Book Review
Sep. 8th, 2007 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Beautiful in Music
by Edward Hanslick
This treatise on musical aesthetics was first published in 1854, and it is important to keep that context in mind while reading. Hanslick's thesis is that music does not intrinsically represent anything and that its real subject is itself. He refutes the idea (apparently popular at the time he was writing) that the actual substance or content of music is "feelings" (i.e., that music is a language that can truly and absolutely represent anger, grief, love, etc.). Hanslick instead contends that the emotional effect of music is entirely subjective and in fact often a product of cultural and societal conventions and associations built up over time. Thus, musical aesthetics should be concerned with the actual musical materials themselves and not with their emotional effects on the listener. However, while reading the book, I often got the impression that he is not quite as much of a hardliner about his thesis as he wants to appear. Especially in the opening chapters, he makes more than a few comments that allow far more acknowledgment of extra-musical content in music than his passionately argued thesis has room for.
Fundamentally, though, I agree with Hanslick. The minor key is not sad or foreboding because of its inherent properties, but because of a couple of centuries of conventions and associations. Oddly enough, I think a lot of trends in contemporary music (meaning post-19th century) give a plenty of support to Hanslick's ideas. Certainly the ideas he is refuting seem incredibly quaint and old-fashioned to me.
by Edward Hanslick
This treatise on musical aesthetics was first published in 1854, and it is important to keep that context in mind while reading. Hanslick's thesis is that music does not intrinsically represent anything and that its real subject is itself. He refutes the idea (apparently popular at the time he was writing) that the actual substance or content of music is "feelings" (i.e., that music is a language that can truly and absolutely represent anger, grief, love, etc.). Hanslick instead contends that the emotional effect of music is entirely subjective and in fact often a product of cultural and societal conventions and associations built up over time. Thus, musical aesthetics should be concerned with the actual musical materials themselves and not with their emotional effects on the listener. However, while reading the book, I often got the impression that he is not quite as much of a hardliner about his thesis as he wants to appear. Especially in the opening chapters, he makes more than a few comments that allow far more acknowledgment of extra-musical content in music than his passionately argued thesis has room for.
Fundamentally, though, I agree with Hanslick. The minor key is not sad or foreboding because of its inherent properties, but because of a couple of centuries of conventions and associations. Oddly enough, I think a lot of trends in contemporary music (meaning post-19th century) give a plenty of support to Hanslick's ideas. Certainly the ideas he is refuting seem incredibly quaint and old-fashioned to me.
