bonds - idealism msc aes

8/7/2019 bonds - idealism msc aes

1/35

American Musicological Society

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth CenturyAuthor(s): Mark Evan BondsSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 50, No. 2/3 (Summer - Autumn,1997), pp. 387-420Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831839

Accessed: 13/10/2009 14:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/831839?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/831839?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of InstrumentalMusic at the Turn of the Nineteenth CenturyMARK EVAN BONDS

aackenroder, Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul, FriedrichSchlegel,E.T. A. Hoffmann:theyarealmostalwayssummonedin asinglev T breathas witnessesto theprofoundchangein musicalaestheticsthat took placein Germanyat the turn of the nineteenthcentury.Withinthespanof littlemorethanadecade,thesewritersarticulatedtherelativelysuddenshift of instrumentalmusic fromthe lowest to the highestof allmusicalforms,andindeed of all the artsin general.Long regardedas aliability,thevaguecontentof instrumentalmusicwasnow seen as anasset.In differentwaysand with differentpointsof emphasis,theseindividualsallagreedthatthe moreabstractnatureof untextedmusicrepresentedthetrueessenceof theart,liberatedfromthestricturesof mundanesemantics.Thenatureandoriginsof this new aestheticremainproblematic,how-ever.Subsequentcriticshavetypicallyportrayedthis shiftin outlook as atriumphof emotionalismoverrationality.WilhelmHeinrichWackenroder,the firstexplicitlyto voice this new perceptionof instrumentalmusic,isroutinelyaccusedof Schwirmerei,thatuntranslatabletransgressioncom-biningsentimentalitywith elementsof ecstasyanddilettantism.Wacken-roderhimselfanticipatedthat readerswoulddismisshisaccountsof musicas"idleSchwarmerei,"'a responsethathas in factcontinuedto thepresentday.In the entryon aestheticsin TheNew GroveDictionaryofMusicandMusicians,forexample,F.E. SparshottblamesWackenroder's"rhapsodiz-ing style"forhaving"permanentlyloweredtheacceptabletoneforseriouswritingon music.Forthe firsttime,cultivatedmen ... conceivedanun-focussedraptureto be a properaestheticresponse,thinkingof musicalI am grateful to John Daverio, Jon Finson, JamesHaar, and J. Samuel Hammond for theircomments on an earlierdraft of this essay. I would also like to acknowledgethe support of theNational Endowment for the Humanities through ayear-long fellowship at the National Hu-manities Center in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, during the academic year1995-96.

1. Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder,SdmtlicheWerkeund Briefe:Historisch-kritischeAus-gabe, ed. Silvio Vietta and Richard Littlejohns, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universi-tatsverlag, 1991), 1:206.[JournaloftheAmericanMusicologicalSociety1997, vol. 50, nos. 2-3]? 1997 by the AmericanMusicologicalSociety.All rightsreserved.0003-0139/97/5002-0004$2.00


3/35

388 Journal of the American Musicological Societytechniques not as rational means of construction and expression but as oc-cult mysteries."By this account, "Wackenroder'shystericallymysticalviewof music eventually invaded the writings of musicians themselves."2Sparshott'sformulation gives pointed expressionto the varyingdegreesof embarrassmentevident in most recent accounts of this new view of in-strumental music. The emotional tone of writers like Wackenroderis gen-erally deemed too personal to be derived from-or to provide the basisfor-any systematic kind of aesthetic. Wackenroder and his collaboratorLudwig Tieck, moreover, expended at least as much energy praising thepowers of vocal music and painting: their aesthetic was by no meanslimited strictly to instrumental music. Hoffmann, in turn, glorified notonly Beethoven, but also Palestrina,Leo, and other masters of sacredmusicfrom the sixteenth through the earlyeighteenth centuries.3 And the char-actersin WilhelmHeinse's novelHildegardvonHohenthal(1795-96) rhap-sodize for hundreds of pages on the emotional power of vocal music; theirschwdrmerischtone continues a tradition going back at least three decades.Even while arguing for a "paradigmshift" to explain the new aesthetic ofinstrumental music, Carl Dahlhaus conceded that it "proceeded from theempfindsammusic aesthetics of the 1780s and 1790s, and did so in a processof transformation that contemporaries must have found nearly impercep-tible."4In the end, the passionate tone of writers like Wackenroder,Tieck,and Hoffmann was simply not all that new.More troubling still is the apparentdiscrepancy between the earlyRo-mantics' claims for the power of instrumental music and the actual reper-tory they described-or more to the point, did not describe.5Wackenroder,Tieck, Novalis, and Jean Paul rarelynamed specificworks or composers,and in those writings in which they did, their choices are allthe more puz-zling. Tieck, for example, discussed only a single work-an overture byJohann FriedrichReichardt-in his important essay of 1799 on the sym-phony. This failureto addressspecificmusical works or composers has ledseveralgenerations of twentieth-century scholarsto stake out the remark-able position that the visionary outpourings of the late 1790s anticipateda body of music yet to be composed, that the repeated references to "in-finity"and "endlesslonging" in the works of Wackenroder,Tieck, and oth-

2. F. E. Sparshott, "Aesthetics of Music," in TheNew GroveDictionaryofMusic andMu-sicians 1:127. Along similar lines, Carl Dahlhaus speaks of the "metaphysicalexcesses" ofTieck, Wackenroder,and Hoffmann (TheIdea ofAbsoluteMusic, trans. Roger Lustig [Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 1989], 23-24; originally published as Die Idee derabso-lutenMusik [Kassel: Barenreiter,1978]).3. E. T. A. Hoffmann, "Alte und neue Kirchenmusik"(1814), in his SchriftenzurMusik,ed. FriedrichSchnapp (Munich: Winkler, 1963), 209-35.4. Dahlhaus, Idea ofAbsoluteMusic, 2, 60.5. Not wishing to offer yet another definition of Romanticism here, I shalluse the termsearlyRomanticismand earlyRomantics as convenient designations for the last decade of theeighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, and for the writers under consid-eration here who worked during that period.


4/35

Idealism and the Aestheticsof InstrumentalMusic 389ers are more nearly congruous with the music of Beethoven's "late"stylethan with the works of Haydn, Mozart, or even earlyBeethoven.6 Partic-ularlyadamanton this point, Dahlhaus arguedthat the Romantic aestheticpreceded Romantic music, and that Tieck's view of instrumental music"did not find an adequateobject until E. T. A. Hoffmann borrowed Tieck'slanguage in order to do justice to Beethoven." This new aesthetic, Dahl-haus maintained, "predicatedthe existence of instrumentalmusic to whichone could attach a poetically inspired metaphysics without embarrassingoneself with inappropriate dithyrambs."7This barely concealed annoyance with Tieck ("inappropriatedithy-rambs")rests on the mistaken assumption that changes in aesthetics werenecessarilydrivenby changes in the contemporarymusicalrepertory.In thecase of early Romantic views of instrumental music, nothing could befurther from the truth. The new aesthetics of instrumental music reflectedfundamental transformationsin contemporaryphilosophy andgeneral aes-thetics that were unrelated to the music of the time. These changes werenot entirelywithout precedent, of course, for in one sense, the new-foundprestige of instrumentalmusic represented the culmination of a long andgradual process whose philosophical and aesthetic roots stretched back atleast a century if not more.8 But the tempo of change accelerateddramat-ically in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and the most importantcatalystfor the emergence of this new aestheticwas the revivalof idealismas a philosophical and aesthetic principle.The Idealist AestheticA venerable tradition of thought that traces its origins to the philosophiesof Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus, idealism enjoyed a vigorous renewal inGerman philosophy and aesthetics toward the end of the eighteenth cen-tury through such figures as Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Karl Philipp

6. See Hugo Goldschmidt, Die Musikasthetikdes18. Jahrhunderts(Zurich and Leipzig:Rascher, 1915), 210, 221, where Wackenroderis called "aprophet"whose theories "do notfit anymusic of the time"and the "apologistfor Beethoven's latestyle"twenty yearsbeforethefact. Edward Lippman, in his Historyof WesternMusicalAesthetics(Lincoln: University ofNebraskaPress, 1992), also senses a disjuncturebetween aesthetics and repertoryin the writ-ings of the earlyRomantics, arguing that music correspondingto their ideas did not begin toemerge until the 1820s and 1830s (pp. 121,239). MartinGeck (VonBeethovenbisMahler:DieMusikdesdeutschenIdealismus[Stuttgart:J. B. Metzler, 1993], 96, 129) makes a similar claim.I shall return to Tieck'sessay below.7. Dahlhaus, Idea ofAbsoluteMusic, 90, 65; see also 103. See also idem, "RomantischeMusikasthetik und Wiener Klassik,"Archivfir Musikwissenschaft29 (1972): 167-81.8. See Jost Hermand, KonkretesHoren: Zum Inhalt der Instrumentalmusik(Berlin:Argument-Verlag, 1981); Bellamy Hosler, ChangingAestheticViewsofInstrumentalMusic inEighteenth-CenturyGermany(Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981); and especially JohnNeubauer, TheEmancipationofMusicfrom Language:DeparturefromMimesis in Eighteenth-CenturyAesthetics(New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1986).


5/35

390 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietyMoritz, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Christian Gottfried Korner,Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and FriedrichSchelling.At first glance, the "rhapsodizing style"of Wackenroder and Tieck mightseem to have little in common with the more sober discourse of Winck-elmann, Moritz, and Kant, yet these earlierwritings provided the essentialframework for what are widely considered to be the first outpourings ofRomantic musical aesthetics.9In the broadestterms, idealismgives priorityto spiritover matter. With-out necessarily rejectingthe phenomenal world, it posits a higher form ofreality in a spiritual world beyond: objects in the phenomenal world-including works of art-are understood as reflections of noncorporealideals. From an aesthetic standpoint, idealism holds that art and the ex-ternalworld are consonant with one another not because art imitates thatworld, but because both reflect a common, higher ideal. Through idealism,the work of art became a central means by which to sense the realm of thespiritual, the infinite.10By the early nineteenth century, the field of aes-thetics was beginning to emerge as "the basic discipline and the organ ofmetaphysics.""1Idealism thus stands in marked contrast to the eighteenth-century pre-dilection for explaining the emotional power of music in essentiallynatu-ralistic or mechanical terms--that is to say, in terms of its effect on thelistener. As a philosophy, naturalismrejects the notion that anything inthe universe lies beyond the scope of empiricalexplanation; it holds that

9. Elementsof idealistthoughthavebeenrecognizedinthewritingsof theearlyRoman-tics on manyoccasions,particularlyin thescholarshipof thelatenineteenthandearlytwen-tiethcenturies,but the applicationof idealistvocabularyandpremisesto the aestheticsofinstrumentalmusichasneverbeenaddressedin anysystematicfashion.TheentryforSchel-lingin DieMusikin GeschichteundGegenwart,forexample,makesno referenceat allto theimplicationsof idealismforcontemporaryperceptionsof instrumentalmusic.HansHeinrichEggebrecht,in turn(MusikimAbendland:ProzesseundStationenvomMittelalterbiszur Ge-genwart[Munich:Piper,1991], 592-621), rightlyemphasizestheimportanceof the ideaofmusicexistingin its ownseparateworldforearlyRomanticaesthetics,but doesnot relatethisoutlookto idealism.Manyrecentscholars,moreover,seemoddlyreluctantto recognizethepresenceof idealistconceptsin writingsissuedat the turn of the nineteenthcentury:Spar-shott,forexample("Aestheticsof Music"),beginshisaccountof idealismwithHegel,whileDahlhaus(IdeaofAbsoluteMusic,10, 129) attributesan"aestheticof essences"to Schopen-hauer,Nietzsche,and the lateWagner,butnot to earlierwriters.Dahlhausandothers,as Ishallarguebelow,alsoblurthe crucialdistinctionbetweenidealistaestheticsand the laterdoctrineof "absolute"music.10. Introductionsto theearlierhistoryof idealismin aestheticsmaybe foundin ErwinPanofsky,Idea:A ConceptinArt Theory,trans.JosephJ. S. Peake(Columbia:UniversityofSouthCarolinaPress,1968);HansZeller,WinckelmannsBeschreibungdesApolloimBelvedere(Zurich:Atlantis,1955), 130-34; andGiorgioTonelli,"Idealin Philosophy:FromtheRe-naissanceto 1780,"in TheDictionaryoftheHistoryofldeas,ed.PhilipP.Wiener,4 vols.(NewYork:CharlesScribner'sSons, 1973), 2:549-52.11. ArnoldHauser,TheSocialHistoryofArt, vol. 3, Rococo,ClassicismandRomanticism,trans.StanleyGodman(London:RoutledgeandKeganPaul,1962), 108.


6/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 391the mind and spiritualvalues have their origins in (and can ultimately bereduced to) material things and processes.12 Naturalism provided thephilosophical basis for mimesis, the aesthetic doctrine that prevailedbefore1800 to explain the power of instrumental music. By imitating nature orthe human passions, a work of art, critics argued, could induce a corre-sponding emotional reaction in the mind and spirit of the listener.But music never fitverywell into the mimetic system, which hadevolvedaround the more overtly representational arts of poetry, painting, andsculpture. By the second half of the eighteenth century,most criticsvieweddirectmusical imitations of the externalworld with skepticism and at timesoutright derision. Human passions provided a more appropriateobject ofimitation, for here, as Jean-JacquesRousseau pointed out, the composer"does not directly represent"in his music such things asrain, fire,tempests,and the like, but instead "arouses in the spirit"of the listener "the sameimpulses that one experiences when beholding such things."'3 Still otherwriters opted for theories of "expression," but these systems ultimatelydepended on the principle of mimesis as well.14Even those relativelyfeweighteenth-century writers who rejected musical mimesis altogether andespoused a kind of protoformalistic sensualismhastened to point out thatmusic without a text was a merely agreeable (angenehme)art that stoodbeneath reason and thus outside the higher realm of the fine arts. Becauseit involved the free interplayof forms ratherthan of concepts, instrumentalmusic was widely perceived, in Kant'soft-quoted formulation, to be "morepleasure than culture."l5Many eighteenth-century writers-including Johann Mattheson,Charles Batteux, Johann Joachim Quantz, Rousseau, Johann Nikolaus

12. H. B. Acton, "Idealism,"in TheEncyclopediaofPhilosophy,ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols.(New York:Macmillan, 1967), 4:110-18. See also Arthur C. Danto, "Naturalism,"in TheEncyclopediaof Philosophy5:448-50.13. Jean-JacquesRousseau, "Imitation,"in his Dictionnaire de musique(Paris, 1768; re-print, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969): "II ne representerapas directementces choses; maisil excitera dans l'fameles memes mouvemens qu'on eprouve en les voyant."14. The classicformulation of the broader shift from mimesis to expression in all the artsremains M. H. Abrams, TheMirrorand theLamp:RomanticTheoryand theCriticalTradition(New York: Oxford University Press, 1953). On music in particular,see Hans Heinrich Eg-gebrecht, "Das musikalische Ausdrucksprinzip im 'Sturm und Drang,'" Deutsche Viertel-jahrsschriftfir Literaturwissenschaftund Geistesgeschichte29 (1955): 323-49; and Hosler,ChangingAestheticViews.On the close relationship between mimesis and "expressive"theo-ries, see Neubauer, EmancipationofMusic, 149-67.15. See, for example,the excerptfrom Boye, L'expressionmusicale,miseau rangdeschimeres(Amsterdam, 1779), translatedby Edward Lippman in his MusicalAesthetics:A HistoricalReader,2 vols. (New York:Pendragon, 1986-88), 1:294: "The principalobject of music isto please us physically,without the mind putting itself to the trouble of searchingfor uselesscomparisons to it. One should regard it 'entirelyas a pleasure of the senses and not of theintelligence."ImmanuelKant,Kritik derUrteilskraft(1790), ed. Raymund Schmidt (Leipzig:Reclam 1956), 237 (section 53): "mehr Genufi als Kultur."


7/35

392 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyForkel, Johann Georg Sulzer, and Heinrich Christoph Koch-sought toelevate the aesthetic status of instrumental music by callingit "thelanguageof the heart" or "the language of the emotions."'6 Yet this approachcouldnot adequatelyovercome the problem of vagueness, for to speak of musicas a language of any kind was to place it within a conceptual model thatinevitablyworked against music without a text. a lack of precision couldscarcely qualify as a desirable linguistic quality. Within the framework ofnaturalism,moreover, the language model failed to explainthe actualpro-cess of cause-and-effect by which music could move the passions of itslisteners.Idealism, by contrast, made no effort to explain the reaction of the in-dividual perceiving any given work of art, positing instead that the aes-thetic effect of an artwork resides in its ability to reflect a higher ideal. Anindividual'sresponse to a given work of art, in other words, was seen as areaction not so much to the work itself as to the ideal manifested in thatwork. Idealism did not deny the emotional power of music. To the con-trary:the aesthetics of idealism fostered some of the most soaring descrip-tions of instrumental music ever written. The object of description,however, had shifted from music's effect to music's essence, or more spe-cifically, to the ideal realm reflected in that music.17 Within the idealistaesthetic,then, instrumental music remained an impreciseart,but with theessentialdifference that this imprecisionwas no longer perceivedin relationto nature, language, or human emotions, but ratherin relation to a higher,ideal world-to that "wondrous realm of the infinite" ("daswundervolleReich des Unendlichen"), to use Hoffmann's celebratedphrase. From thisperspective, vagueness was no vice. Commentators no longer felt com-pelled to engage in the futile (and inevitably trivializing) effort to specifythe objective "content" of instrumental music. Instead, they changed thevenue of contemplation from the material to the spiritual, from the em-piricalto the ideal. Freed from the obligation to explain the causal mech-anism of their responses to music, idealist critics could revel in thoseresponses all the more freely. One can, after all, be more readilyforgivenfor resorting to metaphorical excess in trying to describe the infinite, asopposed to one's personal reaction to a specificwork of art. The earlyRo-mantics were most assuredlynot the first to respond deeply and passion-ately to instrumental music; they were, however, members of the first

16. See Hosler, ChangingAestheticViews;Neubauer, EmancipationofMusic; and MarkEvan Bonds, WordlessRhetoric:Musical Formand theMetaphorof the Oration (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1991), 61-68.17. Neubauer's interpretation of early Romantic music aesthetics as a revival ofPythagoreanismis correct insofar as Pythagoreanismis itself one particularmanifestation ofidealism.The examplesin his "Epilogue on Romanticism"(EmancipationofMusic, 193-210)become more persuasivewhen viewed within this broadercontext.


8/35

Idealismand the Aestheticsof InstrumentalMusic 393generation to have at its disposal a philosophical framework in which toexpress such powerful emotions without embarrassment.Not surprisingly, the earlyRomantics described the very act of listeningin fundamentallynew terms. All aestheticcoatemplation, accordingto theidealist outlook, demanded imagination-Einbildungskraft-to mediatebetween the senses and the spirit, between the phenomenal and the noum-enal worlds. Indeed, the term itself, as used by Lessing, Kant, and Fichte,among others, combined an inward-directedactivity ("Ein-bildung")witha sense of constructive power ("-kraft").18 Christian Gottfried Korner,writing in 1795, emphasized that we value an artisticwork "not by whatappearsin it, but according to what must be thought,"that is, according tothe reflectiveprocess demanded by the particularwork.19 For Korner andother idealists, the enjoyment of art was not a process of "idlereception,"but rather of "activity."Late eighteenth-century aesthetics thus movedfrom the premise of passive effect (Wirkung) to what Wackenroder andHerder would characterizeas reverentcontemplation (Andacht). The newscenario rendered the listener less important in some respects but moreimportant in others: less important in that the musical work's essence--asopposed to its effect-had become the focus of attention, and more im-portant in that the listener was obliged to take an active role in the mentalconstruction of that work within his or her own sphere of perception.The novelty of this approach-which we tend to take for granted today-can be readily illustratedby contrasting two accounts of listening, onefrom 1739, the other from 1792. Both resonate with passion, but theiraestheticpremises differ fundamentally. "When I hear a solemn symphonyin church," Mattheson confessed in 1739, "a sense of reverential awe fallsover me. If an instrumental chorus joins in, this brings about an elevatedsense of wonder within me. If the organ begins to storm and thunder, adivine fear arises in me. And if everything concludeswith ajoyful Halleluia,my heartleapswithin my body."20For Mattheson, listening was an intense

18. Kant's KritikderUrteilskraft(1790) was particularlyimportantin this regard.Recentaccounts of the growing role of imagination in the eighteenth century include Lillian Furst,Romanticismin Perspective,2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1979), 119-209; JamesEngell, TheCreativeImagination:Enlightenmentto Romanticism(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press,1981); and MarkJohnson, TheBodyin theMind: TheBodilyBasisofMeaning,Imagination,andReason(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 139-72.19. Christian Gottfried K6rner,"UeberCharakterdarstellungin derMusik,"in WolfgangSeifert, Christian GottfriedKorner:Ein Musikasthetikerde deutschenKlassik (Regensburg:GustavBosse, 1960), 151: "Wirschatzendie Erscheinung nach demjenigen, was in ihr nichterscheint,sonderngedacht werden muss." Emphasis in the original.20. JohannMattheson, Der vollkommeneCapellmeister(Hamburg, 1739; reprint, Kassel:Barenreiter,1954), 208-9: "Vernehme ich in der Kirche eine feierlicheSymphonie, so uber-falltmich ein andachtigerSchauder;arbeitet ein starckerInstrumenten-Chor in die Wette, sobringt mir solches eine hohe Verwunderung zu Wege; fangt das Orgelwerck an zu brausen


9/35

394 Journal of the American Musicological Societybut ultimately passive process, in contrast to the "trueway of listening"thatWackenroder described in 1792 in a letter to Tieck:

It consistsof the most attentiveobservationsof the notes andtheirprogres-sion;in thecompletesurrenderof thesoulto thistorrentialstreamof emo-tions;in the distancingand withdrawalfromeverydisruptivethoughtandfromallextraneoussensuousimpressions.Forme,thisvoraciousquaffingofthe notesis associatedwith acertainstrainthatcannotbe toleratedforallthatlong. And for thisreason,I believeI mayassertthat one is capableof per-ceivingmusicin aparticipatorymannerforone hour atthemost.21In keeping with the mimetic aesthetic of his time, Mattheson had de-scribed the listening experience in terms of cause and effect;Wackenroder,

as an idealist,saw it as an integration of emotional receptivityand an active,even strenuous, imagination, a "voracious quaffing of the notes." This isnot to suggest that Mattheson andhis contemporariesused no imaginationwhile listening to instrumental music, or that their aesthetic response tothis music was somehow less intense than that of Wackenroder and otherearlyRomantics. But the new premise of a participatoryimagination in theact of aesthetic perception had changed the acceptablemodes and purposeof describing that perception.To sum up thus far: the idealist aesthetic assumesthat anyone contem-plating a work of art can and must mentally reconstruct that work beforeit can exercise a significantemotional effect. As an aesthetic based on thephilosophical premise of a free and absolute self, idealism accommodatesmultiple and widely differing interpretations of a given work of music.Under the doctrine of mimesis, conflicting interpretationsof the emotionalcontent of an instrumentalwork had long been perceived as an inevitableconsequence of the presumed deficiencies of instrumental music itself.The implicitly derisive question attributed to the philosophe Bernard deund zu donnern, so entstehet eine gottliche Furcht in mir; schliesst sich denn alles mit einemfreudigen Hallelujah,so hupfft mir das Hertz im Leibe."Mattheson goes on to note that theeffect of the vocal music would still be powerful even if for some reason he did not know themeaning of the words being sung.21. Wackenroderto Tieck, 5 May 1792, in his SiimtlicheWerke2:29:Wennich ineinKonzertgehe,find'ich,dafiich immeraufzweyerleyArtdie Musikgeniefie.NurdieeineArtdesGenufiesist die wahre:sie bestehtin deraufmerksamstenBeobachtungderToneu[nd]ihrerFortschreitung;in dervolligenHingebungderSeele,indiesenfortreifiendenStrohmvonEmpfindungen;in derEntferungundAbgezogenheitvonjedemstorendenGedankenundvon allenfremdartigensinnlichenEindricken.DiesesgeizigeEinschliirfenderToneistmireinergewissenAnstrengungverbunden,die mannichtallzulangeaushilt.Eben daherglaub'ich be-hauptenzukonnen,dafimanhochstenseineStundelangMusikmitTheilnehmungzuempfindenvermoge.The other method Wackenroderdescribes is to allow the music to provoke images in his mind,without paying such close attention to the actual course of the notes themselves--in otherwords, to use the music asa stimulus to the fantasy,ratherthan to use the fantasyas a stimulusto the "quaffing"of the music. Ironically,this less satisfactorymode of listening is the one thathas been most often ascribed to writers like Wackenroder.


10/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of InstrumentalMusic 395Fontenelle -"Sonata, what do you want of me?"-resonated for as long asit did not merely because the mimetic nature of instrumental work wasdeemed unsatisfactory,but also because the very premise that the listenermight have to "work"while listening was itself so audacious.22Within theidealistaesthetic, listeners were expected to "work"with their imagination,and the fact that instrumental music could generate widely differing ac-counts of its content was accepted as a consequence of this music'scapacityto reflect a higher ideal. That this ideal might be only partially compre-hensible was scarcelyafault of the medium itself. For in the end, it was onlythrough the work of art that the infinite could be sensed at all, howeverimperfectly.The Emergenceof the Idealist Aesthetic in the LateEighteenth CenturyThe resurgenceof aesthetic idealism in the eighteenth centuryowes muchto the work of the archaeologistand arthistorianJohann JoachimWinck-elmann (1717-1768), whose concept of ideal beauty drew heavily onPlato.23For Winckelmann,the work of artdid not imitateanysingle modelin nature, but derived its features instead from a varietyof differentexem-plars. The resulting "ideal figures, like an ethereal spirit purified by fire,"were no mere composites, however: the high purpose of ancient Greekartistshad been "to bringforth creations bestowed with adivine andsupra-sensory sufficiency"that were "freed from every human weakness."24In

22. See Rousseau,"Sonate," in his Dictionnaire de musique,452: "I shallnever forget theoutburst of the celebrated Fontenelle, who, finding himself overwhelmed by these endlesssymphonies, criedout quite loudly in a fit of impatience:'Sonata,what do you want of me? "("Jen'oublieraijamaisla saillie du celebreFontenelle, qui se trouvantexcede des ces eternellesSymphonies, s'ecria tout haut dans un transportd'impatience:sonate,que me veux-tu?").23. "Idealism"is an extremely broad phenomenon, and the outline of its application tomusicalaestheticspresentedhere should not convey the impressionthat this mode of thoughtdeveloped in a clearor linearfashion. Kant, Fichte, and Schelling-to name only three of themore prominent philosophers associatedwith this movement-each developed his own dis-tinctive brand of idealism, and in the necessarilycondensed account that follows, I havemadeno attempt to distinguish among idealism'svariousmanifestations, such as subjective,objec-tive, transcendental,and absolute, preferringinstead to focus on the underlyingsimilaritiesofthese views as appliedto instrumentalmusic. Chronological priority is also difficult to estab-lish in such a broad area. In one sense, Wackenroderand Tieck actually applied the aestheticsof idealism to instrumentalmusic a few years before they were systematicallyformulated inSchelling'sSystemdestranscendentalenIdealismus(1800) and in his lectures at Jena (1802-3),laterpublished asDie Philosophieder Kunst. But Schelling's formulations are anticipatedto acertain extent by Kant, Schiller, and Korner in writings that date from the first half of the1790s and thus precede those of Wackenroder and Tieck.24. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, "Vorlaufige Abhandlung zu den Denkmalen derKunst des Altertums" (1767) in his Simtliche Werke,ed. Joseph Eiselein, 12 vols. (Donau-oschingen: Verlag deutscher Classiker, 1825-35), 7:110.


11/35

396 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietythis sense, Winckelmann saw ideal beauty as deriving at least in part fromthe mind alone, independent of direct reference to experience. And al-though he at one point explicitly denied that ideal beauty holds any meta-physical significance,he argued elsewhere that the ideally beautiful has itsarchetypein God.25Herder accuratelysummed up the receptionof Winck-elmann's epoch-making Geschichteder Kunst desAltertums (1764) in de-scribing the work not so much as an actual history of art than as a"historicalmetaphysics of beauty."26Plato's theories of beauty are equally evident in the Allgemeine Theorieder schiinenKiinste (1771-74) of the Swiss aesthetician Johann GeorgSulzer (1720-1779). Here, Sulzer followed the Greek philosopher's dis-tinction among various categories of artistic imitation and idealization.The first and lowest category of artistsconsists of those who copy naturepreciselyand without discrimination. Artists who imitate nature more se-lectively belong to the second, higher category. The third and highest cat-egory consists of those for whom nature is not sufficient and who pursuethe images of ideal forms. "One can generallysayabout an artworkthat hasnot been copied from an object in nature that it has been made accordingto an Ideal, if it has received its essence and form from the genius of theartist."27But it apparentlynever occurred to Sulzer or anyone else of hisgeneration to align instrumental music (or any kind of music) with theconcept of the ideal; to do so would have been to elevate what was con-sidered a merely pleasant form of diversion to the highest ranks of the finearts-which is preciselywhat many of the Romantics would later do.Karl Philipp Moritz (1757-1793) helped lay the foundation for thisdevelopment in his later writings. From 1789 until his death, he lecturedin Berlinon antiquity, mythology, and the historyof art,and his audiencesincluded Wackenroder, Tieck, Alexander von Humboldt, and the com-poser Johann FriedrichReichardt. Moritz openly rejectedmimesis as a ba-sis of art, insisting instead that the true artwork must be self-containedandinternallycoherent, andthat it must exist for its own sake. He placedspecialemphasis on the act of aestheticcontemplation. In his "Essayon the Uni-fication of All the Fine Arts and Sciences Under the Concept of the Per-fected Thing in Itself,"he proclaimed that "incontemplating the beautiful,

25. See FredericWill, "Winckelmannand the Ideal of Beauty,"chap. 6 of his IntelligibleBeautyin AestheticThought,from Winckelmannto VictorCousin (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer,1953).26. Johann Gottfried Herder, "ErstesKritischesWaldchen"(1769), in his SchriftenzurAsthetikund Literatur, 1767-1781, ed. Gunter E. Grimm (Frankfurtam Main: DeutscherKlassikerVerlag, 1993), 66.27. Johann Georg Sulzer,AllgemeineTheoriederschinenKuinste,2 vols. (Leipzig: M. G.WeidemannsErben und Reich, 1771-74), "Ideal":"Man kannuberhauptvon jedem Gegen-stand der Kunst, der nicht nach einem in der Natur vorhandenen abgezeichnet worden,sondern sein Wesen und seine Gestaltvon dem Genie des Kunstlersbekommen hat, sagen, ersey nach einem Ideal gemacht."


12/35

Idealismand the Aestheticsof InstrumentalMusic 397... I contemplate the object not as something within me, but rather assomething perfect in itself, something that constitutes a whole in itself andgives me pleasureforthe sakeofitself,in that I do not so much impartto thebeautiful object a relationship to myself but ratherimpart to myself a re-lationship to it."28For Moritz, the contemplation of the beautiful carriedthe added benefit of drawing attention away from the ills of mortal exist-ence, if only momentarily. "This forgetting of the self is the highest degreeof the pure and unselfishpleasurethat beauty grantsus. At that moment wegive up our individual, limited existence in favor of a higher kind of ex-istence."29The belief that arts in general, and music in particular,can provide ref-uge from the failed world of social and political life is a touchstone of Ro-mantic aesthetics.Franzvon Schober'spoem "An die Musik,"set to musicby Schubert in 1817, is one of the better-known poetic expressionsof thisphenomenon ("Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden, / ... hastmichin eine bess're Welt entriickt!"). In a diary entry from the previous year,Schubert himself had observed that Mozart'smusic "shows us in the dark-nesses of this life a light-filled, bright, beautifuldistance, toward which wecan aspirewith confidence."30When listening to music, Wackenroder'sfic-tional Joseph Berglinger forgets "allearthly trivialities that are truly duston the radianceof the soul"; this trivial dust is "cleansed"by music.31Tieckdeclares the modern symphony to be capable of "redeeming us from theconflict of wayward thoughts" and leading us "to a quiet, happy, peacefulland,"while Hoffmann perceivesa "wondrous spirit-realmof the infinite"

28. KarlPhilipp Moritz, "Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schonen Kiinste und Wissen-schaftenunter dem Begriffdes in sich selbst Vollendeten" (1785), in his SchriftenzurAsthetikundPoetik,ed. Hans Joachim Schrimpf (Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1962), 3: "ich betrachteihn [the beautifulobject], als etwas, nicht in mir, sondern in sichselbstVollendetes,das also insich ein Ganzes ausmacht,und mir um seinselbstwillenVergniigen gewahrt; indem ich demschonen Gegenstandenicht sowohl eine Beziehung aufmich, als mirvielmehreine Beziehungauf ihn gebe." Emphasis in the original.29. Moritz, "Versuch,"5: "dies Verlieren, dies Vergessen unsrer selbst, ist der hochsteGrad des reinen und uneigenniitzigen Vergniigens, welches uns das Schone gewahrt. Wiropfern in dem Augenblickunser individuelleseingeschranktesDasein einer Art von hoheremDasein auf.".Moritz's novel AndreasHartknopf(1786) contains similar imagery, even whileadheringto the conventional metaphor of music as the "languageof emotions."30. Quoted in Otto Erich Deutsch, Schubert:Die DokumenteseinesLebens(Kassel:Baren-reiter, 1964), 42-43: "Die Zaubertone von Mozarts Musik ... zeigen uns in den Finster-nissen dieses Lebens eine lichte, helle, schone Ferne, woraufwir mit Zuversichthoffen." Onthe early nineteenth-centuryidea of music as a utopian realm, see Max Becker,Narkotikumund Utopie:Musik-Konzeptein Empfindsamkeitund Romantik(Kassel: Barenreiter,1996).31. Wackenroder, Herzensergiessungen,"Das merkwiirdige musikalische Leben desTonkiinstlersJoseph Berglinger,"in his SdmtlicheWerke1:132: "Die Gegenwartversank vorihm; sein Inneres war von allen irdischen Kleinigkeiten, welche der wahre Staub auf demGlanze der Seele sind, gereinigt."


13/35

398 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietythrough the prism of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.32 Even Beethovenhimself is alleged to have urged a ten-year-old admirer,"not only cultivateyour art, but penetrate to its innermost; it deserves this, for only art andscience elevate mankind to the divine."33And Bettina von Arnim, in herfictional report of conversations with the composer, first published in1835, had Beethoven declare,"Whenmy music makes itself understood tosomeone, that person becomes free of all the misery that the rest of man-kind carries as its burden."34 While not necessarily representative ofBeethoven's own thought, Arnim'saccount is certainlyrepresentativeof itstime.It was not until 1790, however, that the aesthetics of idealism receivedits firstsystematictreatmentin the KritikderUrteilskraftof Immanuel Kant(1724-1804). Like Moritz, Kant emphasized the creativity of receptionandthe "playof mental powers"in aestheticjudgment, and in his "Critiqueof Judgment," he established a philosophical basis for connecting reasonwith the senses. It is not too much of anexaggeration to saythat afterKant,beauty would no longer be defined as a qualitywithin a given object, butrather as a function of subjective, aesthetic pleasure.For Kant, spirit-Geist-is the "abilityto present aesthetic ideas." Hedefined an "aesthetic idea," in turn, as "that representation of the imagi-nation which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of anydefinitethought, i.e., concept, being adequateto it." This representationofthe imagination, consequently, "can never be completely realized or ren-dered intelligible through language. One can easily see that it is the coun-terpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which is, conversely, a concept towhich no intuition (or representation of the imagination) can be ade-

32. Tieck, Phantasien,"Symphonien,"in Wackenroder,SamtlicheWerke1:241: "aus demStreit der irrenden Gedanken in ein stilles, heiteres, ruhiges Land erlost zu werden"; Hoff-man, review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1810) in his SchriftenzurMusik, 37: "daswun-dervolle Geisterreichdes Unendlichen." Idealism played an important role in contemporaryGermantheories of the state, and in this respect,Hoffmann's review of Beethoven's Fifth canbe seen to reflect certainpolitical ideas of his time: see Stephen Rumph, "A Kingdom Not ofThis World: The Political Context of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Beethoven Criticism," 19th-CenturyMusic 19 (1995): 50-67. But in the end, Hoffmann's response is motivated less bypolitical circumstances than by broaderphilosophical, aesthetic, and ethical ideals.33. Beethoven to "Emilie M. in H[amburg]," 17 July 1812, in his Briefivechsel:Gesamt-ausgabe,ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, 6 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 1996), 2:274: "tibe nichtalleindie Kunst, sondern dringe auch in ihr Inneres; sie verdient es, denn nur die Kunst unddie Wissenschaft erhohen den Menschen bis zur Gottheit." No autograph of the letter sur-vives. Note the similarityto Goethe's ZahmeXenien IX, first published in 1827: "WerWis-senschaftund Kunst besitzt, / Hat auch Religion; / Werjene beiden nicht besitzt, / Der habeReligion."34. Bettina von Arnim, GoethesBriefivechselmit einemKind, ed. GustavKonrad (Frechen:Bartmann, 1960), 246 ("letter"of 28 May 1810): "wem sie [Beethoven's own music] sichverstandlichmacht, der mufi frei werden von all dem Elend, womit sich die andern schlep-pen."


14/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 399quate."35But Kant explicitly rejected the notion that purely instrumentalmusic might incorporate aesthetic ideas; it could be judged only on thebasis of its form. He therefore relegated instrumental music-along withwallpaper-to the category of "free beauty."36Vocal music, by contrast,belonged to the higher category of "dependent beauty" on the groundsthat its text allowed the listener to find correlatives in the concepts of theobjects being represented.In this dichotomy of "free"and "dependent"beauty, Kant suggested analternativeapproachto the evaluation of instrumentalmusic, for as an in-stanceof "freebeauty,"such music could be evaluatedexclusivelyfrom theperspective of form. This line of thought presented an important openingto formalists in the mid-nineteenth century, most notably Eduard Hans-lick. But for Kant, "free beauty"was a decidedly inferior category of art,because the contemplation of mere form, without concepts, would even-tually "make the spirit dull, the object repulsive, and the mind ... discon-tented with itself and ill-humored."37He dismissed any ideas one mightexperience while listening to instrumental music as mere mechanicalbyproducts of associative thought. Unlike poetry, music speaks "onlythrough sentiments and without concepts, and thus ... leaves nothing tobe contemplated."It was on this basis that he deemed untexted music to be"more pleasurethan culture,"even while affirmingits potential emotionalpower.38From the standpoint of aesthetic cognition, then, Kant's ideas were ex-tremely advanced for his time; but in applying these principles to instru-mental music, he retreated to the traditionalmodel of that art as at best asemiarticulate"languageof the emotions." As Edward Lippman hasnoted,however, Kant's inadequate treatment of instrumentalmusic had the pos-itive value of spurringlaterwriters to reconcilethis artwith an aestheticofthe beautiful, as opposed to an aesthetic of the merely agreeable.39

One of the most influential of these post-Kantian writers was Friedrichvon Schiller (1759-1805), who developed the tenets of aestheticidealism35. Kant,Kritik derUrteilskraft,216 (section 49): "untereiner asthetischenIdee ... ver-stehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft,die viel zu denken veranlatit,ohne dafiihr doch irgendein bestimmter Gedanke d. i. Begriff adaquat sein kann, die folglich keineSprachev6llig erreicht und verstandlichmachen kann. Man sieht leicht, daf sie das Gegen-stick (Pendant) von einer Vernunftidee sei, welche umgekehrtein Begriffist, dem keine An-schauung (Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft)adaquatsein kann."36. Ibid., 95-96 (section 16).37. Ibid., 234 (section 52).38. Ibid., 237 (section 53). PhilipAlperson ('The Arts of Music,"Jounal ofAestheticsandArt Criticism50 [1992]: 217-30, at 221-23) points out certainambiguities in the treatmentof instrumentalmusic in the Kritik der Urteilskraft,suggesting that Kant may well have held"higher"forms (asopposed to mere Tafelmusik;see 204-5, section 44) in greateresteem, evenwhile conceding that Kant never states this position explicitly.39. Lippman, Historyof WesternMusicalAesthetics,133.


15/35

400 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietyin a series of widely readessays dating from the mid 1790s, beginning withan extended review of a collection of poetry by Friedrich von Matthisson.In a remarkablepassage that anticipates Hanslick by some sixty years,Schiller argued that "although the content of emotions cannot be repre-sented"in anywork of art, "theform certainlycan be." Schillerwent on topoint out that there is in fact a "widely beloved and powerful art that hasno other object than the form of these emotions. This art is Music."40

In short,we demandthatin additionto its expressedcontent,everypoeticcompositionat the sametime be an imitationandexpressionof theformofthis contentand affectus asif it weremusic....Now the entireeffectof music,however(asa fineart,and not merelyasan agreeableone), consists of accompanyingand producingin sensuousform the inner movementsof the emotionsthroughanalogousexternalmotions.... If the composerand the landscapepainterpenetrateinto thesecretof thoselawsthatgovernthe innermovementsof thehumanheart,andif theystudythe analogythat existsbetweenthesemovementsof the emo-tions andcertainexternalmanifestations,thentheywilldevelopfrommerelyordinarypainters into true portraitistsof the soul. They will leave the realmof the arbitraryand enterthe realmof the necessary.And they mayjustlytaketheir places not beside the sculptor, who takes as his object the external hu-manform, but ratherbeside the poet, who takes as his object the innerhumanform.41While still essentiallymimetic in its assumptions, Schiller'spronounce-ment moved the focus of debate awayfrom content and toward form. LikeHanslick, Schiller denied that music itself embodies emotional content;rather,it works through a process of analogical structure,mediated by the40. FriedrichSchiller,"UberMatthissonsGedichte"(1794), inhis WerkeundBriefe,ed.OttoDannet al, 12 vols. (Frankfurtam Main:DeutscherKlassikerVerlag,1992), 8:1023:

"ZwarsindEmpfindungen,ihremnhaltenach,keinerDarstellungfahig;aberihrerFormnachsind sie es allerdings,und es existiert wirklicheine allgemeinbeliebte und wirksameKunst, diekeinanderesObjekthat,alsebendieseFormderEmpfindungen.DieseKunstistdieMusik."Emphasis in the original.41. Ibid., 1024-25:kurzwirverlangen,dafjedepoetischeKompositionnebendem,wasihrInhaltausdriickt,zugleichdurchihreFormNachahmungundAusdruckvon Empfindungensei, und alsMusikaufunswirke....NunbestehtaberderganzeEffektderMusik(alsschonerundnichtbloi angenehmerKunst)darin,die innerenBewegungendes Gemiitsdurchanalogischeauflerezu begleitenund zuversinnlichen....DringtnunderTonsetzerundderLandschaftmalerin dasGeheimnisjenerGe-setzeein,welcheiiberdie innemBewegungendesmenschlichenHerzenswalten,undstudierterdieAnalogie,welchezwischendiesenGemiitsbewegungenundgewissenaufiemErscheinungenstattfindet,so wirder auseinemBildnergemeinerNaturzumwahrhaftenSeelenmaler.ErtrittausdemReichderWillkiirin dasReichderNotwendigkeitein,und darfsich,wo nichtdemplasti-schenKiinstler,derdeniaufernMenschen,dochdemDichter,derden innernzu seinemObjektemacht,getrostan die Seitestellen.Emphasis in the original. Schiller's review was widely discussed in its time and quoted exten-sively: see Dann's editorial comments in Schiller, Werkeund Briefe8:1543-46.


16/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 401listener'simagination. The poet retains the abilityto directthe imaginationof his audience in amore defineddirection, but even this capacityis limited,for while the poet can "indicatethose ideas and allude to those emotions,he cannot develop them himself." Above all, he must not preempt theimagination of his readers.An overly precise indication of ideas or emo-tions would constitute a "burdensome limitation," because the attractive-ness of an aesthetic idea lies in our freedom to perceive its content in a"boundless profundity." 'The actual and explicit content that the poetgives is alwaysfinite;the potential content, which he leaves for us to projectinto the work, is an infinite entity."42The "art of the infinite" and "infinitelonging" play an even greaterrolein Schiller'scelebratedessay"On Naive and Sentimental Poetry"of 1795-96. The dichotomy between the naive (the natural and sensuous) and thesentimental (the reflective and abstract)corresponds roughly to the phe-nomenal and noumenal. The task of the modern poet is to bridge the gulfbetween the two. But because this cannot be realized on earth, the poet'sstriving for such a synthesis must necessarilyremain "infinite."The geniusof sentiment, according to Schiller,"abandons [phenomenal] realityin or-der to ascend to ideas and to rule over his materialwith his own freedomof activity."43In so doing, however, the artist runs the risk of devolvinginto a realm of meaningless abstraction. On precisely these grounds,Schillerelsewhere rejectedthose works of music by "recent"-unnamed-composers that appealed merely to the senses.44Although Schiller was disinclined to comment at any length on the in-tegration of the sensuous and the abstractin instrumentalmusic, he helpedestablish aframeworkfor the reevaluation of this art in the work of his closefriend Christian Gottfried Korner (1756-1831), who happened to be anaccomplished musician. Korner's essay "On the Representation of Char-acter in Music" was firstpublished in Schiller'sjournal,Die Horen, in 1795;and following Schiller's lead, Korner rejected Kant's notion that instru-mental music constituted a merely agreeable artratherthan a fine art.The

42. Schiller,"Uber Matthissons Gedichte," 1026:AndeutenmagerjeneIdeen,anspielenjeneEmpfindungen;dochausfiihrensoiler sienichtselbst,nicht derEinbildungskraftseinesLesersvorgreifen.JedenahereBestimmungwird hieralseinelastigeSchrankeempfunden,dennebendarinliegtdasAnziehendesolcherasthetischenIdeen,dafwir in denInhaltderselbenwie in einegrundloseTiefeblicken.DerwirklicheundausdriicklicheGehalt,den derDichterhineinlegt,bleibtstetseineendliche;dermoglicheGehalt,dener unshineinzu legenuiberlfit,isteineunendlicheGrofie.43. Schiller, "Uber naive und sentimentalischeDichtung" (1795-96), in his WerkeundBriefe8:786: "Das sentimentale Genie hingegen verlasstdie Wirklichkeit,um zu Ideen auf-zusteigen und mit freierSelbsttatigkeitseinen Stoff zu beherrschen."On the category of theinfinite in earlyRomantic aesthetics in general, see Ursula Leitl-Zametzer, "Der Unendlich-keitsbegriffin der KunstauffassungderFriihromantikbei FriedrichSchlegelund W. H. Wack-enroder" (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1955), a work whose scope extends well beyond the twowritersnamed in its title.44. Schiller,"Uber das Pathetische,"in his Werkeund Briefe8:427.


17/35


18/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 403

By the end of the 1790s, the concept of the artwork as a perceptiblemanifestation of the ideal was being articulatedever more systematicallybysuch figures as Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), FriedrichWilhelmJosephvon Schelling (1775-1854), andAugust Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845). Schelling, in particular, insisted that art and philosophy were inthe end concerned with the same basic issue: to reconcilethe world of phe-nomena with the world of ideas.48Schelling, like Schiller, saw profoundmeaning in the congruence of artistic and natural forms and considered theartworkto providea window on their essentialunity in the Absolute. In hisSystemdes transzendentalenIdealismus(1800), he advocated art as the keyto perceiving the nature of this unity. His PhilosophiederKunst, in turn,based on lectures first delivered at Jena in 1802-3, has justly been called"the firstexplicitart-philosophy in the historyof the Westernworld."49Artis the means by which the real and the finite can be synthesized with theideal and the infinite. "Through art, divine creation is presented objec-tively, since it rests on the same idea of the infinite idealdwelling in the realon which the creation of art rests.The exquisiteGerman word Einbildungs-kraftactuallymeans the power of forming into one, and in fact all creationis basedon this power. It is the power through which an ideal is at the sametime something real, the soul is the body; it is the power of individuation,which of all powers is the one that is truly creative."50Within this framework, Schelling saw the "formsof music"--by this hemeant rhythm, harmony, and melody-as "the forms of eternal things in-sofar as they can be contemplated from the perspective of the real. . . . Thusmusic manifests, in rhythm and harmony, the pure form of the movementsof the heavenly bodies, freed from any object or material. In this respect,music is that artwhich castsoff the corporeal, in that it presentsmovementin itself, divorced from any object, borne on invisible, almost spiritualwings." Rhythm, harmony, and melody are the "first and purest forms ofmovement in the universe.... The heavenly bodies soar on the wingsof harmony and rhythm.... Borne aloft by the same wings, music soarsthrough space to weave an audibleuniverseout of the transparentbody of

48. On Schelling'sphilosophy of music, see August Steinkriiger,DieAesthetikderMusikbeiSchellingundHegel:EinBeitragzurMusikisthetikderRomantik(Bonn:VereinStudenten-wohl, 1927), esp. 150-64.49. ManfredFrank,Einfihrung in diefrihromantischeAsthetik(FrankfurtamMain: Suhr-kamp, 1989), 16, 171. Although not published until 1859, these lecturescirculatedwidely inmanuscriptfrom the first decade of the nineteenth century onward.50. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Philosophieder Kunst, in his SiimmtlicheWerke,ed. K. F. A. Schelling, 14 vols. (Stuttgart and Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856-61),5:386: "Durch die Kunst wird die g6ttliche Schopfung objektivdargestellt,denn diese beruhtauf derselben Einbildung der unendlichen Idealitat ins Reale, auf welcher auch jene beruht.Das treffliche deutsche Wort Einbildungskraftbedeutet eigentlich die Kraft der Ineinsbil-dung, auf welcher in der That alle Schopfung beruht. Sie ist die Kraft,wodurch ein Idealeszugleich auch ein Reales, die Seele Leib ist, die Kraft der Individuation,welche die eigentlichschopferische ist."


19/35

404 Journal of the American Musicological Societysound and tone."51Schelling openly acknowledged his debt to Pythagore-anism at this point, but insisted that Pythagorean theories had been quitepoorly understood in the past.On this basis, then, one might reasonablyexpect that Schelling woulddeem instrumentalmusic to be the highest of all artspreciselyon the basisof its incorporeality,which in turn would allow the greatest possible rangeof freedom for imaginative perception. For Schelling, however, the con-templation of the ideal was but a means to the end of achieving the Ab-solute, which he defined as the integration of the material and the spiritual,the phenomenal andthe ideal. Although the artist and the philosopherpur-sue the same essentialtask, the former does so by using symbolic forms ina manner he himself does not fully understand. The material of the phi-losopher, by contrast, is rational thought, which can be more readily ide-alized and then reintegrated into the realm of the phenomenal. For thisreason, Schelling preservedthe traditionalhierarchythat accordedplaceofhonor to the verbal arts.

Schelling'swork nevertheless provided an important philosophical con-text for the new aesthetics of instrumentalmusic. He broke decisively withearliersystems based on the principle of mimesis, and he insisted on themetaphysicalsignificanceof allaestheticintuition, includingthe perceptionof instrumental music. The potential realizationof the Absolute throughthe contemplation of the artwork helps explain much of the sacred vo-cabularyand concepts found in the writings of Wackenroder,Tieck, andHoffmann. In this respect, Schelling'sphilosophy of art (which is in fact aphilosophy throughart) representsa world qualitativelydifferent from theone in which Kant, only a little more than a decade before, had deprecatedinstrumental music because of its purported inability to accommodateideas. The rising tide of art-philosophy had raised the status of all artisticvessels, including that of instrumental music.

Schelling'sphilosophy reverberatesthroughout the subsequent historyof idealist aesthetics.August Wilhelm Schlegel's lectures on artwithin hisVorlesungeniiberschoneLiteraturundKunst (1801-2) also pursue the ideathat the beautifil is a symbolic representation of the infinite and that theinfinite becomes at least partly perceptible through the beautiful. Schlegel51. Ibid., 501-3:DieFormenderMusiksindFormenderewigenDinge,inwiefernsievonderrealenSeitebetrach-tetwerden.... so bringtdieMusikdieFormderBewegungenderWeltkorper,diereine,vondemGegenstandoderStoffbefreiteFormin demRhythmusundderHarmoniealssolchezurAn-schauung.DieMusikistinsoferndiejenigeKunst,die ammeistendasKorperlicheabstreift,indemsiediereineBewegungselbstalssolche,vondemGegenstandabgezogen,vorstelltundvon un-sichtbaren,fastgeistigenFlugelngetragenwird.... WirkonnenjetzterstdiehochsteBedeutungvonRhythmus,HarmonieundMelodiefestsetzen.Siesinddie erstenundreinstenFormenderBewegungim Universum.... Auf denFlugelnderHarmonieunddesRhythmusschwebendieWeltkorper;... Von denselbenFlugelnerhobenschwebtdie Musikim Raum,um ausdemdurchsichtigenLeibdesLautsund TonseinhorbaresUniversumzuweben.


20/35

Idealismand the Aestheticsof InstrumentalMusic 405used this premise to expose the inadequacy of earlierpsychological, em-pirical, and sensualist theories. Sound, according to Schlegel, is the "in-nermost"of the five senses, dealing with transitory phenomena in a playofsuccessions; and music, as exemplified by the sound of the chorale (quiteapart from any underlying text), provides us. with "an intimation of har-monic perfection, the unity of allbeing that Christiansimagine through theimage of heavenly bliss."52Because of its incorporeality, "one must accordmusic the advantageof being ideal in its essence. It purifiesthe passions, asit were, from the materialfilthwith which they areassociated,in that musicpresents these passions to our inner sense entirely according to their form,without any reference to objects; and after touching an earthly frame, itallows these passions to breathe in a purer ether."53Idealism in EarlyRomantic Musical AestheticsAlthough seldom identified as such, idealist vocabulary and categories ofthought figure prominently in the musical aesthetics of the earlyRoman-tics. Wackenroder, Tieck, Hoffmann, and others consistently portrayedmusic as the reflection of ahigher, spiritualrealm.The emphasison specificpoints varies from writer to writer, but the basictermsand concepts derivefrom idealist philosophy.This outlook is evident throughout the fiction of Jean Paul (1763-1825). In his earlyDie unsichtbareLoge(1793), for example, he invokes thePythagorean idea of the harmony of the spheres with such outbursts as"Oh, Music! Echo from a distant harmonic world! Sighing of the angelswithin us!"54Elsewhere, he refers in passing to the "spiritworld," "infinitelonging," and the "inner world" associated with music. His VorschulederAsthetik (1804), although concerned primarilywith literature, adopts afundamentally idealist stance, particularlyin its emphasis on the relation-ship of the cosmic to the corporeal, one of the centralelements in his theoryof irony.

52. August Wilhelm Schlegel, VorlesungenuberschoneLiteraturundKunst. ErsterTeil:DieKunstlehre(1801-2), in his KritischeAusgabeder Vorlesungen,ed. Ernst Behler (Paderborn:Ferdinand Schoningh, 1989- ), 1:381: "eine Ahndung der harmonischenVollendung, derEinheit alles Daseyns, welche die Christen sich unter dem Bilde der himmlischen Seligkeitdenken."53. Ibid., 375: "somuf man derMusik den Vorzug zugestehn, ihremganzen Wesennachidealisch zu seyn. Sie reinigt die Leidenschaften gleichsam von dem materiellen, ihnen an-hangenden Schmutz, indem sie selbige ohne Bezug auf Gegenstande blof;nach ihrer Form inunserem innern Sinn darstellt;und lafit sie nach Abstreifung der irdischenHiille in reineremAether athmen."54. JeanPaul,Die unsichtbareLoge(1793), in his Werke,9 vols., ed. Norbert Miller (Mu-nich: Carl Hanser, 1959-85), 1:60: "O Musik! Nachklang aus einer entlegenen harmoni-schen Welt! Seufzer des Engels in uns!"


21/35

406 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyIn scattered aphorisms, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) similarly emphasized the Pythagorean, quasi-mysticalnatureof mu-

sic, and indeed, of language itself. And it is within the broader context ofidealism that we can best appreciate the assertion of Friedrich Schlegel(1772-1829) that music has "moreaffinityto philosophy than to poetry."Indeed, Schlegel pronounced the need for "allpure music" to be "philo-sophical and instrumental,"and he urged others to go beyond consideringinstrumental music from "the flat perspective of so-called naturalness"-that is, from the mechanistic perspective of cause and effect-and to rec-ognize it instead as a vehicle of philosophy.55It is against this background that Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder(1773-1798) emerged as the single most important figure in the articu-lation of a new aesthetic of instrumentalmusic at the end of the eighteenthcentury. Unlike most of the other writersdiscussed up to this point (withthe notable exception of Korner), Wackenroderhad substantialtraining inmusic. He received early instruction in his native Berlin from Karl Fasch,founder of the Singakademie,and he appearsto have tried his hand at com-position as well.56At G6ttingen, Wackenroderstudied under the theorist,historian, and composer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and his keyboard skillswere good enough to have elicited an invitation from a musical society inBamberg for a public performance of a concerto by Haydn.57 In the lastyearsof his brief life, he collaborated with his friend Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), a poet and playwright who in turn was responsible for the post-humous (albeitanonymous) publication of Wackenroder'sPhantasien iiberdie Kunst (1799), to which Tieck added severalessays of his own.58Wackenroder's first major publication, the HerzensergiessungeneineskunstliebendenKlosterbruders(1796), attracted immediate attention. Pub-lished anonymously, these "Outpourings from the Heart of an Art-LovingMonk" were thought for a time to have been written by none other thanGoethe himself, and there was sufficient demand for the work to be reis-sued (along with the Phantasien) in a second edition in 1814. TheHerzensergiessungenandPhantasienincorporateallthe essentialelements ofthe idealist aesthetic. Nature and art are "two wondrous languages" of"mysterious power" granted to us by God "in order that mortals might

55. KritischeFriedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe,ed. Ernst Behler (Munich and Paderborn:Ferdi-nand Schoningh, 1958- ), 18:361; 16:178; 2:254. On the historical context of the last ofthese aphorisms, see Bonds, WordlessRhetoric,166-67.56. Rudolf Kopke, Ludwig Tieck:Erinnererungenaus dem LebendesDichters (Leipzig:Brockhaus, 1855; reprint,Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft, 1970), 183.57. See Wackenroderto his parents,letter of 23 July 1793, in his StimtlicheWerke2:196.58. On the troublesome questions of authorship in the collaborative publications ofWackenroderand Tieck, see the commentary to Wackenroder'sSamtlicheWerke1:283-88and 368-72.


22/35

Idealism and the Aestheticsof InstrumentalMusic 407grasp (as fully as possible) heavenly things in their full power."59JosephBerglinger, Wackenroder'sfictitious musician, declares music to be "themost wondrous" of all the fine artsbecause "itrepresentshuman emotionsin a superhuman manner"and "shows us all the movements of our emo-tions in a manner that is incorporeal, clothed in golden clouds of etherealharmonies, above our heads."60Insofar as music is a language at all, it is"the language of angels." It is the "only art that leads us back to the mostbeautiful harmonies of the manifold and contradictory movements of ouremotions."61Here we see the reintegrationof the ideal with the phenom-enal first expounded by Fichte and applied more specificallyto the arts(slightly later) by Schelling.

Music is the darkest and most powerful of allthe arts. Its "waves"streamforth with "pureand formlessessence ... andparticularlythe thousandfoldtransitions among the emotions. In its innocence, this idealistic,angelicallypure art knows neither the origins nor the impetus for its motions, and itdoes not know the relationship of its feelings with the actual world."62Here, Wackenroderencapsulates the creed of idealist aesthetics with re-markableconcision. Music occupies aseparateworld of ideals,independentof earthly objects and emotions, and it has the power to lift us out of theills of life to a higher region. In Wackenroder'swritings, we find virtuallyno attempt to explain a cause-and-effect relationship between work andlistener,for the fundamentalnature of discourse on music has changed: theperspective is no longer even remotely naturalistic.Tieck sharedthese views on the essence of instrumental music, strenu-ously disavowing any connection of this art with the phenomenal world.Instead, he emphasized that musical notes "constitute a separate worldunto themselves."63In one of the veryfew extended discussions of a specific

59. Wackenroder,Herzensergiessungen,"Von zwey wunderbaren Sprachen, und derengeheimnifivollerKraft,"in his SamtlicheWerke1:97. Published in December of 1796, the titlepage of Wackenroder'swork bears the date 1797.60. Wackenroder,Phantasien,"Die Wunder derTonkunst,"in his SamtlicheWerke1:207:"Die Musik aber halte ich fur die wunderbarste dieser Erfindungen [the fine arts], well siemenschliche Gefihle auf eine ubermenschlicheArt schildert, well sie uns alle BewegungenunsersGemiiths unkorperlich,in goldne Wolken luftiger Harmonieen eingekleidet, iiber un-serm Haupte zeigt."61. Ibid., 208: "Sie ist die einzige Kunst, welche die mannigfaltigsten und widerspre-chendsten Bewegungen unsres Gemiiths auf dieselben schonen Harmonieen zuriickfihrt."62. Wackenroder,Phantasien,"Das eigentiimliche innere Wesen der Tonkunst, und dieSeelenlehre derheutigen Instrumentalmusik,"in his SiimtlicheWerke1:220: "indiesen Wellenstromt recht eigentlich nur das reine, formlose Wesen, der Gang und die Farbe, und auchvornehmlich der tausendfaltige Ubergang der Empfindungen; die idealische, engelreineKunstweit in ihrerUnschuld weder den Ursprung noch das Ziel ihrerRegungen, kenntnichtden Zusammenhang ihrerGefuhle mit der wirklichenWelt."63. Tieck, Phantasien,"Die T6ne," in Wackenroder'sSiimtlicheWerke1:236: "dieseTone... ahmen nicht nach, sie verschonernnicht, sondern sie sind eine abgesonderteWelt fur sichselbst."


23/35

408 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietywork of music by earlyRomantic writers,he praisedJohann FriedrichRei-chardt's overture to a German-language adaptationof Shakespeare'sMac-beth(1787). Tieck's choice of works has been widely misunderstood: it hasbeen suggested that he knew nothing of the music of Haydn and Mozart,but this seems implausible for an artist living in Berlin during the late1790s.64 Reichardt's music to Macbethwas quite well known at the time,65and Tieck chose an overture to a spoken drama in order to contrast themusic with the subsequent stage production, arguing that purely instru-mental music was capable of projecting its own complete and self-contained "drama"of a kind that "no poet could ever give us." The musicitself was a dramawithout charactersthat relied on no laws of probabilityand referredto no story.66And in order to emphasize the greateremotionalpower of instrumental music over the verbal arts, Tieck selected a workassociated with one of the greatest of all dramas by none other thanShakespearehimself. Quite aside from all this, Reichardt happened to be aclose friend of Tieck's.Wackenroder and Tieck were both young men when they presentedtheir idealist aesthetic of instrumental music. Many older writers under-standably clung to more traditional outlooks well into the nineteenthcentury: Goethe, for one, appears never to have embraced the enhancedaesthetic status of instrumental music. Like many writers before him, helikened the string quartet to a conversation among four intelligent indi-viduals, but the implicit imagery of music as a language was alreadyold-fashioned by this time. Other critics shifted theirallegianceto the aestheticsof idealism during the closing yearsof the eighteenth centuryand the firstdecade of the nineteenth. The writings of JohannGottfried Herder (1744-1803) illustratethis change particularlywell, for his views on the natureand aesthetic worth of instrumental music changed markedly over thecourse of his life. His fourth KritischesWaldchen(written in 1769 but notpublished until 1846) maintained the conventional image of music as alanguage of passions, and within this conceptual design, instrumentalmu-sic inevitablysuffers because of its semantic obscurity. By the mid 1780s,Herder's views had begun to change. In an essayof 1785 entitled "WhichProduces the GreatestEffect, Painting or Music?A Dialogue of the Gods,"

64. See, for example, CarlDahlhaus, "RomantischeMusikasthetik und Wiener Klassik,"Archiviir Musikwissenschaft29 (1972): 174.65. The enduring popularityof Reichardt'sincidentalmusic to Macbethwas remarkable:A. B. Marx was stillwriting enthusiasticallyabout it as lateas 1824. See WalterSalmen,JohannFriedrichReichardt(Zurich: Atlantis, 1963), 281-83.66. Tieck, Phantasien,"Symphonien,"in Wackenroder'sSamtlicheWerke1:244. Becauseof its all-encompassingnaturein the realm of instrumentalmusic, the symphonywas the genremost often used at this time to illustratethe ideal in music. I shall pursue this connection ingreaterdetail in a forthcoming book dealing with criticalperceptions of the symphony in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries.


24/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 409

Apollo presides over a dispute between the goddess of music and the god-dess of painting. Painting charges that Music is darkand confusing. Musicresponds that what isdarkandconfusedinyouremotionsis due to yourorganof perception,notmytones,which arepureandclear,thehighestmodelof harmoniousorder.They are (aswas once pointedout by a wise mortalinspiredby me) therelationshipand numbersof the universein the most pleasant,facile,andpowerfulof all symbols.In criticizingme, my sister,you have thereforepraisedme. You havepraisedthe infinitequalityof myart in its innermostworkings.The goddess of poetry is summoned to judge the debate and finds in favorof Music, but reminds her "that without my words, without song, dance,or other action, you must concede that for humans, your emotions remainperpetuallyin the dark. You speak to the heart, but to the understandingof how very few!"67The location of the debate on Mount Olympus is par-ticularlyrevealing, for while Poetry reiterates the then-standard view thatonly through word or gesture can music become intelligible, she does sofrom aperspectivethat suggests this aesthetic stanceto be dictated more bynecessity than desirability.Herder's late Kalligone (1800), in turn, reads like a thoroughly idealisttract. In rebutting Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft,Herder unambiguouslydeclared instrumental music to be the highest of all the artsbecause it pro-vides a means of perceiving the Absolute. Music surpassesall other artsin the way the spirit surpassesthe body, for music is spirit- Geist- "relatedto motion, great nature's innermost power. What cannot be made visibleto man-the world of the invisible-becomes communicable to him in itsmanner, and in its manner alone."68Ten yearsbefore E. T. A. Hoffmann'sreview of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Herder spoke of "infinitelonging"(unendlicheSehnsucht)in conjunction with the process of listening, and heemphasized Andacht-reverent contemplation-as the cognitive quality

67. Johann Gottfried Herder, "Ob Malerei oder Tonkunst eine grossere Wirkunggewahre? Ein G6ttergesprach"(1785), in his Stmmtliche Werke,ed. BernhardSuphan, 33vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1913), vol. 15: "Das Dunkle und Verworrene ihrer Emp-findungen liegt an ihremOrgan, nicht anmeinen Tonen: diese sind rein und helle, dashochsteMuster einer zusammenstimmendenOrdnung. Sie sind, wie schon ein von mir begeistertersterblicherWeise gesagt hat, die Verhaltnisse und Zahlen des Weltalls im angenehmsten,leichtesten,wirkendsten allerSymbole. Du hast mich also, Schwester, gelobt, indem du michtadelst. Du hast das Unendliche meiner Kunst und ihrer innigsten Wirkung gepriesen" (p.228). "Du wirst mir aber zugeben, dass ohne meine Worte, ohne Gesang, Tanz und andreHandlung, fur Menschen deine Empfindungen immer im Dunkeln bleiben. Du sprichstzumHerzen; aber bei wie wenigen zum Verstande!"(p. 231).68. Herder, Kalligone,in his SdmmtlicheWerke22:187: "dennsie ist Geist, verwandt mitdergroIen Natur innerstenKraft,der Bewegung. Wasanschaulichdem Menschen nicht wer-den kann, wird ihm in ihrerWeise, in ihrer Weise allein, mittheilbar, die Welt des Unsicht-baren."


25/35

410 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietythat moves the listener to a "high, free realm"when hearingmusic withoutwords. A more spiritualversion of Kant'sEinbildungskraft,Herder'sAn-dacht implies a sense of contemplation with reverencefor the divine, theinfinite.69Through reverent contemplation, the aesthetic experience wasnow seen to take place in a transcendent sphere, "pureand free above theearth."70Herder's insight is critical to understanding the Romantic aes-thetic, for it was not a change in the contemporaryrepertorythatwas trans-porting listeners to a higher realm, but rather a change in the perceivednature of aesthetic cognition.Christian Friedrich Michaelis (1770-1834), although only slightlyolder than WackenroderandTieck, is another writer whose works revealasimilarchange in aesthetic. Michaelispublishedtwo separateessaysentitledUber den GeistderTonkunst(1795 and 1800), both of which take as theirpoint of departureKant's Kritik der Urteilskraft.Although clearlyfamiliarwith the principles of idealism and willing to grant instrumental music ahigher aesthetic status than had Kant, Michaelis adheredto the traditionalview of instrumentalmusic as"morepleasurethan culture."71But by 1808,in an essayentitled "On the Ideal in Music," Michaelis had abandoned thenaturalistperspective and openly embraced idealism. Music "presentsen-tirely and purely the spirit of art in its freedom and individuality" andconjures up before our fantasy"such an entirely individual world that wewould search in vain for an original in artless reality."72The ecstasy ofWackenroderand Tieck is missing, but the perspectiveis recognizably thesame.Michaelis's "conversion"to idealism is fairly typicalof his time. The no-tion of the artwork-and the work of music, in particular-as an earthlymanifestation of the Absolute won widespread acceptance in the first de-cade of the nineteenth century.73 The vocabulary of idealism pervadesmuch of the criticism written during this time: music is widely describedas "supernatural,""mystic,""holy,""divine,""heavenly."The mechanical

69. Andacht has been translated in a varietyof ways: as "reverence"(Lippman,MusicalAesthetics2:40); as "devotion" (Lustig's translation of Dahlhaus, Idea ofAbsoluteMusic, 79);and as "religiousawe" (Peter le Huray and JamesDay, eds., MusicandAestheticsin theEigh-teenthandEarly-NineteenthCenturies[Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1981], 257).I prefer "reverentcontemplation" because it combines both humility and active thought(-dachtderives from denken,"to think"), whereas "devotion" overemphasizes the religiouselement, and "awe" connotes a stunning of the senses, as if they were incapableof operatingactivelyand independently.70. Herder, Kalligone, 187.71. Christian FriedrichMichaelis, Uber den Geist der Tonkunst,2 vols. (Leipzig, 1795-1800; reprint,Brussels:Cultureet Civilisation, 1970), 1:11, 12 (idealism); 1:25, 2:30 (plea-sure vs. culture).72. Christian Friedrich Michaelis, "Ueber das Idealische der Tonkunst," AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung 10 (13 April 1808): 449-52.73. See Peter Schnaus, E. T. A. Hoffmann als Beethoven-Rezensentder AllgemeinenMusikalischenZeitung (Munich: Emil Katzbichler, 1977), 84-88.


26/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 411associations with the passions, although still very much a topic of debate,were no longer the centralconcern they had been only a short time before;instead, the emphasis had shifted toward the premise that music is the re-flection of a higher, more spiritual realm. The anonymous reviewer ofWackenroder and Tieck's Phantasien in Leipzig's Allgemeine musikalischeZeitung, for one, seems to have taken the idealist aesthetic as a given: theessence of art, he observes almost in passing, is to "manifest the supra-sensuous, to unite the finite and the infinite." And it was a mistake, thisreviewer argues, to draw a parallelbetween sounds and colors (in Wack-enroder's essay "Die T6ne") on the grounds that the corresponding playof sensations between sounds implicitly relegates music to the agreeablerather than the fine arts.74Idealistpremises are also evident in the lengthyand perceptive "Observations on the Development of Music in Germanyin the Eighteenth Century"by JohannTriest, a pastor in Stettin, publishedin the Allgemeine musikalischeZeitung in 1800-1801. Triest argued thatinstrumental music is no mere receptacle for vocal music, nor is it derivedfrom it, but instead is fully capableof incorporating aesthetic ideas. Triestthus preservedKantianterminology while extending the domain of instru-mental music beyond the realmof the merely sensuous. Even more so thanvocal music, instrumental music is able to incorporate "spiritand life" byintimating an ideal.75In the works of Shakespeareand Mozart, accordingto the playwright, novelist, and critic FranzHorn, writingin 1802, thereis no longer "anyconflict between the ideal and the real, the internal andthe external";instead, the "infinite is made manifest for the fantasy"of thebeholder.76 And it is altogether telling that Heinrich Christoph Kochshould include an entry "Ideal"in the abridged version of his musical dic-tionaryof 1807, even though none is to be found in the much largerorig-inal edition of 1802.77E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) thus appearedon the scene of idealistaesthetics at a relativelylate stage: the basicconcepts and vocabularyof hismusic criticismwere alreadywell establishedby the time he began writingreviews for the AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung in 1809. Hoffmann's par-ticular contribution lies in his superior prose and his ability to integratephilosophical and aesthetic concepts with more technical issues of musical

74. Review of Phantasien uber die Kunst . . . vonLudwig Tieck(Hamburg: Perthes,1799), AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung 2 (5 March 1800): 401-7.75. [Johann] Triest, "Bemerkungen iiberdie Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschlandim achtzehntenJahrhundert,"AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung3 (28 January1801): 301,297.76. FranzHorn, "MusikalischeFragmente,"AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung4 (24 March1802): 422. Horn (1781-1837) had alreadyachieved acclaimas the author of the populardramaDer Fall derSchweiz.77. Heinrich Christoph Koch, KurzgefasstesHandworterbuchderMusik (Leipzig, 1807;reprint,Hildesheim: Olms, 1981); idem,MusikalischesLexikon(Frankfurtam Main: A. Her-mann derjiingere, 1802). The entryfor "ideal"emphasizesthe freedomof the listener'simag-ination and speaksof a "poeticized world" (erdichteteWelt) within which the images of ourfantasycan play.


27/35

412 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietydetail. Like earlierwriters, Hoffmann perceivedmusic as occupying an al-together separatesphere beyond the phenomenal, thereby endowing mu-sical works with the power to provide a glimpse of the infinite. He alludesto Plato's cave when he speaksof instrumentalmusic and its power to makelisteners "aware of giant shadows that surge back and forth." This music"discloses to man an unknown realm, aworld that has nothing in commonwith the external sensuous world that surroundshim, a world in which heleaves behind him all feelings that can be expressed through concepts, inorder to surrenderhimself to that which cannot be expressed"in words. Invocal music, it is only because the text is "clothed by music with the purplelusterof romanticism"that we can be led into "therealm of the infinite."78

As in earlier writings influenced by the idealist aesthetic, Hoffmann'smusic criticism abounds with sacred metaphors. He adopted Schelling'sview of the artist as a high priest capable of providing mankind with aglimpse of a distant "spirit-realm,"and he perceived musical harmony as"the image and expression of the communion of souls, of union with theeternal, with the ideal that rules over us and yet includes us."79Hoffmannsaw the origins of music in the liturgy of the church and emphasized thatmusic's divine nature had now extended into the secular sphere as well.Thus, while he acknowledged that "instrumentalmusic had elevated itselfin recent times to a level of which the old masters [before Haydn andMozart] had no concept,"80it is important to recognize that his aestheticappliesto vocal as well as instrumentalmusic, and not merely to the musicof the present and recent past. The sacredworks of Palestrinaand Leo arejust as capableof providing a glimpse of the divine as are the symphoniesof Haydn, Mozart, andBeethoven. Beethoven's instrumentalcompositionsmayhave provided Hoffmann with the immediate impetus for some of hismost inspired essays, but not with the philosophical and aestheticoutlookthat underlies these writings.

Within the repertoryof Hoffmann's own lifetime, the "sole object" ofinstrumentalmusic had become "the infinite."81Instrumentalmusic is "themysterious language of adistantspirit-realmwhose accentsresonate within

78. E. T. A. Hoffmann,reviewof Beethoven'sFifthSymphony(1810), in hisSchriftenzurMusik,34: "DieMusik[specifically,instrumentalmusic]schliesstdemMenscheneinun-bekanntesReichauf;eineWelt,die nichtsgemeinhat mit deraussernSinnenwelt,die ihnumgibt,und in der er alledurchBegriffebestimmbarenGefiihlezuriicklasst,um sichdemUnaussprechlichenhinzugeben."79. Hoffmann,"AlteundneueKirchenmusik,"215: "undso wirdderAkkord,dieHar-monie,BildundAusdruckderGeistergemeinschaft,derVereinigungmit demEwigen,demIdealen,dasiiberunsthrontunddochunseinschliesst."80. Hoffmann,reviewof FriedrichWitt'sSymphonyNo. 5 (1809), in hisSchriftenzurMusik, 19.81. Hoffmann,"BeethovensInstrumentalmusik"(1813), in his Fantasie-undNacht-stzcke,ed.WalterMiiller-Seidel(Munich:Winkler,1960),41. Hoffmannaddedthisphraseinreworkingportionsof hisearlierreviewof Beethoven'sFifthSymphonyintothisessay.


28/35

Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music 413us and arouse aheightened, more intensive life. All the passions, shimmer-ing and splendidly arrayed, fight among themselves and submerge in anineffable longing that fills our breast."When united with a text, music isforced to descend to the realm of common, everyday life and "speak ofspecific passions and actions .... Can music proclaim anything else but thewonders of that region from which it descends to us to resound?"In anutter reversalof traditional aesthetic hierarchies, Hoffmann left open thepossibility that vocal music could achieve the exaltedrealmof instrumentalmusic if the poet could raise himself to the level of the composer and dojustice to the music.82

The Idea of Absolute Music?It is by no means coincidental that the idealist aestheticarosemore or lesssimultaneously with the first extended use of poetic imagery to describeworks of instrumental music that give no outward indication of a poetic"content."83Alth-oughsuch accountsnow strikeus astrivial andnaive, theymanifested in their own time a fundamentally new way of approachinginstrumentalmusic, for they rest on the notion that a work without a textcan in fact representsomething beyond itself that is not merely literal(e.g.,thunder, birdcalls) and more than merely generic (e.g., anger, tenderness,grief). Somewhat paradoxically, the liberty to "poeticize"is directly pro-portional to the abstractness of the musical representation. Once it is ac-knowledged that music can provide only a dim, imperfect reflection of anoumenal world, critics are in a sense liberatedfrom the obligation to pro-vide detailed correspondences between a work of music and the phenom-enal world. The question, then, is not to what degree a particularwork ofinstrumentalmusic might be representationalof a particularobject or psy-chological state, but rather, to what degree a composer might choose toarticulatehis vision of the work's ideal through verbalmeans. Beethoven'sEroicaand PastoralSymphonies aretwo celebratedexamplesof a composerdesignating that ideal within the title of a work. Criticsstruggled with the

82. Hoffmann, "Der Dichter und der Komponist" (1813), in his Die Serapionsbrider:GesammelteErzihlhungen und Mirchen, ed. Hans-Joachim Kruse (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag,1978), 100:Ist nicht die Musikdie geheimnisvolleSpracheeinesferen Geisterreichs,derenwunderbareAkzentein unsermInner widerklingenundein hoheres,intensivesLebenerwecken?Ale Lei-denschaftenkampfen,schimmernedundglanzvollgeriistet,miteinanderundgehenunterineinerunaussprechlichenSehnsucht,dieunsereBrusterfiillt.Dies ist dieunnennbareWirkungderIn-strumentalmusik.Abernun soil die Musikganzins Lebentreten,sie soil seineErscheinungenergreifen,und Wortund Tat schmiickend,von bestimmtenLeidenschaftenund Handlungensprechen.... Kanndenn dieMusiketwasanderesverkuindenals dieWunderjenesLandes,vondem siezuunsheriibertont?83. See Bonds, WordlessRhetoric,169-76.


29/35

414 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietynarrowness of more explicit narrativesfor these works, and it is importantto remember that A. B. Marx'scelebrated"program"of the Eroicaappearswithin a larger philosophical discourse on the nature of "idealmusic."84Inthis sense, the idealist aesthetic helps reconcile the paradoxthat the samewriters who considered the content and power of instrumental music soineffableshould also have written more about those veryqualitiesthan anygeneration before them.The idealist aesthetic of instrumental music that arose around 1800should therefore not be confused with the aesthetic of "absolute"musicthat began to emerge toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Thetwo are closely related, to be sure, but it is important to recognize theirfundamentaldifferences. Their common ground and their historicaldiver-gence around the middle of the nineteenth century emerge with specialclarity in Eduard Hanslick's VomMusikalisch-Schiinen,first published in1854 andrevisedby the author for no fewer than nine subsequent editions.By tracingthe fate of idealist thought through these editions, we can betterunderstandthe emergence of the dichotomy between "absolute"and "pro-gram"music.Hanslick's treatise was a carefullyreasoned response to the growing-and largely unquestioned-legitimacy of "program"music in the secondquarterof the nineteenth century.Within the broadertendency to integratemusic with the literary,visual, and plastic arts,composers were becomingincreasinglywilling to make explicit connections between works of instru-mental music and objects or ideas lying beyond the realm of sound. At-tempts to legitimize the aesthetic basis of works like Berlioz's Symphoniefantastique and Liszt's symphonic poems eventually fostered a backlashfrom those who felt that such works encroached on music's"true"essence,and Hanslick's VomMusikalisch-Schinenquickly emerged as the centralmanifesto of these musical "conservatives."

Documents

bonds - idealism msc aes