Eduard Hanslick 18251904

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Eduard Hanslick(1825-1904)

• Vom Musikalich-Schönen

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Biography

• Born in Prague in 1825.
• Was musically educated but opted for a legal
  profession.
• Wrote music criticism throughout his career
  attained prominent post in Presse.
• Subsequently went on to lecture and eventually
  became a professor.
• He was clearly a consummate music critic.
• Has been coined the most important music critic
  in Europe of his time

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Historical Context surrounding the Article

• This article was central to a debate amongst
  music critics at the time, and set Hanslick up as
  the leader of the Anti-Wagnerian Party.
• He wrote the book as a relatively young man in
  1854 he was only 29 and he lived another 50 years
  without publishing another major paper, though
  were many additions to it over the years.
• There has been much discussion as to why he wrote
  Vom Musikalich Schönen later critics of
  Hanslicks work like Morris Weitz have argued
  that it mainly served to set up what was to be
  discussed and argued over.

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Definitions

• Formalism noun.
• 1. Rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized
  forms, as in religion or art.
• 2. An instance of rigorous or excessive adherence
  to recognized forms.
• 3. A method of aesthetic analysis that emphasizes
  structural elements and artistic techniques
  rather than content, especially in literary
  works.
• Autonomist noun. - The condition or quality of
  being autonomous independence.
• Autonomous adj. - Not controlled by others or by
  outside forces independent

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Music and the Emotions

• Much aesthetic theory of the time emphasised the
  importance of emotion in music
• Hanslick wished to deny that the emotions have
  any place in contemplation of musical beauty
• Hanslick believed that music was an entirely
  autonomous art from, which needs no reference to
  external sources to explain its beauty

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Music and the Emotions(2)

• Hanslick gives a number of reasons for expelling
  the emotions from aesthetic theory
• The interpretation of emotions supposedly
  represented in music is ambiquous.
• We do not actually experience the emotions
  represented in music.
• Music cannot depict extra-musical objects
• Emotions must be directed towards an object or
  cause

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What it is to be Musically Beautiful

• Music is an autonomous art form.
• Its beauty consists entirely in the relationships
  between the different elements within it, eg.
  Structure, tonality, rhythm etc.
• Musical beauty is entirely objective
• Musical expressiveness is like an untranslatable
  language

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Sensation and Pleasure

• Musical experience may invoke feelings, but such
  feeling is neither the source of musical beauty,
  nor is it musics content.
• It is not human emotions which tell us what is
  beautiful, but human imagination, which Hanslick
  calls "the organ of pure contemplation".
• Sensation is simple and direct.
• Musical pleasure is different from normal
  pleasure as it puts something beautiful in front
  of us.

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Sensation and Pleasure

• In the presence of musical beauty, sensation is
  part of an outwardly directed, contemplative
  experience, a specifically and uniquely musical
  pleasure.
• Feeling on the other hand is inward looking, and
  at a certain auditory point feeling and musical
  pleasure depart from the sensible in opposite
  directions.
• Feeling moves in the direction of internally
  subjective musings, and musical pleasure toward a
  beautiful object which is musics true essence.

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Sensation and Pleasure

• When you receive pleasure. You may also receive
  feeling. But pleasure is the true response to
  musical beauty, and it is a distinct kind of
  pleasure, only aroused by music.
• Feelings can be dangerous as they make us more
  inward, looking away from sonorous beauty that
  should be engaging our minds.
• Yet Hanslick says feelings arent a problem, but
  they need to be recognized as nothing more than
  a secondary effect.

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Form and Content

• Content is that which a thing contains or holds
  in itself.
• Musics content is its tonally moving forms, the
  sounds within a composition, these being the
  combination of melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre
  etc. Hanslick describes them as the
  individually pleasing sounds in significant
  relationships to each other.

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Form and Content

• In other arts form and content are two separated
  entities. The content of a painting is a bowl of
  fruit and three artists may paint their own
  version presenting a different form.
• The notes of a piece are the content, but they
  are also form that is already realised.
• Music is absolutely beautiful and
  self-sufficient relying on nothing extra
  musical, unlike other arts where a separate
  stimulus of content is needed to produce form.

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Music and Text

• The sound of music is an end in itself. Whereas
  speech must use sound to convey a sense of what
  it wants, through the subservience of sound to
  thought.
• Transition of speech to singing is always a
  descent, vocal music can never be equal to
  instrumental music.
• Musical meaning has nothing to do with words. It
  may increase its power, but not the beauty of
  music because music is already complete.

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Music and Text

• Hanslick sees recitative as a perfect example of
  where music degenerates into a mere shadow and
  relinquishes its individual sphere of action
  altogether.. The music is subordinate to the
  text, and therefore loses something from its
  tonally moving forms.
• Opera is a beautiful merger of both music and
  drama, but it sees sacrifices and compromises on
  both sides. Therefore, it is not as pure as
  instrumental music.
• Musics content is only present like this in
  instrumental music where there are no
  extra-musical elements to water down musics
  objective beauty.

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Instrumental Music

• Believed instrumental music to be the purest form
  of music, as it is free from any mistaken
  connections with extra-musical factors.
• Extremely critical of programmatic music as it
  attempts to represent emotions and objects which
  are external to the music.
• Believed opera and text settings served to
  devalue music as they impose constraints upon a
  piece and restrict the free play of the
  composers imagination.

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Scientific Approach

• Hanslick advocates a scientific approach to the
  appreciation of music, consistently promoting
  objectivity as key to the intelligent listener.
• He also points the reader towards certain
  beautiful concepts which humans find appealing,
  for example when he is discussing nature and
  arabesques.
• However he disparages the link between maths and
  music which could be seen as a contradiction
  after taking the time to promote proportion.

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Composer-Performer-Listener-Musician

• Although Hanslick does offer us a hierarchy of
  the composer, performer and listener, he does
  show a tendency to lean towards the Romantic
  presentation of the composer as genius.
• The artist may be unfathomable, but we cab still
  fathom his creations.
• Gives impression that the composer is a profound
  and enigmatic being
• Makes no special case for the position of the
  listener, but highlights the correct way of
  listening to a piece, searching out musical
  pleasure rather than feelings.

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Composer-Performer-Listener-Musician

• Interestingly though he then goes on to make this
  comment about musicians as a whole.
• Musicians themselves, however, are less prone to
  the mistake of making all the arts independent on
  feelings, since they believe that what
  distinguishes music from the other arts is
  precisely this power and tendency to arouse
  emotions of all kinds in the listener.

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Writing Style

• Hanslicks writing style has caused a great deal
  of controversy mainly as to whether it is a
  polemic or philosophical document.
• Polemic Mainly comes through in his strident
  tone, and unsupportable views. Critics have
  also attributed the early success of the book to
  its polemic tone and the reaction that the
  writing caused.
• Philosophical - Argument stems the different
  philosophical direction that his writing takes
  and the fact that he did not write another major
  paper. Also the continued interest in the paper
  once the controversy died down would suggest that
  it had more to offer.

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Writing Style Continued

• Hanslick himself admits that this negative
  doctrine was polemically intended and is argued
  by him in a deliberately provocative and
  rhapsodic manner.
• Consistency e.g. Feeling should be a secondary
  reaction to the music, music should be viewed
  objectively.
• Repetition
• Analogy e.g. wine analogy page 16
• Repetition
• Boldness e.g. opening paragraph
• Repetition
• How much of his writing style is Hanslicks
  personality or is he just being Anti-Wagnerian
  for the sake of the artistic debate?

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Comparisons with other Writers

• Similarities
• Kant and the idea of the disinterested listener
• Schopenhauers view that instrumental music is
  the purest form.
• The scientific approach of Quantz and Rameau
• The Ancient Greek notion of the educated listener
• Differences
• Hanslicks denies that maths has any place in
  music theory, contrary to the Ancient Greeks.
• Hanslick denies that the emotions have any place
  in aesthetic theory, contrary to both the Greeks
  and to his contemporaries of the Romantic era.

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Conclusions

• Regardless of how polemically intended the work
  is the fact that it is such a departure from
  previous musical aesthetic theory makes it an
  important document.
• Hanslick emphasises the importance of a
  scientific approach towards aesthetic
  appreciation.
• Beauty exists solely in objective contemplation
  of music.
• Music is the only art form in which form and
  content are inseparably linked, as it form is its
  content and vice versa.
• Instrumental music is the purest form of music,
  and extra musical effects, including the addition
  of text undermine and devalue musics beauty.

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Critical Questions

• How effective is Hanslicks writing style in
  convincing the reader of the validity of his
  concepts?
• Is it possible for music to be objectively
  beautiful without appeal to a metaphysical realm?
  Is beauty not a concept created by the subjective
  human mind?
• Is it true that the emotions have nothing to do
  with aesthetic contemplation?

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Bibliography

• Thomas Grey, Hanslick, Eduard, Grove Music
  Online (2001) 12/03/2007.
• Geoffrey Payzant , Hanslick, Sams, Gay, and
  "Tönend Bewegte Formen" , Jstor (2006)
  12/03/2007.
• Peter Kivy , Something Ive Always Wanted to
  Know About Hanslick" , Jstor (2006)
  12/03/2007.
• Kivy, Peter, What was Hanslick Denying?, The
  Journal of Musicology, Vol. 8, No. 1. (Winter,
  1990), pp. 3-18
• Bowman, Wayne, Philosophical Perspectives on
  Music (New York Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Hall, Robert, Hanslick and Musical Expression,
  Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 29, No. 3.
  (Autumn, 1995), pp. 85-92.