, who strives exclusively, in life, for the negation of the personal will. This can occur either through artistic reception or, better, through asceticism. Nie­tzsche, on the other hand, affirms the personal will, and with it the pain and suffering that life necessarily entails. Suffering is ultimately justified by the either Apollonian or Socratic order that surrounds a person and that he uses to structure his own life. In the case of Schopenhauer’s negation of the personal will, we can speak of life-denying pessimism, while in the case of Nie­tzsche’s affirmation of the personal will, we must speak of life-affirming pessimism and thus also of a life-affirming philosophy. In order for European society to be characterized, once again, by a lifeaffirming pessimism, Nie­tzsche hoped that traditional opera, which implied optimism and hence flight from this world, would pass away and that a more powerful Dionysian music, such as could be found, for example, in Wagner’s music dramas, would take its place. Nie­tzsche himself intended to do his part, as a “music-making Socrates.”

Reception Nie­tzsche was one of the most important intellectual figures of the twentieth century. However, his writings on cultural and linguistic philosophy were much more influential than his writings on the philosophy of music. Among artists, and musicians in particular, it is true that his works were widely read, 83. Schmidt, Der ethische Aspekt der Musik, 67. 84. Meyer, Nie­tzsche und die Kunst, 83. 85. Young, Nie­tzsche’s Philosophy of Art, 48. 86. Ibid., 27.

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but less on account of his ideas about the philosophy of music than on account of his reflections on the philosophy of life and culture. The musicality of his language surely also contributed to his popularity among artists. Thus, it is not surprising that numerous composers have set Nie­tzsche’s poems to music or have taken his works as inspiration for their own compositional practice. Richard Strauss’s (1864–1949) first opera, Guntram (1894), was strongly influenced by Nie­tzsche’s ethics and his anti-Christianity.87 Strauss’s symphonic poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, which by his own account portrays the religious and scientific stages of human development up to the ideal of the Übermensch,88 is probably the best-known musical work inspired by Nie­ tzsche.89 The influence on Strauss derived from Nie­tzsche’s ethics and anthropology, not from his philosophy of music. Nie­tzsche’s work had a very significant influence on the compositions of Frederick Delius (1862–1934).90 Like Strauss, Delius was strongly influenced by Nie­tzsche’s anti-Christianity. Delius set the Mitternachtslied Zarathustras (1898) for baritone, chorus, and orchestra; the symphonic tone poem La ronde se déroule (1899, revised 1901 and 1912 as Life’s Dance); Lieder nach Gedichten von Friedrich Nie­tzsche (Songs after Poems of Friedrich Nie­tzsche, 1898), for which he set the poems “Nach neuen Meeren,”“Der Wanderer,”“Der Einsame,” and “Der Wanderer und sein Schatten”; and A Mass of Life (1905), in which he “interpreted eleven passages from Zarathustra.”91 A “Song before Sunrise,” also from Zarathustra, was included in his Requiem, completed in 1916. Like Strauss and Delius, both of whom drew lasting inspiration from Nie­ tzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) felt the powerful appeal of this work. Thus, in the fourth movement of his Third Symphony (1895/96) he set the poem “O Mensch, gib acht,” which is found at the end of the section “Das trunkne Lied.”92 Much less well known than Mahler’s Third Symphony are the Nietzscheinspired works of Carl Orff (1895–1982). Orff composed a “Nachtlied” (in Drei Gesänge, op. 1, 1911) and a Zarathustra for baritone, male choruses, and orchestra (1912). Later these youthful works were followed (in Lieder, 1919) by a song for high voice and piano with the title “Mein Herz ist wie ein See so weit.”93 Nietzsche would probably have greatly valued many of Orff ’s works from a music-philosophical perspective, as well. At a farther remove from 87. Thatcher, “Musical Settings of Nie­tzsche Texts,” 5:365–66. 88. Ibid., 5:367. 89. Ibid., 5:365–70. 90. Ibid., 4: 295–98. 91. Ottmann, “Musik,” 479. 92. Thatcher, “Musical Settings of Nie­tzsche Texts,” 4:318–20. 93. Ibid., 5:357.

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Nietzsche’s philosophy of music is the work of Paul Hindemith (1895–1963). Part II of his Drei Chöre (1939) is called “Nun da der Tag.”94 Even Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), a composer who emphasized progress, was actively engaged with Nie­tzsche. A song from his Acht Lieder for voice and piano (op. 6) bears the title “Der Wanderer.”95 Besides the above-named artists, who are among the most important to have engaged Nie­tzsche creatively, there are numerous compositions by Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924),96 Hanns Eisler (1898–1962),97 Wolfgang Rihm (1952– ),98 Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915),99 Giuseppe Sinopoli (1946–2001),100 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937),101 Edgar Varèse (1885– 1965),102 Anton von Webern (1883–1945),103 Hugo Wolf (1860–1903),104 and Bernd-Alois Zimmermann (1918–70).105 But there is no direct connection to Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music. The musical references are usually to the ethical content of Nie­tzsche’s writings or inspired by the musicality of his language.106 As with the great composers, there is no demonstrable evidence that Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music had a direct impact on philosophers. True, most of the great philosophers of the twentieth century were influenced by Nie­tzsche, but here, too, we find little reference to his philosophy of music. Rather, postmodern philosophers refer to his statements on truth and language, and sociologists and psychologists refer to his reflections on power. Sloterdijk, for example, wrote a book on Nie­tzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, but in it he is not concerned with Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music; instead, he focuses on Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of culture. The most direct relationship of Nie­ tzsche’s philosophy of music to a music philosophy of the twentieth century occurs in Heidegger. When Heidegger became aware of the problem of nihilism—an event that derived in great part from his intensive engagement with Nie­tzsche—the result was Heidegger’s famous turn. In late Heidegger, works of art, and thence music as well, are a means of surmounting contemporary 94. Ibid., 4:310. 95. Ibid., 5:362. 96. Ibid., 4:294. 97. Ibid., 15:444. 98. Ibid., 15:448–49. 99. Ibid., 5:363–64. 100. Ibid., 15:449–51. 101. Ibid., 5:370. 102. Ibid., 15:452. 103. Ibid., 5:373. 104. Ibid., 5:375–76. 105. Ibid., 15:452. 106. Additional references are given in Ottmann’s article “Musik,” 479–80.

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nihilism. As in Nie­tzsche, art serves the strong idea of the good. The difference between Nie­tzsche and Heidegger consists in the fact that according to Heidegger a culture with a powerful idea of the good must grow slowly, while according to Nie­tzsche it must be actively generated by powerful creators. For this reason, Heidegger does not address values directly, for he is of the opinion that it is possible to speak of values only if the latter are not taken for granted and no consensus concerning value is present. Beside the influences that have been mentioned so far, Nie­tzsche’s philosophy of music also had an impact on how classical philologists have understood tragedy. Although, apart from one scathing review,107 The Birth of Tragedy was completely ignored by the classical philologists of Nie­tzsche’s era, Nie­tzsche’s understanding of the Greek people as having been shaped by the duality of the Dionysian and the Apollonian gained numerous well-known adherents in the twentieth century (Walter F. Otto, E. R. Dodds). Previously, Winckelmann’s view of the ancient Greeks as having been characterized by “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” had held sway. As Nie­tzsche’s synthesis of the Apollonian and Dionysian replaced Winckelmann’s interpretation of Greek mythology, Greek art, and Greek existence, the understanding of Greek tragedy changed as well. As a result, the musical element in tragedy took on a new, incomparably greater significance.

References

Nie­tzsche’s Works Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. [Translation of Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft.] Ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. [Translation of Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik.] Ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Spiers. Trans. Ronald Spiers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. The Case of Wagner. In The Birth of Tragedy; and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nie­tzsche: The First Complete and Authorized English Translation. Ed. Oscar Levy. 18 vols. Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1909–13. Reprint ed., New York: Gordon Press, 1974. Vol. 1: The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism. [Translation of Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik.] Trans. William A. Haussmann. Vols. 4–5: Thoughts out of Season. [Translation of Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen.] Trans. Anthony M. Ludovici. Part 1: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, 19–70; Richard

107. Gründer, Der Streit um Nie­tzsche’s “Geburt der Tragödie.”

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Wagner in Bayreuth, 71–123. Part 2: The Use and Abuse of History, 1–100; Schopenhauer as Educator, 101–201. Vols. 6–7: Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits. [Translation of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches.] Part 1 translated by Helen Zimmern, with Introduction by J. M. Kennedy. Part 2 translated by Paul V. Cohn. Vol. 8: The Case of Wagner; Nie­tzsche contra Wagner. [Translation of Der Fall Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner.] Trans. J. M. Kennedy. Vol. 9: The Dawn of Day. [Translation of Morgenröthe.] Trans. J. M. Kennedy Vol. 10: The Joyful Wisdom (“La gaya scienza”). [Translation of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.] Trans. Thomas Common. Vol. 11: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. [Translation of Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen.] Trans. Thomas Common. Vol. 12: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. [Translation of Jenseits der Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft.] Trans. Helen Zimmern. Vol. 13: The Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic. [Translation of Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift.] Trans. Horace B. Samuel. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter. [Translation of Morgenröthe: Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile.] Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. [Translation of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.] Ed. Bernard Williams. Trans. Josephine Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Die Geburt der Tragödie: oder, Griechentum und Pessimismus. Afterword by Günter Wohlfart. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. [Translation of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: Ein Buch für freie Geister.] Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Introduction by Erich Heller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. On the Genealogy of Morality. [Translation of Zur Genealogie der Moral.] Ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson. Trans. Carol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe. Ed. Giorgio Colli and Massimo Montinari. 2nd rev. ed. 15 vols. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. Revised ed. of Werke, 1967. Vol. 1: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 9–156; Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen I–IV, 157–510 (I: David Strauss der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller, 157–242; II: Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, 243–334; III: Schopenhauer als Erzieher, 335–427; IV: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, 429–510). Vol. 2: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I–II. Vol. 3: Morgenröthe: Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile, 19–331; Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 353–571. Vol. 5: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 9–243; Zur Genealogie der Moral, 245–412. Vol. 6: Der Fall Wagner: Ein Musikanten Problem, 9–53; Götzen-Dämmerung: oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert, 55–161; Ecce Homo, 255–374; Nietzsche contra Wagner, 413–46. Vol. 12: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884–1887. Vol. 13: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1887–1889. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. [Translation of Also sprach Zarathustra.] Ed. Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin. Trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Twilight of the Idols. [Translation of Götzen-Dämmerung.] In The Anti-Christ, Ecce homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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Unfashionable Observations. [Translation of Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen.] Trans. Richard T. Gray. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

General Literature Gane, Lawrence, and Kitty Chan. Introducing Nietzsche. New York: Totem Books, 1998. Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Jähnig, Dieter. Welt-Geschichte, Kunst-Geschichte: Zum Verhältnis von Vergangenheitserkenntnis und Veränderung. Cologne: Verlag Dumont Schauberg, 1975. Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie. 2nd rev. ed. 3 vols. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1993. Meyer, Theo. Nietzsche und die Kunst. Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 1993. Plato. Phaedo. Trans. and ed. Christopher Rowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Silk, M. S., and J. P. Stern. Nietzsche on Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Sloterdijk, Peter. Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism. Trans. Jamie O. Daniel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Winchester, James J. Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Turn: Reading Nietzsche after Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Young, Julian. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Musical Literature Böning, Thomas, Metaphysik, Kunst und Sprache beim frühen Nietzsche. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. Borchmayer, Dieter, and Jörg Salaquarda, eds. Nietzsche und Wagner: Stationen einer epochalen Begegnung. 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1994. Dahlhaus, Carl. Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas. Trans. Mary Whittall. New York: Cambridge University. Press, 1979. Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich. Wagner and Nietzsche. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Seabury Press, 1976. Gründer, Karlfried, Der Streit um Nietzsche’s “Geburt der Tragödie”: Die Schriften von E. Rohde, R. Wagner [und] U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf. Hildesheim: George Olms, 1969. Janz, Curt Paul. “Nietzsches Manfred-Meditation: Die Auseinandersetzung mit Hans von Bülow.” In Pöltner and Vetter, Nietzsche und die Musik, 45–55. Liébert, Georges. Nietzsche and Music. Trans. Graham Parkes and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Love, Frederick. “Nietzsche, Music and Madness.” Music and Letters 60 (1979): 186–203. Magee, Bryan. Aspects of Wagner. Rev. ed.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Ottmann, Henning. “Musik.” In Nietzsche Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung, ed. Ottmann, 479. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000. Pöltner, Günter, and Helmut Vetter, eds. Nietzsche und die Musik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Schmidt, Bertram, Der ethische Aspekt der Music: Nietzsches “Geburt der Tragödie” und die Wiener klassische Musik. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1991. Thatcher, David S., “Musical Settings of Nietzsche Texts: An Annotated Bibliography.” Nietzschestudien 4 (1975): 284–323; 5 (1976): 355–83; 15 (1986): 440–52. Also available in book form: Musical Settings of Nietzsche Texts: An Annotated Bibliography. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,1975. ———.“Nietzsche and Brahms: A Forgotten Relationship.” Music and Letters 54 (1973): 261–80.

Bloch F r a n cesc a Vida l

Brief Biography When the philosopher Ernst Bloch, who was born on July 8, 1885, recalled his childhood and youth, he was less interested in the biographical facts than in the relationship between the perceived world and his earliest reflections. Thus the motif of something being created from its origins became a philosophical theme very early on. In his sparse recollections, references to early experiences in the workingclass city of Ludwigshafen, including his contact with the misery of the workers and their socialist hopes, as well as with street fairs and popular literature, appear together with reflections about its polar opposition to the bourgeois city of Mannheim, whose library made possible his early contact with philosophy. In 1905, Bloch began the study of philosophy and German in Munich. A year later, in Würzburg, he added physics and music. In 1908, he earned his doctorate with a dissertation on Heinrich Rickert. With his Critical Discussion of Rickert and the Problem of Epistemology (Kritische Erörterungen über Rickert und das Problem der Erkenntnistheorie), he aligned himself with socially critical thinkers of the period. Like them, he drew on neo-Kantian philosophy, emphasizing its purely methodological interest in Kant’s epistemology, to arrive at a critique of generally accepted academic philosophy within the framework of social analysis. . Würzburg: 1908, Ludwigshafen: 1909. Excerpted in Tendenz—Latenz—Utopie, 55–107.

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Thus, he turned to the philosopher Georg Simmel, who was considered unorthodox. The latter’s method of approaching philosophical reflection through attention to concrete objects, no mater how insignificant, greatly influenced Bloch. Criticism of Simmel’s relativism and irrationalism led to a break when World War I began and Simmel expressed enthusiasm for the war. In 1917, Bloch and his wife Else von Stritzky (d. 1921) emigrated to Switzerland, where Bloch wrote political articles opposing the war and Kaiser Wilhelm’s policies. In 1918, the first edition of The Spirit of Utopia (Geist der Utopie) appeared, followed in 1923 by the new edition of that work and Through the Desert (Durch die Wüste). The title Spirit of Utopia is demonstrative, for “spirit” (Geist) was a programmatic concept of expressionism. The optimism that was common among intellectuals following World War I motivated Bloch to play a role in the newly declared German Republic. His activity as a public intellectual, his philosophical parables, most of which were collected under the title Traces (Spuren), and his book Thomas Münzer as a Theologian of Revolution (Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution) reflected his active engagement with developments of the era. Nevertheless, he maintained a certain distance from politics, responding to events of the 1920s and 1930s with writings that, for the most part, did not appear until 1935, in the volume Heritage of Our Times (Erbschaft dieser Zeit), which he was able to publish only after he had embarked on his second Swiss exile. Here he exposed the roots of Nazi doctrine as lying in the realm of the unmastered past and arrived at an analysis of the conditions that encouraged the growth of National Socialist ideas. In lectures and essays, he argued for a Popular Front strategy in art and science and consequently participated in the Association for the Protection of German Writers in Exile (Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller im Exil). But in Europe the power that sought to annihilate all utopian potential was growing ever stronger. Bloch was forced to flee with his wife Karola Piotrkowska (married 1934) and his son Jan Robert (b. 1937) from one country of exile to another, ending up in the United States. During the eleven years of his American emigration, he worked on the project he called “dreams of a better life.” By taking seriously human dreams as the presentiment of a better world, he arrived at a new principle of philosophy, the “principle of hope” (das Prinzip Hoffnung). In 1949, the family moved to Leipzig in East Germany, where Bloch was given a chair in philosophy. He viewed the university as a pragmatic site for recuperating and continuing to develop what had been achieved, in the sense . English in original.—trans. . The Principle of Hope, translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. I have consulted this translation and occasionally drawn on it.—trans.

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of a “future in the past.” However, very soon Bloch’s interpretation of Marx was sharply criticized by Marxist officialdom; both The Principle of Hope and his Hegel book Subject-Object. Commentaries on Hegel (Subjekt-Objekt. Erläuterungen zu Hegel) became the object of polemics. When, following the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Bloch turned more and more openly against the policies of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the party launched a campaign that resulted in Bloch’s being made professor emeritus and in a ban on his teaching and publishing. This forced him into emigration yet again. When the Berlin Wall went up, Ernst and Karola Bloch, who were on a trip to Bayreuth and Munich, decided to move to Tübingen in West Germany. Here Bloch received a guest professorship, and his works Natural Law and Human Dignity (Naturrecht und menschliche Würde, 1961), Literary Essays (Literarische Aufsätze, 1965), Atheism in Christianity (Atheismus im Christentum, 1968), Political Measurements (Politische Messungen, 1970), The Problem of Materialism (Das Materialismusproblem, 1972), Experimentum Mundi (1975), InterWorlds in the History of Philosophy (Zwischenwelten in der Philosophiegeschichte, 1977), and Tendency—Latency—Utopia (Tendenz—Latenz—Utopie, 1977) appeared. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Bloch received numerous prizes, among them the Culture Prize of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1964 and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Association in 1967. In 1970, he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Ludwigsburg, and in 1975 he received honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne and the University of Tübingen. These numerous honors did not deter Bloch from continuing to be active as a politically engaged philosopher who gave clear expression to his criticisms of social wrongs. Ernst Bloch died on August 4, 1977, in Tübingen, where he was buried in the Bergfriedhof. In 2000, a multifunctional center of science and culture was established in Bloch’s name, with the goal of creating a site oriented to his themes and offering a forum to debate contemporary questions about the shape of the future.

Philosophy and Art Bloch’s work seeks to grasp the world as a whole as an open and yet goaldirected process. Grounded in the claim of searching for utopia in all realms of life, hope becomes an act of cognition. It characterizes a process of being underway to another, possible better life. This is future-oriented, since the essential being of the world lies only in the future. In Bloch’s most important . All of Bloch’s books appeared in a collected edition of his works, Gesamtausgabe, published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1961–85.

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work, The Principle of Hope, he offers an encyclopedia of human hopes. He begins with little daydreams and proceeds by way of anticipatory consciousness to docta spes, the “learned hope” that seeks to create a design for the future. In the process, Bloch develops a dialectical theory of knowledge that strives to enlarge both the idealist and materialist traditions in order to find the path to a society that is adequate to human needs. Thus, he focuses his attention on the socially real contradictions out of which the process drives toward an inconclusive end. The perspective of such a stance comes from that “totum of the gaze that is called philosophy.” Bloch argues for a philosophy that draws on the past to aim its arrow at the future. Philosophy flows from the tension among things that are incommensurable and out of this awareness injects tension into life. In The Principle of Hope, these ideas are developed with reference to Marxist thought—the link between philosophy and Marxism here is exceptional. It is elucidated with the help of an interpretation of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in different ways; but the point is to change it.” For Bloch, Marx is not trying to belittle philosophy but, quite the contrary, trying to raise its value. Marx’s criticism is directed at the fact of merely interpreting; however, the capacity for reflection also embraces the material world. In this sense, philosophy is “the totum’s own cognition and conscience [Wissen und Gewissen], in all realms of knowledge.” From its fundamentally critical position, it mediates contexts and relationships that are relevant to the whole. This is precisely the task that Bloch also assigns to art. Artworks mediate the cognition of meaningful relations. They are sites where those aspects of the past that have not been discharged remain alive. Accordingly, they can be understood as powers that mediate the future dimension of the cosmic process. Since art, simultaneously registering and anticipating possibilities, enlarges the modes of perception of its viewers or listeners, it exists in a dialectical relationship to hope. Artworks become a central concern in Bloch’s search for traces. Artistic reflection becomes the point of origin for philosophical reflection, in order “to reflect what, in times of successful artworks, was either always threatened by classicism or, conversely, did not transcend the horizon of its own concept. In art, it is this very reflection that brings to anticipatory light [Vor-schein], in place of illusion, an aesthetic without illusion, above illusion, . Bloch, “Universität, Marxismus, Philosophie,” inaugural lecture in Leipzig, May 1949, 278. . See “Changing the World or Marx’s Eleven Theses on Feuerbach,” in Principle of Hope, 1:249–86. . Bloch, Literarische Aufsätze, 326. . On the significance of art in Bloch’s work, see Francesca Vidal, Kunst als Vermittlung von Welterfahrung and “Auf der Suche nach einer Blochschen Ästhetik.”

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that eludes the merely contemplative understanding of art.” Illusion in the work of art, accordingly, marks not only untruth but its utopian potential. This is emphasized by the concept of bringing to light, or shedding an anticipatory light (Vorschein), since it grasps the character of aesthetic experience as one that reveals something. Shedding an anticipatory light is not a formal means that the artist can introduce at will but something that is disclosed in aesthetic experience, since art, through the use of symbolizing forms (Gestaltungen), can induce a seeing that has the function of discovery. Art changes one’s view of the cosmic process. This occurs based on art’s peculiar temporality, which Bloch terms noncontemporaneity (Ungleichzeitigkeit). In The Spirit of Utopia, the term is still employed in a purely descriptive manner. It is meant to make clear that art does not have to run parallel to the real cosmic process. We have Arno Münster to thank for the observation that Bloch develops the category of noncontemporaneity, as it refers to music reception, in opposition to Nietzsche, in order to explain why epochal masterworks of music (Bach, Beethoven, Wagner) have a character that reaches beyond the context of their respective epochs.10 In Heritage of Our Times, the category of the noncontemporaneous develops and becomes more dynamic. From his starting point in art, the philosopher turns his attention to socialpolitical figurations. He seeks to demonstrate the extent to which, for the sake of a humane future, it remains necessary to inherit “subversive and utopian contents in the relation of human beings to other human beings and to nature.” In other words, he is able to demonstrate that it is not only in art that there is a legacy to be inherited—it is necessary for the progress of the whole of society. In the search for traces, therefore, it is necessary to imagine a structure that opens up future potentials beyond the moment of contemplation and independent of the link to specific forms of social development. The goal of Bloch’s reflections is to situate the utopian striving that is mediated by artworks in a context that is historical and thus generally adequate for and natural to humanity. His fundamental question about the status of human beings in the cosmic process—along the lines of “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What awaits us?”11—shapes Bloch’s view of art and philosophy. The anticipatory light that can be perceived in the work of art is explained by describing its function as grasping the content of . Bloch, Experimentum Mundi, 197. [Here Bloch plays on the words Vorschein (in “zum Vorschein bringen,” to reveal, or bring to light) and Schein, appearance, illusion, or semblance. Plaice et al. have “forward dawning” and “pre-appearance.”—trans.] 10. Münster, Utopie, Messianismus und Apokalypse, 161. On the meaning of this category, see Vidal, Die Gegenwart des Ungleichzeitigen. 11. Bloch, “Changing the World or Marx’s Eleven Theses on Feuerbach,” in Principle of Hope, 1:275.

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tendencies in images, thus enabling them to remain inheritable. To reveal this requires philosophical reflection, which, in turn, derives its categories from the philosophy of art. In this way, art becomes the essential basis of a philosophy of hope. This means, conversely, that explanations of art, including the philosophy of music, can be comprehended only within the philosophy of hope as a whole.12

Art and Music The Spirit of Utopia owes its appearance with the publishing firm of Duncker und Humblot to a recommendation by conductor Otto Klemperer. The publisher had sent the manuscript to Georg Simmel for review, and Simmel had forwarded it to Klemperer, with a note explaining that the book included an approximately 150-page segment on music, from the earliest beginnings of its written transmission to the late nineteenth century, as well as a theory of music. The comments on music, in particular, were received enthusiastically by Klem­perer and motivated his recommendation. The Spirit of Utopia was a politically minded book—Bloch had felt impelled to write it by the world war, the Russian October Revolution, and his relationship to expressionism.13 Spirit (Geist), here, becomes the quintessence of thinking beyond an oppressed present. Bloch’s treatment of music in this work is embedded in contemporary discourse. For example, Bloch mentions the work of August Halm, which influenced his Bruckner interpretations, and criticizes the dominant formalism, which was based, above all, on the works of Eduard Hanslick. In both the first and the revised editions, music occupies a central position, since—beyond his personal interest in music—Bloch sought to present it as the utopian art per se. However, this thought is far more prominent in the first edition. In the 1923 edition, music is still central, but it no longer enjoys the same pride of place.14 Bloch sees in music a chance for the subject to encounter itself—although for it to achieve cognition it must find its way from the internal to the external. Because there is thus a fundamental philosophical question at stake, he speaks of a philosophy of music in which every form of productivity and innovation is grounded in subjectivity. In the 1923 edition, he develops such a music 12. For Wolfgang Matz this is the decisive reason, in his path-breaking work on Bloch’s philosophy of music, for presenting it via the description of Bloch’s philosophical categories; see his Musica humana. 13. On the history of the book’s creation, see Zudeick, Der Hintern des Teufels, 50–70. 14. Compare Mayer, “Musik als Luft von anderen Planeten,” 468f.

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philosophy in the chapters “Dream,” “History of Music,” “On the Theory of Music,” and “The Secret.” Music’s secret is its “objectively veiled human content” (sachlich verhüllter Menschengegenstand). Music becomes the guarantor of the human, it is man’s immediate—because objectless—expression. The fulfilled aesthetic moment is the artistic symbol of the human longing for identity. Longing and not-yet are central concepts. Like human beings, music is not yet with itself; thus, Bloch interprets its history from the future. The book does not contain a chronological history of music; Bloch’s perspective on history starts from the musical subject. Music’s focus on the new is characterized as its youth. In order to grasp this youth in individual works, or, in Bloch’s words, in its states of individual genius (geniale Ichzustände), he draws on Georg Lukács in designating all the types of forms that transcend boundaries and genres by the term “carpets” (Teppiche). In the history of music he identifies three “carpets”: first, the one that consists in endless singing to oneself, in dance and chamber music. It is associated with prehistoric and naïve human beings whose feelings spontaneously become tone. The second “carpet” includes work forms that are complete in themselves: the formally closed song, the Spieloper (Mozart), the oratorio. In the realm of the subject, they correspond to the “I” of Greece and of Attic culture. The third level is characterized by a turn toward the Gothic. Here, the exemplary works are the through-composed song; the Handlungsoper (Carmen, Fidelio); the great choral works; the symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler; and Wagner’s operas. Gothic is a cipher for artistic will, in general. Building on the utopian substrate of the Gothic, an art emerges that both inherits and transcends that substrate. The magnetic field that is generated among the “carpets” is meant to usher in a transition to the fulfilled time of “seraphic” music. Individual works, consequently, are both creations of genius and, at the same time, related to the social context and conditions of their time. The works intone a future truth, one that in the darkness of the unmediated present moment can be suggested only by the lifting and turning of the act of creation. At the same time, it must be emphasized that Bloch wants to see in music not only anticipated reconciliation but also its quality of being interwoven with the present, with the contradictions and tensions out of which it emerges. For the author of The Spirit of Utopia, genius is a utopian category. Bloch employs this category to characterize individuals who, on the cusp of the most advanced consciousness, are so sensitive that they are able to sense future tendencies in the material process and to express these tendencies through their creative action. The concept of genius is interlinked with a process-dependent concept of history. Genius is connected to the objective conditions of the time

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in which it exists, although it should be noted that these conditions are treated only very peripherally in The Spirit of Utopia. The significance that Bloch attached to genius explains why, in his history of music, he became an interpreter of musical works. He uses individual works to address their utopian qualities and aesthetic foundations. Bach, Mozart, Bruckner, and Mahler are treated in extenso; Beethoven and Wagner are also prominent. Consideration of the compositional structure of individual works is used to derive statements of principle. On this foundation, Bloch constructs a theory in which tone as a phenomenon and a means, harmonic theory as a formula, and the meaning of rhythm and counterpoint as music-theoretical categories are developed. The suprahistorical aspect of music is seen as located in the tone, with which the new is not described or depicted but adumbrated in sound (anklingt). Tone is music’s material.15 It enables music to say more than language can. This is meant as an explicit expression of the possibility for human beings to find themselves. Music is the medium of encounter with oneself. The explanation for this lies in the meaning of the tone that one hears, which is described as burning outward from within the subject, in order to find, in traversing its own interiority, the path to the external, in the sense of a longing for the new. Tone is necessarily dependent on being heard, despite or because of the fact that it cannot be bound to a fixed definition. How a given tone is interpreted depends on the encounter with the listener. The capacity to hear is decisive, since the new will announce itself prophetically in music’s tone; what is important is to listen for the urge to become different (Anderswerden). Bloch starts from the assumption that music is contagious. The listener becomes infected (angesteckt) and experiences the meaning of the utopian for herself and the world. The listener doesn’t talk about music but turns toward it. Starting from the utopian element that is intrinsic to music and can be found within it, the listener wants to arrive at new cognition of the creative process and the work of art. This is the basis for her productive philosophizing. The capacity to create tones is an essential means of human expression. What is decisive for music is the choice of tones. The rules of harmonic theory bring them into a corresponding order, which has been called into question over the course of history. The tonal field was abandoned by composers who could no longer imagine themselves within the strict rules that had been prescribed and who arrived, as a result, at a new language of music with intermittent key characterizations and shifting centers. 15. On the significance that Bloch ascribed to tone, see the extensive interpretation of the philosophy of music in Bloch’s early work by Czajka-Cunico, “‘Wann lebt man eigentlich?’” 103–58.

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The measure of the human is introduced into the tones by rhythm. Rhythm connects music’s inner world with the outer world; thus in Bloch’s mind it is only with the rhythm of Beethoven’s music that the path to something qualitatively new was opened up. In Beethoven, for the first time, rhythm became an ambitious formula. The new occurs as counterpoint, which is the form of the event. Relying on Schoenberg’s harmonic theory, Bloch explains how harmony conveys meaning by reference to counterpoint—i.e., harmony itself does not have any firm rules; they develop within the movement of time. In his theory, Bloch explains the analogy between musical tones and language. Tones cannot be comprehended without a relation to content; for this reason Wolfgang Matz describes Bloch’s theory as an attempt to use meaningcreating structures to grasp the still undeciphered language of the future.16 Music cannot be understood the way language can; it is not interpretable in the sense that words are. Therefore, Bloch employs the term “call” (Ruf). Music wants to be heard; this links it with language, but it is understandable otherwise than language. That the call for an “otherwise than here” is attributed to it derives from the philosophy of music. That the relationship between philosophy and music is mutual, and philosophy is not simply interpreting something into music, is because music itself expresses something of the future, something that in the openness of its process has to do not only with music itself but with the world. When we look at Bloch’s own language, we can see how this insight influences his own way of working. Bloch writes under the guidance of music. In his writings, the choice of linguistic means, whether metaphoric or syntactical, is not merely a vehicle for presentation but is developed from within the thing he is considering. He wants to find a language that is “music of reason.”17 Given the significance he attaches to music, we can understand why he once compared his own compositional principle for texts to the means Mahler used in his Second Symphony, where the composer first briefly suggested a motif, later reprised it, and finally developed it as a theme. The language character of music occupies a decisive place in Bloch’s theory of music, because he is interested in grasping the language of the future that makes itself known in music. Music makes cognition possible through its allegorical and hence ambiguous character; it is able to make its content comprehensible through tones, aconceptually. Bloch demonstrates this even more clearly in his later writings on the philosophy of music. In his last major work, Experimentum Mundi, music’s 16. Matz, Musica humana, 52ff. 17. Zudeick, “Im eigenen Saft,” 69–91.

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significant position is grounded very consciously in its allegorical character, including the greater ambiguity that distinguishes it from the other arts. In this way, music refers to the future, for “the hour of utterly unique and understandable language in music lies ahead, a new larynx could be created in music, is implicit in it, not stammering so-called Orphic words, but calls [Rufe] with their meanings, as they now already create an intensive aura accompanying the sung word, in the lied in Schubert (‘Die Nonne’), in Mozart (‘Deh vieni, non tardar’), in Brahms (‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer’), in Wagner (‘Träume’), in Mahler (‘Abschied,’ from the Lied von der Erde).”18 In his work on categories,19 Bloch no longer dedicates a separate chapter to music, as he had, for example, in The Principle of Hope. He pays much greater attention to music in chapter 51 of that book, and in numerous essays on individual performers, works, and questions of musical theory,20 even if after the 1930s, as Hans Mayer has demonstrated, he did not follow the development of contemporary music quite as closely as he had in the 1920s.21 On the other hand, the impact of his interpretation of the works of Karl Marx is quite evident. Marxian ideas appear in his examination of the musical material, which includes both technical analysis and historical interpretation, and which he interprets from the perspectives of both compositional technique and social context—the music becomes an indicator of social processes. The transition from The Spirit of Utopia, with its two editions, to Bloch’s later reflections on the philosophy of music can be exemplified in his use of the term “expression” (Ausdruck) as a category. Truth is revealed only through changes that occur in the course of history. Thus “expression” refers not only to the means of expression but to a category that has the capacity to mediate the openness of the artwork. The qualities of this category are explained rather vaguely in Bloch’s early works, and in greater detail in The Principle of Hope. Here he writes that expression is a humane category.22 On the one hand, such a category indicates that content can never be manifest but changes over the course of time; on the other hand, it refers to the productivity that is manifested in both the artwork and the listener or viewer. Using the example of a tonal sequence, Bloch shows that the understanding of the tension it expresses is determined not only by empathy but also by an objective factor that is pres18. Bloch, Experimentum Mundi, 204. 19. The full title of the book is Experimentum Mundi: Question, Categories of Emergence, Practice (Experimentum Mundi: Frage, Kategorien des Herausbringens, Praxis).—trans. 20. The texts, which had appeared in a variety of publications, were collected in a volume published by Karola Bloch in 1974 as Zur Philosophie der Musik. 21. Mayer, “Der geschichtliche Augenblick des Fidelio,” 471. 22. Bloch, “Human Expression as Inseparable from Music,” in Principle of Hope, 3:1062–70.

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ent in the music itself. This objective factor shows empathy the way and allows the listener to anticipate the next tone. In this way, a dialectical relationship emerges between the music and the listener, whereby the listener, in his effort to achieve understanding, is oriented both to characteristics within the musical work and to his basic knowledge of the world. Expression becomes a category that makes it possible to characterize the explosive power of the artwork, its orientation to a goal that surpasses reality. In order for the tension that is expressed in this way to have consequences for practice, Bloch looks for regularities in the work itself. Referring back to Kant, he interprets the regularity within the work as the promise of an ought that presses for a resolution. Thus, the gaze into the future requires an “objectivereal hermeneutics,” one that sees cognition and production as a unity. This also means, however, that analysis based on musicological criteria takes a back seat for Bloch. He situates the theory of music within philosophy because his first concern is to provide a foundation, based in social critique, for the utopian consciousness that unfolds in music. What this means for music is that Bloch is primarily interested in tone, as music’s content. Wolfgang Matz is absolutely correct in asserting that the reason why music plays such an important role for Bloch is not that it ranks first among the arts but that it has the capacity to express the goal of identity as the highest content of wishing.23 This is the reason why music became a constitutive aspect of the philosophy of hope. Art, and music in particular, determines the gesture of philosophy. Thus, through philosophical reflection, music becomes a mediating authority for contexts and relationships that are relevant to the whole.

Remembrance of the Future: The Trumpet Call Bloch’s interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s liberation opera Fidelio (in the third version of 1814) shows what can happen when the philosophy of hope is applied in practice, while also offering an example of just how decisive the analysis of musical works is for the philosophy of hope. The chapter on music in The Principle of Hope ends with the section “‘Marseillaise’ and the Moment in Fidelio.” Early in the chapter, Bloch indicates how important it is that the call, “toward which, in this work, every measure intends,” be made audible. In accordance with the theory that he developed in his early works, Bloch begins with the tone. The anticipatory light that is shed on the solution of unresolved social contradictions can be heard in every single 23. Matz, Musica humana, 136.

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tone, but it is especially audible in the utopian force of the trumpet call. The trumpet signal, for him, is the real signal of hope.24 Hans Mayer expresses this very much in Bloch’s sense: “Only with the sound of the trumpet call, as Beethoven finally composed it in the third Leonore Overture . . . , do we see what Ernst Bloch, using the same symbol of the trumpet call from Fidelio, has designated as the anticipatory light of a ‘principle of hope.’”25 Bloch was touched by this music, especially by the third Leonore overture, with its anagnorisis or dramatic “moments of recognition in the music.” The feeling is said to have accompanied him his whole life long as often as he listened to the opera. It has as much to do with the memory of individual people and their fates as with a recognition that transcends them. The trumpet call, which sounds when the governor arrives and Leonore prevents the murder of her husband Florestan, becomes the symbol of a promise of happiness. It merges the private with the politically just and hence socially significant. It is a promise that, at the moment of its fulfillment, makes it possible to sense the meaning of the fullness of time in the present moment and, since it occurs in art, simultaneously refers to a realization that is possible only in the future. In the opera, the trumpet call announces the concrete liberation both of the husband and of the other prisoners, for Leonore’s gaze is open to their suffering. She embodies the call for freedom; her person stands for the ideals of liberation. And precisely because of this, the trumpet call points beyond the opera, to the content of human striving per se. True, the trumpet call is intended as a warning to Pizarro, indicating the arrival of the minister. But since it sounds at the very moment when Leonore raises her weapon against him to rescue her husband, it becomes the tone that delivers the message of future freedom per se, both to the couple and to all the other prisoners. Here, Beethoven reprises the traditional notion of the trumpet call as a signal of hope. Already in the Bible, at the blare of the trumpet graves open, angels play trumpets (or trombones), and the sound of trumpets brings the walls of Jericho tumbling down. The trumpet call aims at an eschaton. Bloch’s interpretation calls the latter from transcendence down to earth. It may mean the ultimate good, the summum bonum, but in a manner that refers wholly to this world. The unity of the longed-for moment and the one that has arrived makes it possible to interpret this moment as a sign of things to come. Thus, 24. Friedhelm Zubke speaks to this in “Der Ton geht mit uns.” One should consider in this context that as early as 1927 Bloch recognized revolutionary tendencies in Beethoven as being present in the trumpet call. He makes this clear in his essay in the Blätter der Staatsoper (Berlin) 7 (November 1927). 25. Mayer, “Der geschichtliche Augenblick des Fidelio,” 35. In this lecture, Mayer also discusses the relationship between Beethoven and Schiller and the relation of both to the ideals of the French Revolution.

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more than the announcement of the minister, it is an announcement of the Messiah, and is nevertheless an arrival that is entirely of this world. It anticipates the realm of freedom and with it the possibility of identity in a future human existence. Bloch grasps this opera by its impulse of hope. The trumpet call becomes a symbol of the liberation of all who are downtrodden and scorned. This is what links it to the “Marseillaise,” for “every future storm of the Bastille is intended in Fidelio. . . . As nowhere else, music here becomes the dawn, . . . glows as a work of pure humanity.”26 Beethoven seems to have realized the ideals of the revolution in his music and thus created an anticipatory light that illumines their actual realization. He has worked the ideals of his time into the material, and as a result the latter has itself become a utopia. To explore the extent to which this may correspond to a future work of history is the task of historicalphilosophical reflection. Bloch shows explicitly how this should be done in his book Natural Law and Human Dignity, which is why it also contains references to Fidelio. In Fidelio, the moment of liberation had announced its arrival in music in the sounds of the strings, the accompanying timpani, and then the trumpet call. Only in the context of the overall interpretation of the opera do Bloch’s remark that in Florestan’s aria the angelic Leonore becomes an angel of liberty, and his interpretation of the trumpet call “as a symbol from the Requiem, more—from the secret Easter in the Dies Irae,” become comprehensible. The reference to the Requiem that Beethoven never wrote serves to emphasize the eschatological character that is made audible in a requiem, in particular.27 The main question for Bloch is not whether this interpretation is supported by the score, although he bases his view on a knowledgeable and detailed acquaintance with its compositional technique. He also anchors his interpretation in history, by seeing in Beethoven an individual for whom this opera represented a way to express his relationship to the ideals of the French Revolution. But the primary question, for Bloch, is the extent to which Beethoven’s music contains the idea of an “I” that is liberated to become “We.” “Thus, music as a whole stands at the boundary of humanity, but [it is] the boundary where humanity, with a new language and the call-aura surrounding deeply felt intensity, a realized We-world [der Ruf-Aura um getroffene Intensität, erlangte WirWelt], first comes into being. The order in the musical expression also suggests a house, even a crystal, but one composed of future freedom; a star, but as a new earth.”28 26. Bloch, “Marseillaise and the Moment in Fidelio,” in Principle of Hope, 3:1101–3. 27. On this point see Zubke, “Der Ton geht mit uns.” 28. Bloch, “Marseillaise and the Moment in Fidelio,” in Principle of Hope, 3:1103.

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Music smoothes the way to the encounter with oneself. The motif “I am. But I do not have myself. Hence we are only becoming,” which turns up again and again in Bloch’s oeuvre, can be experienced through listening to music. Music tells us that the way to our own I is possible only via the external, specifically through remembrance. Bloch chooses his metaphors carefully, in the effort to grasp what music anticipates—for example the metaphor of the house, which is a staple of everyday communication and can be found in poetic, philosophical, and political language. Bloch deploys it in a dynamic sense that is informed by images of planning and building. For him, the house is an open symbol that permeates all wishful dreams and is the object of all hope.29 Hope aims at a crystal constructed of future freedom; in other words, it aims at the object of human dreams in societal reality. The new earth, then, means humankind and nature; nature stands very consciously at the end of history. Bloch indicates that this aspect is not made sufficiently clear in Fidelio. In the essay “Andante—Adagio. Sojourn in the Unheard-of ” (“Andante—Adagio: Aufenthalt im Unerhörten”), written in 1939,30 Bloch had said that the landscape of our wishes (Wunschlandschaft) can be portrayed more easily in a slow tempo. The philosophy of hope imagines the liberated world as a liberated landscape—landscape as the anticipated reconciliation of man and nature. Utopia and landscape belong together; here Bloch chooses a concept that does not mean nature pure and simple but suggests an aesthetic gaze. Landscape is the anticipatory light of a liberated nature and hence also of a liberated humanity, for the possibility of a nature with the quality of subjectivity is revealed in music, poetry, and painting. Here freedom is seen as not only social but in harmony with nature. Music that arouses expectations of better things to come, like the C-major chord in the second act of Wagner’s Meistersinger, is characterized as a lasting art whose meaning will remain central into the future. Such music suggests in an exemplary fashion that for Bloch all outstanding works of music are nourished by the ideal of hope. Music mediates between the real present and the possible world of the future. Fidelio is the model for Bloch’s way of doing philosophy. Accordingly, as Wolfgang Matz emphasizes, references to Fidelio as the symbol of human liberation are found in the most widely scattered places throughout Bloch’s philosophical writings. However, the anticipated eschaton signifies not an end but a new mystery; this is precisely why music endures. It also explains why philosophy and music are linked, just as we can say more generally that music remains a central component of utopian thought. For, as 29. Bloch, “Too Much Image, Rescue from It, Nimbus around Marriage,” Principle of Hope, 1:326. 30. Published in Tendenz—Latenz—Utopie.

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Matz perceptively observes, without Fidelio the philosophy of hope would not be the way it is. Is music something lasting? Giving it a central locus is extremely timely. Rainer E. Zimmerman has emphasized that modern physics is attempting to revive music’s epistemic place.31 He says that superstring and membrane theories, in particular, when they characterize the cosmic process as a whole, exploit the notion of a multidimensional music in the form of vibrations of ten- or eleven-dimensional strings in mathematical spaces. But the question of the lasting character of music remains timely in ways that are even more far-reaching than the debates of the physicists. Because music is linked to utopia, how we answer the question has implications for the future development of the world. What is at stake is the extent to which human beings are prepared to entertain utopia. If every reminder of society’s forward development is dismissed, and if, at the same time, only defensive strategies are mobilized in regard to creative artistic potentials, then art will have nothing more to tell than the story of its embeddedness in the culture industry. The dismissal of utopia, which says nothing about utopia itself, entails the danger of not wanting to hear the call of music. Music is the subjective expression of something objectively grounded in the figurations of society. Hence Bloch calls it “socially seismographic”—an art that reflects relational tensions and real turbulences.32 He points to its scientific character, which makes possible its access to worldliness,33 and which aims at a sensuality seeking all-embracing fulfillment. But just as hope must be learned, so must the ability to listen for the plural, in order to perceive in it the tone that aims at the future. At a minimum, one needs a readiness to be open to both art’s autonomy and its worldliness and to reflect philosophically on its call as something aesthetically mediated. Music’s meaningful content (Gehalt) cannot be grasped through analysis of its structure alone. Bloch’s philosophy of music demonstrates this. But, at the same time, it also emphasizes that music’s content is not immediately accessible either, since sheer empathy cannot comprehend its social and historical character. The task that emerges from all this is to discover how, today, human beings can be liberated by music from their quotidian entanglements. Film music might possibly have a chance—at least Bloch’s congenial colleague Hanns Eisler thought so. During his exile in Hollywood, Eisler saw in the development of the movies possibilities for reaching a much larger public, and also for helping to overcome the contradiction between sight and hearing. Eisler 31. Zimmermann, Subjekt und Existenz, 212ff. 32. Bloch, “Marseillaise and the Moment in Fidelio,” in Principle of Hope, 3:1088. 33. See Behrens, “Hören im Dunkel des gelebten Augenblicks,” 101–17.

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thought that the sense of sight had become much more highly differentiated than hearing. The New School for Social Research helped Eisler to launch a Film Music Project, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, in which he attempted to demonstrate the uneven development of the arts.34 His chamber work “14 Ways of Describing the Rain” is a twelve-tone composition for the film Rain, by Joris Ivens, in which the film and the music were developed in mutually interdependent ways. Claudia Albert has shown that the noncontemporaneity between the evolution of film techniques such as montage, flashbacks, and fadeovers, on the one hand, and film music, which continued to evolve along late romantic lines,35 on the other, motivated not only Eisler, but Adorno, too, to think about the emancipation of listening. A new film music was to be developed—one that would make it possible to establish dramaturgical counterpoints by letting dissonances and polyphony carry the dynamics and the dramaturgy. Bloch’s philosophy of music takes a similar approach to cinematic music and gives tips for the still much-needed willingness to learn to listen. He, too, sees in film music a potential that could be used to reach the audience through the ear.36 Here, film music may serve as an example of the importance Bloch attaches to the cultivation of listening, as something whose significance is by no means limited to future musicians. The significance of listening, in turn, is meant to convey the image of a willingness to want to feel the spur of utopia, and thereby to draw closer to the present, by becoming aware of it in both its relation to the past and its openness to the future.

Reception The music philosophy that Bloch developed in The Spirit of Utopia and the version of history and theory that it deployed were rejected by most contemporary critics. The book was accused of lacking systematic thought and of having an esoteric style not founded on musicologically based analyses of the material.37 The critics were irritated by the expressionist style of Bloch’s writ34. For a more detailed description of the project, its theoretical foundation, and its practical realization, see Albert, Das schwierige Handwerk des Hoffens, 5–21. 35. In 1913, Bloch had already criticized the fact that in cinema the melody did not correspond with the action because musical numbers were selected rather than composed specifically for the film. The revised version of the critique, “The Musical Stratum in Cinema, Revisited” (1919), can be found in Literary Essays, 159–62. 36. See Brücher, “Der Klang der träumenden Bilder.” 37. A detailed exploration of the criticisms may be found in Münster, Utopie, Messianismus und Apokalypse, 152ff.

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ing and categorized Bloch as belonging to a neo-Catholic/mystical tendency. This shows how far the musicologists were from successfully locating Bloch’s statements about music, in The Spirit of Utopia, within the overall context of the work, and how closed their minds remained to its philosophical arguments. Even the positive reaction of a Max Martersteig, who emphasized the significance of music as a medium of utopia, did not appreciate that the philosophy of self-encounter cannot be reduced to a purely interior phenomenon. For Bloch, on the contrary, the relationship between a human being and his or her treatment of the material proceeds from the inside out, with a kind of “necessity for the inner to turn outward.”38 Martersteig’s failure to understand this context explains how it was possible for him to see Bloch as a representative of conservative mysticism. Tibor Kneif ’s critique, which appeared in 1965, also faulted Bloch’s expressionist language, calling it imprecise and metaphorical. For Kneif, the link between music and utopia is proof of an irrationalism that he sees as characteristic of the way music was perceived at the time. Kneif overlooks the fact that while Bloch, on the one hand, did indeed employ an expressionist style of expression, and thus became a representative of this movement, he also, on the other hand, saw the expression of the period and its life-world as socially mediated and was himself ultimately sociopolitically oriented. This set of issues, in its significance for Bloch’s philosophy of music, was first identified by Arno Münster in his reception of Bloch’s early work. While Bloch’s contemporary critics failed to pay attention to the sociopolitical analyses in The Spirit of Utopia, Anna Czajka-Cunico notes that in more recent reception the work’s original point of departure gets lost when authors focus too intently on the aspect of social critique. She examines the description of aesthetic experience (in music and poetry) in The Spirit of Utopia and clarifies the extent to which music, for Bloch, was an aspect of the most authentic search for self and hence centrally important for the view of music as utopian. Contemporary thinkers who wrote in analogy or confrontation with Bloch responded quite differently from the musicologists. Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukács, Adolph Lowe, and Theodor W. Adorno engaged in a dialogue with Bloch’s philosophy, even if they differed on key points relating to the interpretation of his philosophy of music. Conductor Otto Klemperer gave a consistently positive evaluation of the musicological views in The Spirit of Utopia; it was Klemperer who had recommended it to the publisher Duncker and Humblot, and it was thanks to his intervention that the book appeared there. Klemperer, 38. Ibid., 155.

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who founded the Kroll Opera in Berlin in 1927, became Bloch’s interlocutor on musical issues.39 He made a point of stating that Bloch’s understanding of the impulse of hope in Fidelio influenced his own interpretation.40 The composer Hanns Eisler was linked with Bloch in lifelong friendship.41 Above all, they were in agreement in their evaluation of the debate over expressionism. They both thought that art must inherit the unfulfilled claims of the past, that it had the task of enriching itself with the still virulent, subversive contents of previous art. Their notion of the “art of inheriting” (Kunst zu erben) and their rejection of the artistic perspective of Social Realism led to jointly written texts in dialogue form, with which they sought to influence the politics of the Popular Front. They pointed out the extent to which contemporary works of art suggested ways for progressive art and the social movement to join forces to effectively combat the rise of fascism. Eisler, more strongly than Bloch in The Spirit of Utopia, emphasized that while music may be a creature of society, its development is nevertheless relatively autonomous in relation to societal processes. He also evaluated Schoenberg’s compositional technique differently from Bloch, who, in his response to Schoenberg as a representative of expressionism, was mainly interested in the composer’s harmonic theory. Eisler did not see Schoenberg’s atonal works as especially path-breaking for the future. He found points of contact with antifascist compositional technique primarily in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. Bloch and Bertolt Brecht were also close friends. But although Bloch viewed Brecht’s theatrical practice as a path-breaking model for the future and pointed out the significance of the music in this context, Bloch’s interpretation had little impact on Brecht’s conception, since the latter was not very aware of it. Theodor W. Adorno was also stimulated by The Spirit of Utopia to enter into a dialogue with Bloch. He agreed with Bloch that music was oriented to utopia but saw it more as the advocate of suffering. Thus his interpretation of the works of Bruckner and Wagner was different from Bloch’s.42 Another composer who emphasized the impact of Bloch’s philosophy of hope on his works is Dieter Schnebel. His composition “Glossolalie 61,” which was completed in 1961, contains a passage from The Principle of Hope as an indication of its political intent. 39. See Karola Bloch’s remarks in her biographical notes to Aus meinem Leben, 63ff. 40. Compare Matz, Musica humana, 103. 41. Albrecht Dümling describes the course of the friendship based on dedications and the compositions to which they were attached. See Dümling, “Eine längere Symbiose,” 38–58. 42. On the relationship between the music philosophy of Adorno and Bloch, see Gramer, “Musikalische Utopie,” 175–91.

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Arno Münster has pointed out that Bloch’s music philosophy not only encountered opposition among contemporary critics but also, and especially, failed to elicit a positive reception among Marxists. Here, the dogmatic perspective of Social Realism made itself felt, not the contrary positions held by Bloch, Eisler, Brecht, and other critics. This is noticeable in the critique of Renate Damus, who overlooked the significance of the legacy of the past in Bloch’s theory of music and hence could not see how, for Bloch, music not only reflects and gives expression to the development of its own era but is also capable of identifying things from the past that still hold an unfulfilled promise, as Bloch had demonstrated using the example of Bach’s oratorios. From a vulgar Marxist perspective, Bloch stood accused of denying the social factors. In the German Democratic Republic, Otto K. Werckmeister attacked Bloch as being incapable of concretely conceiving the possible art of a classless so­ ciety. Like Kneif, Werckmeister remained mired in rigid sociological patterns; he denounced Bloch’s concept of genius as a remnant of idealist aesthetics. Attempts to disavow Bloch from this quarter can, however, be regarded as a thing of the past. For Anna Czajka-Cunico, the Marxist perspective on Bloch’s musical aesthetics was transformed by the neo-Marxist reception of Heinz Paetzold, who in 1974 undertook to reconstruct the utopian theory of music in the context of Bloch’s overall philosophy. We are indebted to Czajka-Cunico for drawing attention to the lively reception of Bloch’s philosophy of music in Italian scholarship. She mentions such authors as Michela Garda, Stefano Migliaccio, and Elio Matassi. A few musicological monographs on Bloch’s philosophy of music appeared in the 1980s. They refer to Bloch’s thinking in The Spirit of Utopia and The Principle of Hope, as well as his numerous essays on specific aspects of music theory and his critiques of individual composers and works. Gerhard Tüns focuses on Bloch’s statements on music, while Wolfgang Matz portrays these as aspects of the whole of Bloch’s aesthetics and emphasizes that “to analyze and portray Bloch’s views on art separately, but in the process to deny their conscious integration into the overall context of the philosophy of hope, would be to overlook their characteristic particularity.”43 Petra Brücher is currently working on a dissertation on Bloch’s philosophy of music, which attempts to crystallize out its contemporary relevance. She has written about this in an exemplary fashion in an essay that looks at Bloch’s ideas about opera in order to show how, in Bloch, music represents transcended movement,

43. Matz, Musica humana, 131.

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either interior or exterior, and thus makes empathy with the dramatic plot first possible. Monographs that deal with Bloch’s views on art often give short shrift to the musicological aspect. A praiseworthy exception is the substantial analysis by Arno Münster, who devoted a chapter to Bloch’s music philosophy in his books Utopia, Messianism, and Apocalypse in the Early Works of Ernst Bloch (Utopie, Messianismus und Apokalypse im Frühwerk von Ernst Bloch), published in 1982 by Suhrkamp, and Figures of Utopia in the Thought of Ernst Bloch (Figures de l’utopie dans la pensée d’Ernst Bloch), which appeared in 1985 in Paris with Aubier. Essays on individual aspects of Bloch’s music philosophy have continued to appear without interruption from the 1960s to the present. They cover such topics as the significance of expressionism for music; the relationship of “language, utopia, and music”; Bloch’s Wagner interpretation; his affinity with Eisler, Brecht, and Adorno; and the relationship between music and chiliasm. Roger Behrens emphasizes that the philosophy still has unqualified contemporary relevance, since it places stress on the social context in the utopian motif and adumbrates a society of the future. According to Behrens, this should be consciously linked to contemporary philosophical discussions, in particular those within so-called postmodernism.

References

Bloch’s Works Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom. [Translation of Atheismus im Christentum: Zur Religion des Exodus und des Reichs.] Trans. J. T. Swann. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. Experimentum Mundi. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985. Gesamtausgabe. 17 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961–85. Vol. 1: Spuren. Vol. 3: Geist der Utopie. Vol. 4: Erbschaft dieser Zeit. Vol. 5: Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Vol. 6: Naturrecht und menschliche Würde. Vol. 8. Subjekt-Objekt. Erläuterungen zu Hegel. Vol. 9. Literarische Aufsätze. Vol. 10. Philosophische Aufsätze zur objectiven Phantasie. Vol. 15. Experimentum Mundi: Frage, Kategorien des Herausbringens, Praxis. Vol. 17: Tendenz—Latenz—Utopie. Heritage of Our Times. [Translation of Erbschaft dieser Zeit.] Trans. Neville Plaice and Stephen Plaice. Berkeley: University of California Press; Oxford: Polity, 1991.

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Literary Essays. [Translation of Literarische Aufsätze.] Trans. Andrew Joron and others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Natural Law and Human Dignity. [Translation of Naturrecht und menschliche Würde.] Trans. Dennis J. Schmidt. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986. The Principle of Hope. [Translation of Das Prinzip Hoffnung.] Trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. 3 vols. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986. The Spirit of Utopia. [Translation of Geist der Utopie.] Trans. Anthony A. Nassar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Traces. [Translation of Spuren.] Trans. Anthony A. Nassar. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. “Universität, Marxismus, Philosophie.” Inaugural lecture in Leipzig, May 1949. In Philosophische Aufsätze zur objectiven Phantasie, 270–91. Zur Philosophie der Musik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974.

General Literature Albert, Claudia. Das schwierige Handwerk des Hoffens: Hanns Eislers “Hollywooder Liederbuch.” Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1991. Behrens, Roger. “Hören im Dunkel des gelebten Augenblicks: Zur Aktualität der Musikphilosophe Ernst Blochs.” Bloch-Almanach 17 (1998): 101–17. Bloch, Karola. Aus meinem Leben. Reihe politische Erfahrung 8. Mössingen-Talheim, [Germany]: Talheimer, 1995. Czajka-Cunico, Anna. “‘Wann lebt man eigentlich?’: Die Suche nach der ‘zweiten’ Wahrheit und die ästhetische Erfahrung (Musik und Poesie) in Ernst Bloch’s Geist der Utopie.” Bloch-Almanach 19 (2000): 103–58. Dümling, Albrecht. “‘Eine längere Symbiose, und nicht nur ein Cafehausmeeting’: Hanns Eisler und Ernst Bloch.” Vorschein: Jahrbuch der Ernst Bloch Assoziation 17 (1999): 38–58. Geoghegan, Vince. Ernst Bloch. London: Routledge, 1995. Hudson, Wayne. The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. London: Palgrave Macmillan; New York; St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Münster, Arno. Utopie, Messianismus und Apokalypse im Frühwerk von Ernst Bloch. [Includes three letters from Bloch to Wilhelm Muehlon.] Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982. Vidal, Francesca. “Auf der Suche nach einer Blochschen Ästhetik.” Bloch-Almanach 15 (1996): 11–32. ———, ed. Die Gegenwart des Ungleichzeitigen: Jahrbuch der Ernst-Bloch-Gesellschaft 1995–96. ———. Kunst als Vermittlung von Welterfahrung: Zur Rekonstruktion der Ästhetik von Ernst Bloch. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,1994. Zimmermann, Rainer E. Subjekt und Existenz: Zur Systematik Blochscher Philosophie. Berlin: Philo Verlag, 2001. Zudeick, Peter. Der Hintern des Teufels: Ernst Bloch, Leben und Werk. Moos [Germany]: Elster Verlag, 1987. ———. “Im eigenen Saft: Sprache und Komposition bei Ernst Bloch.” Bloch Almanach 1 (1981): 69–91.

Musical Literature Brücher, Petra. “Der Klang der träumenden Bilder: Eine kleine Philosophie der Film-Musik bei Ernst Bloch.” Bilder-Welten: Jahrbuch der Ernst-Bloch-Gesellschaft 2001, 81–90. Gramer, Wolfgang. “Musikalische Utopie: Ein Gespräch zwischen Adornos und Blochs Denken.” Bloch-Almanach 4 (1984): 175–91. Matz, Wolfgang. Musica humana: Versuch über Ernst Blochs Philosophie der Musik. Marburger germanistische Studien 9. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998.

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Mayer, Hans. “Der geschichtliche Augenblick des Fidelio.” In Hans Mayer, Abend der Vernunft: Reden und Vorträge, 1985–1990, 33–45. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990. ———. “Musik als Luft von anderen Planeten: Ernst Blochs Philosophie der Musik und Feruccio Busonis ‘neue Ästhetik der Tonkunst.’” In Materialien zu Ernst Blochs Princip Hoffnung, ed. Burghart Schmidt, 464–72. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978. Norris, Christopher. “Utopian Deconstruction: Ernst Bloch, Paul de Man and the Politics of Music.” In Music and the Politics of Culture, ed. Christopher Norris, 305–47. London: Norris & Wishart; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Zubke, Friedhelm. “‘Der Ton geht mit uns’: Die Utopie der Musik.” Bloch-Almanach 21 (2002).

Heidegger G ü n t he r P ö lt n e r

Brief Biography Martin Heidegger was born on September 26, 1889, in Messkirch (Baden). After passing his Abitur, he entered the Theological Faculty of the University of Freiburg but gave up the study of theology after two years to devote himself entirely to philosophy. Two works, he would later state, were important in this period. The first was a dissertation by Franz Brentano, “On the Manifold Meaning of Being according to Aristotle” (1862), which during Heidegger’s high school years already was “rod and staff of my first, clumsy attempts to enter into philosophy” and stimulated the question that was to remain his principle inquiry: “What is being?” The other was the ontology of Carl Braig, On Being: Outline of Ontology (Vom Sein: Abriss der Ontologie, 1896). Braig, who at the time was professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg, worked in the Scotist tradition. Heidegger completed his doctorate in 1913 and his second doctorate two years later with The Theory of Categories and Meaning of Duns Scotus (Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus), which was published in 1916 in Tübingen. In 1919, Heidegger became a lecturer (Privatdozent) and simultaneously assistant to Edmund Husserl in Freiburg. From 1923 to 1928, he held a professorship in Marburg. In 1928, he became the successor to his teacher Edmund Husserl in . Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens, 8; On Time and Being, 74. . Ibid.

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Freiburg. In 1927, Being and Time: Part One (Sein und Zeit: Erste Hälfte) appeared. It is the work with which Heidegger became world famous; however, it was never completed in the form that he envisioned. The next major work to appear, in 1929, was Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik). In 1933, Heidegger was named rector of the University of Freiburg, but resigned the position in 1934 following differences with the Nazi party leadership. (Hannah Arendt compared Heidegger’s relationship to National Socialism to Plato’s political error.) Shorter works appeared during the war years, among them the interpretations of Hölderlin, Plato’s Doctrine of Truth (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit), and The Essence of Truth (Vom Wesen der Wahrheit). In 1945, Heidegger was barred from teaching; the ban would be lifted in 1951. In the intervening period, he published many of his lecture courses, essays, and lectures in book form. Books based on lecture courses included An Introduction to Metaphysics (Einführung in die Metaphysik, 1953); What Is Called Thinking (Was heißt Denken, 1954); The Principle of Reason (Der Satz vom Grund, 1957); Nietzsche (two volumes, 1961); and What Is a Thing? (Die Frage nach dem Ding, 1962). Volumes of essays and lectures included Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege, 1950); Lectures and Essays (Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1954); Identity and Difference (Identität und Differenz, 1957); and The Way to Language (Unterwegs zur Sprache, 1959). Heidegger died on May 26, 1976, in Freiburg, and was buried there. His collected works have been appearing with the publisher Klostermann, in Frankfurt, since 1975.

Philosophy and Art To do philosophy, for Heidegger, means to ask the question of being (Sein)— nominally the fundamental question of Western metaphysics. The latter, Heidegger was convinced, sets its sights on being by inquiring about entities (das Seiende) as such, i.e., beings under the aspect of being, but does not inquire into being itself. Hence metaphysics is fundamentally nihilistic, because forgetful of being. For these reasons, the question of being must be posed anew, and it is necessary to ask expressly about the meaning of being, i.e., the openness or truth of being. Heidegger works out the question of being in two steps: first as a fundamental-ontological question, in his principal work Being and Time (Sein . Also translated as On the Way to Language.—trans. . “Forgetfulness” refers not to a loss of knowledge by individual metaphysicians, resulting from a lack of attentiveness, but rather to a fundamental historical situation of thought; changing this is not simply a matter of individual or collective effort.

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und Zeit), and later as a question of the history of being, thinking about its “event as appropriation” (Ereignis). Fundamental ontology poses the question of being starting from the understanding of being within which being is disclosed to us. “Being” does not mean some ghostly layer of things that exists behind the world that is known to us—being is not a being or an entity—but is the enabling of every kind of relation to what is (whether, for example, in the mode of daily life, scientific research, the ethical shape of a life shared with others, or artistic creation). The mode of being (Seinsweise) of humans consists in understanding being (Sein). Heidegger characterizes this as Ex-istence (Existenz), the disclosedness of being as the “there” (da) of being. And because this “there” occurs in the existence of humans, he defines the essence of being human as Dasein, or “being there.” With this, he has not merely chosen another word for “human” but grounded an understanding of the human that is distinguished from the metaphysical exposition of man, his task, and his place among beings in general. If being is disclosed in the existence of humans, then the question of being—seen fundamental-ontologically—must first expose the structures of existence, i.e., the existentials (Existentialien). The goal of fundamental ontology is the existential analysis of Dasein. Among the central existentials are state-ofmind (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen), and discourse (Rede). On the one hand, the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of being is accomplished (vollbracht) by Dasein. Heidegger calls this accomplishing a projection (Entwurf) of being, or a transcending (Transzendieren) of Dasein toward being. Dasein’s projection of being includes understanding and the articulation of being that is understood (the existentials of understanding and discourse). On the other hand, the projection does not bring forth the disclosure of being—what does it mean to be, if Dasein is not already established?—nor can the projection fail to occur. Dasein is both given to itself and given to itself as a task (vorgegeben und aufgegeben)—both things are beyond its power to dispose. The projection is a thrown projection. “Thrownness” (Geworfenheit) means the nondisposable givenness and givenness-as-a-task of projection, the facticity of Dasein—this, that it has to be. Thrownness discloses itself to being in the mode of attune­ ment (Gestimmtheit), which is the existential of state-of-mind. . Because, for example, we are familiar with the difference between really existing and being thought of, we can distinguish something real from something merely thought up; because we are familiar with what “living” is, we can distinguish living things from mere things. Somehow we understand the different modes of being, and along with them such a thing as existence, without therefore possessing a conceptually worked out (ontological) understanding of being. . Also translated as disposedness, condition, or situatedness.—trans. . Also translated as speech, logos, articulateness.—trans.

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Attunement or state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit) is not to be equated with feeling (Gefühl) or lived experience (Erlebnis); it is not a merely subjective phenomenon in which man experiences something of his psychic state that is then transposed onto objects; rather it is the mode in which his nonobjective relation to the world and the way he is inserted into this relation are disclosed. If the fundamental-ontological question defines the relation of Dasein and being as one of transcendence and horizon, the question of being seen from the aspect of its history defines it as a projecting out of events that have occurred and been appropriated (ein ereigneter Ent-wurf) and a throwing toward of events that are occurring and being appropriated (ein sich ereignender Zuwurf). It is an address (Zuspruch) or claim (Anspruch) directed to being. Heidegger terms the relation itself the event or event-as-appropriation (Ereignis) and thinks it as the history if being itself. The transformation of the inquiry’s point of departure from a fundamental-ontological to a historical-ontological one, which does not signify a break,10 has to do in the first instance with thrownness, which is now thought of as the event and appropriation of being (Ereignetsein) by being.11 The working out of the question of being from the perspective of historical ontology (the so-called “turn” or Kehre) begins in the 1930s and remains at the center of Heidegger’s thought until the end. As Heidegger himself remarks, his reflection on art represents a way station on the road to the working out of all of this.12 “The entire essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ moves consciously yet in an unspoken way along the path of the question of the essence of being. Reflection on what art is is determined only from inside the question of being. Art has its validity neither as a realm of cultural accomplishment, nor as an appearance of the spirit; it belongs to the event from within which the ‘sense or direction of being’ [Sinn . “‘Attunement’ (Gestimmtheit, Stimmung), however, can never be grasped as ‘event’ and ‘feeling,’ because doing so only robs it of its essence and interprets it out of that essence (‘life’ and the ‘soul’), [an approach] which, indeed, can claim the appearance of a right to exist only as long as it contains within it the distortion and misinterpretation of attunement.” Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 9:192; Pathmarks, 233. . In German, Ereignis, event, bears an apparent etymological relationship to eigen, one’s own, hence Heidegger’s stretching of Ereignis to signify appropriation, as well as event.—trans. 10. Heidegger himself indicates that his fundamental-ontological and historical-ontological points of departure belong together when he writes in Contributions to Philosophy: “The relation between Dasein and being. In Being and Time, for the first time, conceived as ‘understanding of being,’ whereby understanding is to be grasped as projection, and the act of projection as one that has been thrown, and this means belonging to event-as-appropriation [Er-eignung] by being itself.” Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 65:252; Contributions to Philosophy, 178. 11. “Da-sein is thrown, appropriated-as-event by being.” Gesamtausgabe, 65:304; Contributions to Philosophy, 214. 12. Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst, 28ff. Whether the hints of Heidegger’s later thinking about art do or do not represent a new stage in comparison with the essay on the work of art need not be discussed here. In our opinion, von Herrmann has demonstrated plausibly that this is not the case.

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von Sein] (cf. Being and Time) is determined.”13 This says, on the one hand, that the phenomenon of art requires the historical-ontological working out of the question of being in an exceptional way, and, on the other, that the essay on the work of art is already thinking in a historical-ontological fashion, without expressly thematizing the relation of being and human essence as event-andappropriation.14 Thinking in terms of event-and-appropriation thus forms the interpretive key to the essay’s understanding. Heidegger speaks of the relation between Dasein and being in a manner that is highly revealing precisely as it applies to the artwork essay, and to music in particular. He speaks of a “belonging together [zusammengehören] of man and being,”15 of the “claim” (An-spruch)16 of being, which “matters to” or “goes toward man” (den Menschen an-geht);17 of being’s “address” (Zu-spruch) to man, which “does not happen without him,”18 of the “address” that “is only perceptible by means of our corresponding [Entsprechen].”19 Perceiving (Vernehmen) is at once “a hearing and a seeing”20—a determination that should not be misinterpreted as metaphorical, because the talk of metaphors is based on “the distinction, if not, indeed, separation, of the sensual and the nonsensual as two realms that exist for themselves.”21 This, our perceiving, is in itself a corresponding22— “An answer . . . that corresponds to the being of beings.”23 The “voice of being 13. Gesamtausgabe, 5:73. This remark can be found in the “Addition” to the essay on the work of art, which was written in 1956 and included in the 1960 Reclam edition. 14. The historical-ontological working out of the question of being not only determines the lectures that Heidegger gave in 1935 and 1936, which form the basis of the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,” which appeared in 1950 in Off the Beaten Track (Holzwege), but provides the main theme of Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie), which was written between 1936 and 1938 but not published until 1989, from posthumous papers, and which bears the subtitle “On the Event or Eventas-Appropriation” (Vom Ereignis). There are several English-language translations of “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Among them: by Richard Hofstadter, in Poetry, Language, Thought; and by Young and Haynes, in Off the Beaten Track. 15. Identity and Difference, 30. [The German word gehören, “belong,” includes the root of the verb hören, “to hear.” In this and the following phrases, Heidegger is exploiting similar apparent verbal clues.—trans.] 16. An-spruch, literally, “saying to.”—trans. 17. Identity and Difference, 30. 18. Gesamtausgabe, 5:74; Off the Beaten Track, 55. 19. Gesamtausgabe, 10:71; Principle of Reason, 48. This bars the way to any transcendentalphilosophical explication of the occurrence of truth. The undisclosedness of being is not founded exclusively in the subjectivity of the subject. 20. Gesamtausgabe, 10:70; Principle of Reason, 47. 21. Gesamtausgabe, 10:72; Principle of Reason, 48. 22. Entsprechen, like its English equivalent “correspond,” is composed of a verb for speaking and a prefix.—trans. 23. Heidegger, Was ist das—die Philosophie? (published by Neske), 32; Was ist das—die Philosophie? (published by New College and University Press), 68–69.

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[Stimme des Seins] . . . determines and bespeaks [be-stimmt] our corresponding.”24 The correspondence has occurred as it is be-spoken and determined by the soundless voice of being. The at-tunement (Ge-stimmtheit) of perception corresponds to this determination and be-speaking (Be-stimmtheit).25 “Correspondence is necessarily and always, not merely accidentally and sometimes, something attuned.”26 In place of voice, address, and the claim of being, Heidegger sometimes says simply: “Language speaks.”27 Being is “the soundless,”28 silence; the speaking of language (i.e., of being) is the “ringing of silence.”29 Accordingly, cor-respondence (Ent-sprechen) is a “listening to language.”30 These words are not an expression of linguistic affectation but are chosen in light of the uniqueness of the human relation to being and the nonobjective nature of being. As Heidegger remarks in the postscript to the artwork essay, being bespeaks openness, “truth as unconcealment of beings,” which may never occur as a result of human beings, but also does not occur without them.31 In the relation of being (truth, openness) and Dasein, what is at stake is not a relation between two objects but rather the occurrence, or, as Heidegger says, “happening,” of clearing (Lichtungsgeschehen), through which being (including ourselves) is first given altogether, and through which we are open to it, so that we can relate to everything that is, in whatsoever way it exists. This happening makes possible the “becoming-perceptible-at-all” (Überhaupt-zum-Vorscheinkommen)32 of beings, it opens the “time-latitude [Zeitspielraum]33 . . . within which beings can appear.”34 The event of this relation is thus not to be con24. The German language provides Heidegger with a suggestive common root for Stimme (voice) and Bestimmung (determination or definition). There is no equivalent coincidence in English. The same root is found in Stimmung (mood or attunement, as in a tuning fork, among other things; as well as Zustimmung, agreement).—trans. 25. “To hear the soundless requires a sense of hearing that each of us has and none of us uses rightly. This sense of hearing is connected not to the ear but directly to man’s belonging [Zusammengehörigkeit] to that toward which his essence is attuned [gestimmt]. Man remains at-tuned [ge-stimmt] toward that from which his essence is determined [be-stimmt]. In the at-tunement [Be-stimmung], man is struck and called by a voice that sounds all the more purely the more noiselessly it rings through the sounding.” Gesamtausgabe, 10:75; Principle of Reason, 50. 26. Heidegger, Was ist das—die Philosophie? (Neske), 36; Was ist das—die Philosophie? (New College and University Press), 76–77. 27. Gesamtausgabe 12:10; On the Way to Language, 33. 28. Gesamtausgabe, 10:75; Principle of Reason, 50. 29. Gesamtausgabe, 12:7, 205, 241; On the Way to Language, 30, 215, 252, also 108. 30. Gesamtausgabe, 12:243; On the Way to Language, 255, also 124 (“the listening to language”). 31. Gesamtausgabe, 5:74; Off the Beaten Track, 55. 32. Literally, “coming to shine forth at all.”—trans. 33. Zeitspielraum is compounded of the German words for “time,” “play,” and “space.” Spielraum means the latitude that provides flexibility. It could also be literally translated as “time-play-space.”—trans. 34. Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, 10:91; Principle of Reason, 62.

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fused with an occurrence that can be dated. It is not the case that on the one side there is Dasein and on the other being, so that there results the problem of how Dasein could be transposed into an understanding relation to being. Rather, Dasein can always only discover itself as already understanding being. The mutual connection of being and human existence must not be confused with a subject-object relation (the latter can exist only on the basis of the mutual connection), because being is not beings, is “never object, never a thing that can be presented or put forward [Vor-stellbares].”35 Heidegger is talking not about a relation that follows from the existence of mankind but rather about the relation that originally constituted this existence. It is not that first there is man and then he is addressed, at some point or other, by being; rather, the existence of man consists in the fact “that it is called to respond [beansprucht] by being.”36 The address occurs in the correspondence; the “ringing of silence” occurs in and as our hearing. One as the other. Thus, he states emphatically, “Man really is this relation of correspondence, and he is only this.”37 In order to emphasize the priority of being in this at-once of address and correspondence, Heidegger says that the correspondence of being is “made to occur” (ereignet) and vouchsafed (gewährt) by being. Thus the hearing of which he speaks may not be confused with the registering of acoustic signals or an “inner perception of sounds.” What is at stake is the hearing that constitutes existence, the one to which man owes his existence. Because man can correspond to the address of being, can hear the ringing of silence—and he can do this because his hearing is made to occur and vouchsafed by being—he can perceive, with his ear, something ringing, sounding, resounding as this or that. Human perception is always a having made present of this “there” as such. Therefore, man remains a hearer, even if he has gone deaf. It is worth reflecting on the fact that Heidegger conceived the difference between the hearing that constitutes existence and the hearing that perceives it—the latter being grounded in the former—by drawing on the example of a composer, the deaf Beethoven. “We hear, not the ear. We hear, it is true, through the ear, but not with the ear. If, therefore, the human ear becomes blunt, i.e., deaf, it can be that, as the example of Beethoven shows, a man nonetheless still hears, perhaps hears even more and greater things than before.”38 35. Gesamtausgabe, 65:252; Contributions to Philosophy, 178. [Vorstellen normally means to represent—the term that in Hegelian epistemology is customarily translated into English as “to present.” See the chapter on Hegel, note 10.—trans.] 36. Gesamtausgabe, 10:103; Principle of Reason, 69–70. 37. Identity and Difference, 31. 38. Gesamtausgabe, 10:70; Principle of Reason, 47.

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Art and Music The attempt to come up with something like a concept of music in Heidegger is faced with the elementary difficulty that Heidegger almost never expressed himself on this theme, apart from occasional comments (on Wagner’s Ge­ samt­kunstwerk, Stravinsky, and Mozart). In the lecture course on Nietzsche, Heidegger mentions Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner’s elevation of music above all the other arts is, he says, an abandonment of art to mere feeling, produced by his fundamental aesthetic position.39 The comment on Stravinsky (on the Psalm Symphony and Persephone) is couched in general terms and contains nothing specifically musical. Heidegger confesses that both works are “music in the highest sense of the word—works given by the Muses.”40 But he asks himself why they “are no longer [able] to found the place to which they belong.”41 This, however, is a question that has to do with the historicalontological position of art per se, and not only of music. Finally, on the occasion of Mozart’s two hundredth birthday celebration on January 27, 1956, Heidegger remarks that Mozart was “one of the most hearing among the hearers, i.e., is essentially [west] and therefore is still.”42 One would have to say that, like Angelus Silesius, he was “the lute-playing of God.”43 Heidegger did deal intensively and in detail with the phenomenon of art— here the essay “On the Origins of the Work of Art” deserves special mention. Music does not become a separate theme here either, but since the essay is concerned with the nature of art, it illuminates the basic characteristics of all artistic genres. Besides, if a musical work is going to be heard, Heidegger’s thoughts on hearing (Hören), ringing (Verlauten), and sounding (Klingen) must be considered in the context of the question of the nature of language. On this basis, we can attempt to explore the place of music in Heidegger’s thought. Here, the reference in the essay on the work of art to the distinction between the poetic and nonpoetic arts, and the reasons that are given for the exceptional place given to poetry among all of the arts, will occupy a prominent position.44 39. “That Richard Wagner’s attempt had to fail does not lie only in the dominance of music over the other arts. Rather: that music could assume this dominance at all already has its ground in the increasingly aesthetic basic position toward art in general; it is the apprehension and evaluation of art from the state of mere feeling and the increasing barbarization of the state of feeling itself into a mere seething and surging of feeling that has been left to itself.” Gesamtausgabe, 6.1: 87; Nietzsche, 1:87–88. 40. Gesamtausgabe, 13:181 (“Über Igor Strawinsky”). 41. Ibid. 42. Gesamtausgabe, 10:100; Principle of Reason, 67. 43. Ibid. 44. This essay is not the place for a comprehensive interpretation of the essay on the work of art; it can only emphasize those elements that are important for the task at hand.

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The essay on the work of art is concerned with the proper exposition of a question, not with a theory of art.45 “What art may be is one of those questions to which the essay does not give any answers. What appear as answers are instructions for the act of questioning.”46 Only in this sense is the essay on the work of art philosophical in regard to art. Heidegger understands his question about art as preparation for a transformed fundamental position of man in regard to art—one that is no longer determined by aesthetics. Aesthetics determines the nature of art from the vantage point of lived experience. It grasps the work of art as the object of lived experience (Erleben), of the pleasure that is said to produce certain states in the subject. Artistic creation, accordingly, is taken as the expression of lived artistic experience. Heidegger obtains the leading definition of the nature of art by way of the destruction of the ordinary idea of the work of art, as determined by traditional aesthetics. In this aesthetic version, the work of art is first of all a thing that has been made and that, in addition, points to something else (symbol) or says something else (allegory). The artwork is considered to be a two-layered construction consisting of a thing-like infrastructure, which is assumed to be the objective element, and a value-laden layer, a “superstructure, which is assumed to be the element of the artistic.”47 Heidegger destroys this aesthetic interpretation of art by showing that the traditional concepts it mobilizes—the concept of the thing as the bearer of qualities, as unity of a sensually given multiplicity, and as a construct of material and form—are adequate for grasping neither the thingness (Dingsein) of a thing nor the particular being of things that are used as tools or equipment (Zeug). They are even less adequate to the work character (das Werkhafte) of a work of art. In contrast to these methodologically inadequate ways of approaching artworks, the key is to envisage the work of art, not as a thing to which something has been added, but as a work of art. The reality of an artwork can not be determined by anything other than “by that which is at work in the work.”48 The artwork should be determined from within itself and not from the subjectivity of the creative artist or the lingering observer. Using the example of a painting of van Gogh that portrays a pair of shoes, Heidegger shows that the reality of the work of art consists in an event or occurrence of truth (Wahrheitsgeschehen). Truth refers not to the characteristic 45. It states expressly: “The reflections to come approach the mystery of art, the mystery that art itself is. They are far from claiming to solve the mystery. The task at hand is to see the mystery.” Gesamtausgabe, 5:67; Off the Beaten Track, 50. 46. Gesamtausgabe, 5:73; Off the Beaten Track, 55. 47. Gesamtausgabe, 5:24; Off the Beaten Track, 18. 48. Ibid.

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of a judgment (the accuracy of something said) but to the coming to light of a being in that which it is: “the opening up of a being in its being.”49 An initial determination of the essence of art is: “Thus, the essence of art would then be this: the placing itself into the work of the truth of beings.”50 Only from this occurrence of truth can the thingly, material aspect (das Dinghafte) of the work be determined. “Thingly,” in this context, does not merely refer to a bodily object that occupies space but also embraces what is within time (a sound, or tone) but does not take up any space of its own.51 Heidegger terms the thingly aspect of the work that is determined by its existence as a work—what is ordinarily called the work’s material—the earthly (das Erdhafte) or the earth (die Erde).52 As the examples of a building (a Greek temple) and a poem (Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s “The Roman Fountain” (“Der römische Brunnen”) show, the work of art is not the expression of artistic experience, nor does it reproduce or imitate something or represent the general essence of something. Rather, a work of art opens up a world (Welt) and reveals within it the essence of the materiality in which this world is collected into a gestalt. The work of art possesses the mode of being of an object that exists not as a “standing against” (Gegenstehen) the world53 but rather as a “standing in itself ” (Insichstehen). It rests in itself. Its “standing in itself ”54 embraces “the erecting [Aufstellen] of a world and the producing [Herstellen] of the earth.” Aufstellen and herstellen are the technical terms for the occurrence of truth in the artwork. Heidegger calls the “opposition of world and earth” their “struggle” (Streit).55 Only in the work of art is a world “erected” and the earth “produced,” and only where, as in the artwork, a world is produced does the peculiarity of material stuff come to light. The work of art opens up a world in its own, i.e., in an incomparable manner. The various artistic genres differ from each other in the way the unity of world and earth is carried out in the works. 49. Ibid. 50. Gesamtausgabe, 5:21; Off the Beaten Track, 15–16. 51. “The work of architecture is in the stone. The carving is in the wood. The painting is in the paint. The work of language is in the sound. The work of music is in the tone.” Gesamtausgabe, 5:4; Off the Beaten Track, 3. 52. That from which the work of art derives its existence is only one of the two meanings of “earth” (Erde): “In the context of the Greek temple the earth was the multiplicitous natural being as a whole, in the midst of which an artwork is standing. . . . We must distinguish between the earth as the homely ground in whose midst the temple stands, and the earth as that from which, in each case, an artwork comes into being.” Herrmann, Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst, 193. 53. The word Gegenstehen, “standing against,” is a Heideggerian neologism created from the German word for object, Gegenstand, which can be parsed as “stand against.”—trans. 54. Gesamtausgabe, 5:34; Off the Beaten Track, 26. 55. Ibid.

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World means neither the sum of what is ready to hand nor the product of subjective (everyday or artistic) imagination, but a qualitatively determined space of presence, the historically changing and history-founding openness of being. World as the historically determined form of the address of being allows beings to appear; therefore, it is not itself being-that-is-appearing. Expressed from the perspective of beings, it is that which is not an object (das Ungegenständliche).56 Where world no longer determines human life and loses its power to make history, and it comes to the “withdrawal and collapse of the world” (Weltentzug und Weltzerfall),57 the work of art loses its “standing in itself ” and becomes an object—whether of art history, art as a profession, art appreciation, or the art business.58 What is meant by “producing” (Herstellen) becomes clear when it is contrasted with other forms of dealing with material. In the bringing forth of an object of common use, the earth is used up in its use. Artistic production also needs to have its element, but in this using the latter is not used up, but rather bodied forth in its innermost possibility. What colors are, we first grasp in a painting; what tones and sounds are, in a work of music; what words are, in a work of spoken or written language. Heidegger speaks of a “putting itself back” (sich-Zurückstellen) of the work into the earth.59 In this way, in the work of art, the earth is revealed as earth. “The work moves and holds earth itself in the openness of a world. The work lets the earth be an earth.”60 What earth is, as earth, eludes explanation, in principle. With the analysis of colors or sounds as numerically quantifiable vibrations, color disappears as color, sound as sound. The heaviness of a stone vanishes when its weight is calculated; earth shows itself as what closes itself off (das Sich-Verschliessende). And precisely this fundamental characteristic is revealed in the work of art. “To produce the earth means: to bring it into the open as that which closes itself off.”61 56. “World is not just the collection of everything present-at-hand, of countable or countless things. But world is also not just an imagined frame placed in front of the sum of everything present-at-hand. ‘World worlds’ [Welt weltet]; it partakes of being to a greater extent than the things that are graspable and perceptible, among which we believe ourselves to be at home. World is that which is always not objective, to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death, blessing and curse hold us entranced [entrückt] into being.” Gesamtausgabe, 5:30 f.; Off the Beaten Track, 23. If one restricts the little word “is” to beings, then one cannot say that the world “is”—which is why Heidegger says that world “worlds”; but it is also not a fiction—rather it “partakes of being to a greater extent than what is graspable and perceptible.” 57. Gesamtausgabe, 5:26; Off the Beaten Track, 19. 58. Ibid. 59. Gesamtausgabe, 5:32; Off the Beaten Track, 24. [The verb sich zurückstellen can also mean to take a back seat, to withdraw modestly in favor of someone or something else.—trans.] 60. Ibid. 61. Gesamtausgabe, 5:33; Off the Beaten Track, 25.

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The truth of art is admittedly only one way in which truth can occur. Other ways of the occurrence of truth are, for example, the nearness of the divine, “the deed that founds sovereignty,” “the essential sacrifice,” or “the questioning of the thinker.”62 Truth (unconcealment [Unverborgenheit}) does not mean empty openness. For disclosure (Entbergung) occurs only as a countermove to concealment (Verborgenheit). Unconcealment reigns as “primal struggle” (Urstreit)63 between clearing (Lichtung) and concealing (Verbergung). In the work of art, it has the form of the struggle between world and earth. This means not only that the “material” that is characteristic of the work of art resists any explanation but also that the work of art is of an unfathomable depth and that we are never able to get to the bottom of it. Unconcealment is not free-floating. It is always an openness of something open (von Offenem). Heidegger speaks of a “self-establishment of openness into the open” (Sicheinrichten der Offenheit ins Offene).64 And because unconcealment never occurs without human beings, a thing that is created by humans can also be a place where truth occurs. “Because it belongs to the essence of truth to establish itself in beings [das Seiende], in order, in this way, to become truth for the first time, therefore there is also, in the essence of truth, the pull [Zug] toward the work as an exceptional possibility of truth to be, itself, a being amidst beings.”65 This formulation derives from Heidegger’s thought regarding events and events-as-appropriation, and is ambiguous. It means both that it is truth that inserts itself into the work (truth as being’s address), and also that it is inserted into the work—in the mode of creating and conserving. For the address occurs as correspondence.66 The creation and perception of a work of art are also to be understood from the perspective of the occurrence of truth that is particular to art. Creation is not a specific kind of making, nor is the perception of art a specific kind of lived experience. To create means to bring forth beings in such a way that a new world is opened up that belongs to them and in which they simultane62. Gesamtausgabe, 5:49; Off the Beaten Track, 37. 63. Gesamtausgabe, 5:42; Off the Beaten Track, 31. 64. Gesamtausgabe, 5:48; Off the Beaten Track, 36. 65. Gesamtausgabe, 5:50; Off the Beaten Track, 37. [Zug has many meanings, including “characteristic” or “trait.” Thus the “pull” of truth is also a characteristic of truth itself.—trans.] 66. “In the title ‘The Putting-to-Work of Truth in the Work’ [Ins-Werk-setzen der Wahrheit], which leaves undetermined but determinable who or what is doing the ‘putting-to-work,’ and in what way, the relation of being and human beings is concealed, which relation even in this version is thought of as unfitting [ungemäss]—a worrying difficulty that has been clear to me since Being and Time.” Gesamtausgabe, 5:74; Off the Beaten Track, 55.

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ously show themselves. A work of art is not a thing that has been made, which inserts itself into an already unconcealed world. Rather, it is a thing or being that, itself, opens up the space of its appearance. It is a truth that has been positioned in its gestalt (Festgestelltsein der Wahrheit in die Gestalt).67 With the work of art, a space of presence is opened up that has never before existed in just this way, a space in which everything appears in a new light, “everything is other than otherwise” (alles anders ist wie sonst).68 The work of art lets us experience “that unconcealment of being has taken place here and is taking place as what has happened here.”69 What is astonishing is that something like this occurs—Heidegger draws a strict line of demarcation between this astonishment and the admiration for any kind of achievement. It is not the achievement that is astonishing but the occurrence of truth that the artist has the honor of bringing to fulfillment and that he serves. This bringing to fulfillment (Vollbringen) is “rather a receiving [Empfangen] and deriving [Entnehmen] within the relation to unconcealment.”70 Something analogous is true of the perceiving (Vernehmen), the conservation (Bewahrung) of the work.71 The work remains real only as long as it finds individuals who conserve it, who can correspond to what is astonishing in its truth—which is something quite different from the “discriminating connoisseurship of formal aspects of the work, its qualities and charms taken in themselves.”72 The fundamental character of both creating and conserving is a projection, or draft (Entwurf).73 What this means is not an idea emerging from artistic imagination or an artistic thought that is to be realized or imitated. If this were the case, creation and conservation would be twisted into the mere construction or employment of a useful object. “Projection” (Entwurf), rather, refers to the structural aspect of an event that was mentioned above and that Heidegger now characterizes as poetic creation (Dichten). This move intends two meanings. First, it refers to the newness of the occurrence of truth in art, 67. Gesamtausgabe, 5:51; Off the Beaten Track, 38. [Once again, Heidegger is punning. The most common meaning of festgestellt is “ascertained.”—trans.] 68. Gesamtausgabe, 5:59; Off the Beaten Track, 43–44. 69. Gesamtausgabe, 5:53; Off the Beaten Track, 39. 70. Gesamtausgabe, 5:50; Off the Beaten Track, 37. 71. Gesamtausgabe, 5:59; Off the Beaten Track, 44. [The German word contains the root wahr, or “true,” and thus suggests that it is the truth of the work that is conserved. This kind of conservation is spiritual and should not be confused with the material conservation of the physical work.—trans.] 72. Gesamtausgabe, 5:55 f.; Off the Beaten Track, 41. “Conservation of the work means: standing in the openness of beings that has taken place in the work.” Gesamtausgabe, 5:59; Off the Beaten Track, 43. 73. The German word Entwurf is related to the act of throwing, or thrownness, and might perhaps also be conceived as a “thrownness from” something or somewhere. It can also be translated as “plan” or “draft.”—trans.

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its character as something that has never existed before. The truth that is unconcealed in art cannot be derived “from the ready-at-hand [das Vorhandene] and ordinary.”74 Second, it refers to the aspect of allowing-to-occur (Lassen) and receiving that belongs to the process of projecting. Poetic creation allows the “unconcealment of beings that addresses us”75 to arrive, by letting it unfold. The definition of the essence of art thus runs as follows: “Truth as the clearing and concealment of beings occurs in the process of creating it poetically [Dichten]. All art, as an allowing-to-occur of the arrival of the truth of beings, as such, is essentially poetry.”76 This is not to reduce the arts to lyric poetry (Poesie). Music, architecture, painting, and so on are neither versions of nor steps along the way to lyric poetry. The various arts are not different garments clothing an identical content whose actual and adequate form would be lyric poetry. Music, for example, does not become conscious of itself in poetry. Heidegger is concerned not with undoing the autonomy of the various artistic genres but rather with pointing to the linguistic character of all of the arts—the fact that each of the arts claims us and brings the human connection to being into the work in its own, irreducible manner. For Heidegger, however, the irreducibility of the arts does not mean that they are of equal rank. He may state that “lyric poetry [Poesie] is only one mode of clearing and projecting truth, i.e., of poetic creation in this broader sense. However, the work of language, poetic creation [Dichtung] in the narrower sense, has an exceptional place in the whole of the arts.”77 Without a doubt, music is to be considered as belonging to the nonexceptional arts. The reason Heidegger adduces for giving an exceptional place to lyric poetry is his view of the right concept of language. But the way this reason is presented—in the essay on the work of art it is suggested more than it is really explicated in detail—raises doubts about the singular place of lyric poetry among the arts. Heidegger contrasts the right concept of language to the ordinary, metaphysically defined understanding of language. For the latter, language is a means of expression and information, a system of signs. The linguistic sound is seen as a sign for something mental, which in turn is seen as a sign for things or for a content. The linguistic sound is the sensual bearer of a spiritual meaning. In this way, however, spoken, sounding language is not conceived from the perspective of living language, but, on the contrary, language acts are perceived from the perspective of an unclear concept of sound (sound as the sensual 74. Gesamtausgabe, 5:59; Off the Beaten Track, 43. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Gesamtausgabe, 5:60f.; Off the Beaten Track, 45.

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bearer of a mental meaning). But just as the “material” aspect of a work of art must be conceived from the starting point of its reality as a work of art, so the linguistic sound must be conceived from the perspective of living speech. In living speech, however, we are never dealing with a sensual bearer of mental meanings, but are immediately in the presence of whatever is being spoken of or about. The spoken word is not a presentation of beings that are already unconcealed and to which an auditory sign has been attached. Rather, what takes place in speaking is the openness of beings: “Language brings beings, as beings, into the open for the very first time”;78 it brings “being into word, for the first time, and into appearance.”79 In the sounds of our language we bring to fulfillment the truth of beings. And in the melody and rhythm of language the attunement of the world relation, within which being appears, makes itself known. By conceiving such bringing to fulfillment as the drafting of poetic creation, Heidegger arrives at the right concept of language: “Language itself is poetic creation [Dichtung] in the essential sense.”80 Lyric poetry deserves an exceptional place within the arts because its element is the word itself. Since this argument is of essential significance for the concept of music that we must explore, I cite it in full: “Language itself is poetic creation in the essential sense. But because language is that coming-topass [Geschehnis] in which, in each case, being, as being, first opens itself to humans, therefore lyric poetry, poetry in the narrower sense, is the original poetry in the essential sense. . . . Building and picturing [Bauen und Bilden], in contrast, have always occurred and only occur within the openness of saying and naming. They are governed and led by the latter. Hence they remain individual ways and means by which truth erects itself in the work. They are an always individual poetic creation within the clearing of beings, which has always already taken place, unawares, in language.”81 There can be no doubt that for Heidegger this latter statement also applies to music.82 But what can it mean that the nonpoetic arts are poetic creation within the clearing that has already taken place, unnoticed, in language? In referring back to the right concept of language, Heidegger is actually operating with a threefold concept of “poetic creation” (Dichtung). First, every human language is already poetic creation (“poetic creation in the essential sense”), then every art is poetic creation (“poetic creation in the broader 78. Gesamtausgabe, 5:61; Off the Beaten Track, 46. 79. Ibid.: “Where no language is essentially [west], as in stones, plants, and animals, there is also no openness of being and hence no openness of nonbeing and the void.” 80. Gesamtausgabe, 5:62; Off the Beaten Track, 46. 81. Ibid. 82. Where Heidegger rejects the misunderstanding of a reduction of all the arts to lyric poetry, he specifically mentions the “art of tones” (music). Gesamtausgabe, 5:60; Off the Beaten Track, 45.

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sense”), and finally poetic creation is the term applied to works of linguistic art (“poetic creation in the narrower sense,” “the most original poetic creation, in the essential sense”). What does this differentiation accomplish, and what is it unable to accomplish? For one thing, it allows us to gain insight into the difference between ordinary and poetic language. What happens unnoticed in the one is purposefully accomplished in the other. In ordinary language, the clearing has already taken place, unawares; in other words, in ordinary speaking we do not attend to the essence of language (i.e., poetic creation in the essential sense). We don’t stop to consider the essential aspects of language, but only those things of and about which someone is speaking. We think about what is opened up in language but not the openness of this open thing that is coming to pass as language. “Inside” the clearing, then, means the same as “the clearing is not explicitly projected.” It is explicitly projected, on the other hand, where the essence of language itself—and that always means the inseparability of being and human beings—is made thematic. But here, projecting something explicitly (eigens entwerfen) does not mean to posit (setzen) the clearing for the very first time, because any making thematic of the clearing is made possible only by its previous presence. The essence of language can be made thematic both in thought (philosophizing) and in works of linguistic art.83 If the occurrence of clearing is expressed in language in a poetic manner, language (poetic creation in the essential sense) is created poetically. The result is “the most original [ursprünglichste] poetry in the essential sense.” In this sense, Hölderlin, for Heidegger, is the poet of poetry. However, the difference between the poetic and the nonpoetic arts cannot be based on the idea that the latter “move within the clearing of beings . . . that has already taken place, unnoticed, in language”—something that, it will be recalled, is not supposed to be the case with lyric poetry. In this way, namely, it is not only music that gets left behind. The difference between art and being at home within ordinary language would also be leveled. That the nonpoetic arts—it is interesting that Heidegger mentions only “building and picturing”—move only “within the clearing” cannot mean that they do not explicitly project the clearing. In this case they would not be art. The nonpoetic arts also explicitly project the clearing and do not merely move within it. What Heidegger is saying can only mean that building and picturing explicitly reveal something that is already open, i.e., bring it into the light anew, 83. “Between these two, thought and poetic creation, a hidden relationship reigns, because both use and divulge themselves in the service of language, for language. But between the two there is also a gap, for they ‘live on separate mountains.’” Heidegger, Was ist das—die Philosophie? (Neske), 45; Was ist das—die Philosophie? (New College and University Press), 94–95.

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in such a way that this cannot be derived from nonartistic openness. Building and picturing make visible for the first time, in their own way, what and how beings truthfully are. This is made clear by the reference to van Gogh’s painting: “The artwork let us know what the pair of shoes is in truth.”84 The painting does not imitate something that is at hand but instead makes visible for the first time. To reduce the painting to “merely a better illustration”85 would be to misunderstand it. “Rather, the thingness of the thing first comes explicitly to light through the work and only [!] in the work.”86 Regarding a work of architecture, the Greek temple, Heidegger also wrote that it, “in its standing there, first gives to things their face, and to human beings the first view of themselves.”87 But if all the arts actually project truth, then the difference between poetry and architecture or picturing must be determined differently—namely, in such a way that it has to do with the actual projecting itself and what is projected within it. At this point, we must recall Heidegger’s comment that art is neither a cultural achievement nor an appearance of the spirit but belongs to events-asappropriation (Ereignis);88 and that talk of the “self-establishment of the truth, i.e.. of being, in beings” touches on “the dubiety of ontological difference.”89 For building and picturing, this means that they correspond “to the unconcealment that is thrown toward us,”90 in such a way that in the process what is brought to fulfillment (vollbracht)—which is also what is projected—is in the foreground: the new world in which being becomes present in a way that it never was before. What is said here applies to all the arts that have spatiotemporal being as their element and in which the world gathers in a spatiotemporal gestalt. (Heidegger’s examples, let us remember, were metal, stone, paint, wood.) Now, the self-establishment of truth in beings is a matter of the coming to pass of ontological difference. Since this is not a process that is objectively observable, it must be said that truth has always established itself in beings. For it is not the case that the truth of being exists first, on the one hand, and establishes itself in beings only over time; rather, beings are solely in and as the arrival of being.91 Arts like building and picturing insert the “event-as-appropriation 84. Gesamtausgabe, 5:21; Off the Beaten Track, 15. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid. 87. Gesamtausgabe, 5:29; Off the Beaten Track, 23. 88. Gesamtausgabe, 5:73; Off the Beaten Track, 55. 89. Ibid. 90. Gesamtausgabe, 5:59 f.; Off the Beaten Track, 43. 91. “The being of beings means: being that is beings. The ‘is’ speaks transitively here, passing over. Here being is essentially [west] in the mode of a transition to beings. However, being does not pass over to beings leaving its place behind, as if beings, previously without being, could be approached by it for the first time.” Identity and Difference, 64.

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that has occurred” (in coming to pass) of ontological difference into the work. Hence the “resting in itself ” of the work,92 where resting means not the stopping but the perfection of movement, coming to pass as gestalt—“the inmost gathering of movement, hence the highest degree of movement.”93 This opens the space of an opposing being (eines Gegenübers)94 that calls for observing and lingering there. In lyric poetry, the situation is different. If, according to Heidegger, it is not only meant to move within the clearing, then in light of the idea of the event-as-appropriation this means: it corresponds (entspricht) to the address of being in such a way that it is not so much what is fulfilled in the correspondence as, rather, the correspondence itself, in its nonobjectivity, that defines the occurrence of truth in the work. But correspondence is a projection in which the event-as-appropriation is already fulfilled by being. And here, precisely, we can locate the place of music in Heidegger’s thought. For now two types of art are differentiated: art that accentuates the correspondence itself (and with it, articulated understanding), and art that accentuates the having come to pass of the correspondence as event-and-appropriation. The one is lyric poetry, the other music. Differentiation is not separation but rather original oneness. The two include each other; both have something purely temporal (i.e., that does not take up any space of its own) as their element: sound, which becomes the signifying word in the first case and the resounding tone in the other. When the address of being, upon being heard, is articulated into a whole of meanings, these sound as words.95 The at-tunement of hearing by means of this address and hence the tuning of the world relation (Weltbezug) are audible as sound and tone. Inclusion means not a post hoc synthesis of individually preexisting artistic genres (as if poetry depended on being set to music, and music on a link to words), but rather the original unity and mutual belonging together of the lyrical and the musical. As lyric poetry has a basic pull and fundamental characteristic (Grundzug) that tends toward the musical, so music has a basic pull and fundamental character that tends toward poetry. The musical in poetry lies in the word’s sound and the tone’s accent;96 the poetic in music, in the 92. Gesamtausgabe, 5:45; Off the Beaten Track, 34. 93. Gesamtausgabe, 5:34f.; Off the Beaten Track, 26f. 94. Also translated, awkwardly, as “being-as-across” or “over-against.”—trans. 95. “Words grow toward the meanings. It is not that word-things are provided with meanings.” Gesamtausgabe, 2:214; Being and Time, 151. 96. Thus he writes: “The construction of human speech can only be the mode (melos) in which the speaking of language, the ringing of the silence of difference, the silence that belongs to mortal beings through the command of difference, takes place [vereignet]” (Gesamtausgabe, 12:29). “That language sounds and rings and resounds, floats and quivers, is peculiar to it in the same measure as that its

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articulation and rhythm of its sounds. (Based on this mutual inclusiveness it is possible to speak accurately, in music, of a statement, a phrase, a response, etc.) In both artworks, the essence of human beings is unconcealed in its belonging to nonobjective being, the event-as-appropriation as such. With this—in contradiction to Heidegger’s own explicit statements—both poetry and music would deserve “an exceptional place in the whole of the arts.”97 Music puts the event-as-appropriation of the correspondence into the work in an emphatic (betont)98 manner as something that has occurred—in an emphatic way, because this also occurs in poetry (in the form in which words are joined together, the way they sound and ring), albeit with the opposite valence. It can do this because it moves within the element of pure tone. Tones bring about unconcealment, but in contrast to sounding words, they do not signify. They do not, like sounding speech, have something that they are about. (Thus it is possible to speak about language but not to make music about music.) That tones are free of signification is not a lack, but distinguishes them. Musical tones are not word-sounds that have emptied themselves of their meaning and made themselves independent as sounds. Thus music is not exhausted in song that is combined with words, but has additional possibilities in store as pure music. The musical tones are distinctive because, based on their freedom from signification, they allow the nonobjectivity and nondisposability of the nonobjective to be present. In music—as we may say in light of the idea of the event-as-appropriation—being’s claim on human beings and its use of human beings are put to work, in the work. Music is the art of the at-tunement of the human being by being and therefore the art of the tuning of man’s world relation. And because, in music, the openness of man to the ringing of silence is put into the work purely as openness, correspondence in the form of creating (and, in its way, of conserving) must become pure hearing. Thus Heidegger could say of Mozart that among those who hear he was one of the most hearing (der Hörendsten einer unter den Hörenden).

spokenness makes sense. But our experience of this peculiarity is as yet very clumsy, because everywhere metaphysical-technical explanation interferes and drives us out of the appropriate state of mind [Gesinnung]” (Gesamtausgabe, 12:193). [The word Heidegger uses for accent is Tonfall, literally the falling of a tone. It also refers to dialect.—trans.] 97. Gesamtausgabe, 5:61; Off the Beaten Track, 46. When Heidegger, in the context of his interpretations of Hölderlin, speaks of song as the highest poetry, what he means is not a work of music but a work of language, of literature; he is not referring to the equally original nature of lyric poetry and music. 98. The German word betont, which derives from Ton or “tone,” is especially suggestive here.—trans.

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Reception In light of the paucity of explicit textual references, it is not surprising that the musicological reception of Heidegger is extremely modest—this is not the place to consider whether a phobia against philosophy may also play a role. Hartmut Flechsig99 is of the opinion that the “course of music, to the extent that it is seen as a structure,” can be seen as consonant with Heidegger’s reflections on the essence of art as the origin of the artwork.100 He mentions the tense, dynamic contradiction “between opening and embracing, between creating and conserving, world and earth” but is of the opinion that a “musicological investigation of this interplay [must] be carried out with restraint”101 and comes to the conclusion that these pairs of concepts may remain “incitements to our own questioning” but cannot be broadened into a “theory of musical structure.”102 Volker Kalisch would like to see in Heidegger “more musicological attentiveness.”103 He interprets Heidegger’s epistolary mention of Stravinsky104 in light of the essay on the work of art, in the interest of unfolding Heidegger’s analysis of artistic creation more precisely “in regard to the explanatory value of a specific artistic activity.”105 He points specifically to the artwork, “and in particular fashion to the musical work,” as a “site of the occurrence of clearing”106 and investigates Heidegger’s question as to why these works (the reference is to Stravinsky’s Psalm Symphony and his melodrama Persephone, after the text by André Gide) “are no longer able to found the place to which they belong,” even though they are “music in the highest sense of the word—works given by the Muses.” The question, for Kalisch, “signifies not a limitation of Stravinsky’s art” but rather “the fatal [geschickhaft] determination of art as such.”107 The works that are mentioned are probably not able to found the place to which they belong because they correspond to the destiny of being, which is retreating.108 Eduardo Marx, after locating music in Heidegger’s thought, attempts a conversation between thinking and “a music of poets and thinkers, which is defined as a ‘wordless song’”; in other words, music “in the era of the deus absconditus.”109 The import of such a con99. Flechsig, “Anstösse Heideggers zum Selbstverständnis in der Musikwissenschaft,” 26–30. 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., 30. 103. Kalisch, “. . . von den Musen geschenkte Werke,” 718. 104. Gesamtausgabe, 13:181 (“Über Igor Strawinsky”). 105. Kalish, “. von den Musen geschenkte Werke,” 722. 106. Ibid., 722 ff. 107. Gesamtausgabe, 13: 181 (“Über Igor Strawinsky”). 108. Kalisch, “. . . von den Musen geschenkte Werke,” 726. 109. Marx, Heidegger und der Ort der Musik, 71.

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versation, which Heidegger never had, is that “one listens for what is essential in this musical work, and that the self-same thing [das Selbe] that is heard is the same as the saying [das Sagen] that Heidegger, for his part, sketched out in his thinking about writing poetry and ‘Seyn.’”110 As an example of such a musical work, Marx mentions Beethoven’s piano sonata op. 31, no. 2. Following this “conversation” between Beethoven’s music and thinking, Marx develops the outlines of a musical history based on the idea of a history of being (Seins­ geschichte). In Beethoven’s music, the work corresponds, “on its own, to what is essential in what thinking thinks.”111 In romanticism, what is sung is “the futility of remaining immediately within one’s own, which always necessarily accompanies song at its inception.”112 As the pathos of “lament, grief, agony, rupture” ultimately gives way to renunciation, because the “song that doesn’t ‘send’ itself abroad . . . proves to be untrue and unsustainable . . . , the majorminor tonality” is threatened with collapse.113 The new music is based on “the utter falling silent, but also the forgetting, of the voice of being, a ‘soundless’ silence,” which results in a music without at-tunement. This kind of outline of the history of being is itself historical and cannot claim to apply to all music, but only to be “able to visualize the event of Western music in a particular respect, namely, with regard to its origin [ursprünglich].”114

References

Heidegger’s Works Basic Writings: From “Being and Time (1927)” to “The Task of Thinking (1964).” Trans. and ed. David Farrell Krell. Rev. ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Includes “The Origin of the Work of Art” (“Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes”), 139–212; “The Way to Language” (“Unterwegs zur Sprache”), 393–426. Being and Time: A Translation of “Sein und Zeit.” Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning. [Translation of Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis).] Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. The Essence of Truth: On “Plato’s Cave Allegory” and “Theaetetus.” [Translation of Vom Wesen der Wahrheit.] Trans. Ted Sadler. London: Continuum, 2005. Gesamtausgabe. 102 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976–. Vol. 2: Sein und Zeit. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Vol. 3: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., 108. 112. Ibid., 110. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid., 111.

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Vol. 5: Holzwege. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Includes: “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.” Vol. 6.1: Nietzsche I. Ed. Brigitte Schillbach. Vol. 6.2: Nietzsche II. Ed. Brigitte Schillbach. Vol. 8: Was heißt Denken. Ed. Paola-Ludovika Coriando. Vol. 9: Wegmarken. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Includes “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” and “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit.” Vol. 10: Der Satz vom Grund. Ed. Petra Jaeger. Vol. 11: Identität und Differenz. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Vol. 12: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Vol. 13: Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. Ed. Hermann Heidegger. Vol. 14: Zur Sache des Denkens. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Vol. 40: Einführung in die Metaphysik. Ed. Petra Jaeger. Vol. 41: Die Frage nach dem Ding: Zu Kants Lehre von den tranzendentalen Grundsätzen. Ed. Petra Jaeger. Vol. 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrrmann. Identity and Difference. [Translation of Identität und Differenz.] Trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Rpt., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. An Introduction to Metaphysics. [Translation of Einführung in die Metaphysik.] Trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. [Translation of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik.] Trans. Richard Taft. 5th ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two. Trans. David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Originally published San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979.Vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art; vol. 2: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Off the Beaten Track. [Translation of Holzwege.] Ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. On the Way to Language. [Translation of Unterwegs zur Sprache.] Trans. Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Rpt., San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982. On Time and Being. [Translations of Sein und Zeit and Zur Sache des Denkens.] Trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” [Translation of “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.”] In Off the Beaten Track, 1–56; and in Poetry, Language, Thought, 15–86. Pathmarks. [Translation of Wegmarken.] Trans. and ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth.” [Translation of “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit.”] In Pathmarks, 155–82. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Includes “The Origin of the Work of Art.” The Principle of Reason. [Translation of Satz vom Grund.] Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Was ist das—die Philosophie? Pfullingen: Neske, 1956. Was ist das—die Philosophie? Trans. William Klubach and Jean T. Wilde. New Haven: New College and University Press, 1956. “The Way to Language.” [Translation of Unterwegs zur Sprache.] In Basic Writings, 393–426. What Is a Thing? [Translation of Die Frage nach dem Ding.] Trans. W. B. Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967. What Is Called Thinking. [Translation of Was heißt Denken.] Trans. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Zur Sache des Denkens. Tübingen: Niemeier, 1969.

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General Literature Braig, Carl. Vom Sein: Abriß der Ontologie. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1896. Herrmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm von. Heideggers Philosophie der Kunst: Eine systematische Interpretation der Holzwege-Abhandlung “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.” 2nd ed. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994. Mulhall, Stephen, ed. Martin Heidegger. International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Young, Julian. Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Musical Literature Flechsig, Hartmut. “Anstösse Heideggers zum Selbstverständnis in der Musikwissenschaft.” Die Musikforschung 30 (1977): 26–30. Kalisch, Volker. “. . . von den Musen geschenkte Werke: Heidegger und Strawinsky.” In Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal, 718–26. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1995. Marx, Eduardo. Heidegger und der Ort der Musik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998.

Gadamer Be at e Regi na S uchl a

Brief Biography Hans-Georg Gadamer was born on February 11, 1900, lived through the entire twentieth century, experienced its final three quarters as a philosopher, and passed away at the beginning of the twenty-first century, on March 13, 2002, at the advanced age of 102. As a young man he was influenced by Richard Hönigswald and Nicolai Hartmann. He earned his doctorate in 1922 as a student of Nicolai Hartmann in Marburg and in 1923 fell under Martin Heidegger’s influence, which molded his thinking and had a long-lasting impact on him. In Marburg, he studied classical philology with Paul Friedländer, completing his study and passing the state examination in 1927. Shortly thereafter, in 1928/29, he completed his second doctorate and joined the faculty in Marburg, where he taught as a lecturer before earning the title of professor in 1937. In 1938, he was offered a position in Leipzig, where he was finally named to the chair in philosophy in 1939. Finally, by way of Frankfurt am Main, he found a permanent academic home and center of activity in Heidelberg in 1949, as the successor to Karl Jaspers. It was not until eleven years later, in 1960, that be published his major work Truth and Method (Wahrheit und . See Gadamer’s autobiographical description in the appendix volume to Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method) in Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 479–508. See also Figal, Grondin, and Schmidt, Hermeneutische Wege; and Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer.

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Methode), in which he developed a long-lived and powerfully influential theory of philosophical hermeneutics. In 1968, he became emeritus. Gadamer was honored with numerous prizes, among them the Reuchlin Prize of the City of Pforzheim and the Hegel Prize of the City of Stuttgart. He was admitted to several academies, including the Academies of Science of Saxony, Heidelberg, Athens, Rome, Boston, Brussels, Turin, and Budapest, as well as the Darmstadt Academy for Language and Poetry.

Philosophy and Art The culmination of Gadamer’s philosophy is his answer to the question of the method of understanding. His response, drawing on Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and especially Heidegger—is that it lies in hermeneutics as the universal means of access to understanding. According to Gadamer, we must acknowledge not only the “fore-understanding” (Vorverständnis—Heidegger) but also the “derivativeness” or historicity (Abkünftigkeit) that characterizes human existence, which ultimately not only moves forward toward what lies ahead but also emerges from what has come before. Thus human existence points not only forward to the future but also backward to the past. Understanding is thus always linked to the inescapable historical contextuality of the understanding individual. History does not belong to us; we belong to it. Thus, according to Gadamer, reflection (Reflexion) is bound up with experience (Erfahrung), fore-understanding, and historical knowledge, and these, in turn, point to the being of man in time. Only the individual who knows that he is not the master of time and of the future, and that humans are historical, finite, and mortal beings, can be said to possess experience in the true sense. In the finite world, man’s capacity as a maker and the self-consciousness of his planning reason reach their limit. It turns out to be an illusion that everything can be undone, that there is always time for everything, and that somehow everything returns. On the contrary, the person who stands and acts within history has the continuous experience that nothing returns. To . On the line of tradition reaching from Schleiermacher via Dilthey and Heidegger to Gadamer, see, for example, Birus, Hermeneutische Positionen: Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer. . Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 1:478–94; 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 219–31. . The translators’ preface to the second, revised edition of the English-language translation of Truth and Method includes an interesting discussion of Gadamer’s use of the terms Erlebnis and Erfahrung, both of which they render as “experience.” To respect the distinction, I generally translate Erlebnis as “lived experience.” In the following, I have occasionally drawn on the earlier version translated by William Glen-Dopel (first published in 1975), despite its infelicities, for example “There-being” for Dasein.— trans. . Gadamer, Truth and Method, 297, 385.

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acknowledge existence does not mean to be conscious of what happens to be present, but to have insight into the limits within which the future is still open for expectation and planning—or, in even more fundamental terms, to be aware that all expectation and planning by mortal beings is finite and limited. Actual experience is thus the experience of one’s own historicity. For Gadamer, the concept of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) contains an ontological statement insofar as it expresses the mode of being (Seinsweise) of humans as standing within history. History’s continuity points back to the mystery of time, which flows past and never comes to a halt, and in which the Now, at the very instant when man identifies it as such, is now already no longer. And yet there are discontinuities, i.e., moments when there is a halt in time’s never-ending forward march—for example, when an event occurs that no one can forget, that can be understood as epochal to the extent that everything that preceded it can be defined as old and everything that followed it as new. An example of an experience like this, “outside of the great, fateful experiences in history,” is the experience of aging or death. Thus, if we were to hear of the death of someone we know, in our consciousness this person’s mode of existence would suddenly change, in that all our knowledge of him would come to a standstill.10 That we humans have a history, i.e., a rise, flowering, and decline, is, however, not the decisive thing. What is decisive for Gadamer is that within this fateful movement we seek to find the meaning of our existence. The power of time, which impels us forward, awakens in us the awareness of our own power over time, by means of which we shape our fate. We ask for a meaning (Sinn) in finitude itself.11 Meaning, however, is linked to understanding, and this, in turn, according to Gadamer, is once again historically contextualized. The thinker’s turn toward a given object therefore leads to the “projection [Entwurf] of an historical horizon.” However, this does not occur by means of a process in which we imagine ourselves as being one with the object. It is not a state of rapture (Entrückung) that transports us to alien worlds totally disconnected from our own. Rather, all the worlds together create a single large, inwardly mobile horizon that, in transcending the limits of the present, embraces the historical depth of our self-consciousness. What is more, the horizon of the present and . Ibid., 385. . Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 135. . Ibid., 2:136–37. . Ibid., 2:139–40. 10. Ibid., 2:140–42. 11. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 23-24.

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the horizon of the past are inseparable, to the extent that without the past the horizon of the present could not be created at all. Understanding, therefore, is always a fusion of horizons, which only appear to exist in themselves, and is always to be conceived as a linking of past and present. In understanding, man enters into authority and tradition: “Understanding itself is to be thought of not so much as an act of subjectivity, but as entering into a process of tradition, in which past and present are continuously mediated in each other.”12 Thus, understanding is ultimately a bridging of the “human or historical gap between spirit and spirit.”13 Since the thinking individual, in the forward march of time, is constantly gathering new experience, new foreknowledge, and new historical knowledge, each fusion of horizons is to be understood as something that is not fixed but merely a step in understanding. But how does this step come about? Only through a controlled entry into the so-called hermeneutic circle, which Gadamer understands as the “interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter, or mediator.”14 Tradition includes material that is at first alien; this opens up the question that is required for any understanding to begin and that therefore has “hermeneutic precedence” (hermeneutischen Vorrang):15 “The essence of the question is the opening up and the holding open of possibilities.”16 The content of the question is established by the history of the influence (Wirkungsgeschichte) of a text or tradition,17 since this determines in advance what will appear to us as worthy of inquiry and as a suitable object for investigation. Were we to take the unmediated phenomenon itself as the whole truth, we would be forgetting half of what is real, or—even more—would be forgetting the whole truth of the phenomenon in question.18 Historical consciousness is thus always interwoven with the history of its influence, which defines the “horizon” (Husserl) of the questioner. Past experience, which can be mined from the tradition, expands the horizon; it is a “communication partner” (Kommunikationspartner).19 To enter imaginatively into a historical horizon is not a purely individual act but always signifies “elevation to a higher level of generality.”20 The hermeneutic art, therefore, is to 12. Gesammelte Werke, 1:309, 310, 311, 295; Truth and Method, 304, 305, 306-7, 290. 13. Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 1. 14. Gesammelte Werke, 1:298; Truth and Method, 293. 15. Gesammelte Werke, 1:368–84; Truth and Method, 362–79. 16. Gesammelte Werke, 1:304; Truth and Method, 299. 17. Glen-Doepel translates Wirkungsgeschichte as “effective-history.” The revised translation, by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, has “history of effect.”— trans. 18. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 300f. 19. Gesammelte Werke, 1:364; Truth and Method, 358. 20. Gesammelte Werke, 1:307–8, 310; Truth and Method, 302–3, 305.

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arrive at the horizon for questioning that is correct for the questions that pose themselves for us in the light of tradition.21 Once the proper horizon for questioning has been identified, the answer is sought in a process in which the act of understanding moves from the meaning of the whole to the part and back again. “The task, moving in concentric circles, is to broaden the unity of the meaning that is understood. The harmony of all the details with the whole is the criterion for judging whether the understanding is correct. The failure to achieve harmony signifies a failure of understanding.”22 However, this is and remains a historical understanding, for which reason hermeneutic reflection can never reach a conclusion. In answering his question about the method of understanding, Gadamer assigns art a “direction-pointing role” (richtungsweisende Rolle). “My fundamental hermeneutic work Truth und Method may have surprised some people, in that the subject of the first part of the book was not—as the subtitle ‘Hermeneutics’ led them to expect—the humanities [Geisteswissenschaften] and related academic fields, but instead art itself. With this, I was being true to my experience as a teacher, which increasingly confirmed that, in truth, interest in the so-called humanities is not confined to academic research, but includes art itself in all of its realms—literature, the visual arts, architecture, music. It is, after all, the arts that as a whole help to govern the metaphysical inheritance of our Western tradition.”23 The direction-pointing role of art, for Gadamer, is also the source of its quasi-paradigmatic function. Thus, he can use art to illustrate the abovementioned building of bridges or fusing of horizons: “In all of its countless variety, art prevails in the long term, even with things that are extremely alien. This demonstrates the absolute ubiquity of art. It is capable of building bridges across barriers and spaces. For us, in the contemporary world, this can perhaps be seen most impressively in music. Here, in a few decades, East Asia has appropriated Mozart and Schubert and the whole of European music so effectively that performers from there are among the leading figures of our musical life. On the other hand, it is well known that Europe has absorbed a great deal of the musical language of the dark continent.” Based on this view of art, he is then able to clarify what he means when he speaks of a fusion of horizons: “Even with the greatest possible cultivation of historical understanding, one will never be able to see the artistic creations of past ages with their own eyes. The preexisting impression, whether religious in origin or a result of our own 21. Truth and Method, 302. 22. Gesammelte Werke, 1:298; Truth and Method, 293. 23. Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 373.

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historical cultivation, always also plays a role.”24 But what, for Gadamer, are “artistic creations” (künstlerische Schöpfungen)? For Gadamer’s understanding of art, three concepts are constitutive: play (Spiel),25 composition (Gebilde),26 and contemporaneity or simultaneity (Gleich­ zeitigkeit). Play is a kind of precondition of every art; hence it is necessary to inquire into its nature. “Play has its own being, independent of the consciousness of those who play. Play is also present, indeed most truly present, where no for-itself of subjectivity limits the horizon and where there are no subjects who are behaving playfully.” It follows that it is not the players who are the subjects of play; rather, it is play that achieves its performance (Darstellung) through the players. In defining the essential nature of play, the “movement of back and forth” is so central that it doesn’t matter who or what carries out this movement. “The movement of play as such has, as it were, no substrate. It is the game that is played or plays itself—no playing subject is retained in it. The play is the execution of the movement, as such.” From this definition follows the “primacy of play over the consciousness of the player.”27 What, then, can be said about the mode of being of play? Play, for Gadamer, obviously represents an order in which the to-and-fro of the game’s activity game occurs as if of its own accord. “The structural order [Ordnungsgefüge] of the game absorbs the player completely, as it were, and relieves him of the burden of initiative, which constitutes the actual effort of existence.” Thus the mode of being of play comes close to the form of movement in nature. This is why nature could actually appear as the model for art, and Friedrich Schlegel could observe: “All the sacred games of art are but distant imitations of the infinite play of the world, the eternally self-composing artwork.” From here it follows, as well, that “all play is a being played,” insofar as “the game becomes the master of the players,” the game “puts the player under its spell, . . . ensnares him in the game, keeps him in play.” The fact that the rules and organization of the game prescribe the way its space is to be filled shows that the goal of the game is its own “self-representation” or “autoperformance” (Selbstdarstellung). 28 “Its mode of being is self-representation.” This, in 24. Ibid., 376–77, 387. 25. In German the word Spiel means both “play” and “game” and is contained in the word for theatrical performance, Schauspiel. This gives Gadamer’s reflections in this section a somewhat different flavor in English than they have in the original German. In the following, “play” and “game” are sometimes used interchangeably.—trans. 26. Glen-Doepel translates Gebilde as “structure.”—trans. 27. Gesammelte Werke, 1:108–10; Truth and Method, 102–5. 28. It is noteworthy that Gadamer uses the terms Selbstdarstellung and Darstellung, which carry overtones of theatrical role-playing.—trans.

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turn, “is a universal aspect of the being of nature.”29 Is this self-representation, then, related to something or someone? According to Gadamer, all representation (Darstellung), in its possibility, is a representation for someone, and this reveals that play, or the game, has a meaningful content that is intended to be understood and that can therefore be separated from the behavior of the player or performer. In this separation, play turns into art, meaning the “transformation (Verwandlung)30 of the game into a composition.” Transformation, in this context, means “that something is suddenly, and as a whole, something else, and that this other thing into which it has been transformed is its true being, in comparison with which its previous being is nil [nichtig]. When we find someone to be ‘as if transformed,’ we mean precisely this, that he has become a different person, as it were.”31 What, then, is a composition, i.e., art? For Gadamer, a composition has its measure in itself; it does not measure itself against anything outside of itself. “Thus, the action of a theater piece is present quite simply as something founded in itself. It no longer allows any comparison with reality, as the secret measure of all reproductive similarity. It is above and beyond such comparison. It is also above and beyond the question of whether all of that is really real, because a higher truth speaks from within it.”32 Here, Gadamer understands truth not ontologically but gnoseologically. The composition mediates cognition, and this is the meaning of the transformation into a composition: “The transformation is transformation into the true.”33 This, according to Gadamer, is what produces the meaning of art. It is a revelation of something concealed. In the game’s self-representation, what is emerges. The transformation into a composition brings to light something that was otherwise constantly concealed and elusive. This is the source of the notion of “so-called reality as what is untransformed, and of art as the sublation [Aufhebung] of this reality into truth.” In regard to the cognition of the true, therefore, “the being of the representation is more than the being of the material that is represented, Homer’s Achilles more than his original.”34 But is what is mediated by art, then, a specific act of cognition?

29. Gesammelte Werke, 1:110–13; Truth and Method, 105–8. 30. Verwandlung is also a metamorphosis.—trans. 31. Gesammelte Werke, 1:114–16; Truth and Method, 108–10. 32. Gesammelte Werke, 1:117; Truth and Method,111. 33. Gesammelte Werke, 1:118; Truth and Method, 112. 34. Gesammelte Werke, 1:118–20; Truth and Method, 112–14.

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According to Gadamer, it is a kind of re-cognition (Wiedererkennen). The question to be asked of an artwork is “how true is it, i.e., to what extent does one recognize and re-cognize in it something, and oneself.” Here re-cognition means “that more is cognized than merely what is [already] known. In recognition, what we [already] know emerges as if by inspiration [Erleuchtung], out of all the contingency and circumstantial variability that determine it, and is grasped in its essential being. It is re-cognized as something.” Thus, cognition of the true is cognition of the essential. Since the essence of the artwork is self-representation, cognition of the artwork is then cognition of its selfrepresentation. This, once again, is encountered only in performance, as music demonstrates most clearly.35 The surplus of cognition that occurs in re-cognition, the bringing forth that is produced by repetition, applies to the audience as well; it contains “within itself the essential relation [Wesensbezug] to everyone for whom the representation” exists. Thus “the audience belongs to it, despite any distancing involved in the act of seeing or listening.” The artwork is “not simply isolatable from the ‘contingency’ of the conditions of access” under which it emerges; it belongs inside the world to which it represents itself. This is especially true of music: “Music must sound.”36 Thus, for Gadamer, it is clear “that the being of art cannot be defined as the object of aesthetic awareness, because, on the contrary, aesthetic behavior is more than it knows about itself. It is a part of representation’s [own] process of being [des Seinsvorganges der Darstellung] and belongs essentially to play, as play.” In this way, the “process of being” of the representation is created by a whole whose constituent parts are things that are imitated (Nachgeahmtes), things that are formed (Gestaltetes), things that are represented (Dargestelltes), and things that are cognized (Erkanntes). This whole demands an “aesthetic nondifferentiation [Nichtunterscheidung],” so that the “double differentiation between poetry and its material, and poetry and its performance” corresponds to a “double nondifferentiation as the unity of the truth,” which is recognized in the play of art.37 How, then, can this “unity of the truth” be understood among the multiplicity of performances and written versions? The variety of performances and written versions, according to Gadamer, belongs to the possibilities of being of an artwork, since the artwork explicates itself in them. There is, admittedly, a criterion, which is always the true “authoritativeness” (Verbindlichkeit) of the work.38 But what role is played in all 35. Truth and Method, 113–16. 36. Gesammelte Werke, 1: 120–21; Truth and Method, 115. 37. Gesammelte Werke, 1: 121–22; Truth and Method, 116. 38. Truth and Method, 119.

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this by the interpreter (or mediator) and the interpretation (or mediation) of the performance? For Gadamer, the individual performer and the interpretation both recede behind the authoritativeness of the work, so that the mediation, according to its idea, is “total.” This, in turn, means that “whatever mediates, as mediating,” negates (or sublates) itself.39 This raises the question of how this negation, or sublation, can be related to the experience of time. The temporal character of art, according to Gadamer, cannot be grasped by “starting from the ordinary temporal experience of succession.” Rather, the essence of the artwork is characterized by “contemporaneity” or “simultaneity” (Gleichzeitigkeit), as in Kierkegaard. Simultaneity means, then, “that a unique thing that represents itself to us, no matter how distant its origin may be, becomes fully present, temporally, in its representation.” Thus contemporaneity is not “a mode of givenness in consciousness, but a task for consciousness and an achievement” that consciousness must accomplish. This task consists in drawing so close to the thing that it becomes “simultaneous,” which means that all mediation “is sublated in a total temporal presentness.”40 What does art do in total mediation? Art, for Gadamer, is the power to impose intellectual or spiritual order. It creates a constant structure of world. Poetry, for example, allows “whole worlds to blossom out of nothing” and “nonbeing to come into being.” In this way, for Gadamer, truth can also be grasped ontologically. For if, in the Platonic sense, the real is the true,41 then art is true, because real. The work of art “emerges [kommt heraus]—and this is what we call truth.”42 At the same time, the emergence of music is of an essentially different character from that of a painting, for example. What, then, is the essence of music?

Art and Music Like Schleiermacher,43 Gadamer scattered his remarks on music throughout widely disparate parts of his oeuvre. For the essence of music, three concepts are determinative: mirror (Spiegel), order (Ordnung), and temporality (Zeitlichkeit). They can be seen in relation to the three above-mentioned concepts of play, composition, and simultaneity. Based on his thesis of the universal reach and ontological dignity of play, of the intertwining of play and seriousness and 39. Ibid. 40. Gesammelte Werke, 1:128, 132; Truth and Method, 122–23, 127. 41. On the Platonic concept of truth, see, for example, Suchla, “Wahrheit über jeder Wahrheit.” 42. Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 36, 378, 384. 43. See for example Scholtz, Schleiermachers Musikphilosophie.

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their mutual interaction, Gadamer—in contrast, for example, to Nietzsche’s idea of art as a lie and an illusion—sees in the play of art “no ersatz or dream world” but rather a “mirror, rising up in front of us over and over again, down through the centuries, in which we see ourselves afresh—often unexpectedly enough, often strangely enough—as we are, as we could be, how it is with us.” What is shown in the mirror, its showing, thus means that the person to whom it is shown “should see for himself, and correctly.” What it makes visible is more than “what so-called reality offers.” It lets us cognize the general.44 Seeing “for oneself, and correctly,” cognizing the general, is constructing world. This construction is predicated on an “intellectual and spiritual power to create order” (geistige Ordnungskraft) for which art is the paradigm per se. For Gadamer answers his question whether “in all art—even in its most extreme extravagances—order is experienced” with the thesis that every work of art testifies to the very power to create order “that makes up the reality of our life.” Every work of art is brought into being by a continuously new and powerful application of ordering intellectual and spiritual energy. Opposed to it—especially today—is the changing modern industrial world with its characteristic, radical modifications of production and consumption and its dematerialization of things—a transformation of the world that “is changing more and more in the direction of the uniform and of the serial.” Every change, every development forces new construction, forces us “to organize anew, again and again, what is disintegrating in front of us.”45 This makes it possible for us to determine the status of new, present-day, contemporary art and to answer the question of whether art has come to its end. According to Gadamer, we now stand “at the end of a long provocation that has led, by way of the cubist fracturing of forms, of the expressionist distortion of figures, of Surrealist riddle-making, of the increasing emptying out of the image toward the loss of the object; that has led, finally, to a resolute skepticism about the image and about art as a whole.” In his eyes, the artist would like to “provoke, to irritate, and some would like to understand their work merely as a kind of proposal that invites others to become active in creating related forms and continuing the activity. Thus, in serial music, for example, the order of the performance is left to the interpretive artist. Thus the viewer of an image must frequently allow himself to be won over and confused by alternative readings of the same image.”46 And yet, in a period of sensory overload induced by the technologies of information and reproduction, the artist—for Gadamer—has to struggle 44. Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 91–93. 45. Ibid., 35–36. 46. Ibid., 214.

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against this flood, which dulls all sensibility. In the struggle, he has to consciously put forward types of alienation (Verfremdung)47 in order “to be able to make the force of his form-creating conviction shine forth . . . and make, out of this alienation, a new at-homeness [Heimatlichkeit].” For Gadamer, accordingly, “the pluralism of experimentation [has become] unavoidable. Alienation up to the limit of incomprehensibility is the law under which the creative power of art, in an era like our own, is most likely to be fulfilled.” Nevertheless, despite pluralism and experimental energies, for Gadamer the legitimacy of the work concept remains valid. For the work of art emerges, gains lasting presence, is lasting, as, on the one hand, the artist regards his artwork as belonging to his oeuvre, and as, on the other, the individual who responds to art as art holds fast to the work of art and lends his own stance (seinen Stand) and his life to the work. But as long as human beings give shape to their own life, the human will to create form will never, in Gadamer’s view, come to a halt, and art will not end.48 Even today, art, in an exemplary way, demonstrates precisely the “intellectual and spiritual power to create order” of which we are always newly in need. Art, for Gadamer, stands “in the midst of a disintegrating world of the accustomed and the familiar, as a pledge of order.” Hence “perhaps all the powers of conservation and sustainability that support human culture [rest] on what we encounter, in an exemplary way, in the activity of the artist and in the experience of art: that we give order, again and again, to what is disintegrating for us.”49 Of all the arts, music, according to Gadamer, is the one whose function mediates the experience of order as such, because music, in particular, is a form of the organization of time.50 Unlike architecture, handicrafts, sculpture, painting, graphic arts, or drawing, music and poetry (as well as prose, cinema, pantomime, theater, and dance) do not exist in space as durable entities but must always be experienced anew, in time; they have a “transitory” character (Kant). Music, moreover, is very close to poetry, since both seem “to exist only in the miracle of memory.” The event of being listened to and heard belongs to them and is primary, while their fixation in writing does not belong to them and is only secondary.51 Hence music exists only when it is performed; performance 47. The word Verfremdung suggests a more overt and subjective act of alienation than the Marxian Entfremdung, which results from the action of impersonal forces in society. Verfremdung is also translated as “estrangement,” for example in Brecht.—trans. 48. Ibid., 215, 219, 220. 49. Ibid., 35–36. 50. Ibid., 384, 36. 51. Ibid., 379.

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(Aufführung) gives music its “ontological status.”52 As being in performance, according to Gadamer, music requires mediation, in other words it can be experienced only in a mediated way—in contrast, for example, to a picture.53 This mediated character, in turn, means that, apart from its technical reproducibility, it can never be one and the same, which makes it “in a radical sense temporal.”54 For Gadamer, the answer to the question of what music is can be found in this temporality: “The dialectic of passing time, of self-devouring time, governs everything. . . . And yet, when a person understands, something comes to a standstill. The individual who understands calls a halt, in midstream, to the passing by [Vorbeizug] that we call life and that, despite all duration, never ceases to have a temporal shape. But what comes to a halt, here, is not the famous nunc stans, like the moment of inspiration. It is more like a lingering, in which not a Now but time itself stands still for a while. We know this. The person who is absorbed in something forgets time.”55 This “coming to a standstill” is, then, according to Gadamer, the essence of music. “Sometimes it wants to seem to me as if here music’s mystery, its mark of distinction above all the other arts, becomes a bit more transparent. To be nothing but this kind of coming to a standstill in the very act of its performance [Vollzug]56—this is the music that we ‘make’ and that is present as music. True, in the other arts, too, ‘understanding’ will have the same temporal form, and there, too, truth will consist in the completion of a performative act. But nowhere else does it pass us by the way it does in music, as pure passing by. With the others, there is always something within that stands, be it an unambiguous meaning of words or the sense of the spoken language that one perceives. This is how it is with poetry, as well as with the prose of thought. Even in the sequence of dance figures there is a something more, or in the articulated sequence of a picture, a sculpture, a building. That nothing stands still but passing by, itself—this is the truth of the act of performance that is music.”57

52. Ibid., 225. 53. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 134. 54. Gesammelte Werke, 1:128–29, 225n; Truth and Method, 123–24, 221n. 55. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 364–65. 56. Here, “performance” is inflected in the direction of its English meaning of carrying out, or performing an action. Gadamer’s text relies heavily on the common verbal root between the word ziehen, “to pull, move, or pass,” and Vollzug, “completed action.” Unfortunately, this cannot be fully rendered in English.—trans. 57. Ibid., 365.

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Reflection on Gadamer’s Concept of Art and His Definition of Music Gadamer’s hermeneutic position attracted and continues to attract widespread attention among scholars, ranging from agreement, to criticism, to reception. No one denies, for example, that he “has provided the most weighty and fundamental investigation into the character of aesthetic experience as play, and in analogy to play.”58 Negative criticism has focused on the claim that his “fusion of horizons” leads to a “dampening of subjectivity,” since, according to Gadamer, it should be seen not as a subjective act but as an entering into the event of tradition. Specific criticism has also been leveled at the “excessive power of the interpretandum,” by means of which, it is claimed, every act of understanding also entails agreement, making it impossible to maintain a certain distance (Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, Dietrich Böhler);59 and at the “supersubject” (Übersubjekt) of the history of artistic influence, in which the subject and the object of interpretation are said to be abolished (Manfred Frank).60 Against the criticism that complains about the abandonment of distance, it can, however, be argued that understanding is always determined by the thing toward which it is directed and that the process of understanding, as a result, always demands a relinquishing of distance vis-à-vis the object of understanding. A similar argument can be made regarding the submersion of subject and object in the “supersubject” of the history of tradition and influence, which—metaphorically speaking—brings subject and object closer together. It is only thanks to the subject’s self-abandonment to the object and its history that the object has the power to have an impact on the subject. The power of art consists first, according to Gadamer, in the transformation of the person who experiences it: “The artwork has . . . its real being in the fact that it becomes an experience that transforms the person who experiences it.”61 The artwork does something that transforms the person who experiences art; this is one side of its power. The other consists in an “increase in being.”62 Art can create entire worlds and make nonbeing come into being. But how should we imagine this increase? 58. Otto, Ästhetische Wertschätzung, 188 n. 19. On the philosophical discussion of an “aesthetic of play,” see Sonderegger, Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels. 59. On this, see Hofer, “‘Die Abdämpfung der Subjektivität.’” 60. Ibid., 595. But compare the already prominent “metacritical comments” and Gadamer’s response in the appendix volume to Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method), Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen). On Betti’s critique, in his Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methode der Geisteswissenschaften, see Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 10 (Hermeneutik im Rückblick): 432–37. 61. Gesammelte Werke, 1:108; Truth and Method, 102. 62. See, for example, Boehm, “Zuwachs an Sein.”

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In my opinion, it can be understood only in terms of transcendental philosophy. Thus, Gadamer says, for example, that the artwork demands of the viewer (or listener) to whom it offers itself that it be “constructed” (aufgebaut): “It is, after all, not what it is. It is something that it is not—not something merely purposive that one puts to use, much less a material thing out of which one can make something else, but something that is constructed in the viewer (or listener) only as that which it appears and plays itself out as.”63 Gadamer cannot be understood, here, as saying anything other than that the observer, in observing the thing, transcends the thing itself, that he is engaging not with the thing as a thing but with its concept a priori. This, however, means, against all criticism, that in Gadamer’s hermeneutics the subject really does play an important role. In this sense, Gadamer observes that understanding is possible only when “the understanding person brings his own presuppositions into play. The productive contribution of the interpreter belongs in an indissoluble way to the sense of understanding itself.”64 According to Gadamer, the subject approaches art from play, which transforms itself into the composition. With and within composition, play not only reveals to the subject something that was concealed but seems to serve the “revelation of the hidden.” In this way, Gadamer instrumentalizes art, following F. W. J. Schelling, who conceived of art as the “organon”65 of philosophy. Gadamer’s interpretation of art as a phenomenon that belongs to epistemology rather than to the world of practice means that for him it can be a means of cognition and the expression of cognition, i.e., a means of truth. For him, the latter, in the traditional sense, is a concept that is coextensive with being itself, for the understanding of which two additional concepts are constitutive—the cognizability of existing beings, and the cognition of existing beings. Art is accessible to intellectual and spiritual cognition. It can become the object of thought, is cognizable, and, insofar as it is cognizable, is ontically or ontologically true. Thought, in turn, really can grasp, cognize, and express art’s characteristics, and insofar as it can do so, art is also logically true. In contrast to existing beings as such, however, art, for Gadamer, makes visible more than just so-called reality; by revealing what is hidden, art opens intellectual and spiritual spaces66 and thus enlarges perception, and with it cognition.67

63. Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 89. 64. Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 109. 65. Tool, or instrument (Greek). The word is also used in the theory of counterpoint and is the source of the word “organ.”—trans. 66. See note 73, below. 67. Gadamer’s concept of truth can thus be understood as artistic or transcendental truth.

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This applies to every type of art and hence even to absolute music: “Even if we are listening to absolute music, for example, we have to ‘understand’ it. And only if we understand it, if it is ‘clear’ to us, is it present for us as an artistic composition. Thus, even though absolute music consists purely in moving forms, as such; is a kind of sounding mathematics; and has, within it, no objectively significant content of which we become aware, nevertheless our understanding retains a relation to meaningfulness.”68 In this sense art has an ordering effect, art constructs world, world comes to a standstill. Understanding includes reading. This is true not only of literature and poetry but also, and in particular, of music—a transitory art whose reproductive representation is determined in an essential way by the understanding and interpretation of its visual notation. The history of notation in European music suggests how important the visual fixation of the voices was for the development of music. Between the adiastematic neumas, which were signs that merely suggested pitch, the subsequent diastematic neumas, which by introducing lines made pitch levels legible, and the modal notation that understood how to render their duration69 lay a period of development lasting approximately four hundred years (!). Thus, reading is also, and especially in music, an “interpretation of what is meant,”70 i.e., in the sense of Schleiermacher, an understanding of what is meant. Nevertheless, musical understanding is a special type of understanding. The relationship of the musician to the notation that he must understand is different from that of a reader to her book or a philologist to her text. The understanding of a notated image is linked to knowledge of the style of the period and the work; it differs in an essential way from the sense and understanding of a literary text. Here, I would wish that Gadamer, who was a brilliant hermeneutic philosopher of reading and the text,71 but paid little attention to the reading of music and the musical text,72 had given us the benefit of more extensive studies. Still, Gadamer’s concept of art is plausible73 and enables him to provide a brilliant definition of the essence of music, which is linked to Johan Huizinga’s theory of culture (homo ludens), the Pythagorean idea of the cosmos 68. Gesammelte Werke, 1:97; Truth and Method, 91. 69. On the significance of the legibility of duration in musical notes, see Suchla’s articles “NotreDame”; “Organum”; and “Perotinus.” 70. Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 19. 71. For example: “Text und Interpretation” in Gesammelte Werke 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 330 ff.; “Hören-Sehen-Lesen”; “Lesen ist wie Übersetzen”; “Der ‘eminente’ Text und seine Wahrheit”; and “Über das Lesen von Bauten und Bildern” in Gesammelte Werke, 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 271 ff., 279 ff., 286 ff., 331 ff. 72. See, for some initial reflections, Truth and Method, 310ff., 399f. 73. In this sense, the art historian Marcel Baumgartner affirms: “What is the issue, then, in art, other than that through it we are shown things and—also intellectual and spiritual—spaces are opened that

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(κόσμος = order) in Aristotle’s interpretation, and Husserl’s phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time,74 without being syncretic; and which, in the process, touches on the foundations, purpose, and function of music. Play, according to Huizinga, is the foundation and basic producer of every culture. This means music, too; thus, music is based on play. In Aristotle, order constructs world. This means music, too; thus music aims at order. Time, finally, is something humans know, according to Husserl, only within the horizon of the before and after of their lived experience (Erlebnisse). This also means the lived experience of music. Thus music also “functions” as a making conscious of time. When Gadamer, taking the ontological status of music, its existence in time, as his point of departure, ultimately conceives its “what” as “coming to a standstill in the very act of its performance,” because nothing stands still in music “but passing by, itself,” then this definition of its essence brilliantly embraces both the dimension of space (“standing”) and that of time (“passing”). The question that follows from this brilliant definition of music’s essence seems to me to be whether music’s fascination does not consist in the fact that music, by virtue of its essence, makes human beings capable, in a playful way, of having a lived experience of time in space, of historicity, and especially of finitude and mortality. The human experience of time is located in a tension, in the dialectic between life in time and time in life. Life in time is limited by one’s lifetime, which must be organized within and subordinated to worldly temporality. Thus the universe can be described metaphorically, with Jeremy Rifkin, as a “clockwork,” whose time produces a “basic conflict within humans.”75 Ultimately, man’s life in time is only and always the life of a limited, mortal time. Coming to terms with lifetime and time in life therefore means confronting something that human beings not only can neither see nor define conceptually but can neither hold fast to in time nor limit nonviolently. Ultimately, a human being does not know her lifespan. The question of how a human being comes to terms with her life and its uncertain limit,76 and how she should sensibly manage it, tells us that human temporality must be conceived, above all, as an ethical situation. In it, human beings have the freedom to engage in the self-imposed we previously did not known and seen in this way.” See Hohenbüchler and Hohenbüchler, “. . . verhalten zu . . .” 74. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 103–4 nn. 193–94. Gesammelte Werke, 2 (Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen): 381; 8 (Kunst als Aussage): 34–36; Truth and Method I, 248–55. 75. See Rifkin, Time Wars. 76. See, for example, Braem, Selftiming, and Held and Geissler, Őkologie der Zeit.

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affirmation of a moral approach to time, whose extent they cannot know, but which they can become conscious of and experience in the interim. Lived experience of time and reflection on that experience presuppose an awareness of time, and thus it appears to be a consequence of our era’s turn away from eschatology and soteriology that there is no period of history in which time has been and continues to be as problematic as ours.77 So-called leisure time has come in for particular attention, including an understanding of “free time” and its functions, as well as its management by the so-called “leisure industry,” in relation to work in arrangements like “time-sharing”78 or “flex-time.” In this way, we have all become members of a time society, even a “leisure-time society.”79 Another important theme is timesaving—to the extent of miserliness—as reflected in Michael Ende’s fairy-tale novel Momo. In the novel, a society of so-called “gray gentlemen” forces people to save time systematically. But the beneficiaries of the time thus saved are not the savers themselves but the time bankers. The subtitle of the novel is therefore: “the strange story of the time thieves and the child who brought stolen time back to the people.” Ende’s novel, too, makes it clear that human beings can become conscious of time only by “accommodating the things that exist in time to the uniform time of the clock.” Since thought is compelled to rely on an objective relation as its medium of sensory perception, time and the measurement of time seem to be so closely interrelated that the measurement of time appears as a form of withdrawal from and ersatz for the being of time.80 But in reality the measurement of time—even in the case of atomic measurement—measures only movement in time. Language reflects this in figures of speech like “the clock is running,” “the watch is slow,” “the flow of time,” and so on, which Newton or Locke already used in similar ways.81 This type of time measurement encourages a content of lived experience that experiences time only and exclusively as movement; again, language reflects this in formulations like “time is running out,” “time is flying,” and “the passage of time.” The so-called passing of a lifetime can be experienced, like music, as fast and as slow, and it has the capacity, like music, to seem to accelerate and slow down. In music, for example, in an accelerando passage, the number of notes 77. See, for example, Poser, “Zeit und Ewigkeit.” 78. English in original.—trans. 79. To give only a few examples from the extensive literature on this point: Geissler, Zeit leben; Lübbe, Im Zug der Zeit; Müller-Wichmann, Zeitnot und Zeitvertreib; Nowotny, Eigenzeit. 80. On this point see Gadamer, “Über leere und erfüllte Zeit” in Gesammelte Werke, 4 (Probleme, Gestalten): 137–53. 81. Citations in Smart, “River of Time.”

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that follow each other within a predetermined period of time gradually increases, with the result that each successive note lasts an increasingly short time. The impression is created that time is speeding up. In a ritardando passage, the number of notes in a predetermined period of time gradually decreases, with the result that each successive note lasts longer. This creates the impression that time is slowing down. In analogy to this, in midlife the daily routine is increasingly packed full of actions, and sometimes increasingly with compulsive activity, with haste. It seems as if time is running out faster and faster, in an increasing accelerando; life accelerates. There follows a ritardando phase, in which the number of activities gradually decreases, life retards, seems to become slower and slower, and there is a transition to the rest and peacefulness of old age. From this it follows that the analogy between human beings and music grasps essential characteristics of their being: the final movement that is expressed in death, i.e., in the transition from becoming to being and from being to the end of being, the accelerando and ritardando of movement, and, in the end, the fact of death followed by a finality that we can never catch up with.82 This analogy renders human beings open, in a preferential way, to the art of music, and especially to its power to let them experience time in space in a playful way. But what is it that makes this experience so meaningful? Certainly, one must agree with Gadamer’s emphasis on art as an imposition of a lawful order. Western music, with its homophonic and polyphonic, linear and vertical lawfulness, could hardly be more ordered. Its orientation to the regular timekeeping of the clock is also significant and must be seen, in particular, as a consequence of the medieval expansion from two to three and four voices, which made it necessary to establish a clear rhythm.83 Yet Gadamer’s lawful order comes up short, and so does that of Igor Stravinsky, when the latter says, “The phenomenon of music is given to us for the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.”84 For if we—with Leibniz—think of “space” as “the order of existences in their being together” (Ordnung der Existenzen im Beisammensein), and “time” as the “order of successivity,” and both—with Norbert Elias—as a “means of orientation,”85 then music is always to be comprehended as a sounding means of orientation. As orientation holds fast, explains, and 82. Gadamer problematizes death quite often. See, for example, “Der Tod als Frage,” Gesammelte Werke, 4 (Probleme, Gestalten): 161–72; “Die Erfahrung des Todes,” ibid., 288–94. 83. See Suchla, “Notre-Dame”; “Organum”; and “Perotinus.” Gadamer does not attach any importance to this complex of problems, since he does not problematize time in music, but only music in time. On this dichotomy, see Büttemeyer, “Musik in der Zeit—Zeit in der Musik.” 84. Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 54. 85. Leibniz, Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, 25–26; Elias, Time: An Essay, 38.

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masters what it finds present, so music acquires a heuristic and hermeneutic valance that sets the terms of thought’s own structure, insofar as the movement of thought does not precede the sounding impression but follows it and interprets what it hears from within the experience. Music is then, by analogy, a means of making the transitory nature of human existence, the passing of a lifetime, graspable by thought. In this sense, the above-cited statement by Friedrich Schlegel, to which Gadamer refers, can be modified. The sacred play of music is a distant imitation of the endless play of the world, of the eternally self-composing artwork and its passing away. Music is then not, as Gadamer emphasizes with Stravinsky, a means of creating order, i.e., a means of making the construction of the world comprehensible. Instead, music is the opposite: a means of orientation, i.e., a means of making the decline and sudden breaking off, the abrupt ending, the very transience of life thinkable by thought. I miss precisely this essential aspect of music in Gadamer.

Reception Gadamer’s Truth and Method had a powerful influence not only on the philosophy of art86 but also on literature and theology.87 Particularly noteworthy is João Duque, who, following Gadamer, would like to prove that art, from a fundamental-theological-metaphysical perspective, is a site of immanent transcendence.88

References

Gadamer’s Works Gesammelte Werke. 10 vols. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Vol. 1: Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. 6th rev. ed. 1990. Vol. 2: Hermeneutik II: Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen, Register. 2nd rev. ed. 1993. Vol. 4: Neuere Philosophie II: Probleme, Gestalten. 1987. Vol. 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I: Kunst als Aussage. 1993. Vol. 10: Hermeneutik im Rückblick. 1995. Die Moderne und die Grenze der Vergegenständlichung. With contributions by Hans Belting, Gottfried Boehm, and Walther C. Zimmerli. Ed. Bernd Klüser. Munich: Klüser Verlag, 1996.

86. For example, Ku, Hermeneutik und Ästhetik. 87. For example, Fuchs, Marburger Hermeneutik, 1:49; Ebeling, Word and Faith, 305–32. 88. Duque, Die Kunst als Ort immanenter Transzendenz.

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Truth and Method. [Translation of Wahrheit und Methode.] 2nd rev. ed. Trans. William Glen-Doepel. Rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Sheed & Ward; New York: Crossroad, 1989.

General Literature Betti, Emilio. Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methode der Geisteswissenschaften. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1967. Birus, Hendrik, ed. Hermeneutische Positionen: Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer. With contributions by Heinrich Anz. Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 1479. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982. Blumenberg, Hans. Lebenszeit und Weltzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001. Boehm, Gottfried. “Zuwachs an Sein: Hermeneutische Reflexion und bildende Kunst.” In Gadamer, Die Moderne und die Grenze der Vergegenständlichung, 95–125. Bourgeois, Jason Paul. The Aesthetic Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Urs von Balthasar. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Braem, Harald. Selftiming: Über den Umgang mit der Zeit. Munich: Langen-Müller, 1988. Dostal, Robert J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Duque, João M. Die Kunst als Ort immanenter Transzendenz: Zu einer fundamentaltheologischen Rezeption der Kunstphilosophie Hans-Georg Gadamers. Frankfurter Theologische Studien 55. Frankfurt am Main: Herder-Knecht, 1997. Ebeling, Gerhard. Word and Faith. Trans. James W. Leitch. London: SCM Press, 1963. Elias, Norbert. Time: An Essay. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Figal, Günter, Jean Grondin, and Dennis J. Schmidt, eds. Hermeneutische Wege: Hans-Georg Gadamer zum Hundertsten Geburtstag. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Fuchs, Ernst. Marburger Hermeneutik. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 9. Tübingen: Mohr, 1968. Geissler, Karlheinz A. Zeit leben: Vom Hasten und Rasten, Arbeiten und Lernen, Leben und Sterben. Weinheim-Basel: Beltz, 1985. Grondin, Jean. Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer. Yale Studies in Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Held, Martin, and Karlheinz A. Geissler, eds. Ökologie der Zeit: Vom Finden der rechten Zeitmasse. Stuttgart: Hirzel Verlag, 2000. Hofer, Michael. “‘Die Abdämpfung der Subjektivität’: Drei Beispiele aus der amerikanischen bzw. französischen Gadamer-Rezeption.” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 54 (2000): 593–611. Hohenbüchler, Christine, and Irene Hohenbüchler. “. . . verhalten zu . . .” Exhibition catalog. Ed. Marcel Baumgartner. Cologne: König, 1998. Ku, Jayoun. Hermeneutik und Ästhetik: Eine Untersuchung der Ontologie der Kunst im Kontext der philosophischen Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers. Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2001. Leibniz, Gottfried. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence: Together with Extracts from Newton’s Principia and Opticks. Ed. H. G. Alexander. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1956. Lübbe, Hermann. Im Zug der Zeit: Verkürzter Aufenthalt in der Gegenwart. Berlin: Springer, 1994. Müller-Wichmann, Christiane. Zeitnot und Zeitvertreib. Munich: UVK Mediengesellschaft, 1992. Nowotny, Helga. Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience. [Translation of Eigenzeit. Entstehung und Strukturierung eines Zeitgefühls, 1989.] Trans. Neville Plaice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994. Otto, Marcus. Ästhetische Wertschätzung: Bausteine zu einer Theorie des Ästhetischen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993.

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Poser, Hans. “Zeit und Ewigkeit: Zeitkonzepte als Orientierungswissen.” In Das Rätsel der Zeit: Philosophische Analysen, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner, 17–50. Freiburg im Breisgau: Karl Alber Verlag, 1993. Rifkin, Jeremy. Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History. London: Simon & Schuster; New York: Henry Holt, 1987. Smart, J. J. C.. “The River of Time.” Mind 58 (October 1949): 483–94. Sonderegger, Ruth. Für eine Äesthetik des Spiels: Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktion und der Eigensinn der Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000. Suchla, Beata Regina. “Wahrheit über jeder Wahrheit: Zur philosophischen Absicht der Schrift De divinis nominibus des Dionysius Areopagita.” Theologische Quartalschrift 176, no. 3 (1996): 205–17.

Musical Literature Büttemeyer, Wilhelm. “Musik in der Zeit—Zeit in der Musik.” In Das Rätsel der Zeit: Philosophische Analysen, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner, 225–90. Freiburg im Breisgau: Karl Alber Verlag, 1993. Scholtz, Gunter. Schleiermachers Musikphilosophie. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981. Stravinsky, Igor. An Autobiography. 1926; New York: W. W. Norton, 1962. Suchla, Beata Regina. “Notre-Dame”; “Organum”; “Perotinus.” In Das grosse Lexikon der Musik, ed. Marc Honegger and Günther Massenkeil. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1981. Tomlinson, Gary. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Adorno Luci a S z ibo r sky

for M.

Brief Biography On September 11, 1903, Theodor W. Adorno was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a Jewish wine wholesaler and a mother who was descended from Corsican nobility. On August 6, 1969, he died of a heart attack while on vacation in Visp (Wallis), Switzerland. Adorno grew up as the only child in an upper-bourgeois household, in which the cultural tone was set by his mother, Maria Cavelli-Adorno, who was a noted singer, and her sister Agathe, a well-known pianist. The talented boy enjoyed a protected childhood in which musical experiences were important from the beginning. He soon began taking piano lessons and as a sixteen-year-old student at the Gymnasium was already studying composition with Bernhard Sekles. Every Saturday afternoon, he had a private lesson with Siegfried Kracauer on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Kracauer would long remain his philosophical mentor. Adorno completed his studies of philosophy, psychology, and musicology at the University of Frankfurt at age twenty-one, with a doctoral dissertation on an epistemological problem in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. In 1922, while still a student, he met Max Horkheimer, the true founder of “critical theory”; in 1923 he also met Walter Benjamin, with whom he would later engage in an intensive philosophical conversation that endured until Benjamin’s . Compare Adorno’s autobiographical comment in “Four Hands, Once Again” (1933).

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death. Adorno was already musically active as a student. In 1922, he began to write reviews (of concert and opera performances and new works by contemporary composers such as Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, Schoenberg, Anton von Webern, and Alban Berg). These were soon followed by his first attempts at the theory and aesthetics of music. Adorno spent the years 1925–27 in Vienna studying composition with Berg and piano with Eduard Steuermann. His ambition was to become a composer and pianist. Berg, who recognized both Adorno’s musical gift and his great theoretical talent, finally advised him to combine the two. Berg also had a decisive impact on Adorno’s own composing. At the end of 1927, Adorno returned to Frankfurt to pursue his second doctorate in philosophy. He continued to write works of music criticism and theory, some of which appeared in the avant-garde Viennese journal Anbruch, which he edited from 1928 to 1931. In the same year, he successfully completed his second doctorate with a philosophical and sociological dissertation, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen); it was not without significance for the construction of his own aesthetics. In 1933, Adorno’s right to teach was withdrawn, and he left Frankfurt for Oxford, where he resumed his study of Husserl. In 1968, he would characterize the essays he wrote there, under the title Against Epistemology: A Metacritique: Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies (Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie), as his most important book after Negative Dialectics. In 1937, he wrote his Essay on Wagner (Versuch über Wagner). He returned from Oxford and emigrated to New York in 1938. There, he became a member of the Institute for Social Research, led by Max Horkheimer, which had also emigrated there. Adorno had already published several musicsociological and philosophical essays in the institute’s journal. They included “On the Social Situation of Music” (“Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik,” 1932), which already demonstrated a critical approach to ideology; the essay “On Jazz” (“Über Jazz,” 1937) which remains an object of controversy on account of its critical analysis; and the essay “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening” (“Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Hörens.” 1938), which clearly showed the influence of his experiences in America. The essay was sociologically inspired but also . See Sziborsky, Adornos Musikphilosophie. . See Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, 5 (Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie), editorial afterword, 386. . Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music,” in Essays on Music, 391–436. . Adorno, “On Jazz,” in Essays on Music, 470–95. . Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” in Essays on Music, 288–317.

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paved the way for Adorno’s major work Philosophy of New Music (Philosophie der neuen Musik). In 1941, following the financial collapse of the institute, Horkheimer and Adorno moved to California, where they collaborated on the major work of their joint project of “critical theory,” Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung). This book stood at the center of Adorno’s reflections on the philosophy of history and had a decisive influence on Philosophy of New Music, which also occupied him during this period. Later, Adorno would call the latter “an extended excursus to Dialectic of Enlightenment” and authoritative (verbindlich) for all his later statements on music. Around this time, Adorno also wrote his first major philosophical work; consisting of aphorisms and short essays, it can be considered the symbol of his moral philosophy. With a nod to Aristotle’s Maxima Moralia, he called the book Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben). During the same period, in conversations with Thomas Mann, he strongly influenced the creation of Dr. Faustus through his analyses of Beethoven’s sonatas and Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. The Institute for Social Research returned from its American exile in 1949 and was reconstructed in Frankfurt thanks to an act of reparation. Adorno returned to teaching. He intervened in the postwar discussions of the 1950s and 1960s, taking ideologically critical positions in numerous lectures on social and cultural problems. He participated in the Darmstadt International Summer Courses on New Music, where he continued to develop and modify the theory he had developed in Philosophy of New Music—most beautifully and forcefully in “Vers une musique informelle,” in which the utopian content of his philosophy of music once more shone forth. In lectures and discussions, he had a lasting impact on the young generation of postwar composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the mid-1960s, the debates on music pedagogy that were sparked by his “Critique of the Roving Musician” (“Kritik des Musikanten,” 1956) led to a new approach to this field. In 1959, Adorno began work on his major philosophical work Negative Dialectics (Negative Dialektik), which appeared in 1966. In it, he justified the ideas he had put forward, in a ruthless self-contemplation of reason, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, while at the same time legitimating the continuing existence of a late philosophy (one that was approaching its end) by its self-criticism, the procedure of “negative dialectics” as the “uncompromising consciousness . Gesammelte Schriften, 12:11; Philosophy of New Music, 5. . Adorno, “Vers une musique informelle,” in Quasi una fantasia, 269–322. . Adorno, “Kritik des Musikanten,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 14 (Dissonanzen): 67–107. See Sziborsky, Adornos Musikphilosophie, 204–58.

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of nonidentity.” In the sense of the old teaching of right living (recte vivere), Adorno held fast to the idea of the salvation of the hopeless (Rettung des Hoffnungslosen); it stood for what remained unfulfilled and unrealized in social practice. In his last major work, Aesthetic Theory (Ästhetische Theorie), which remained a fragment owing to his sudden death and appeared only posthumously (1970), Adorno provided the rational foundation, as it were metatheoretically, for his numerous “material” works of analysis and reflection on literature as well as music.10 Thus, Aesthetic Theory, with Philosophy of New Music at its heart, subsumes the legacy of Adorno’s entire philosophy; it, along with his Negative Dialectics and a planned work on moral philosophy that his early death prevented, is what he wanted to throw into the philosophical balance.

Philosophy and Art This brief sketch already makes clear that, for Adorno, art and philosophy played a central role from his early years onward. Initially, his interests seemed to turn more toward music than philosophy, both practically and theoretically; to the young student philosophy seemed like more of a duty. This underwent a fundamental shift during his work on the Kierkegaard book in 1929 and 1930. In this book, philosophy and art were joined in a characteristic manner. Adorno’s “construction of the aesthetic” offered a critique of Kierkegaard’s aesthetics that proceeded neither from the theory of art nor from the view of art as a form of communication by existential individuals. For the young Adorno, more was at stake. He criticized, as false appearance (falschen Schein), the retreat of Kierkegaard’s existential ontology into an objectless, abstract inwardness and at the same time sought to preserve, by transforming it into a medium of cognition, the aesthetic semblance (ästhetischen Schein) that Kierkegaard had rejected.11 But what sort of cognition? That aesthetic semblance as a medium of cognition was becoming a cornerstone of Adorno’s philosophy was already evident, in a preliminary way, in the intensive philosophical and music-theoretical conversations in which Adorno engaged around that time (and later) with the composer Ernst Krenek (1929– 64).12 In his first letter to Krenek, Adorno writes: “I ascribe to every legitimate

10. See Gesammelte Schriften, 11 (Noten zur Literatur). 11. See Scheible, Theodor W. Adorno, 64 f. See also Sziborsky, “Adornos Musikphilosophie und die Naziästhetik,” 25–28. 12. See Adorno and Krenek, Briefwechsel. The quote is from p. 12.

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art . . . the character of cognition [Erkenntnis]. I would like to add, as a caveat, only that I am not assuming a . . . rationality that chooses ahistorically from among the opportunities that the material offers, but that I consider cognition in art to be determined by present historical reality [historische Aktualität].” In the years that followed, Adorno developed his theory of musical material, the final, constitutive foundation of which was laid down in the historical and philosophical construct of Dialectic of Enlightenment. This work signaled a turning point for “critical theory,” a temporary halt to the development of Adorno’s theory of the philosophy of music, and the starting point for his elaboration of the philosophy of his late period, which would culminate in Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory.13 It should also be noted that during the years of his emigration to the United States Adorno developed an active engagement with sociology that found expression in the realm of music theory in “NBC Music Appreciation Hour,” in which he studied the behavior of audiences during broadcasts of classical music.14 The idea of structural listening (Idee des strukturellen Hörens), or adequate listening (adäquates Hören), which he developed there, generated the typology of listeners that Adorno presented in his Introduction to the Sociology of Music (Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie, 1962).15 This “idea” provided the model for the concept of aesthetic experience (ästhetische Erfahrung) that would find its final form in Aesthetic Theory. Indeed, it was the model for the philosophical concept of experience in Adorno altogether.16 Another area of sociological and psychosocial interest during those years was research in the field of fascism/anti-Semitism, in which Adorno participated and whose standards he helped to set. The monograph The Authoritarian Personality, cowritten as part of a team of authors, appeared in 1950 in New York. Just as Adorno’s music-sociological studies of the 1930s and 1940s had relevance not only for his philosophy of music but also for his aesthetic theory as a whole, so the sociological and psychosocial research that he carried out during those years can be seen to have had an indirect influence on the abovementioned social and culture-critical works that he wrote in postwar Germany. In this period, Adorno’s late philosophy also matured.

13. Cf. Sziborsky, Adornos Musikphilosophie, 158ff. 14. The study, which was not published at the time, appeared in 1963 under the title “Die gewürdigte Musik,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 15 (Komposition für den Film): 161–87. 15. Adorno, “Typen musikalischen Verhaltens,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 14 (Dissonanzen; Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie): 178–98. 16. Cf. Sziborsky, “Zum Begriff der ästhetischen Erfahrung,” in Rettung des Hoffnungslosen, 28–42.

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Art and Music From the above, it should be clear that the diverse and divergent elements forming the spectrum of Adorno’s many-sided interests, activities, and theoretical starting points increasingly came together in a dense network that would coalesce, in the middle period of his thought, into a kind of focal point and then, in his later period, would crystallize, as a result of renewed philosophical reflection of a metatheoretical nature, into the major works that represented what he (as stated above) wanted to throw into the philosophical balance. We have also seen that, from the beginning, art and philosophy enjoyed equal standing and that within the framework of art music held the central position and simultaneously served as the point of departure. Music’s privileged position was further enhanced by Adorno’s sociological and psychosocial works, which dealt with musical production and reception, and which opened up significant perspectives for the elaboration of theory. Among the numerous analyses and interpretations of music that Adorno produced, the monographs on Richard Wagner (Essay on Wagner), Gustav Mahler (Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy; Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik), and Alban Berg (Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link; Berg: Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs) merit a special place. To examine them in detail would exceed the bounds of this essay. Rather, I will concentrate in the following on Adorno’s major work of music philosophy, Philosophy of New Music, the theory of musical material that it elaborates, and its consequences for musical production. After that, I will briefly discuss the issue of reception, which is dominated by the “culture industry,” with particular attention to the condition of aporia that exists between artistic production and social reception. As shown above, Adorno began to develop his theory of musical material in the 1920s in numerous critical and theoretical analyses of music, in discussions with Ernst Krenek, and in sociological and psychosocial studies, before finally achieving its actual foundation in the philosophy of history he constructed in Dialectic of Enlightenment. In taking the position, early on, that art has a “cognitive character,” Adorno had joined the ranks of the inheritors of German idealism à la Schelling and Hegel. But, unlike them, he grounded this theorem materialistically, in the sense of Marx. The question we posed above, what sort of cognition this is, can now be framed more precisely: What sort of truth is it that is cognized in art (works of art)? The answer Adorno gives is clear: It is the truth of society, which is not conscious of it itself. What does this truth look like? Adorno does not conceive of musical material as a natural (naturgegeben), quasi-substantial thing that remains the same through various tones, sounds,

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rhythms, musical forms, and so on, and is available to the composer at all times. Rather, he sees it as historically and socially mediated spiritual or intellectual (geistig) material that is repeatedly preformed (präformiert) in the consciousness of the artist. Thus, it exists in a state of constant change. Since it belongs to the genuine realm of art, it is subject to its own laws of motion; however, since it is simultaneously bound up with the overall process of social progress, the traces of society are immanent within it. In the dialectical act of composing, the composer seismographically senses instructions of the material (Anweisungen des Materials) that challenge him to engage it. He responds in freedom (in Freiheit), creating an autonomous work that is always oriented to the current state of the material. In this way, engagement with society enters into artistic production in two ways: objectively, through the societal contents that are sedimented (sedimentiert) in the musical material; and subjectively, through the experience of the contemporary zeitgeist that makes up the most advanced consciousness of the musician. The two are mutually mediated in the act of composition. In the expression of authentic works, they find aesthetically and historically conditioned embodiment. The production of such works also advances the development of the material. Undoubtedly, this aesthetic theory, centered as it is in a theory of the philosophy of history, must be understood as a dialectically structured theory of the avant-garde of modernism—but one that is potentially applicable to the music of all times.17 It is by no means indebted to pure l’art pour l’art, but is expressly to be understood as a social theory that makes it possible to conceive artworks as “congealed” or “unconscious” history (“geronnene” oder “bewusstlose” Geschichtsschreibung), in which the truth of social reality is made manifest and thus rendered accessible to interpretation. One of the central categories of this theory is inner consistency or attunement (Stimmigkeit). At a point in history when the categories of “style” have lost their capacity to be authoritative, because the compositions of the period no longer conform to them, there remains only one possibility: to derive the quality of a work from within its inner logic, from the how of its making, its compositional technique. Thus, the category of inner consistency allows the analyst to arrive at a variety of aesthetic judgments about works and allows the performer to proceed with the decoding (Dechiffrierung) of a work’s truth content, which can be true or false (in the sense of right or wrong). The implicit moral measure of such judgments is the representation, in the works’ form and expression, of the alienated and suffering subject whose capacity for experience has been crippled (verstümmelt). 17. Cf. Eichel, “Zwischen Avantgarde und Agonie,” in Mit Ohren denken, 281–93.

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In Philosophy of New Music, Adorno elaborates on the theory of musical material, with the philosophical intent “of constructing the idea of the works and their context, even if it . . . should sometimes exceed what is realized in the artwork.”18 In two antithetically related essays, “Schoenberg and Progress” (“Schönberg und der Fortschritt”) and “Stravinsky and the Restoration” (“Strawinsky und die Reaktion”),19 Adorno, drawing on the analysis and interpretation of specific works as they followed one another in time, developed the following basic thesis: The music of Schoenberg, which confronts the demands of the contemporary state of the material, gives form and expression to alienation and the suffering of the subject. By contrast, Stravinsky, with a will to style (Willen zum Stil) that seeks to recreate a lost aesthetic authority, falls back on historically decayed (zerfallen) material and mythical subjects. His works show the liquidation (Liquidierung) of the subject by society. Linked together dialectically and yet individually different in each case, the works of the two composers reveal a historically authentic truth. For Adorno, the new music of Schoenberg and his students Webern and Berg stands for the alienated, suffering subject, whose truth it expresses and whose intentions it represents, while the music of Stravinsky shows the truth of totalitarian society, which in its destruction of the subject is, as a whole (als Ganze), untruth (das Unwahre). Thus the music of both groups of phenomena, in Adorno’s eyes, is an authentic expression of social truth. Stravinsky’s music is “the appearance of negative truth itself ” (die erscheinende negative Wahrheit selbst); it has no utopian perspective and lacks transcendence, since it affirms bad existence (das schlechte Bestehende).20 In contrast, the works of new music—they are now nothing but fragments—absorb society’s contradiction between the subject (humankind) and the object (society as a whole) “into their own consciousness and into their own form [Gestalt],” in which they destroy the identity of subject and object that the “closed” works of the tradition document. In doing so, these works place themselves, morally, in contradiction to society as a whole. But at the same time, they point to the mirror image of the social contradiction: “In the act of cognition that art performs, its form represents a critique of the contradiction by pointing to the possibility of its reconciliation, and thus to the contingent, resolvable, nonabsolute character of the contradiction.”21 In the constellation of historical immanence and the act of 18. Gesammelte Schriften, 12:34; Philosophy of New Music, 24. 19. In Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 27–102 (“Schoenberg and Progress”) and 103–58 (“Stravinsky and the Restoration”). 20. See Adorno, “Strawinsky: Ein dialektisches Bild” (1962) in Gesammelte Schriften, 16 (Musikalische Schriften I–III): 382–409; “Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait,” in Quasi una fantasia, 145–76. 21. See Gesammelte Schriften, 12:119; Philosophy of New Music, 97.

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transcending that springs from it, toward something at once “imageless” and transcendent (ein bilderloses Transzendentes), the fragmentary works of modernism acquire a utopian perspective. Let us now turn our attention to the reception of music, which, dominated by the interests of the culture industry, is subject to the laws of the market. This situation, steered by purely economic consideration, is made more acute by advertising. This applies not only to so-called entertainment (or “popular”) music, which is produced expressly for the market, but also to so-called serious (or “classical”) music, since the performance practice of the latter also obeys the rules of supply and demand. This is the objective aspect of the situation, while subjectively, on its human side, we find those deformation phenomena that have “damaged” the capacity for “adequate” listening, indeed for listening in general. This diminishment affects not only the “ears” but the overall human capacity to experience, which has been reduced to that of “amphibians,” as Dialectic of Enlightenment has it. Is it possible, in view of the fundamental contradiction between social reality and the human constitution, which affects consciousness and the psyche in equal measure, for music from the two so different yet complementary tendencies to receive an appropriate reception? Whether the works are performed at all is calculated according to the interests of the culture industry. If the works are performed, then the question arises whether they are capable of reaching the “ear” of the deformed listeners; if they are not performed, then the question doesn’t even come up. How, then, should and can the “anthropological sound barrier” between music and society be broken through, if there is an aporia between the realms of production and reception? As early as 1932, Adorno wrote to Krenek, in regard to the essay “On the Social Situation of Music,” that he had wanted to describe “the blocked pathways, the aporetic condition”—“a specific and very gripping experience . . . , namely that of obstruction [Verstellt­ heit], which is at the center of the Kierkegaard book.”22 While this may be equally applicable to the “authentic” music of both Schoenberg and Stravinsky, the aporia becomes even more acute in the case of the new music, since neither the truth that has been cognized nor the message that transmits it is able to reach humankind. The message stands in contradiction to society and stubbornly resists it. In this determinate negation (bestimmte Negation) of what is, it points beyond what exists, toward that which Adorno refers to as the reconciliation of contradictions (Versöhnung der Widersprüche), or redemption (Erlösung). In contradiction to the music of Stravinsky, the new music exists under the sign of the “salvation of the hopeless.” I will now examine this 22. See Adorno and Krenek, Briefwechsel, 37.

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perspective more closely—one that oscillates between materialist social theory and metaphysics.

The “Salvation of the Hopeless” Adorno’s entire philosophical work is imbued with the intention of salvation. In 1935, in a letter to Horkheimer, he wrote: “and indeed, I could introduce the motif of the salvation of the hopeless as the central enterprise of all of my enterprises, without there being anything more left for me to say.”23 The motif can already be found in Adorno’s early interpretation of Berg’s opera Wozzeck (1929). It is woven into Dialectic of Enlightenment and Philosophy of New Music, as well as Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. It is given very pointed expression, bordering on paradox, in the last fragment of Minima Moralia, which is a key to Adorno’s philosophy. The text sheds light on the deepest ground from which the need for salvation springs—namely, the subjective and objective despair over a state of the world in which Auschwitz was (and still is) possible. The fragment reveals the intention of salvaging, or saving, in the most explicit way. It describes the possibility and impossibility of what is intended in this way: “Philosophy, as its sole moral defense in the face of despair, would be the attempt to regard all things as they would represent themselves from the vantage point of redemption. . . . Perspectives would have to be created in which the world shifts, is alienated, reveals its ruptures and fissures the way it will one day lie there, as needy and disfigured, in the Messianic light. To gain such perspectives without arbitrariness and violence, entirely out of empathy with the objects, this is the only thing that matters for thought. It is the simplest thing of all, because the state of affairs undeniably calls for such cognition, indeed because perfected negativity [vollendete Negativität], once wholly within our gaze, crystallizes into the mirror writing of its opposite. But it is also completely impossible, because it demands a perspective that is completely removed from . . . the domain of existence, while every possible cognition must not only be wrested from what is, in order to be authoritative, but for this very reason is itself struck with the very deformity and neediness that it intends to escape.”24 The statement leads into an aporia. It is possible to gain that perspective, if negativity is grasped in its perfectedness. Then, it crystallizes into the “mirror writing of its opposite.” In this illegible writing, redemption shines forth as something that is not cognizable, is “imageless.” It is impossible to achieve 23. Quoted in Gumnior and Rungguth, Max Horkheimer in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, 84. 24. Gesammelte Schriften, 4:281; Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, 245.

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such a perspective, because philosophical reflection would have to assume an absolute vantage point outside history. Thought cannot assume this vantage point; therefore its cognition remains deformed and in need of salvation, like the “perfected negativity” that it seeks to grasp. It is evident that the transcendent is the last condition of the possibility and impossibility of a philosophy that emphatically seeks to think the “salvation of the hopeless.” The effort of thought, which springs from an existential need, winds up in a paradox. Unlike the dialectics of Hegel, who ultimately resolves the contradiction—speculatively—by means of determinate negation raised to a higher and higher level, and ultimately to the absolute, Adorno’s “negative dialectics,” oriented as it is to the antinomian dialectics of Kierkegaard, denies itself a positive resolution in the concept. Instead, it holds out, as determinate negation, in resistance. Here, a thinking that is conscious of its finitude comes up against an uncrossable boundary, insofar as it seeks to think—materialistically—real reconciliation, redemption in an absolute sense. The perspective of utopia is revealed as negative, since it cannot be unambiguously fixed conceptually. The transcendence that shines forth (around which Adorno’s late thought circles in ever new “constellations”) proves to be a broken-off transcendence, a light that is simultaneously dawning and vanishing. Adorno’s philosophy acquires an additional metaphysical dimension. In light of the above, what consequences for philosophical consideration of the “new music” derive from the relationships that we have seen becoming visible between cognition, determinate negation, and the transcendence that emerges from them? In the “construction of the idea of the works and their context” with which Adorno describes the unfolding of truth in the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, works of art take the form (Gestalt) of cognition. Thus the truth of the fragmentary works of Schoenberg is placed in a constellation in which the transcendent not only dawns and vanishes in thought but is also given as a reflection of reconciliation in the real, material works. If the works are forms of cognition of a perfected negativity, if they crystallize, in themselves, “into the mirror writing of [their] opposite,” then they are lifted out of the “domain of existence” to that “tiny” extent to which thought seeks to de-range (ver-rücken) itself. This removal, which Adorno also terms re-moval or re-setting (Ver-setzung), is realized in the authentic works of “new music.” The transcendent is mediated in them through the “configuration” of their form (Form), in which at the same time the historical and social truth is also mediated. “The artworks say what is more than being, solely by bringing into a constellation the way being is.”25 And: “Nonbeing is mediated in them 25. Gesammelte Schriften, 7:200f.; Aesthetic Theory, 133f. The subsequent quote is found on 129/83.

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by the fragments of being, which assemble themselves into an apparition. It is not art’s concern to decide, through its existence, whether the nonbeing that appears exists after all, as apparition, or persists in [mere] semblance. The artworks have their authority in the fact that they force us to reflect on how they, figures of being and incapable of citing nonbeing into existence, could become its overwhelming image, if nonbeing did not exist in and of itself.” With this, artworks are referred back to a renewed philosophical reflection for which, on the other side, a surplus (ein Mehr) in cognition is not possible. What Aesthetic Theory states in this way, Philosophy of New Music achieves as it follows its thoughts through to their conclusion. As Adorno ties both cognition of objective social antinomies and radical negation of these contradictions to the works’ form, the works point to the opposing image as a nondefinable Other. This Other is mediated in them in such a way that it is at once immanent in them and withdrawn. It is in them to the extent that it shines forth in the configuration of the form. It remains withdrawn from them because, as something immaterial, it is not fully resolved in its material mediatedness. This corresponds to the statement in Aesthetic Theory that speaks of “appearing nonbeing.” The metaphysical dimension enters into a constellation with the dimension of the finite, historical world. Thus Adorno, in a specific sense, exceeds the theory of society that Philosophy of New Music continues to embody. The anticipatory, utopian aspect of “new music,” which salvages the idea of humanity—the philosophical legacy of great music since Beethoven26—by rendering it imageless, is ambiguous. When it refers to the real transformation of social reality, then the realization of reconciliation, the salvation of the hopeless, must be imagined as the liberation of humanity from force and alienation—from suffering. For this, a changed society would be required, one that would have to be brought into being. In the “cipher of suffering” (Chiffre des Leids, Kurt Oppens), music calls us to undertake this transformation. In this regard, the motif of salvation continues to have an eminently social function, like the “stubborn theory” (unnachgiebige Theorie) mentioned in Dialectic of Enlightenment. On the other hand, Adorno seems to erase the utopian design that is one possible interpretation here, by locating reconciliation and salvation around a pole that lies outside the historical world. This would mean that reconciliation cannot be thought as this-worldly. From this perspective, the relation between humans and music—a relation that in Aesthetic Theory, as “aesthetic experience,” is subjected to urgent reflection—takes on the meta-

26. Cf. Gesammelte Schriften, 12, passim; Philosophy of New Music.

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phorical sense27 that human beings are capable, in the experience of music, of entering into a connection with the transcendent, which is the wholly Other, something absolute and uncognizable. This experience, which “joyfully” (im Glück) perceives “the interior of things as something that is at the same time removed [entrückt] from them,” as it says in Negative Dialectics with reference to Berg’s operas Wozzeck and Lulu, is also—as aesthetic—a metaphysical experience that remains negative. It is a “waiting in vain” and “does not guarantee what expectation goes toward.”28 Nevertheless, this experience “is contrary to the weakening of the ego that the culture industry promotes.”29 Again, it must be asked how the human being who is incapable of experience should once more become capable of an experience that, despite its renunciatory character, can strengthen him again. Adorno attempts an answer in his comments on pedagogy.30 In its capacity to make it possible for humans to experience the transcendent, the “new music”—no matter what its shape—reaches the limit of its possibility. “Its signs shed light on the senseless world. . . . It dies away unheard, leaving no echo.”31 Before, in the following, we turn to the problem of reception, let us take one more look at Aesthetic Theory. The dual perspective on transcendence that is developed, in a kind of stretto, in Philosophy of New Music returns, in many variations, in Aesthetic Theory, with Adorno’s social theory as its critical framework. The metaphysical dimension receives greater emphasis, specifically in Adorno’s reflection on aesthetic experience32 and the “enigmatic character” (Rätselcharakter)33 of artworks. Adorno again inquires about the truth content of artworks and about their sense (Sinn); he comes back to the particular question of the sense of a “new music” that has become senseless34 and transposes it to the level of art in general. Art, he says, makes sense by giving form (Gestaltung) to the emphatically senseless within it. Adorno’s final question, related to this, addresses the absolute: “In the last instance, artworks are enigmatic [rätselhaft] . . . in regard to their truth content. The question that each of them leaves with the individual who has passed through—the question: ‘What’s the 27. Gesammelte Schriften, 12:122; Philosophy of New Music, 99. See also Sziborsky, Adornos Musikphilosophie, 198–202. 28. Gesammelte Schriften, 6:368; Negative Dialectics, 375. 29. Gesammelte Schriften, 7:364; Aesthetic Theory, 245. 30. Gesammelte Schriften, 14 (Dissonanzen): 67–126, esp. 108–26, “Zur Musikpädigogik” (On Music Education). Compare Sziborsky, Adornos Musikphilosophie. 31. Gesammelte Schriften, 12:126; Philosophy of New Music, 102. 32. Gesammelte Schriften, 7:510–33, 363–65; Aesthetic Theory, 343–59, 244–46. 33. Gesammelte Schriften, 7:182–205; Aesthetic Theory, 119–36; the quotation is from 192ff./127ff. 34. Gesammelte Schriften, 12:120f.; Philosophy of New Music, 98f.

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point of all that?’— persistently returning, turns into the question: ‘Then is it true?’—the question about the absolute, to which every artwork responds by divesting itself of the form of a discursive answer. . . . The key to its mystery is missing. . . . The most extreme form in which its character as enigma can be thought is whether there is any sense, per se, or not.” This needs no comment. The question of the truth of the absolute, which Adorno’s late philosophy struggles to confront cognitively, is sketched out in Dialectic of Enlightenment, interpreted from a dual perspective in Philosophy of New Music, and forged in Negative Dialectics into the paradoxical clarity of “It is and is not.”35 This question and the enigma it becomes reappear in Aesthetic Theory in ever new constellations. In its attempt to express the inexpressible of the Other after all, Aesthetic Theory is negative metaphysics. Its longing aims at annihilation in the object whose mystery it wants to decipher. In this refusal to let go, a process in which it consumes itself, it holds fast to the possibility of the “salvation of the hopeless,” like the work of art, like authentic music.

Reception That the “new music” did not remain unheard is clear from the history of its reception, which gradually began in concert halls in the 1950s. To this day, it has barely been able to secure a regular place in performance practice. Thus it still resists the interests of the culture industry, since it conforms only with difficulty to the laws of supply and demand. A different situation obtained among the musical avant-garde of the 1950s, whose reception of the new music was influenced by Philosophy of New Music, first published in 1949, and by Adorno’s lectures in the Darmstadt summer courses. At first, the book found few supportive voices among musicologists and music pedagogues. Thus, for example, Herman Sabbe36 showed that Philosophy of New Music critically anticipated future developments in music that had “uncontrovertibly occurred” only after 1950, thus proving the legitimacy of Adorno’s theory. But he also asserted that “the immanent development of the material led to its own end point and dissolution” and called for the creation of a new “historical-materialist dialectic” in light of the changed compositional situation, which pointed toward postmodernism in art. The charge that only Adorno himself adequately understood the work was occasionally heard among musicologists. Such comments failed to comprehend that what was at stake was not Adorno’s personal experience but an interpretation, based 35. See Gesammelte Schriften, 6:368; Negative Dialectics, 375. 36. See Sabbe, “Philosophie der neuesten Musik.”

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in sociology and the philosophy of history, of the aporia between musical production and social reception. Walter Harth’s early and very harsh critique of Philosophy of New Music 37— it may have been this critique, above all, that caused the rejection of the book and its completely inappropriate reception by musicologists and music pedagogues—criticized musical details in a way that clearly showed that Harth had not understood the fundamental construct of the philosophy of history that was the foundation for the “dialectic of the material.” Harth’s misinterpretation of the Schoenberg essay, which Adorno attempted to correct in a response in 1958 (“Misunderstandings”),38 was outdone only by his criticism of the Stravinsky essay. There, he claimed, Adorno had operated with “dangerously nonobjective arguments” like “system of madness [Wahnsystem], schizophrenia, neurosis,” attempting to “displace objectively correct facts into the sphere of clinical observations of the excesses of a ‘madman.’” In other words, Adorno had personally disavowed Stravinsky. Once again, there was no comprehension of the fact that Adorno saw this music as expressing a general social circumstance that exhibited the pathological symptoms he was describing. The theory of the “dialectics of the musical material”—often abbreviated reductively, by later writers, to a “revolution in the material” (Materialrevolution)— continued to have an impact on composers of the postwar generation. But it was misunderstood by musicologists and pedagogues. Harth’s misjudgment of Adorno’s Stravinsky essay was repeated well into the 1970s. If I am correct, Carl Dahlhaus was one of the first to shed a proper light on the concept of the “musical material.” He showed clearly and distinctly that the theory, which had generated a lively critique, contained both a “technicalcompositional category and an aesthetic, historical-philosophical, and sociological one.” He also defended the concept of “attunement” or “internal consistency” (Stimmigkeit) as an “interdisciplinary category” in which all these categories were subsumed.39 Dahlhaus’s publication appeared at a time when Adorno’s writings had become the object of struggle between the political factions of the 1960s. The “left”40 accused him of having failed to pay adequate attention, in his philosophy of music, to the concrete state of the society, or even of having treated it 37. See Harth, “Die Dialektik des musikalischen Fortschritts,” 333ff. 38. Gesammelte Schriften, 12:203–6; Philosophy of New Music, 165–68. The Harth quotes are drawn from 204/166. Also see Adorno’s “Notice” on the fifth edition of Philosophy of New Music, dated April 1969. It points out that the “general comment” that the book had “done its duty” (199) was not yet comprehended. 39. See Dahlhaus, “Adornos Begriff des musikalischen Materials.” 40. See Tomberg, “Utopie und Negation”; Boehmer, “Adorno, Musik und Gesellschaft” and Zwischen Reihe und Pop; Reininghaus and Traber, “Musik als Ware—Musik als wahre.”

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affirmatively. The “right,” on the other hand, continued to see in him a critic of existing society and one of the main inciters of the student revolts. Beginning in the second half of the 1960s, the discussion of Adorno’s philosophy of music gradually died down, as interest increasingly turned to engagement with the posthumous Aesthetic Theory. The metaphysical component, which had attracted little attention until then, came in for increased attention. In the course of the emergence and rapid spread of theories of postmodernism, the social-critical elements of Adorno’s thought increasingly receded in favor of a “pure aesthetics.” This went so far that there were even attempts to turn Adorno into a theoretician of postmodernism, to render him newly up-to-date, especially in the United States. The contemporary state of reception of Adorno’s philosophy of music, in which a long good-bye to postmodernism seems to be taking shape, can be summarized in a few salient points. Adorno’s “failure to recognize” the avantgarde role of jazz, his “ethnocentric” preference for German music, his loyalty to a tradition of classical modernity, and his “elitist” preference for so-called serious (as opposed to popular) music and for an avant-garde that by now appears to many to be old-fashioned—all these are felt to be anachronistic. Other aspects of Adorno’s philosophy of music are felt to have continuing relevance. These include his insistence that reflection on music should continue to incorporate a philosophical component and to conceive of music as more than a purely sensual aural phenomenon, and Adorno’s insight that serialism had led to a “standstill” in the dialectic of the material. Reinhold Kager,41 for example, takes off from there and yet attempts to hold onto Adorno’s concept of progress, but in a different way. He does not share postmodernism’s noncommittal stance but—precisely in view of the pluralism of popular music’s subjects and styles—retains Adorno’s criteria of progress and regression. At the same time, he revitalizes Adorno’s value categories of “true” and “false,” in the sense of “innovative” and “regressive,” and reintroduces them into the discussion of musical philosophy in modified form.

References

Adorno’s Works Aesthetic Theory. [Translation of Ästhetische Theorie.] Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

41. Kager, “Einheit in der Zersplitterung.”

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Against Epistemology: A Metacritique: Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies. [Translation of Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie.] Trans. Willis Domingo. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983. Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. [Translation of Alban Berg: Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs.] Trans. Julian Brand and Christopher Hailey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Briefwechsel Adorno/Krenek. Ed. Wolfgang Rogge. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. [Translation of Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente.] Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert. Trans. Susan H. Gillespie and others. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Includes “Music, Language, and Composition” (1956); “Why Is the New Art So Hard to Understand?” (1931); “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music” (1953); “On the Problem of Musical Analysis” (1969); “The Aging of the New Music” (1955); “The Dialectical Composer” (1934); “The Radio Symphony” (1941); “The Curves of the Needle” (1927/1965); “The Form of the Phonograph Record” (1934); “Opera and the LongPlaying Record” (1969); “On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening” (1938); “Little Heresy” (1965); “What National Socialism Has Done to the Arts” (1945); “On the Social Situation of Music” (1932); “On Popular Music” [with the assistance of George Simpson] (1941); “On Jazz” (1936); “Farewell to Jazz” (1933); “Kitsch” (c. 1932); “Music in the Background” (c. 1934); “Late Style in Beethoven” (1937); “Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis” (1959); “Wagner’s Relevance for Today” (1963); “Mahler Today” (1930); “Marginalia on Mahler” (1936); “The Opera Wozzeck” (1929); “Toward an Understanding of Schoenberg” (1955/1967); “Difficulties” (1964, 1966). “Four Hands, Once Again” [Translation of “Vierhändig noch einmal” (1933).] Trans. Jonathan Wipplinger. Cultural Critique 60 (Spring 2005): 1–4. Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, with the collaboration of Gretel Adorno, Susan BuckMorss, and Klaus Schultz. 20 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970–. Vol. 2: Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen. 1979. Vol. 3: Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. 1981. Vol. 4: Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. 1980 (1951). Vol. 5: Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie; Drei Studien zu Hegel. 1970. Vol. 6: Negative Dialektik: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. 1973. Vol. 7: Ästhetische Theorie. 1970. Vol. 11: Noten zur Literatur. 1974. Vol. 12: Philosophie der neuen Musik. 1975. Vol. 13: Die musikalischen Monographien. 1971. Includes Versuch über Wagner (1–146); Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik (149–318); Berg: Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs (321–493). Vol. 14: Dissonanzen: Musik in der verwalteten Welt; Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. 1973. Vol. 15: Komposition für den Film [with Hanns Eisler]; Der getreue Korrepetitor. 1976. Vols.16–19: Musikalische Schriften. 6 vols. in 4. 1978–84. Vol. 16 includes Klangfiguren (7–248); Quasi una fantasia (249–540). Vol. 17 includes Moments musicaux (7–161); Impromptus (163–344). Vol. 18: Musikalische Schriften V. Vol. 19: Musikalische Schriften VI. In Search of Wagner. [Translation of Versuch über Wagner.] Trans. Rodney Livingstone. London: New Left Books, 1981. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. [Translation of Einleitung in die Musiksociologie.] Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Seabury Press, 1976.

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Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. [Translation of Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen.] Trans. and ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Theory and History of Literature 61. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy. [Translation of Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik.] Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. [Translation of Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben.] Trans. E[dmund] F. N Jephcott. London: New Left Books, 1974. Negative Dialectics. [Translation of Negative Dialektik: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit.] Trans. E. B. Ashton. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Seabury Press, 1973. Philosophy of New Music. [Translation of Philosophie der neuen Musik.] Trans. and ed. Robert HullotKentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Quasi una fantasia: Essays on Modern Music. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. London: Verso, 1992. Includes “Music and Language: A Fragment” (1–6); “Motifs” (9–36); “Commodity Music Analysed” (37–52); “Fantasia sopra Carmen” (53–64); “The Natural History of the Theatre” (65–79); “Mahler” (81–110); “Zemlinsky” (111–29); “Schreker” (130–44); “Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait” (145–76); “Berg’s Discoveries in Compositional Technique” (179–200); “Vienna” (201–24); “Sacred Fragment: Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron” (225–48); “Music and New Music” (249–68); “Vers une musique informelle” (269–322). Sound Figures. [Translation of Klangfiguren.] Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Includes “Some Ideas on the Sociology of Music” (1–14); “Bourgeois Opera” (15–28); “New Music, Interpretation, Audience” (29–39); “The Mystery of the Maestro” (40–53); “The Prehistory of Serial Music” (54–68); “Alban Berg” (69–79); “The Orchestration of Berg’s Early Songs” (80–90); “Anton von Webern” (91–105); “Classicism, Romanticism, New Music” (106–122); “The Function of Counterpoint in Music” (123–44); “Criteria of New Music” (145–96); “Music and Technique” (197–216).

General Literature Buck-Morss, Susan. The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute. Hassocks, UK: Harvester Press, 1977. Gumnior, Hellmut, and Rudolf Rungguth. Max Horkheimer in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973. Menke, Christoph. The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida. Trans. Neil Solomon. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Nicholsen, Shierry Weber. Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno’s Aesthetics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997. Scheible, Hartmut. Theodor W. Adorno: Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. Tomberg, Friedrich. “Utopie und Negation: Zum onthologischen Hintergrund der Kunsttheorie Theodor W. Adornos.” In Politische Ästhetik: Vorträge und Aufsätze, 23–42. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1973. Zuidervaart, Lambert. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

Musical Literature Boehmer, Konrad. “Adorno, Musik und Gesellschaft.” In Die neue Linke nach Adorno, ed. Wilfried F. Schoeller, with contributions by Johannes Agnoli et al., 118–34. Munich: Kindler, 1969. ———. Zwischen Reihe und Pop: Musik und Klassengesellschaft. Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1970. Dahlhaus, Carl. “Adornos Begriff des musikalischen Materials.” In Zur Terminologie der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts: Bericht über das zweite Colloquium der Walcker-Stiftung 9–10 März 1972 in Freiburg

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im Br[eisgau], ed. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, 9–17. Stuttgart: Musikwissenschaftliche VerlagsGesellschaft, 1974. Eichel, Christine. “Zwischen Avantgarde und Agonie: Die Aktualität der späten Ästhetik Theodor W. Adornos.” In Klein and Mahnkopf, Mit den Ohren denken, 281–93. Harth, Walther. “Die Dialektik des musikalischen Fortschritts: Ein Versuch zur Extrapolation von Adornos Philosophie der neuen Musik.” Melos: Zeitschrift für neue Musik 16 (1949): 333–37. Kager, Reinhard. “Einheit in der Zersplitterung: Überlegungen zu Adornos Begriff des ‘musikalischen Materials.’” In Klein and Mahnkopf, Mit den Ohren denken, 92–114. Klein, Richard, and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, eds. Mit den Ohren denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. Paddison, Max. Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music. London: Kahn and Averill, 1996. ———. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Reininghaus, Friedrich Christoph, and Jürgen Habakuk Traber. “Musik als Ware—Musik als wahre: Zum politischen Hintergrund des musiksociologischen Ansatzes von Theodor W. Adorno.” Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie 4 (1973): 7–14. Sabbe, Herman. “Philosophie der neuesten Musik: Ein Versuch zur Extrapolation von Adornos Philosophie der neuen Musik.” Philosophica Gandensia 9 (1972): 90–111. Spitzer, Michael. Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Subotnik, Rose Rosengard. “Adorno’s Diagnosis of Beethoven’s Late Style.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 29 (1976): 242–75. ———.“The Historical Structure: Adorno’s French Model for Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Music.” Nineteenth-Century Music 2 (1978): 36–60. Sziborsky, Lucia. Adornos Musikphilosophie: Genese, Konstitution, Pädagogische Perspektiven. Munich: W. Fink, 1979. ———. “Adornos Musikphilosophie und die Naziästhetik.” In Die dunkle Last: Musik und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Brunhilde Sonntag, Hans-Werner Boresch, and Detlef Gojowy, 2–29. Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft und Musiktheorie 3. Cologne: Bela, 1999. ———. Rettung des Hoffnungslosen: Untersuchungen zur Ästhetik und Musikphilosophie Theodor W. Adornos. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994. Williams, Alastair. New Music and the Claims of Modernity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.

Contributors

H. James Birx is professor of anthropology at Canisius College, Buffalo, and Distinguished Research Scholar at the State University of New York, Geneseo. Christel Fricke is professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, where she directs the Centre for the Study of Mind and Nature. Oliver Fürbeth is lecturer in music at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt, and docent in musicology at the Music Academy of the City of Kassel. Susan H. Gillespie (translator) is director of the Institute for International Liberal Education at Bard College, where she is vice president of Special Global Initiatives. Among her translations are Essays on Music by Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (University of California Press, 2002, with others) and Fission by Helga Königsdorf (Northwestern University Press, 2000). Günther Pöltner is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Vienna. Herbert Schnädelbach is professor emeritus of theoretical philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Gunter Scholtz is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Ruhr University in Bochum. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Erfurt. Michael Spitzer is professor of music at the University of Liverpool. Beate Regina Suchla has a permanent research position at the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen, and is professor of philosophy at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. Lucia Sziborsky was formerly lecturer in philosophy of education at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf.

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Francesca Vidal is lecturer in rhetoric in the department of speech communication at the University of Koblenz at Landau. Berbeli Wanning is professor of German literature at the College of Education in Ludwigsburg. Günter Zöller is professor of philosophy at the University of Munich.

Index Written by RU TH E LW E L L .

absolute music, xxiii, xxv, 65, 105–6; Gadamer on, 225; Hegel on, xxxiii, 79, 80, 84; Kant on, 36, 41, 44; Nie­tzsche on, xxxv; Schopenhauer on, xxxiv–xxxv, 131, 132, 134 absolute spirit, ix, x, 72, 73 aconceptual cognition, xix, xxii, xxx, 18, 112, 173 Adler, Guido, xxiv; “Scope, Method, and Goals of Musicology,” 18 Adorno, Theodore W., ix, xi, xii, xvii, xxvii–xxix, xxxi, xxxv, xxxvi, 1, 72, 91, 233–48; aesthetics of, xx, xxiv, xl, 117, 234, 236–37, 248; on autonomous music, 239; biography of, 233–36; Bloch’s influence on, 180–82, 184; on cognition, xix, xl, 18–19, 236–38, 240, 242–44, 246; critical theory of, xx, xxxiv, 233, 235, 237; dialectic of, xxii, xxxix, xl, 235–36, 239, 240, 243, 246–48; on expression, 237, 239, 240, 242; metaphysics of, xl, 242, 246; on new music, xxxix–xl, 240–46; on performance, xxvi, 234, 241, 246; reception of, 246–48; terminology of, xxii–xxiv; utopianism of, 235, 240, 241, 243, 244 —works, 248–50; Aesthetic Theory, xxiv, xxix, xl, 236, 237, 242, 244–46, 248; Against Epistemology, 234; Alban Berg, 238; The Authoritarian Personality, 237;

Beethoven, xx; “Critique of the Roving Musician,” 235; Dialectic of Enlightenment, 19, 235, 237, 238, 241, 242, 244, 246; Essay on Wagner, 234, 238; Introduction to the Sociology of Music, 237; Kierkegaard, 234, 236, 241; Mahler, 238; Minima Moralia, 235, 242; “Misunderstandings,” 247; Negative Dialectics, 234–37, 242, 245, 246; “NBC Music Appreciation Hour,” 237; “On Jazz,” 234; “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” 234; “On the Social Situation of Music,” 234, 241; Philosophy of New Music, 19, 70, 235, 238, 240, 242, 244–47; “Schoenberg and Progress,” 240, 247; “Stravinsky and Restoration,” 240 Aeschylus, 86 aesthetics, x, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxxv, xxxvii, 2, 8–13, 18, 21, 53; of Adorno, xx, xxiv, xl, 117, 234, 236, 248; of Bloch, 183; of Gadamer, xxxviii; of Hegel, xxxi, xxxiii, xl, 14, 71–72, 77, 88, 89, 91, 116; of Heidegger, 195; of Kant, xxix–xxxi, 11, 23, 28, 31–44, 88, 114; of Schelling, 12, 100–102, 105, 114–17; of Schiller, 11–12, 40, 42; of Schleiermacher, xxxi, 48, 54, 55, 62–65; of Schopenhauer, 131–33, 136, 137 affects, theory of, 5, 7 Albert, Claudia, 180

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alienation, xxi, 72, 73, 221, 240, 244 Alperson, Philip, 132 Althusser, Louis, xviii analytic philosophy, xix–xxi, 131 Anbruch (journal), 234 Anglo-American musicology, xvii–xviii, xxiv anti-Semitism, 237 Apel, Karl-Otto, xx, xxvi, 223 Apollo, xi, xxxv, 135, 143, 146–52, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161 appearances, world of, 29, 44, 123, 147, 149 appropriation, 76; event as, 189–91, 198, 203–5 Archilochus, 147 Arendt, Hannah, 188 Aristotle, xxvii, 61, 73, 226; Maxima Moralia, 235 artifacts, 31; beautiful, xxxi, 39 Association for the Protection of German Writers in Exile, 166 atonal music, 19, 83, 182 attunement, 58, 189–90, 192n, 201, 239, 247 autonomy, 20–21, 117; Kant on, 23; Schelling on, 100 autonomous music, xxii, xxiii, 13, 20–21, 117; Hegel on, xxxiii, 79, 90; Kant on, 41; Schopenhauer on, 130–31 Bach, Johann Sebastian, xxix–xxx, 7, 8, 10, 82, 85, 88; Bloch on, 169, 172; Nie­tzsche on, 151, 156; St. Matthew Passion, 22 Barth, Karl, 65 Bartók, Béla, 234 Basel, University of, 141 Batteux, Charles, 53 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 8–9, 11, 53, 72; Aesthetika, 40, 100 beautiful, idea of the, 11–12, 14 beautiful play of sensations, xix, xxx, 35, 88 Beckett, Samuel, 135 Beethoven, Ludwig van, xxxiii, 12, 13, 81, 87, 89, 244; Adorno on, xx, 235; Bloch on, 169, 171–73, 175–79; Heidegger on, 193; Nie­tzsche on, 151, 156; Schelling and, 116; Schopenhauer on, 130 —works: Fidelio, xix, xxxvi, 91, 171, 175–79, 182; “Hammerklavier Sonata,” 22; Lenore Overture, 176; Ninth Symphony, xxxvi, 16; piano sonata op. 31, no. 2, 207

Behrens, Roger, 184 being, question of, xi, 188–91 Benjamin, Walter, 181, 233–34 Berg, Alban, xxix, xxxix, 234, 238, 240; Lulu, 245; Wozzeck, 242, 245 Bergson, Henri, xxxix Berlin, University of, 48, 69 Berlin Wall, 167 Berlioz, Hector, 79; Symphonie fantastique, 15 Bernhard, Christoph, 6 Bernhard, Thomas, 135 Bible, the, 176 birdsong, 7, 53, 59, 76 Birnbaum, Johann Abraham, 8 Birx, H. James, ix–xii, 253 Bizet, Georges, 152; Carmen, 152–53, 171 Bloch, Ernst, xix, xxxv, xxxvii, xxxix, xl, 18, 91, 165–84; biography of, 165–67; on cognition, 167–68, 170, 172, 173, 175; dialectic of, xxxvi, 168, 175; on expression, 171–72, 174–75, 177, 179; on language, xi, 172–74, 177, 178, 181, 184; on opera, 171, 175–77, 182, 183; reception of, 180–84; terminology of, xxv, xxvi; utopianism of, xxxvi, 18, 166, 167, 169–72, 175–84 —works, 184–85; “Andante—Adagio,” 178; Atheism in Christianity, 167; Critical Discussion of Rickert and the Problem of Epistemology, 165; Experimentum Mundi, 167, 173–74; Heritage of Our Times, 166, 169; Inter-Worlds in the History of Philosophy, 167; Literary Essays, 167; Natural Law and Human Dignity, 167, 177; Political Measurements, 167; The Principle of Hope, 167, 168, 174, 175, 182, 183; The Problem of Materialism, 167; The Spirit of Utopia, 70, 166, 169–72, 174, 180–83; Subject-Object, 167; Tendency— Latency—Utopia, 167; Thomas Münzer as a Theologican of Revolution, 166; Through the Desert, 166; Traces, 166 Bloch, Jan Robert, 166 Bloch, Karola (née Piotrkowska), 166, 167 Blumenberg, Hans, xviii Boethius, 4, 147 Böhler, Dietrich, 223 Boulez, Pierre, 235 Brahms, Johannes, 17, 134, 174 Braig, Carl, 187 Brandom, Robert, xxvi

Index Brecht, Bertolt, 182–84 Brentano, Franz, 187 Brücher, Petra, 183 Bruckner, Anton, 90, 170–72, 182 Brunner, Emil, 65 Buddhism, 146 Bülow, Hans von, 81 Burkhardt, Jakob, 16 Burmeister, Joachim, Musica poetica, 3–4 Busoni, Ferruccio, 160 Byron, Lord, 14 Cage, John, xxxvii Caplin, William, xxvii Cartesian tradition, 11 Cassirer, Ernst, 44 Catholic Church, 3, 181 Cavelli, Agathe, 233 Cavelli-Adorno, Maria, 233 characters, representations of, 41 Christianity, 12, 56–57, 149, 153, 155, 159 classicism, 17, 40, 168 cognition, xiii, xix, xxvi–xxvii, xxxiii, 9, 18, 157; Adorno on, xix, xl, 18, 236–38, 240, 242–44, 246; art as, 12, 18, 44, 97–105, 132, 236–40; Baumgarten on, 8–9, 11, 100; Bloch on, 167–68, 170, 172, 173, 175; Erkenntnis translated as, xv, 237; Gadamer on, 217–18, 224; Hegel on, xxxii; Kant on, xxx–xxxi, xl, 11, 28–32, 36, 38–40, 42, 44; Schelling on, xix, 12, 97–102, 105, 107; Schleiermacher on, xxvi, 51; Schopenhauer on, xxi, 122–26, 128–29, 132, 133 Cohen, Hermann, 44 concept character of music, xxii Conrad, Joseph, 135 consonance, 8, 60, 78, 82–83, 148 Cook, Nicholas, xxvi–xxvii Copernicus, Nicolaus, 5 counterpoint, 6, 82, 156, 172, 173, 180 Cox, Arnie, xxvi Critical Journal of Philosophy, 69, 70 Critical Musician, The, 8 Critical Musician on the Spree, 9 critical theory, xx, xxvi, xxxiv, 233, 235, 237 Czajka-Cunico, Anna, 181, 183 Dahlhaus, Carl, xvii–xviii, xxvii, xxxi, 19, 44, 65, 71, 247

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Damus, Renate, 183 dance, 4, 10, 15, 21, 89, 222; Kant on, 36, 41; Schleiermacher on, 53, 55, 61 Darmstadt International Summer Courses on New Music, 235, 246 Dasein, xxiii, 189–93 Davies, Stephen, xix décadence, xxxv, 144 deconstructionism, xxviii Deleuze, Gilles, xviii Delius, Frederick, 159 Derrida, Jacques, xviii, xxviii Descartes, René, xxix Dewey, John, xxvi dialectic, xviii, xxii–xxiv, 150; of Adorno, xxii, xxxix, xl, 235–36, 239, 240, 243, 246–48; of Bloch, xxxvi, 168, 175; of Gadamer, 222, 226; of Hegel, x, xxii, 116, 243; of Schelling, 103, 105, 106, 108–11, 113, 115, 116; of Schleiermacher, xxxi, xxxii Diffrey, T. J., 132 Dilthey, Wilhelm, xxxviii, 2, 17, 64, 212 Dionysus, xi, xxxv, 15, 135, 143, 146–52, 154–58 disinterested liking, 31–32, 35, 38 dissonance, 4, 6, 8; Bloch on, 180; Hegel on, 78, 82–83; Nie­tzsche on, 148–49, 157 Dodds, E. R., 161 Duncker und Humblot publishing firm, 170, 181 Duque, João, 229 Eisler, Hanns, 160, 179–80, 182–84; “14 Ways of Describing the Rain,” 180 Elias, Norbert, 228 embodiment, xxviii, 15, 39, 41, 239 emotions, relationship of music to, ix, 5, 8, 9; Hegel on, 73–74, 88; Kant on, x, 37, 38, 42, 88; Schelling on, 109; Schleiermacher on, 50, 57–58, 62; Schopenhauer on, 128, 131–33 Ende, Michael, 227 Enlightenment, ix, x, xx, xxx, xxxv, 9, 47, 57, 100, 154 epistemology, xiv, 1, 165, 224, 233; of Schelling, 95–98, 100; of Schopenhauer, 123, 129 Erkenntnis, translation of, xv, 123, 237. See also cognition

258

Index

ethics, x, xx, xxi, 5, 8, 10, 189, 226; of Nie­ tzsche, 159–60; of Schelling, 100, 110; of Schleiermacher, 47–50, 52, 54, 63; of Schopenhauer, 125, 134 etymology, xv, xxiii, 190n Euripedes, 143 event-as-appropriation, 189–91, 198, 203–5 exact imagination, xxvi experience, aesthetic, 32, 99, 212, 237 expression, xxiii, xxiv, 7, 9–10, 15, 54, 132, 224; Adorno on, 237, 239, 240, 242; Bloch on, 171–72, 174–75, 177, 179; Hegel on, 71, 75–81, 83–85, 89, 90; Heidegger on, 195, 196, 200; Kant on, 35, 37–38, 42, 44; Schelling on, xxxiii, 113, 117; Schleiermacher on, 55, 57, 58, 62, 64 expressionism, xxxiv, 166, 170, 180–82, 184, 220 extramusical, the, xviii, xxiv, 17, 126, 132, 134 Faraday, Michael, 98 fascism, 237 feeling, ix x, xv, xxi, xxvi, xxx, 8, 10, 54; in Baumgarten, 100; in Bloch, 171; in Hegel, xxxii, 72, 75–76, 88, 91; in Heidegger, 190, 194; in Kant, xxx, 30–38, 43, 106; in Schelling, 106, 109, 114, 117; in Schleiermacher, xxxii, 50–53, 55, 57–58, 62; in Schopenhauer, 126–28, 132–33; in Wagner, 16, 194 Festpiel Theater (Bayreuth), 141 Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas, 168 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 11, 12, 28, 29, 69, 96, 98–99, 141 fine arts, 53; Hegel on, 71; Kant on, xxx, 33, 35–44; Schelling on, 106, 117 Fischer, Kuno, 134–35 Flechsig, Hartmut, 206 Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, 10, 22 form (Gestalt), 63, 75, 196, 199, 240, 243 formalism, xxvii, xxxv, 44, 133–34, 170 formative arts, 102–3, 105–7 Förster-Nie­tzsche, Elisabeth, 141, 142 Foucault, Michel, xviii Fracaeur, Siegfried, 233 Frank, Manfred, xx, 223 Frankfurt School, 19 Frankfurt, University of, 233 free play, cognitive, 32, 35–40, 42 free will, 30

Freiburg, University of, 187, 188 French Revolution, 177 Freud, Sigmund, 62, 135 Fricke, Christel, xxx–xxxi, 27–44, 253 Friedländer, Paul, 211 Fulda, Adam von, xxix, 3 Fürbeth, Oliver, xviii, xix, 1–23, 253 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, xi, xix, xxvii, xix, xl, 211–29; biography of, 211–12; concept of play, xiv, xix, xxxviii, xxxix, 216–20, 223–24, 226, 229; concept of understanding, 212–16, 222–25; hermeneutics of, xxvii–xxix, xxxviii, xxxix, 2, 212, 214–15, 223–25, 229; reception of, 229; reflections on concept of art and definition of music of, 223–29 —works, 229–30; Truth and Method, xxxviii, 211–12, 215, 229 Garda, Michela, 183 Gehalt, xxiv, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxix, 133–34, 179 Geist, xxiii, 72, 166, 170; See also spirit genius, 13; Bloch on, xxxvi, 171–72, 183; Hegel on, 81; Kant on, xxxi, 33, 42; Schelling on, 101–2, 116; Schopenhauer on, 15, 124, 128, 135, 137 German idealism, 29, 95, 98, 238 gestalt, 196, 199, 203, 204; See also form gesture, xxvi, 35, 41; See also dance Gide, André, 206 Gillespie, Susan H., xiii–xvi, 253 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 9 Gneisenau, Neithardt, 48 Goehr, Lydia, 132 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 11, 40, 41, 69, 96; Faust, 16 Gotter, Pauline, 96 Greeks, ancient, ix, 20, 72, 110, 150, 153, 155, 157–58; architecture of, 196, 203; art of, 9n, 56, 75; mousiké concept of, 4, 15; music theory of, 5; religion of, 143–44; tragedies of, xi, 96, 135, 143, 161 Gulyga, Arsenij, 34 Habermas, Jürgen, xviii, xx, 223 Halm, August, xxvii, 170 Hanslick, Eduard, xxvii, xxxi, xxxiv, 74, 76, 133–34, 158, 170; On the Musically Beautiful, 17, 43–44, 70, 117, 133 Hardy, Thomas, 135

Index Harth, Walter, 247 harmony, 4–8; Bloch on, 173, 178; Gadamer on, 215; Hegel on, 77, 79, 80, 82–87, 89; Kant on, 32, 42; Schelling on, 110–13, 115; Schleiermacher on, 59, 60, 62; Schopenhauer on, 127, 130 Hartmann, Eduard von, 91, 135 Hartmann, Nicolai, 211 Hasty, Christopher, xxxix Haydn, Joseph, xxi, 13, 22, 34, 87 hearing, 10; Adorno on, 39, xl; Bloch on, 172; Eisler on, 179–80; Hegel on, 75, 88, 89, 91; Heidegger on, xxiv, xxxvii, 191–94, 204, 205; Kant on, 35; Schleimacher on, 58 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, ix, xviii, xx, xxvii, xxix–xxxiii, 55, 69–91, 135; on absolute music, xxxiii, 79, 80, 84; aestethetics of, xxxi, xxxiii, xl, 14, 43, 71–72, 77, 88, 89, 91, 101, 116; biography of, 69–70; Bloch’s book on, 167; on cognition, xxxii; dialectic of, x, xxii, 116, 243; on expression, 71, 75–81, 83–85, 89, 90; on harmony, 77, 79, 80, 82–87, 89; idealism of, x, 29, 50, 72, 98, 238; on melody, xxxiii, 77, 79, 82–86, 89; reception of, 91; Schelling and, 96–98; on spirit, 72–76, 79, 80, 82–83, 87, 89–91; terminology of, xxii–xxiv —works, 92; The Difference between Fighte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, 69; Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 70; Lectures on Aesthetics, 14, 71–72, 90; Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, 70; Phenomenology of Spirit, 70, 82; Science of Logic, 70 Heidegger, Martin, xviii, xxvii–xxix, xxxiv, xxxvi–xl, 187–207; biography of, 187–88; Gadamer influenced by, 211, 212; on hearing, xxiv, xxxvii, 191–94, 204, 205; hermeneutics of, xxvii–xxviii, xxxviii, 2; on language, xxxvii, 192, 194, 196n, 197, 200–202, 204n, 205; Nie­tzsche’s influence on, 160–61; ontology of, xix, xxv, xxviii–xxiv, 17, 187–91, 194, 203–4; on phenomena, xxxvii, 190, 191, 194; reception of, 206–7; terminology of, xxiii, xxiv —works, 207–8; Being and Time, xxxvi, 188–91; The Essence of Truth, 188; Identity and Difference, 188; An Introduc-

259

tion to Metaphysics, 188; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 188; Lectures and Essays, 188; Nie­tzsche, 188; Off the Beaten Track, 188; “The Origin of the Work of Art,” xxxvi, 190, 194; Plato’s Doctrine of Truth, 188; The Principle of Reason, 188; The Theory of Categories and Meaning of Duns Scotis, 187; The Way to Language, 188; What Is a Thing, 188; What Is Called Thinking, 188 Heidelberg, University of, 69 Herbart, Johann Friedrich, 116 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 27–28, 40–43, 61; Kalligone, 42–43 hermeneutics, xvi, xxvii–xxxix, xxxvii–xxxix, 2, 131; of Bloch, 175; of Gadamer, xxvii–xxix, xxxviii, xxxix, 2, 212, 214–15, 223–25, 229; of Heidegger, xxvii–xxviii, xxxviii, 2; of Scheiermacher, xxvii–xxix, xxxi, xxxvii, xxxviii, 2, 49, 63 Herwegh, Georg, 136 Herz, Henriette, 47 heteronomous music, 21 Heydenreich, Karl Heinrich, 53–54 Hindemith, Paul, 234; Drei Chöre, 160 historicism, xxviii, xl, 17 historicity, xvi, 212, 213, 226 Hoffmann, E. T. A., xxvii, 12–14 Hölderlin, Friedrich, xxv, xxxvii, 69, 96, 188, 202 Holtmeier, Ludwig, xxviii Homer, 217 Hönigswald, Richard, 211 Horkheimer, Max, 136, 233–35, 242; Dialectic of Enlightenment, 19, 235, 237, 238, 241, 242, 244, 246 Hotho, H. G., 71 Huizinga, Johan, 225 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 41, 48, 55 Hume, David, 28 Husserl, Edmund, xxxviii, 17, 187–88, 214, 226, 233, 234 idea of the beautiful, 11–12, 14 idealism, x, xii, xx, xxvi, 11, 40, 63; Bloch and, 168, 183; of Hegel, x, 29, 50, 72, 98, 238; of Schelling, 12, 29, 50, 95, 98–99, 115–117, 238 imagination, xxvi, xxx; Adorno on, xxvi; Hegel on, 83; Heidegger on, 197, 199;

260

Index

imagination (cont.) Kant on, x, 32, 37; Schelling on, 109; Schleiermacher on, 51, 54, 58–63 imitation, xxx, 10, 42, 53, 73, 126, 147, 229 Inhalt, xxiv, xxxiv, 78, 79, 133n, 134 inner form, 61 Institute for Social Research, 234, 235 interiority, xxxii, 75–76, 78–80, 88, 90–91, 172 intuition: Hegel on, 78; Kant on, xxii, 11, 28–31, 35–36, 38, 44; Schelling on, 98–100, 102, 107, 111, 112; Schleiermacher on, 54–56 Ivens, Joris, Rain, 180 Jähnig, Dieter, 154 Jaspers, Karl, 211 Jena circle, xxiv, 95, 96 Jena, University of, 96, 121 Jesuits, 5 Journal for Speculative Physics, 97 Judaism, 56, 137, 138 Kager, Reinhold, 248 Kalisch, Volker, 206 Kant, Immanuel, ix, xii, xiv, xv, xvii, xviii, xxvii–xxxiii, 2, 15, 27–44, 50, 72, 91, 135; on absolute music, 36, 41, 44; aesthetics of, xxix–xxxi, xxxviii, 11, 23, 28, 31–44, 88, 101, 114; biography of, 27–29; Bloch influenced by, 175; on cognition, xxx–xxxi, xl, 11, 28–32, 36, 38–40, 42, 44; on emotions and music, x, 37, 38, 42, 88, 106; epistemology of, 165; on genius, xxxi, 33, 42; on intuition, xxii, 11, 28–31, 35–36, 38, 44; on judgments of taste, 31–32, 35, 38, 43, 87; on language, xxxi, 32, 37, 39, 42, 44; Nie­tzsche on, 151, 156; on phenomena, xxiv, 32, 39, 40; reception of, 40–44; on representation, 36–37, 40–42; Schleiermacher influenced by, 48; on sensations, xix, xxx, 35–38, 41–44; on temporality, 36, 221; terminology of, xxi–xxiv; Western horizon established by, 125 —works, 45; Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 28, 34; “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime,” 28; Critique of Judgment, xvi, 11, 28, 30, 34, 40, 42–44, 100; Critique

of Practical Reason, 28, 30; Critique of Pure Reason, 11, 28–29, 40, 98, 123, 233; Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 28; “On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World,” 28 Kepler, Johannes, Harmonices mundi, 4–5 Kierkegard, Søren, xxxviii, 219, 236, 241, 243 Kirch, Anthanasius, xxix, 5–6; Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni, 5 Kivy, Peter, xix Kleist, Heinrich von, 29; “Michael Kohlhaas,” 2 Klemperer, Otto, xxxvi, 170, 181–82 Kneif, Tibor, 181, 183 Königsberg, University of, 27–28 Körner, Christian Gottfried, 43; “On the Representative of Character in Music,” xxxi, 40–41 Köstlin, Karl Reinhold von, 91 Krause, Christian Gottfried, 9–10 Krenek, Ernst, xxix, 236–38, 241 Kristeva, Julia, xviii Kroll Opera (Berlin), 182 Kuhnau, Johann, 7 Lacan, Jacques, xviii Langer, Suzanne, 44 language, xix–xxiii, 4, 6, 15, 16; Adorno on, 19; Bloch on, xi, 172–74, 177, 178, 181, 184; Gadamer on, xxxviii, 215, 222, 227; Hegel on, 78, 88–90; Heidegger on, xxxvii, 192, 194, 196n, 197, 200–202, 204n, 205; Kant on, xxxi, 32, 37, 39, 42, 44; Nietzsche on, xi, 142, 145, 159, 160; Schelling on, 101, 109, 116; Schleiermacher on, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61; Schopenhauer on, 128–29, 137 language character of music, 19, 173 language, philosophy of, xix–xx, 142 Lehnerer, Thomas, 64 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 6–7, 9, 28, 60, 129, 228 Leipzig, University of, 96 141 Lessing, Gottfried, 8 Levinson, Jerrold, xix liberal arts, 4, 53 life, philosophy of, 143, 159 lisening, structural, 237 Listenius, Nicolaus, 21 Liszt, Franz, 16–17, 22, 81, 91

Index Locke, John, 227 Lommatzsch, Carl, 64 Lowe, Adolph, 181 Lukács, Georg, xxxvi, 171, 181 Luther, Martin, 3, 151, 156 Lutherans, 27, 48, 141 Lyotard, Jean-François, xviii Mahler, Gustav, xxi, xxxix, 171–74, 238; Lied von der Erde, 174; Second Symphony, 173; Third Symphony, 159 Mann, Thomas, 135; Dr. Faustus, 235 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, 9 Martersteig, Max, 181 Marx, A. B., xxvii, xxxii Marx, Eduardo, 206–7 Marx, Karl, xxxv, 167, 174, 238 Marxism, xxxv–xxxvi, xxxix, 18, 167, 168, 183 Matassi, Elio, 183 materialism, xxvi, xxxv, xl, 168, 238, 242, 243, 246 Mattheson, Johann, 4, 7–8 Matz, Wolfgang, 173, 175–77, 183 Maupassant, Guy de, 135 Mayer, Hans, 174, 176 Mead, George Herbert, xxvi mediation, xxii, xxxviii, 40, 44, 86, 87, 99, 219, 222 melody, 4, 6–9; Bloch on, 180n; Hegel on, xxxiii, 77, 79, 82–86, 89; Heidegger on, 201; Kant on, 42; Nie­tzsche on, 147, 152; Schelling on, 107–12, 114, 115; Schopenhauer on, xix, xxxiv, 127, 129 Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix, 10, 22, 90 Mendelssohn, Moses, 10, 28 metaphysics, xx–xxi, xxvi, 12, 18, 28, 57, 115; of Adorno, xl, 242, 246; of Hegel, 87; of Heidegger, xi, 188; of Nie­tzsche, xxxv, 15, 145, 146; of Schelling, 95, 98; of Schopenhauer, 15, 70, 125, 127, 129, 132, 135, 146, 147 meter, xxxix, 113–14 Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand, 196 Meyer, Leonard, xxvi, xxvii Meyer, Theo, 158 Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, xxx, 42, 43 Middle Ages, 3–4, 143 Migliaccio, Stefano, 183 mimesis, xxiii, xxvi, 73, 89, 123, 132

261

modernism, xviii, xxxi, xxxiii–xxxiv, 14, 115, 132, 144, 239, 241 modernity, xxxv, 14; Adorno on, xxxix, 248; Hegel on, 80, 84; Schelling on, 110, 112; Schleiermacher on, 55, 56 modulation, 35, 85, 107–9, 111, 114 moral law, 30–32 Moravian Brethren, 47 mousiké, ancient Greek concept of, 4, 15 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, xxi, 34, 82, 87, 90, 215; Bloch on, 171, 172, 174; Heidegger on, 194, 205 —works: Don Giovanni, 91; The Magic Flute, 86; The Marriage of Figaro, 91 Munich, University of, 98 Münster, Arno, 169, 181, 183, 184 musical meaning, xx, xxvi, 110, 132, 134 National Socialism, xx, xxviii, 166, 188 natural philosophy, xxxiv, 49, 74, 112 Nazism. See National Socialism Neoplatonism, 60 New German School, 17 new music, xxxix–xl, 19, 207, 240–46 New Musicology, xviii New School for Social Research, 180 Newton, Isaac, 227 Newtonian mechanics, 29 Nicholsen, Shierry, xxix Nie­tzsche, Carl Ludwig, 141 Nie­tzsche, Franziska (née Oehler), 141, 142 Nie­tzsche, Friedrich, ix, xv, xviii, xix, xxvii, 1, 141–61, 169, 220; biography of, 141–42; historicism of, xl; on language, xi, 142, 145, 159, 160; metaphysics of, xxxv, 15, 145, 146; on opera, xi, xxxv, 148, 152–54, 156, 158, 159; reception of, 158–61; Shopenhauer’s influence on, 135, 145–48, 150, 151, 156, 158; terminology of, xxiv —works, 161–63; Beyond Good and Evil, 142; The Birth of Tragedy, xxxv, 15, 142, 143, 145–46, 150, 153–55, 160–61; Daybreak, 142; The Gay Science, 142; Human, All Too Human, 142; On the Genealogy of Morals, 142; Thus Spake Zarathustra, 142, 159; Untimely Meditations, 142 nihilism, 144, 153, 160–61 Novalis, 141

262

Index

Odebrecht, Rudolf, 64 Oedipus, 149 ontology, 18, 39, 236; of Gadamer, xxxviii, 213, 217, 219, 222, 224, 226; of Heidegger, xix, xxv, xxviii–xxiv, 17, 187–91, 194, 203–4; of Schopenhauer, 123, 127, 129 opera, 5, 8–10, 16, 55, 81; Adorno on, 234, 242, 245; Bloch on, 171, 175–77, 182, 183; Hegel on, 71, 79, 80, 91; Kant on, 36; Nie­tzsche on, xi, xxxv, 148, 152–54, 156, 158, 159; Schopenhauer on, 129–30, 136 Oppens, Kurt, 244 Orff, Carl, 159 organic purposieveness, 30 organon, Schelling’s concept of, xx, xxxiii, xxxix, xl, 12, 97, 101–2, 117, 224 Otto, Walter F., 161 Oxford University, 234 Paetzold, Heinz, 183 Paganini, Niccolò, 81 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 21, 82 performance, xxxvii, 10, 20, 22, 114; Adorno on, xxvi, 234, 241, 246; Gadamer on, xiv, xxxviii, 216, 218–22, 226; Hegel on, 80–82, 90; Nie­tzsche on, 147, 149; Schopenhauer on, 130 Pfitzner, Hans, 136 phenomena, 12, 15–17, 60; Adorno on, 19; Bloch on, 172, 181; Gadamer on, 214, 224; Hegel on, 73, 75, 76, 81; Heidegger on, xxxvii, 190, 191, 194; Kant on, xxiv, 32, 39, 40; Nie­tzsche on, 135, 143, 157; Schopenhauer on, xxxiv, 122, 133 Pietism, 27, 47 pitch, 59, 127, 225 Plato, ix, 12, 48, 123, 125, 143, 188; Phaedo, 155 Platonic tradition, 5, 11, 62, 148, 219 play, Gadamer’s concept of, xiv, xix, xxxviii, xxxix, 216–20, 223–24, 226, 229 Plotinus, 60, 61 poetry, xiii, xv, 4, 9, 10; Bloch on, 178, 181; Gadamer on, 218, 219, 221, 222, 225; Hegel on, 78, 86; Heidegger on, xxxvii, 194, 200–205, 207; Kant on, x, 35–37, 53; Nie­tzsche on, 148; Schelling on, xxiv,

xxxiv, 103–4, 106; Schleiermacher on, xxxii, 55; Schopenhauer on, 124 Pöltner, Günther, xxiv, xxvii–xxviii, 187–207, 253 polyphony, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 82–84, 180, 228 Popular Front, 166 postmodernism, xviii, xx, 160, 184, 246, 248 presentation, 31–32, 40, 173, 201; Vorstellung translated as, xiv, 29n, 32, 73n Prez, Josquin des, 3 private taste, xxx, 32 Protestantism, 3, 27; Reform, 47 Proust, Marcel, 135 purposiveness, xxxvii, 11, 28, 30–33; without purpose, xxx, xxxi, 38–41 Pythagoras, 77–78 Pythagoreans, 4–6, 225–26 Quantz, Johann Joachim, 8 Ratz, Erwin, xxvii redemption, 123, 125, 134, 137, 241–43 Reger, Max, 85 Reinhardt, Johann Friedrich, 48 Renaissance, 3 representation, xix, xxi, 9, 14; Gadamer on, 216–19, 225; Heydenreich on, 53; Kant on, 36–37, 40–42; Schelling on, 99, 102, 103; Schleiermacher on, 54–55, 57, 62; Schopenhauer on, 122–28, 132–33; translation of Vorstellung as, xiv, 29n, 54, 73n rhetoric, 3–4, 7, 10, 35 rhythm, xiii, xv; Bloch on, 172, 173; Gadamer on, xxxix, 228; Hegel on, 77, 79, 84, 85, 89; Heidegger on, 201, 205; Schelling on, xix, xxxiii–xxxiv, 107–116; Schleier­ macher on, 55, 59–60; Sulzer’s article on, xxxiii Rickert, Heinrich, 165 Riedesel, barons von, 96 Riemann, Hugo, 44 Rifkin, Jeremy, 226 Rihm, Wolfgang, 160 ringing of silence, 192, 193, 205 Ritschl, F. W., 141 Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 96 Rockefeller Foundation, 180 Rohde, Erwin, 141

Index romanticism, xxii, 12–14, 16, 91; Hegel and, xxxii, 75–76, 79–80, 84, 88–89; Heidegger on, 207; Schelling and, 95–96, 99, 105–6, 110, 112, 115–16; Schleier­ macher and, 47, 57, 63, 65; Schopenhauer and, 15, 70 Rosen, Charles, xxxii Rosenkranz, Karl, 14 Rossini, Gioachino, xxxiii, xxxv, 82, 91, 129–30 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 28 Russian Revolution, 170 Sabbe, Herman, 246 Salome, Lou, 142 Scharnhorst, Gerhard von, 48 Scheibe, Johann Adolph, 8 Schein, xxiv, 169n, 236 Schelling, Caroline, 96 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, x, xxvii, xl, 29, 95–117; aesthetics of, 12, 100–102, 105, 114–17; biography of, 95–98; on cognition, xix, 12, 97–102, 105, 107; dialectic of, 103, 105, 106, 108–11, 113, 115, 116; epistemology of, 95–98, 100; Hegel and, 69; idealism of, 12, 29, 50, 95, 98–99, 115–117, 238; on intuition, 98–100, 102, 107, 111, 112; on melody, 107–12, 114, 115; organon concept of, xx, xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxix, xl, 12, 97, 101–2, 117, 224; reception of, 115–17; on rhythm, xix, xxxiii, xxxiv, 107–116; terminology of, xxiv —works, 117–18; Ages of the World, 104; “Concerning the Relationship of the Formative Arts to Nature,” 97, 104; “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom,” 97; Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 96; New Deduction of Natural Right, 96; Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, 96; Philosophie der Kunst, xxxiv; Philosophy of Art, 103–6, 110–11, 116; Philosophy of Mythology, 98, 104; Philosophy of Revelation, 98; System of Transcendental Idealism, 97, 100, 103 schemata, xxi–xxii, 51, 100, 106, 108 Schenker, Heinrich, xxvii, xxviii Schiller, Friedrich, xxxviii, 11, 29, 40–42, 86;

263

On the Education of Man in a Series of Letters, 40 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 96, 141; The Theory of Art, 54 Schlegel, Friedrich, xxxviii, 41, 47, 48, 55, 57, 96, 141, 216, 229 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E., x, xix, xxvii, xxix, xl, 47–65; aesthetics of, xxxi, 48, 54, 55, 62–65; biography of, 47–48; concept of understanding of, 47, 52, 61–64; on cognition, xxvi, 51; dialectic of, xxxi, xxxii; ethics of, 47–50, 52, 54, 63; on expression, 55, 57, 58, 62, 64; Gadamer influenced by, 212, 219, 225; hermeneutics of, xxxviii, 2; on imagination, 51, 54, 58–63; on language, xx, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61; reception of, 64–65 —works, 65–66; The Christian Faith, 48; “Christmas Eve,” 48, 57, 65; Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy, 49; Ethics, 49; Occasional Thoughts on Universities, 48; On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, 47, 53, 57, 65; Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals, 47, 49 Schleuning, Peter, xxix Schmalfeldt, Janet, xxvii Schmidt, Bertram, 158 Schnädelbach, Herbert, xxiii, xxxii, 69–91, 253 Schnebel, Dieter, “Glossolalie 61,” 182 Schoenberg, Arnold, xxi, xxvii, xxxii, 19, 78, 134, 173; Acht Lieder, 160; Adorno on, xxxix–xl, 234, 235, 240, 241, 243, 247; “The Relationship to the Text,” 137; Schopenauer’s influence on, 136–38 Scholtz, Gunter, xxvii–xxviii, xxxi, xxxii, 47–65, 253 Schopenhauer, Arthur, x–xi, xxvii, xxxiv– xxxv, xl, 91, 121–38; aesthetics of, 131–33, 136, 137; biography of, 121–22; on cognition, xxi, 122–26, 128–29, 132, 133; on genius, 15, 124, 128, 135, 137; on melody, xix, xxxiv, 127, 129; metaphysics of, 15, 70, 125, 127, 129, 132, 135, 146, 147; Nie­tzsche influenced by, 135, 145–48, 150, 151, 156, 158; reception of, 134–38; on representation, 122–28, 132–33; terminology of, xxi, xxiv

264

Index

Schopenhauer, Arthur (cont.) —works, 138; Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 121; “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,” 121; Parerga and Paralipomena, 122, 125, 137–38; The World as Will and Representation, 70, 121, 125, 137 Schopenhauer, Heinrich Floris, 121 Schopenhauer, Johanna, 121 Schubert, Franz, 90, 174, 215; Winterreise, 86 Schubert, G. H., 96 Scotist tradition, 187 Scriabin, Alexander, 160 Searle, John, xxiii Seifert, Wolfgang, 41 Sekles, Bernhard, 233 self-representation, 62, 216–18 semblance, xxiv, 143, 169n, 244, 236 semiotics, xxii, xxvi, 39, 44, 51 sensations: Hegel on, 72, 88; Kant on, xix, xxx, 35–38, 41–44 sensibility, 8, 35n, 42, 53, 54, 88, 221 Shaftesbury, Lord, 61 Shakespeare, William, Julius Caesar, 63 signs, xxxi–xxxii, 39, 41, 51, 56, 77, 85, 200, 201; See also semiotics silence, ringing of, 192, 193, 205 Silesius, Angelus, 194 Simmel, Georg, 135, 166, 170 Sloterdijk, Peter, 154, 160 Social Realism, 182, 183 Socialist Union Party, 167 Socrates, xxxv, 143, 146, 148, 150–52, 154–58 sonority, 105–7, 111–13, 116 Sophocles, 86 Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz, xviii, xx, 1–23, 141–61, 253 Spengler, Oswald, 153 spirit, ix, xxi, xxiii, 3, 10; Bloch on, 166; Gadamer on, 214; Hanslick on, 17, 76; Hegel on, 72–76, 79, 80, 82–83, 87, 89–91; Heidegger on, 190, 203; Schelling on, 99; Schleiermacher on, 60, 62, 63 Spitzer, Michael, xiii, xvii–xli, 253 Sprachcharakter, xix, xx Steffens, Henrich, 49 Stein, Karl Freiherr von, 48 Steuermann, Eduard, 234 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 235

stochastic music, 20 Strauss, Richard, 79; Also Sprach Zarathustra, 159; Guntram, 159 Stravinsky, Igor, xxxix–xl, 228, 229, 234, 240, 241, 243, 247; Persephone, 194, 206; Psalm Sunday, 194, 206; The Rite of Spring, 85 Stritzky, Else von, 166 structural listening, 237 sublime, the, xxix, 28, 33–34, 42 Suchla, Beate Regina, xxvii–xxviii, xxxviii, 211–29, 253 Sulzer, Johann Georg, xxxiii Surrealism, 220 symbols, 50–52, 89, 123 synthetic judgments, xxx, 29 systematic philosophy, xiii, 15, 17, 71, 83 Sziborsky, Lucia, xxxix–xl, 233–48, 253 taste, judgments of, 31–32, 35, 38, 43, 87 temperament, musical, 5–6, 78 temporality; Bloch on, xxxvi, 169; Gadamer on, xiv, xxxviii–xxxix, 219, 221–22, 226; Hegel on, 75, 77; Heidegger on, xxxvii, 203, 204; Kant on, 36, 221; Schelling on, xxxiv, 107–8, 113, 116; Schleiermacher on, 58 thrownness, 189–90, 199 Tieck, Ludwig, 12 Tolstoy, Leo, 135 translation, philosophical, difficulties of, xiii–xvi Tübinger Stift, 69, 96 Tüns, Gerhard, 183 Turgeniev, Ivan, 135 ugliness, aesthetic of, 14 understanding, concepts of, xv, xxxi; of Bloch, 169, 175; of Gadamer, 212–16, 222–25; of Heidegger, 189–90, 193; of Kant, 29, 30, 32, 36, 38, 42, 44; of Schelling, 98, 108–9; of Schleiermacher, 47, 52, 61–64; of Schopenhauer, 122, 130, 156 unsayability topos, 12, 13, 16, 132 utopianism, xxxv, xl; of Adorno, 235, 240, 241, 243, 244; of Bloch, xxxvi, 18, 166, 167, 169–72, 175–84 Vaihinger, Hans, 135 van Gogh, Vincent, xxxvii, 195, 203

Index Varèse, Edgar, 160 Vermittlung, translation of, xxii, 86; See also mediation Vidal, Francesca, xxxv, xxxvi, xxvi, 165–84, 254 virtuosity, 81–82, 90 Vischer, Friedrich, 91 visual arts, 97n; Gadamer on, 215; Hegel on, 78, 88–89; Kant on, 35, 39; Nie­tzsche on, 135; Schleimacher on, 51, 53–55; Schopenhauer on, 124, 135 Vivaldi, Antonio, 20 vocal music, 4, 9, 10, 12–13, 86, 106, 129–30; See also opera voice, human, xxvi, 58n, 76 Vorstellung, translation of, xiv, 29n, 32, 54, 73n. See also presentation; representation Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, 12 Wagner, Richard, xi, xxxv, xxxix, 13, 15–17, 81, 135, 136–38, 141–42, 145, 151, 152, 156–58, 169, 171, 172, 182, 184, 194, 238; “Art and Revolution,” 136; “The Artwork of the Future,” 136; “A Communication to My Friends,” 136; Der Fliegende Holländer, 136; Lohengrin, 136; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 136, 137, 178; “On Franz Liszt’s Symphonic Poems,” 136; “Opera and Drama,” 136; Parsifal, xi, 136; Das Rheingold, 136; Der Ring des Nibelungen, xi, 85, 136; Tannhäuser, 136; Tristan and Isolde, 136, 148; Die Walküre, 136

265

Wanning, Berbeli, xxxiii, 95–117, 254 Weber, Carl Maria von, 86 Weber, Max, 17 Webern, Anton von, 160, 234, 240 Weisse, Christian Hermann, 12, 14 Wellmer, Albrecht, xviii, xx Werckmeister, Andreas, 6 Werckmeister, Otto K., 183 Wilhelm, Kaiser, 166 Will: Nie­tzsche on, 146, 156–57; Schopenhauer on, xi, xix, xxv, xxvii, xxxiv, xxxv, 15, 70, 122–36 Willich, Henriette von, 48 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 9, 56, 143 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xix, xxiii, xxxviii, 135–36 Wolf, Hugo, 160 Wolff, Christian, 28, 72 work concept, xx, xxv–xxvi, xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxix, 20–23, 221 World War I, 166 world, work of art as, 196, 197n Xenakis, Iannis, 20 Young, Julian P., 132, 153–54, 158 Zimmerman, Rainer E., 179 Zimmermann, Bernd-Alois, 160 Zola, Émile, 135 Zöller, Günter, xxi, xxxiv, 121–38, 254