Sound and Sense

www.peterlang.
com
Sound and Sense: Music and Musical Metaphor in

the Thought and Writing of Goethe and his Age
ISBN 978-3-0343-0237-1
Jo Tudor (BA London, PhD Dunelm) focused on German

literary and cultural studies from 1750 to the present,
alongside early interest and studies in music and French.
Until her retirement she was lecturer in the Department of
German at Durham University. Her publications include
articles on metaphor as a form of thought and writing in the
work of Goethe and of Gnter Grass and, with H.Tudor,
a volume of edited and translated letters and articles from
the Revisionist Debate among nineteenth-century German
Socialists.
J.M. Tudor
This study focuses on beliefs about music current in

eighteenth-century Germany. Of particular interest are
the conceptual metaphors through which major writers
(Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Klopstock) used music as
analogy and medium for perceptions of the world in their
writing. The book surveys traditional metaphors (music
as harmony/disharmony, music as like/unlike language,
music as structured by mathematical proportion or by
rhythm) inherited from Greek and French thought and
looks at ways in which these writers also assimilated and
developed contemporary ideas (especially from Leibniz,
the French Rationalists, Rameau and Rousseau). German
writers of this epoch had a remarkably rich and varied
range of ideas of music at their disposal, some of which
could also be realised in multi-media genres. With the help
of modern theory from several fields, the study aims to show
how they deployed these resources in ways both like and
unlike the practice of Romantic writers with whom they
overlapped at the end of the century.
BI
46
46
Sound and Sense

Music and Musical Metaphor in the Thought
and Writing of Goethe and his Age
J.M. Tudor
BI
46
Britische und Irische Studien

zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur
British and Irish Studies in
German Language and Literature
Etudes britanniques et irlandaises
sur la langue et la littrature allemandes
Peter Lang
Sound and Sense: Music and Musical Metaphor in

the Thought and Writing of Goethe and his Age
Jo Tudor (BA London, PhD Dunelm) focused on German

literary and cultural studies from 1750 to the present,
alongside early interest and studies in music and French.
Until her retirement she was lecturer in the Department of
German at Durham University. Her publications include
articles on metaphor as a form of thought and writing in the
work of Goethe and of Gnter Grass and, with H.Tudor,
a volume of edited and translated letters and articles from
the Revisionist Debate among nineteenth-century German
Socialists.
J.M. Tudor
This study focuses on beliefs about music current in

eighteenth-century Germany. Of particular interest are
the conceptual metaphors through which major writers
(Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Klopstock) used music as
analogy and medium for perceptions of the world in their
writing. The book surveys traditional metaphors (music
as harmony/disharmony, music as like/unlike language,
music as structured by mathematical proportion or by
rhythm) inherited from Greek and French thought and
looks at ways in which these writers also assimilated and
developed contemporary ideas (especially from Leibniz,
the French Rationalists, Rameau and Rousseau). German
writers of this epoch had a remarkably rich and varied
range of ideas of music at their disposal, some of which
could also be realised in multi-media genres. With the help
of modern theory from several fields, the study aims to show
how they deployed these resources in ways both like and
unlike the practice of Romantic writers with whom they
overlapped at the end of the century.
BI
46
46
Sound and Sense

J.M. Tudor
BI
46

British and Irish Studies in
German Language and Literature
Peter Lang
www.peterlang.com
Sound and Sense

British and Irish Studies
in German Language and Literature
Edited by H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates

Band 46
PETER LANG
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt/M. New York Wien
Sound and Sense

J.M. Tudor
PETER LANG
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt/M. New York Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Tudor, J. M.
Sound and sense : music and musical metaphor in the thought and
writing of Goethe and his age / J. M. Tudor.
p. cm. -- (British and Irish studies in German language and
literature ; 46)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-0343-0237-1 (alk. paper)
1. Music--Philosophy and aesthetics--History--18th century. I. Title.
ML3800.T94 2010
781.1094309033--dc22
2010044926
ISSN 0171-6662
ISBN 978-3-0343-0237-1
E-ISBN 978-3-0353-0132-8
Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011

Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
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Printed in Germany
I have never liked the idea that you cannot understand the real message of
music unless you understand it in non-musical terms [] To me the only
valuable definition of music is Busonis, when he said that music was sonorous
air, nothing more and nothing less. Everything else that people say about
music, that it is mathematical, that it is emotional, that it is rational, that it
is given to hysteria, actually says nothing about the music as music. It says a
lot about our reaction to it, but it does not say much about the music.
Love, the Hard Way:
Daniel Barenboim on Gustav Mahler, The Guardian,
31 August 2001
Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert [hat] unter Musik etwas erheblich andres verstanden als wir [], es hat sie anders empfunden, andre Ansprche an sie
gestellt und ihr andre Kulturwerte abzugewinnen gesucht.
[Eighteenth-century understanding of music was substantially different
from our own: they received it differently, expected different things of it,
and sought to derive different cultural values from it].
Hermann Abert, Goethe und die Musik, 1922
What kind of thing is metaphor?
Zoltn Kvecses,
Language, Mind and Culture 2006
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
xi
xiii
1
Part One
47
Traditional Conceptions of Music
Chapter One
Music as Harmony i): Music as Order and Form
51
The Greek tradition (51); Eighteenth-century developments of the

traditional metaphor of harmony (58); Goethes reception and
development of the traditional concept of harmony (61); Goethes Faust (64)
Chapter Two
A Negative Metaphor of Harmony: Music as Disharmony,

Discord, Dissonance
77
Disharmony, discord, dissonance (78); French and Italian thought:

Disharmony as part of the cosmic order (85); Reception of these changes
in German representations of disharmony within cosmic disorder (91);
Schiller and Goethe (94)
Chapter Three
A Negative Metaphor of Language: Music as Irrational,

Music as Voice of Feeling
Plato and Aristotle (107); Eighteenth-century development of this
inheritance (116); Effects of music on the body: French and Italian
thought (119); Music can damage your health (122); Rationality restored
if possible (124); Music restored as the voice of feeling (Rousseau and
Herder) (130); Goethes reception of these conceptual metaphors (136);
Goethes development of these metaphors in the Rousseau/Herder
105
viii
mode (140); Goethes development of these metaphors beyond
Rousseau and Herder (144); Goethe: Music and the undermining of
thought and language (147)
Chapter Four
A Further Negative Metaphor of Language:

Music as Sub- and Superhuman, Music and the Daemonic
153
The perpetuation of these metaphors in Shakespeare (157); The reception

and development of these metaphors in eighteenth-century Germany (159);
Music as medium of metamorphosis and change (163); Music as
manifestation of the daemonic: Goethes development of this
entailment (168); Daemons, demons and humans (172)
Traditional Conceptions of Music, Reviewed

Part Two Conceptions of the Structure of Music
and Their Influence on Musical Metaphor
180
183
Chapter Five
Music as Based on Mathematical Relations
189
Signs as analogues (190); Mathematical ratios in the cosmos and in

music (192); Harmonics, acoustics and measuring the world (196);
Mathematics as a disadvantaged discourse in a harmony of
Vorstellungsarten (203); Mathematics and mathematicians in the
cosmos (210) Makarie and friends (212); Goethes Tonlehre (217)
Chapter Six
Music as Based on Rhythm

Rhythm, the body and dance: Descartes and Mattheson (226); Rhythm,
metre and pitch variation (229); Herder and rhythmic sequence in life
and art (230); Herder, Schiller and Maas (233); Goethe: The rhythm of
life and the dance of ideas (238); Rhythm as medium, theme and sequence
for depiction of a way of living (244); Herders schne Folge as structural
principle in Wanderjahre and Faust (249); Rhythm and repetition as
metaphors for ways of living: Faust (252)
221
ix
Part Three Conceptions of Music and Language: Renewed
Metaphorical Potential from Interactive Domains
265
Chapter Seven
Enhanced Communication i): Music and Language as Similar
277
Rousseau: Music, rhetoric and human utterance (278); Herder and

the timbre of musical sound: Melodie des Herzens (280); Music and
language equated in melody, as expression of (middle class) feeling (284);
Klopstock and Rousseau: Song as sonorous special utterance in
literature (290); Goethe and amateur music-making (293); Goethe:
Simple song and sophisticated writing (295); Goethe: Fresh impetus
from Italy, song as Wechselrede (304); Goethe: special utterance in
an ambiguous medium (309)
Chapter Eight
Enhanced Communication ii): Music as Contrast and

Complement to Language
Music as needing the help of language (314); Music as having qualities
complementary to language (316); A range of Romantic views: Music
as superior to language, music as other-worldly medium (320); Other
Romantic views which connect with eighteenth-century thought:
Music goes where language fears to tread (324); The origins of language
and music as origins of articulated sound: Rousseau, Herder and
Schiller (327); The development of a manifold language for writing:
i) Sound, silence and rhetoric (330); A manifold language:
ii) Klopstock (333); A manifold language: iii) Music + language
+ dance = broadband communication (335); Goethe: Language, sound,
silence and sense (339); Goethe, manifold language: Living sense in
living formulation (345); The perils of manifold language: Confusion,
contradiction and signifying nothing (356); Music as element (359);
Music as mediator between language and extremes of experience (362)
313
Part Four The Synthesis of These Conceptions of Music
365
Chapter Nine
Music as Harmony ii): Music as All-Encompassing Dynamic Whole
369
Leibniz and the structure of harmonious wholeness: Simultaneous and

sequential connections (376); The living cosmos and its dynamic units:
a chain of being and a non-Darwinian evolution (378); Shaftesburys
relocation of the human individual to the heart of the harmonious
cosmos (384); Man as beholder, laudator and creator of cosmic harmony
in Nature: The human voice becomes part of cosmic polyphony (386);
Cosmic harmony and science (391); Cosmic harmony, science and the
future of Man (396)
Chapter Ten
Music as Harmony iii): Harmony as Sequence,

Melodie [] in ihrem weiten Inbegrif
403
Goethes sequences (408); Harmonious sequences and ideal endings:

i) Novelle (411); Harmonious sequences and ideal endings:
ii) Grablegung, Bergschluchten (416); Harmonious sequence and the
end of metaphor (430)
Conclusion
443
Bibliography
473
Index
Index of Goethes Works
Index of Herders Works
Index of Schillers Works
489
509
513
515
1.

Lolotte et Werther [Lotte and Werther at the piano]: coloured

engraving by Morange after S. Amand, reproduced by permission
of the Goethe-Museum, Dsseldorf.
Nothing is known of the artists, although the image has reached the internet as typical of
sentimental Wertherisme. However, in the age of Lichtenberg and Chodowiecki, who
often juxtaposed right and wrong ways of reacting to Nature and Art (cf. series for the
Gttinger Taschen-Kalender, 1779 and 1780), the picture has more critical potential.
While Werther appears lost in his own thoughts, and Lottes fingers barely touch the keys
as she looks at him, the onlookers gaze is challenged by the little girl who points to her doll
an artificial human being with arms spread wide in a semblance of emotion. Real Nature
appears in the trees and hills visible through the open window, but how much natural
feeling is in the room?
2.

Robert Fludds representation of the The Divine Monochord as

basis of cosmic order, Utriusque Cosmi Maioris [] vol. I, i
(Oppenheim: de Bry, 1617) reproduced by courtesy of the University
Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library,
the University of Manchester.
Fludd, who travelled widely in Europe and had strong interests in Hermetic lore, attempted
in his diagrams to summarise all the learning of his time on Man and the Cosmos. See
esp. Joscelyn Godwin, Robert Fludd, Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds
(Boulder, CO: Shambala, 1979).
3.

Lady Hamilton as Goddess of the Dance, Friedrich Rehberg, engraved

by Tommaso Piroli, in Drawings faithfully copied from nature at
Naples [] dedicated to the Right Honourable Sir William Hamilton,
1794, copyright V & A images/Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Goethe saw her performances in Naples (see e.g. Italienische Reise II, Caserta, 16 March
1787). While Sir William Hamilton admired her movements as the perfect combination
of Nature and Art, Goethes comments on both of them are more cryptic: its certainly
something different.
xii
4. Dame am Spinett [thought to be Lili Schnemann], sketch

by Goethe c.1775, reproduced by permission of the Klassik
Stiftung Weimar.
5.

The Harmonie, or wind-band, of the Prince of OettingenWallerstein, c.1783; reproduced from The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol.10, reproduced by permission
of Oxford University Press Inc.
This arrangement embodies perfectly a concept of harmony designed to encompass

diversity. Alongside the traditional woodwind and brass instruments, a double bass is
included. The players are framed within a room laid out and furnished in strict NeoClassical symmetry, but the band members are diverse in age, height and weight. See e.g.
the stocky horn player second from the right, and the double bass player who appears
shorter than most and has higher heels on his shoes.
6. Goethes amendment, in his own hand, to the final page of his

Faust manuscript (1831), reproduced by permission of the

Goethe-Museum, Dsseldorf.
7. The opening section of Goethes Tonlehre (1810), reproduced by

permission of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. This work remained

as a draft.
The opening section, which reflects Rameaus concept of the origin of music in a
corps sonore, begins: Entwickelt die Gesetze des Hrbaren. Dieses entspringt durch
Erschtterung der Krper, fr uns vorzglich durch Erschtterung der Luft. Das Hrbare
ist im weiten Sinne unendlich. Davon werden aber beseitigt: Gerusch, Schall und
Sprache. Bleibt zu unserer nchsten Beschftigung: das musikalisch Hrbare (der Klang).
[Develops the laws of sound. This arises through the vibration of bodies, for us especially
by vibration of the air. Sound in its full sense is infinite; but here we exclude noise (vocal
and non-vocal), and speech. There thus remains for our investigation here: musical sound
(tone)].
Preface
This book explores the significance which Goethe and others in his lifetime
(17491832) attached to aspects of music, through the musical reference and
musical metaphors which they deployed in writing of various kinds. Goethe
has primacy here because he developed a more diverse network of such allusions over a longer period than others: any reader ofhis work will come upon
references to music and/or musical episodes of some kind, early or late, in fiction or non-fiction. The frequency ofthese allusions has been acknowledged
periodically, especially in Faust criticism; explanations have been sought, but
not found, in his musical knowledge and encounters with musicians. Instead,
I have focused on the metaphorical relations which underpin most of his
musical reference and have drawn on metaphor theory (before, during and
after Lakoff and Johnson) as well as on literary criticism, to consider how
Goethes musical allusions function in relation to their context and to each
other. This has opened up a wider and clearer perspective. In the context of
contemporary usage, it is possible to see whether in a given case Goethe was
drawing on mainstream clich, developing a familiar idea in new ways, or
making new metaphorical connections of his own. Occasionally I have borrowed ideas from word and music studies or intermediality; but since this
discipline works within the field of metaphorical relations, I have principally
used that broader frame. Sometimes I have drawn on philosophy of music
and on musicology to clarify particular issues. But this is not primarily a book
about eighteenth-century aesthetics or music history. It is concerned with
perceived experience of music and beliefs about music, with the metaphorical
thought and language through which these are expressed and with the role
they play in writing of the time, especially during the latter half of the long
eighteenth century.
This study could not have been undertaken without incurring considerable debts. Published work is of course acknowledged in the bibliography and
footnotes. But I have relied in a general way on works from several epochs
and gratefully acknowledge these obligations here. Among the oldest, the
compendia by Goldschmidt and Moos, and Friedrich Blumes monumental
xiv
Preface
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, supplied necessary information on figures, places and concepts influential in musical culture but little known to
Germanists; while twentieth-century studies on Goethe and music (from
Herrmann in 1916 to Canisius in 1998) made clear how all-pervasive eighteenth-century preoccupation with music was, and how controversial and
elusive the assessment of music remained. The Goethe editions of the last
few decades (Hamburger, Frankfurter and Mnchener) have widened critical focus to include his writing of all sorts, especially on the sciences; revised
editions of Herder and Schiller have also opened fresh perspectives. For the
conceptual framework to organise this diverse material, I have a debt to metaphor theory from various stages: Cassirer, Black and Cohen, as well as others
since the millennium such as Stern and Kvecses, who developed frameworks
for considering historical perspectives and much more complex metaphorical
relations than were accommodated before them. Germanists and others from
the 1960s to the present have created a more precise and diversified critical
discourse for dealing with eighteenth-century texts. John Hollander (1961),
Andrew Barker (1984, 1989), Jamie James (1993) and Peter D. Smith (2000)
have between them shown how ideas about the cosmos, ancient and modern,
have consistently depended on metaphor and very often been embodied in
musical metaphor. I could not have found answers to many questions without
the collective efforts of all these writers, and am duly grateful. What I have
done with these resources is, of course, entirely my own responsibility.
Alongside these debts, I owe warm personal thanks to several people and
institutions. The staff ofDurham University Library, the British Library, the
University of London Institute of Germanic Studies (now the Institute of
Germanic and Romance Studies), gave technical help and valuable bibliographical advice. In the University Library and the Musicological Institute
of the Freie Universitt Berlin in Dahlem, I was given access to musicological items not readily available otherwise. The University of Durham gave
leave and support without which I could not easily have pursued outside
research; and without the philosophical library ofHenry Tudor, I would not
have explored Shaftesbury (in an edition which kindly capitalised all nouns,
in German fashion). John Smeed, Barry Nisbet and most recently Andreas
Musolff gave critical pointers without which I would certainly have lost
wood among trees and metaphor among metaphor theory. I am grateful to
the English Goethe Society for permission to use material from a paper given
Preface
xv
to the Society in 2005 and to Steven Marshall for technical assistance. Above
all, I owe thanks to the series editors and to Graham Speake of Peter Lang,
whose monumentally patient encouragement would in more leisurely ages
have received a panegyric, but who now have to make do with a book.
Jo Tudor
Durham, December 2009
Introduction
Musical reference in traditional literary texts,

and beyond
Musical reference in a text can be an effective means of conveying milieu,

character, intellectual climate and much else. As Edward Lowinsky has argued,
our perception of music is affected not only by taste and training, but by the
social, cultural, philosophical, ethical, even economic and political factors
predominant in our time and place, which he summarised as ideology.1 Such
ideologies exercise strong influence on the range and type of connections
made between music and other domains the extra-musical metaphorical
connections which Barenboim deplored. Through an authors depiction of
music perceived and received, readers can have access not only to an individuals taste, but to a large area of his/her ideological environment as well.
A classic example can be found in chapters five to nine of E.M. Forsters
Howards End (1910). Here a performance of Beethovens Fifth Symphony is
the economical means of depicting the two Schlegel sisters (only the music
vs the goblins walking quietly over the universe), their family, their guests
(On the what, dear? On the drum, Aunt Juley), the affinities and hostilities
between British and German life and culture, British class differences, the
currently fashionable obsession with common ground between the arts (the
real villain is Wagner), and much else, including the narrators ironic tribute
(the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man) and
mild satire of this whole authorial procedure (she labels it with meanings
from start to finish; turns it into literature).
It is instructive to look at Forsters episode almost a century later. We can
see the tensions building up in these years before the First World War, in a
E.E. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and Ideology in Eighteenth-century Music, in Earl R.

Wasserman, Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1965,
163205.
Introduction
way which the protagonists could not. But we also see how closely interlinked
in culture and economy the two peoples were at the time, which now may
come as a surprise. In particular, we can see that our distance from Forster
creates certain problems with musical metaphor. Helen Schlegels capacity to
see music as analogous to almost anything has to be explained even for contemporary readers, because her ideas are arbitrary and extreme (The course
ofthe Oder is to be like music [] the exit into the Baltic is in C sharp major,
pianissimo). But it is no longer possible to judge what the norm was which
Helens view exceeds, because the cultural framework on which it hung has
disappeared. We can appreciate a good deal: the fluency of the repartee, the
crucial difference between each sisters attitude to music and her related personality traits, how each reacts (in this and much else) to English social and
cultural convention. We can be reasonably sure that hearing only the music
presents no problems then or now; but we cannot know whether hearing
goblins padding over the universe would have struck readers then as pretentious, insane, or dottily endearing. We cannot follow the sense ofthe metaphor
precisely, and the immediacy of its original impact is blunted.
German literature has consistently drawn on musical reference and musical metaphor in this way, and still occasionally does so. But problems of uneven
access will inevitably be more acute with German eighteenth-century writing. From a present-day perspective, this epochs metaphorical connections
between music and other things range from straightforward to bizarrely
opaque, as seen even in the simple example of solo pianists. Like their slightly
later counterparts in Jane Austen, they are fairly numerous; but their function
is not so easy to discern. Werthers Lotte thumps away on her out-of-tune
piano to let off steam; but Schillers Laura am Klavier is said to threaten
both her listener and the order ofthe universe with her cascades of sound, in
terms which would lead a modern reader to envisage an entire orchestra at
full volume, not a solo pianist. Luciane (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) is a social
irritant whose self-obsessed performance is symptomatic ofher extraordinary
powers of disruption. Angela, chief support of the mysterious Makarie who
moves between earth and stars in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, is partnered
with a statistician pianist whose dazzling brilliance and absence of emotional
input suggest links with an a-human Pythagorean cosmic symmetry. Yet he
is described in almost offhand terms, and hard to take seriously.
Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond
The obvious explanations are oflittle help. Ifthis usage is mainly due to
sociological factors (most people in the middle and upper reaches of eighteenth-century German society played the piano, Goethe included), neither
Laura nor Angelas fianc fit at all. Musicological factors (the development
in keyboard instruments during this period gave much greater tonal range
and volume) might explain the difference between Lotte and Laura, but not
the others and not Lauras perceived cosmic powers. The influence of music
philosophy (e.g. Rousseaus polemic for music as the irresistible language of
human feeling) might explain Lotte and Laura, but not Lucianes negative
power and not the statistician. Still less would it help with Die pilgernde
Trin [The Madwoman on Pilgrimage], who plays exquisitely to her hosts
while singing an outrageous song, and reveals absolutely nothing of what
she is and feels. Similar discrepancies appear in other metaphorical areas
too. Musicological opinion has until recently held that the idea of music as
reflecting mathematically based cosmic order (e.g. in polyphonic structure)
disappeared after Rousseau and gave way to a Romantic belief in instrumental
music as the medium ofhuman feeling and of spirit i.e. everything outside
the physical world.2 Yet at the end of the eighteenth century Schiller developed an elaborate philosophical concept of harmony which has links both
to cosmic order and to music (see e.g. Die Knstler and Der Tanz). As late as
1823 the botanist Ernst Meyer, encouraging Goethes efforts to coordinate
the observed diversity of plant life with systematic botanical classification,
drew an extended analogy with the groundbass and the great variety of polyphonic and melodic structures built upon it; although by then that musical
technique was long since outmoded.3 Similar kinds of problem arise with
songs and singer figures, singly or in groups; with dancers and dances; with
textual descriptions of music heard and performed, with episodes in which
music is thematised in some way. Of course, poetic texts traditionally bring
language and music closer together in a semblance of song. But there is more
to poetry and poets than lyrical qualities; some poet figures (e.g. Goethes
Musensohn, Schillers Knstler) seem to exercise more awe-inspiring functions
2
3
See of many e.g. Lowinsky, op.cit., 163205, esp.1719, 192ff.; and more recently Michael
Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004,
esp.135ff.
In Problem und Erwiderung, Zur Morphologie, II,1, AA 17, 17689, esp.183f.
Introduction
through music. Ernst Meyers chosen example suggests that metaphor linking the domain of music with extra-musical phenomena was not confined to
belles lettres, but part of general educated usage. Was there a European pool
of generalised public discourse on music, in which musical metaphor might
be fostered, and the sources of its puzzling connotations found?
A public discourse on music?

In eighteenth-century England and Scotland, there was something at least
emerging as public discourse on music, and it depended heavily on periodicals.4 G.R. Seaman has pointed out that not only learned journals such as the
Philosophical Transactions ofthe Royal Society, but those with general cultural
appeal such as The Spectator, and those with specific target readerships such
as The Gentlemans Magazine, The London Magazine, The Scots Magazine, The
Ladys Magazine, The European Magazine, from time to time carried articles
on musical performances and on aspects of music deemed to be of cultural
importance.5 The problem is, in his view, that these articles only rarely discussed specifically musical issues (such as the development of instruments,
the properties of sound and the organs of hearing), and even more rarely an
explorers encounters with non-European music.6 Instead, they were concerned
with the moral and physical impact of music on society (especially its effects
on the lower orders), and with whether they should welcome the all-pervasive
Italian opera or seek out their own folk music, in which they included Welsh
4
5
6
See also Kevin Barrys Language, Music and the Sign: A Study in Aesthetics, Poetics and
Poetic Practice from Collins to Coleridge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987,
which surveys a range ofliterary sources in English in the light oftheories of signs. Some
indication of public discourse in England and Europe is also given, mingled with brief
exposs of philosophical thought, in the Introduction by Peter Le Huray and James Day
to their anthology of Romantic thought, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and
Early-Nineteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 116.
Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals and Music, in British Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 7 (1984), 6976, esp.70ff.
Op.cit., esp.705.
and Scottish.7 Such periodicals were often of short duration; but Rosamund
McGuiness shows that at least one ofthem, the British Apollo, set out early in
the century to educate its readers on hearing and performing music, and on
philosophical aspects such as the views ofAristotle and Descartes. It also ran
a Question and Answer column for both performers and listeners.8 Clearly,
this reached a wide readership: McGuiness finds a London coal merchant
who held public concerts above his shop, for which he was satirised in more
middle-brow journals.9 And although most ofthis public discussion focused
on London, the readers of such journals took the latest ideas to the shires when
they dispersed after the season, and kept up with opinion by their continued
reading. A slightly different perspective on musical culture is provided by
Catherine Jones, in her article on the Scottish philosopher James Beattie.10
Beattie sent a highly technical treatise on the philosophy of musical sounds
to a friend who was Episcopal minister at Peterhead; but himself, as professor of philosophy in Aberdeen, preferred the Ethicks of music its effects
on moral and emotional life. Since he was also a composer of widely admired
songs and a writer of poetry (about song, among other things), and since
his philosophical reflections had been sufficiently convincing to influence
Robert Burns, he had both abstract theoretical and informed empirical access
to the phenomenon of music. Although these aspects ofhis work sometimes
conflicted, they also informed and enriched each other.11 Collectively, these
critical studies show that there was indeed a vigorous and well-informed musical culture in England and Scotland, and that a wide range of people listened
to music and wrote about music, both in journal articles and in various forms
ofbelles lettres. It is also evident from the examples and discussions cited that
these writings on music usually contained a mixture of philosophy, science and
metaphor: i.e. the tendency to think of music in terms of something else, as
well as considering aspects of it without such extraneous reference.
7
8
9
10
11
Op.cit., esp.72ff.
The British Apollo as a Source of Musical Information, BJECS 14 (1991), 6173
passim.
Op.cit., esp.64.
James Beattie and the Ethics of Music, BJECS 30 (2007), 5571.
Op.cit., 55ff., 68f., and passim.
Introduction
I have found less information on France, especially on life outside Paris;

but it seems evident that there was an energetic public discourse on music
there too.12 However, it seems to have been much more influenced by cultural
and other kinds of politics, divided into high- and low-brow not only by ferocious polemics and social divides, but even, as Connon shows, by legislation.13
Dent commented that the so-called guerre des bouffons (between supporters
of French serious high-brow opera and those of Italian popular operetta)
was a war mainly of journalists;14 and NHDM (103) agrees. Certainly, one
can easily gain the impression that writing about music (e.g. in reaction to
Rameaus theory of harmony, in articles in the Encyclopdie, in Rousseaus
polemics and in Diderots satire Le Neveu de Rameau) and talking about
music in theatres and social gatherings, was at times more culturally and
socially important than listening to music or composing it. Musical activity
of course continued unabated throughout these critical hostilities, especially
in opera (serious and comic) and in instrumental music.15 And so on a more
rarefied level did the previous centurys discussion of music in the context of
the debate on the origins oflanguage.16 One result of all this was that French
musical culture (as opposed to French music) became intellectualised; it was
Rousseaus ideas on music, rather than his musical compositions, which came
to exercise powerful influence in Germany. Again, his writing shows a high
proportion of metaphorical thought. Throughout, he polemicises in terms
12
13
14
15
16
In general, see NHDM, 323f.; also e.g. Lowinsky, op.cit. passim, on the controversies between supporters of French serious opera and Italian opera buffa, and between
Rousseau and Rameau; Edward J. Dent, Opera, Harmondswoth: Penguin, 1940,
esp.72ff.; Hugh Ottaway, The Enlightenment and the Revolution, in A. Robertson
& D. Stevens (eds), The Pelican History ofMusic, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, vol.3,
2733; L.W. Tancocks introduction to his translation ofDiderots Le Neveu de Rameau,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, esp.25ff.; and Derek Connon, Music in the Parisian
Fair Theatres: Medium or Message?, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies [the successor to BSECS] 31 (2008), 11935.
Op.cit., 119ff.
Op.cit., p.40.
See e.g. Denis Matthews (ed.), Keyboard Music, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, 4650,
110f., and Anthony Baines (ed.), Musical Instruments through the Ages, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 3rd rev. ed., 1969, 26474 and passim.
See e.g. Caroline Jacot Grapa, Lhomme et le dissonant au dix-huitime sicle, Oxford:
Voltaire Foundation, 1997, and Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIime
sicle [], Paris: Champion, 1995.
of a conceptual metaphor17 of music as language of feeling; arguing on this

basis that music must be melodic and as closely analogous as possible to a
singing voice.
In Germany, as far as I can see, the situation was different again. Because
ofGermanys large territorial area and fragmented political geography, there
was no single city to serve as cultural capital; although Leipzig came close in
the mid-century, and Berlin developed in this direction later.18 This did not
mean a lack of music-making. As Michael Spitzer points out in his study of
metaphor within music, it is simply a fact that composers of the Germanspeaking lands Schtz, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms,
and Wagner happen to have been central to the formation ofthe [Western]
canon and to our conceptualization of musical thought.19 The oddity is that
the major German theorists and conceptualisers he names do not actually
come from the eighteenth century, but from seventeenth-century parallels
with rhetoric (Figurenlehre), and from nineteenth-century theorists from Kant
(at the very end ofthe eighteenth century) through Wagner to Benjamin and
Adorno. Goethes comments on European musical life, made as notes to his
translation of Diderots Le Neveu de Rameau (1806), indicate the situation
underlying this discrepancy:
Alle neuere Musik wird auf zweierlei Weise behandelt, entweder da man sie als eine
selbstndige Kunst betrachtet, sie in sich selbst ausbildet, ausbt und durch den verfeinerten ueren Sinn geniet, wie es der Italiener zu tun pflegt, oder da man sie in
bezug auf Verstand, Empfindung, Leidenschaft setzt und sie dergestalt bearbeitet, da
sie mehrere menschliche Geistes- und Seelenkrfte in Anspruch nehmen knne, wie es
die Weise der Franzosen, der Deutschen und aller Nordlnder ist und bleiben wird.20
17
The term conceptual metaphor is used widely in metaphor theory, to denote a metaphorical concept which creates connections between two domains, as opposed to the
individual figures of speech (similes, verbal metaphors, etc.) which such a concept
generates.
18 Germany is used here as shorthand for the German-speaking lands which later became
Germany, as opposed to those which later became part of Austria, Poland, CzechoSlovakia, etc. In general, see NHDM 3369 (this was written before the reunification
of Germany, but is not affected). On Leipzig, see MGG 8, cols. 54660. esp.554ff.,
and NMGG 5, cols. 105565; on Berlin, see MGG I, cols.170533, esp.150813, 29, and
NMGG, I, cols 142032, esp 346, and 14424.
19 Metaphor and Musical Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 5.
20 Musik, in Anmerkungen zu Rameaus Neffe, AA 15, 1039f.
Introduction
[All modern music is approached in one of two ways: either it is regarded as a selfcontained art, developed and practised according to its own criteria and appreciated
by refined physical sense, as is the Italian habit; or it is brought into relation with the
human mind, sense and passion and treated in such a way as to appeal to several faculties
of the mind and heart, as is and will always be the custom of the French, the Germans,
and all the Northern lands].
This rather crude division between music as beautiful sound and music as
deeply meaningful serves well enough as explanation for the perennial culture
wars in Paris, especially since he adds that great music requires a blend ofboth.
But there is a twist in his narrative. Of Italian bel canto, he had said:
Der Italiener wird sich der lieblichsten Harmonie, der geflligsten Melodie befleiigen,
er wird sich an dem Zusammenklang, an der Bewegung als so chen ergtzen, er wird des
Sngers Kehle zu Rate ziehn, und das, was dieser an gehaltenen oder schnell aufeinanderfolgenden Tnen und deren mannigfaltigstem Vortrag leisten kann, auf die glcklichste
Weise hervorheben und so das gebildete Ohr seiner Landsleute entzcken.
[The Italians will take pains to produce the pleasantest harmony, the most appealing
melody, will take pleasure in consonance and animated tempo for their own sake, will
take account of a singers voice and will show off in the most skilful fashion its mastery
of sustained notes and rapid runs in richly varied performance, and will thus delight
the practised ear of his countrymen].
Noting that this technique rarely does justice to the text of vocal music, he
then adds:
Wie der Italiener mit dem Gesang, so verfuhr der Deutsche mit der Instrumentalmusik.
Er betrachtete sie auch eine Zeitlang als eine besondere, fr sich bestehende Kunst, vervollkommnete ihr Technisches und bte sie, fast ohne weitern Bezug aufGemtskrfte,
lebhaft aus, da sie denn bei einer, dem Deutschen wohl gemen, tiefern Behandlung
der Harmonie zu einem hohen, fr alle Vlker musterhaften Grade gelangt ist.21
[The Germans approached instrumental music in the same way as the Italians treated
vocal music. They too regarded it for a time as a special and self-sufficient art, perfected
its technical aspects and pursued it energetically with little or no reference to human
feelings; with the result that, given the more thorough treatment ofharmony to which
Germans were disposed, it attained a level which became the pre-eminent model for
other nations].
21
Ibid.
This is not simply an inconsistency in Goethes account. The practice of music,

the development of instruments and the compositional skills to exploit these
extended opportunities, flourished in Germany and often attained greatness.22
But they flourished unevenly, in courts of varying sizes where the rulers
taste might be well-informed (as in Mannheim) or might be restrictive (as in
Berlin),23 where financial constraints affected quality (as in Weimar),24 or in
cities where the tastes of the city fathers set certain limits (as in Leipzig), or
where there happened to be a good instrument maker (such as Johann Andreas
Stein in Augsburg).25 And they flourished well and truly out oftandem with
the public discourse on music, such as it was.
English interest in folk song influenced German conceptions of poetry
rather than music.26 Discourse on music consisted very largely of ideas from
France: not only Rousseaus, but also those of French Rationalists such as
Dubos and Batteux.27 Here too periodicals were crucial. Mary-Sue Morrow
has given a detailed account of what she calls the review collective, cultural
periodicals (usually based on major cities) which spread ideas among the
culturally hungry members of the middle classes and often also among aristocratic amateurs.28 But these were aimed at readers mostly oflimited musical
skill, and intermingled with practical advice on playing and singing. Most of
See e.g. NMGG 5, col. 1064, on instrument makers in Leipzig; and Matthews, op.cit.,
Baines, op.cit.
23 On Berlin, see MGG and NMGG, loc. cit.; on Mannheim (where Mozart spent some
time and met Constanze and her family), see MGG 8, cols 15949, esp.958; NMGG
5, cols 16359; NHDM 4679.
24 See e.g. Ilse-Marie Barth, Literarisches Weimar, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971, 1821 &
10520.
25 See note 18 above; Lowinsky, op.cit. 163f. Also articles by various authors in Baines,
op.cit. 713 & 914, and Matthews, op.cit., 70163, esp.11014, on the pre-eminence
of German composers responses to improved instruments.
26 See esp. the essays in Herders edited volume Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1773).
27 E.g. Jean Baptiste Dubos, Rflexions Critiques sur la Posie et sur la Peinture, Paris:n.p.,
1719; and Charles Batteux, Les beaux arts rduits un mme principe, Paris: Durand,
1746.
28 Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997, 44 and passim; on Weimars cultural periodicals, see also Barth,
op.cit., 81105.
22
10
Introduction
the periodicals were short-lived with limited circulation,29 aiming primarily

to improve their readers performance and/or to standardise their taste to
French models. Such aesthetic theorising as there was took place intermingled with practical hints, and drew parallels between music, language and/
or dance, in periodical articles and in manuals by Kapellmeister designed
to teach composition, or flute-playing, or even the whole art of music to
similar amateurs or to other potential Kapellmeister.30 In short, as Morrows
study shows, there was lively debate, and plentiful assertion.31 But there was
almost certainly not, as she implies, a nationwide consensus. For one thing,
almost no cultural development was nationwide, given the geographical
and political diversity of the territory. Throughout the eighteenth century,
German experience of music had been both diverse and markedly uneven.
In this land and epoch of classic musical achievements, Goethe (who had a
sharp ear and fair if limited musical education) spent time in major cities
(Frankfurt, Leipzig, Strassburg) and a court of moderate standing (Weimar)
as well as the Imperial Chancery in Wetzlar. But until he went to Italy in 1786
and heard polyphonic and popular music in Rome, his most exciting musical
experience was provided by the folksongs which Herder urged him to collect
in the Alsace countryside.
In this curiously elusive situation, Germans wrote extensively about music;
not only in cultural periodicals but in their literature and in essays and treatises
of all kinds.32 In short, a significant part of the discourse in Germany took
29 Cf. Morrow, op.cit. 2937; this account seems to me somewhat misleading, since the
most widely-circulated periodicals dealt with culture generally, not specifically with
music.
30 E.g. Johann Matthesons Neu-Erffnetes Orchestre, Hamburg; Schillers Witwe etc., 1713,
and Der vollkommener Capellmeister, Hamburg: Herold, 1739; Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bachs Versuch ber die wahre Art, das Klavier zu spielen, Berlin: self-publ., 1753; Johann
Joachim Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung, die Flte traversire zu spielen, Berlin: 1752;
3rd edn Breslau: Korn, 1789.
31 See e.g. her chapters 3 and 4, 4578.
32 This is a trend which continued after the divide (however drawn) between the eighteenth century and Romanticism, and has persisted to the present day. Music appears
in these texts not only as subject matter, but with various functions and associations;
some recent studies have also been concerned with a similar incorporation of textual
elements into music. See e.g. Spitzer, op.cit., passim; Ricarda Schmidt, Wenn mehrere
Knste im Spiel sind: Intermedialitt bei E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck
11
place not in public but in private, between writers of various kinds and their
readers. This makes a substantial difference to the corpus of sources from
which the following study selects. For, in the absence of a philosophical or
theoretical consensus in their own day which would do justice to the diversity
of musical experience, these texts are engaging not only with contemporary
musical experience but also with musics image in literary and philosophical
tradition. There is thus a historical factor both in our present-day approaches
to eighteenth-century thinking and in eighteenth-century approaches to
the pool of ideas then available. And again, because of the absence of philosophical consensus, these discussions of music tend to be predominantly
metaphorical: the elusive art of music has to be understood partly in terms
of something else.
Philosophy and theory of music in the eighteenth century

Why was there no philosophical consensus? At first sight, it seems preposterous to suggest that the nation which produced abundant music of classic
status should have had no clear conception of what it was doing. The answer
seems to be that musicians knew perfectly well what they were doing, but did
not often couch their ideas in theoretical terms specifically related to music.
In 1986, John Neubauer pointed out that:
the history of music aesthetics suggests that theory and practice in the arts tend to leapfrog, so that the creative work occasionally shapes the theory, whereas at other times
theoretical reflection inspires creativity.33
33
& Ruprecht, 2006; Horst Petri, Literatur und Musik: Form- und Strukturparallelen,
Gttingen: Sachse & Pohl, 1964, concerned mostly with twentieth-century writers
and composers; and writers and composers cited in Walter Bernhart, Steven Paul Scher,
Werner Wolf (eds), Word and Music Studies: Defining the Field, Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1999. See also preface to Part III below.
In his survey of verbal and mathematical approaches to music in the eighteenth century,
The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in EighteenthCentury Aesthetics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, 3.
12
Introduction
Eighteenth-century Germany seems to have been a time when musical practice

was well ahead oftheory. As David Wellberys study shows (qv), mid-century
aesthetics was very much bound up with concepts of semiotics, and with classification ofthe arts according to the types of sign they employed, the relation
ofthese to natural signs, and to the faculties ofthe recipient called upon to
respond.34 Music came out of this relatively well, as the art which employed
natural signs (in this case sounds) in temporal succession, and thence was
deemed to have the liveliest immediacy of impact on the listener.35 But there
and in Lessings Laokoon, most philosophical attention was directed towards
poetic language in relation to the visual arts, or to rules for combining the
arts (e.g. in opera). There was nothing here to distract German musicians
and Kapellmeister from their reading ofMattheson, C.P.E. Bach or Quantz,
and still less to distract them from studying the techniques of whichever
superior practitioners they happened to encounter. It does seem reasonable
to assume that in the second half of the century there were some theorists
whose work did not achieve a high profile among the broad reading public,
but who nonetheless made conceptual headway: Spitzer pays attention to several, including Johann Georg Sulzers Allgemeine Theorie der schnen Knste
und Wissenschaften (17714) and Heinrich Christoph Kochs Versuch einer
Anleitung zur Composition (178293).36 Goethe reviewed Sulzers work unfavourably in 1772 as full oflearned abstractions, and in Dichtung und Wahrheit
dismissed it as for amateurs, not artists; but Goethes musical mentor Carl
Friedrich Zelter, head of the Berlin Singakademie, still cited it in a letter of
1799, so it must have had some reputation among musicians.37 I have found
no mention ofKoch in literary and cultural sources. Yet Morrow cites him as
a periodical editor developing from a compiler ofrules to a theorist allowing
much more creative leeway in musical structure; and Spitzer dubs him the
most important German theorist of the eighteenth century, whose Versuch
34 Lessings Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age ofReason, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984, esp. his section on Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Friedrich Meier,
and Moses Mendelssohn (4398).
35 Mendelssohn had most to say on music; cf. Wellbery, op.cit. 8694.
36 Op.cit., 210ff. and passim, 243ff. and passim.
37 See DjG I, 937, in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen 18 December 1772, also notes,
441; DuW III,12, AA 10, 590; also Claus Canisius, Goethe und die Musik, Mnchen:
Piper, 1999, 126.
13
offered the first comprehensive theory of musical form.38 Kant, by contrast,

was and is periodically cited as typical ofEnlightenment theory. Yet this seems
to be on the strength ofhis general philosophical distinction rather than on
the basis ofhis theory of music. There he confesses to considerable uncertainty,
refers to instrumental music as though it were merely unstructured sound, and
has a drastically old-fashioned view of the mechanism involved in musics
impact on the listener, based (like Matthesons) on Descartes mechanistic
theory ofthe passions and of emotional responses to stimuli.39 He is, overall,
considerably less enlightening than Moses Mendelssohn or Mattheson. It
seems that there was not so much a discourse on music in eighteenth-century
Germany as several discourses which overlapped to some extent: (a) the review
collective, read principally by amateurs; (b) the practical manuals (such as
Matthesons) which also contained theoretical points, read by a somewhat
wider public; (c) the theoretical publications which also gave practical instruction (such as Kochs), read by specialists but also presumably by those seeking
instruction; and (d) what for the moment can be called the literary collective.
By this I mean works of literature in which music, reference to music, views
of music current and traditional, and reviews of experience of music played
a part of some kind; and also other forms such as essays, treatises, and letters.
These were usually written by figures of intellectual and cultural distinction
and accordingly had more elevated levels of readership/theatre audience;
but even these authors usually had little musical expertise. Sometimes their
works reached a wider readership, and sometimes overlapped with the cultural
periodicals or essays. In many cases, they deployed musical reference in the
context of a preoccupation with something else: e.g. the nature oflanguage,
or in Goethes case the natural sciences. This also made for metaphorical
usage: not only was music envisaged in terms of something else, but other
phenomena could be envisaged in terms of music.
38
39
Morrow, op.cit., 145f. and passim; Spitzer, op.cit., 243.

In the Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 51, 53; cf. Spitzer, 210f.; Morrow, passim; and the
helpful account of Kants oddities in the context of his aesthetic thought as a whole in
Andy Hamilton, Aesthetics and Music, London/New York: Continuum, 2007, 702
and passim.
14
Introduction
Philosophy of music in the present, and Intermediality

Since eighteenth-century thought on music was so diverse, it might seem an
obvious strategy here to take a theoretical framework based on present-day
music theory, or on a modern philosophy of the arts involving music. But
there is still no philosophical consensus. Apart from studies of the Western
tradition in tonal music, there are works concerned with modernism (i.e. art
which seeks to reflect the fragmentation of society and experience encountered in the twentieth century) and with the theories of Theodor Adorno,
especially with avant-garde music which works outside traditional Western
tonality.40 There are also critical works, usually regarded as specialist, which
engage with jazz; those which deal with popular music, however defined;
those which deal with electronic music; and those, often still in the form of
newspaper columns, which deal with world music, the extraordinary wealth
of music currently available from traditions outside Europe.41
Until very recently indeed, critical works which did aim to present a
philosophically rigorous or at least a coherent account of music did so by
drastically reducing the field in various respects. Some concentrated on the
Western Classical tradition [in fact focused mainly on Romantic music].42
40 See e.g. Max Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory
and Music, London: Kahn & Averill, 2004; Andy Hamilton, Aesthetics and Music,
London/New York: Continuum, 2007, 15391 and passim, plus further bibliographical
references. These works and ideas are of course outside the scope ofthis study; but it will
nonetheless be necessary to engage briefly with a discipline which grew from Adornos
ideas, the sociology of music. Lowinsky, as we saw at the beginning ofthis Introduction,
dealt with such aspects of musical reception under the general heading of ideology;
and these factors were certainly vigorously at work in the eighteenth century. But they
tended to produce conceptual metaphor rather than aesthetics, and accordingly I have
dealt with them in the section below on metaphor theory.
41 Hamilton gives some bibliographical information on all these areas; a very broad survey
is also given in NHDM under Popular music, 6469, Electro-acoustic music, 2803,
Jazz, 41317, and Ethnomusicology, 2913.
42 See e.g. R.A. Sharpe, Philosophy ofMusic: An Introduction, Montreal: McGill-Queens
University Press, 2004, and Peter Kivy, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, Oxford:
Clarendon, 2002; both of whom argue against formalism and for expressive music,
which tends to emphasise nineteenth-century classics at the expense of much twentiethcentury music.
15
Some drastically reduced the conceptual framework, not questioning whether

music was expressive ofhuman emotion, but arguing over what kind of emotion it expressed and how.43 Others, whether or not their range of examples
was wide, encapsulated music not within a philosophy but within a conceptual metaphor: music as a language.44 These are still strong trends in philosophical aesthetics; and have often meant almost exclusive focus on melodic,
vocal and tonal aspects of music. Musical rhythm, by contrast, has received
very little attention. Apart from NHDM (qv), Scruton and Hamilton are
two of very few who acknowledge its multiple functions and importance.
Scruton accounts for this omission in terms of nineteenth-century and modernist musical concepts;45 but even in 2002 Peter Kivy felt able to issue his
Introduction to a Philosophy ofMusic with no reference to rhythm at all. Alex
Rosss vigorous attempt to put twentieth-century modernist music back on
the critical map, by restoring this musics social context and explaining in
accessible terms its technical innovations and its nature as a highly diverse
43 Malcolm Budd, Music and the Emotions: the Philosophical Theories, London/New York:
Routledge, 1985, 1992, gives a lucid account of the historical and current arguments
around these questions. For over a decade, articles in the British Journal of Aesthetics
and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism have debated this topic: see, of many,
Robert Stecker, Davies on the Musical Expression ofEmotion, BJA 39 (1999), 27381,
and Expressiveness and Expression in Music and Poetry, JAAC 59 (2001), 8596 (plus
Davies reply, BJA 39 (1999). 2827). Of many later contributions, see e.g. David Carr,
Music, Meaning and Emotion, JAAC 62 (2004), 22534; and the review by Derek
Matravers ofJenefer Robinsons Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in Literature,
Music and Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, in JAAC 64, 2835.
44 The two ends of a long spectrum might be represented by Deryck Cookes much reprinted
The Language of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959, 1989, which used language/music uncritically and almost interchangeably, and took many examples from
vocal music where meaning was in fact provided by the text; and Hamilton, op.cit.
(2007), who gives a lucid historical survey of what music has been thought to be, but
centres the aesthetic element of his carefully-argued analysis on the idea of music as
language-like (6 and passim), or as utterance (7).
45 Both Hamiltons Aesthetics and Music, London/New York: Continuum, 2007, 11952,
and Scrutons The Aesthetics of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 2239,
have substantial sections on rhythm, although Scrutons is incorporated into a chapter on Tone. See also Scrutons essay Thoughts on Rhythm in Kathleen Stock (ed.),
Philosophers on Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 22655, esp. his comments
on the omission of rhythm (242). Bizarrely, his essay is included with one on electronic
music, under the rubric New Issues.
16
Introduction
sound experience, nonetheless operates with the single conceptual metaphor

of music as a language.46
This imbalance is gradually readjusting, notably in the wake of Roger
Scrutons substantial The Aesthetics of Music (1997), and his attention to
Wittgensteins broader idea of meaning and understanding.47 I cannot claim
to follow all Scrutons arguments; but he has certainly broadened the field
of critical vision. The range of music considered has been extended beyond
a narrowly conceived Classical canon.48 The analogy with language has been
recognised and scrutinised. For instance, it has been questioned whether
music has an equivalent to syntax or semantics; and the conclusion reached
that music could be heard as meaning-bearing without making it necessary
to accept the hypothesis that music is literally a language.49 Attention has
been focused on a broader concept of understanding the meaning of music,
moving away from hearing music as expressive of an emotion towards a
much wider idea of cognition, including the perception of formal patterns
and musical relations.50 This has prompted some reappraisal of what in the
nineteenth century was decried as formalism; hence Nick Zangwills Against
46 Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, London: Fourth Estate,
2007. Ross complains that it has long been fashionable to fence [classical] music off
from society, to declare it a self-sufficient language; and proposes to remedy this situation by removing the fence: here [] no language is considered intrinsically more
modern than any other. But he is still left with the problem that musical meaning is
vague, mutable, and, in the end, deeply personal (xiii). These adjectives only make sense
applied to music as a failed language; cf. Barenboims list of metaphors which tell us
more about the society which uses them than about the music.
47 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; and e.g. Wittgenstein and the Understanding
of Music, BJA 44 (2004), 19.
48 Alongside Scruton himself, cf. Robert Kraut, Why does jazz matter to aesthetic theory?
JAAC 63 (2005), 315, and Andy Hamilton (op.cit. passim), 2007.
49 Of many, see e.g. Joseph P. Swain, The Range of Musical Semantics, JAAC 54 (1996),
13552, and Jeanette Bicknell, Can Music Convey Semantic Content? A Kantian
Approach, JAAC 60 (2002), 25361; the conclusion cited is Bicknells (260).
50 See e.g. Catherine Z. Elgin on the thought ofNelson Goodman, Reorienting Aesthetics:
Reconceiving Cognition, JAAC 58 (2000), 21925; Justine Kingsburys arguments, in BJA
42 (2002), 1319, against Derek Matravers view of musics expressiveness and capacity
to arouse emotion in his Art and Emotion, Oxford: Clarendon, 1998; and Peter Kivys
essay Music, Language and Cognition: Which Doesnt Belong?, in the collection of
his essays Music, Language and Cognition, Oxford: Clarendon, 2007, 21423.
17
Emotion: Hanslick was Right about Music (2004).51 Gordon Graham, in an

essay on Music and Electro-sonic Art, argues that we apply the language of
the emotions to music as a device to describe perceived musical relations (e.g.
the sadness heard in minor modes derives from its aural contrast with major);
and that we should no longer support the post-Romantic fallacy of ascribing
real emotional connections to music. Unlike (for instance) Hamilton, who
seems to find something inhuman in taking organised musical sound simply
as such, Graham suggests that listening to organised musical sound, whether
electro-sonic or tonal, offers both an enrichment of aural experience and a
sense of the mind being directed through a series of perceptions.52 All this
suggests that Spitzer is either wrong or disingenuous when he declares that we
inevitably and always think of music in metaphorical terms.53 Barenboim and
Graham at least would disagree with him; and there are many, musicians or
listeners, who would agree with Margaret Schlegel in hearing only the music
(which as Barenboim implied in his quotation of Busoni, is hardly trivial).
Hamilton concedes that emotional ascriptions are secondary or metaphorical, i.e. not strictly speaking part of aesthetic terminology.54 Metaphor is not
the equivalent of, or a substitute for, the aesthetics of music.
Nonetheless, this brief survey suggests that music is a complex art with
many facets, which should be approached with a broad perspective. Most
of these studies tend to fall back on metaphorical thought at one stage or
another, especially in attempts to convey human experience of music.55 This
continues a long critical tradition in which metaphor has been deployed in
In BJA 44, 2943.

In Kathleen Stock (ed.), Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning and Work, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007, 20925, esp.213f., 216. Cp. Hamilton on humanistic
art, op.cit., 89, 111 and passim; and R.A. Sharpe, Music and Humanism: An Essay in the
Aesthetics of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
53 To think, talk, or write about music is to engage with it in terms of something else,
metaphorically (op.cit., 1).
54 Op.cit., 83f.
55 Alternatively, branches of aesthetics have been developed to consider aspects of music
such as performance and relation to score, arrangements, instrumentation, etc., which
determine musical experience: see e.g. the section Musical Ontology in Kathleen Stock,
op.cit. 1192, Peter Kivys section on Opera and Film and Performance in Music,
Language and Cognition, 3387 and 91134 resp.
51
52
18
Introduction
various ways. The pieces by Edward T. Cone are exemplary in their blend of
technical analysis and wider generalisation, in which metaphor (verbal or
conceptual) is integrated into his argument according to his purpose in each
essay (as for instance the extended analogy ofhis A View from Delft).56 More
recently, the perception of metaphor has been influenced by linguistics, as
e.g. in Joseph P. Swains study comparing features such as syntax, semantics,
metaphor in both music and language, or Jenefer Robinsons studies of music
and meaning.57 Though neither ofthese critics suggests that music actually is
a language (Swain, 168f.), and although Robinson draws attention to the conceptual metaphor involved, their emphasis on structural parallels and on the
role of cultural convention in interpretation ofboth media tends to emphasise
similarities and erode awareness of difference. The current alternative to such a
focus on one dominant conceptual metaphor (music as language-like) seems
to be small samples of many and various fields of metaphorical comparison,
as for instance in Bennett Zons Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century
British Musicology (2000).58
Strictly speaking, the discipline of Intermediality is out of turn here,
because it sometimes draws (lightly) on metaphor theory to deal with the
transfer of meaning accomplished when a work in one medium incorporates
another medium in some way.59 However, intermediality presents itself as a
discipline of aesthetics; and tries to offer a coherent perspective on the relations which Swain, Robinson, Hamilton and others encapsulate in the idea
56
57
58
59
E.g. in the collection edited by Robert P. Morgan, Music: A View from Delft, Selected Essays
(Chicago/London: Chicago University Press, 1989, covering work from 195489.
Swain, Musical Languages, New York/London: Norton, 1997. See e.g. Robinsons introductory essay New Ways of Thinking Alternatively, e.g. in the collection edited about
Musical Meaning (120) in her edited volume Music and Meaning, Ithaca/London:
Cornell University Press, 1997, and her contribution Can Music Function as a Metaphor
of Emotional Life?, to Kathleen Stock (ed.), Philosophers on Music, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007, 14977.
Aldershot,etc.: Ashgate, 2000.
See e.g. the essays in Steven P. Scher (ed.), Literatur und Musik: Ein Handbuch zur
Theorie und Praxis eines komparatistischen Grenzgebietes, Berlin: Schmidt, 1984; those
in the collective volume edited by Walter Bernhart, Scher and Werner Wolf, Word and
Music Studies: Defining the Field, Amsterdam: rodopi, 1999; and as an example ofhow
this can be applied, the Einleitung to Ricarda Schmidt, Wenn mehrere Knste im Spiel
sind: Intermedialitt bei E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006,
1119, esp.1317.
19
of music as language-like. In the earlier intermedial studies, Horst Petri dealt

with structural parallels;60 later developments have focused mainly on the two
media in combined genres (Lied, opera), and on music in literature or literature
in music. Werner Wolf s essay brings clearer terminology to descriptions of
literary works which incorporate musical features; noting that in many cases
(for example Verlaine or Joyces Ulysses) verbal signifiers remain such, and
imitate music rather than becoming music, so that to speak ofthem in musical
terms is confusing.61 This is a helpful insight when dealing with some older
Goethe criticism which talked imprecisely ofSprachmusik. But by and large
eighteenth-century writers handled their media combinations and musical
metaphors with clear awareness. Gesang ist immer noch Sprache, said Herder
even as he advocated music-like poetic language;62 and only in one effervescent
party-piece (Concerto Dramatico, 1773) did Goethe try to make language actually impersonate music.63 For present purposes, the question is not so much how
a musical reference is conveyed (which would simply generate a list oftypes),
but what its function is in context. Here the essay by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth is
more helpful. She asks why music might be deployed in a text, and suggests
that texts which are in some way musicalised should be read as self-reflexive,
situating music as the texts other and problematising its premises as text.64 She
assumes that such writing will be modern, i.e. after an abandonment of mimesis
in literary narrative. But awareness oflanguage and text as such is not lacking
in eighteenth-century writing; and it seems to me that such musicalisation
might be used not only to problematise the form and medium of writing, but
to signal problematic content (as in Goethes Novelle, where action, descriptive
narrative and the flute-players musical performance work against each other
in several ways). The concept of intermediality will be helpful at several stages;
but is neither broad nor flexible enough to offer a conceptual framework for
eighteenth-century musical metaphor. So we must look to metaphor theory:
what did it offer at the time, and what does it offer now?
60 Horst Petri, Literatur und Musik: Form und Strukturparallelen, Gttingen: Sachse
& Pohl, 1964; and Petris essay on this topic in Scher, 22141.
61 Musicalized Fiction and Intermediality: Theoretical Aspects ofWord and Music Studies,
Bernhart etc., 3758, esp.49.
62 [Song is still language]; Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 11618.
63 AA 4, 15560.
64 Reading Musicalized Texts as Self-Reflexive Texts, in Bernhart, etc., 20520.
20
Introduction
Metaphor theory in the eighteenth century:

Resources of the inquiring mind
During the earlier part of the century, discussion of metaphor was part of a
broad cultural effort to make the German language a viable national medium
for philosophical thought and clear meaning. It tended to turn on the permissibility or otherwise of deploying metaphors as individual figures of speech in
support of rhetorical points; the great negative contrast being the elaborate
and often convoluted metaphors through which Baroque poets had tried to
convey the devastations ofthe Thirty Years War.65 However, this concern to
establish clarity ran alongside a concern to allow for the poetic imagination.
Baroque writers had been extremely powerful and impressive in their language; and Johann Christoph Gottsched, the successful standardiser of the
language and would-be standardiser of literary writing techniques, was not
himself a writer of compelling prose or riveting dramatic dialogue.66 From
the middle of the century onward, metaphor came to be seen more as a way
ofthought than as an individual ornament oflanguage to drive home a point;
and more as an operation ofthe human mind generally than as the specialist
preserve of rhetoricians and poets. As Tanehisa Otabe explains, mid-century
philosophical views came to perceive the wit necessary to create metaphor as
involving the cognitive faculty to perceive similarities and thence half-hidden
truths, which once seen could be fully articulated in reasoned argument.67 For
Johann Georg Hamann, Gleichnisse [analogies] were older than Schlsse
[reasoned deductions] in the development ofhuman language, and of equal
65
See e.g. Tanehisa Otabe, From Clothing to Organ of Reason: An Essay on the
Theories ofMetaphor in German Philosophy in the Age ofEnlightenment, in Zdravko
Radman (ed.), From a Metaphorical Point of View: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the
Cognitive Content ofMetaphor, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995, 725; and the classic account in
Eric Blackall, The Emergence ofGerman as a Literary Language, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1959, chapters four The Stabilisation of the Language to fourteen,
The Return to Origins, 102481, passim.
66 Blackall, op.cit. chapters four to five and seven to eight.
67 Otabe, op.cit., 1324; Blackall, 387. Otabe covers ground here which many critics omit;
but tends to use allegory and metaphor [i.e. conceptual metaphor] as interchangeable
terms, which makes for confusion.
21
if not superior merit; the whole ofNature, he considered, was a Gleichnis for
the Divine which it was the task ofhumankind to interpret.68 This view esteems
metaphorical thought and language not merely as ornament or optional extra,
but as a necessary complement to reason. Herder shared Hamanns view of
metaphors place in the development of human thought and language; and
especially regarded metaphor as a crucial element alongside reason in cognitive ventures on the borders of current knowledge and understanding. Hans
Adler complains that Herder has been undervalued as a philosopher because
ofhis metaphorical thought and language, in the wake ofKants tendency to
discount metaphor as a form of thought.69 By the end of the century, truth
was seen as much more problematic: a complex entity which could only be
arrived at, and then not completely, as the sum of different but complementary modes ofthought and medium, diverse Vorstellungsarten. Ulrich Gaier
shows how Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi suggested that each culture and each
individual contributed what would now be called their particular discourse;70
Gaier emphasises the affinity of these ideas with Goethes own, and their
influence on his technique of setting up a Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten
when approaching complex phenomena.71
For Goethe too, metaphorical thought and language are integral to human
cognitive processes, a necessary and inevitable aspect of the development of
human knowledge of the world, especially since language itself involves the
metaphorical process of transferring meaning from thought to words:
68 See e.g. Blackall, op.cit. 42647; James H. Stam, Inquiries into the Origin ofLanguage:
The Fate of a Question, New York: Harper & Row, 1976, 1438.
69 Adler, Herders Style, in Hans Adler & WulfKoepke (eds), A Companion to the Works of
Johann Gottfried Herder, Rochester/New York: Camden House, 2009, 33150, esp.341;
Stam, op.cit., 11730, esp.121ff.; Blackall, op.cit., 45181, esp.452ff.
70 Gaier, Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten als Prinzip in Goethes Faust, in Jane K. Brown,
Meredith Lee, Thomas P. Saine (eds), Interpreting Goethes Faust Today, Columbia:
Camden House, 1994, 15871, esp.15963. Jacobi (17431819) and his brother Johann
Georg were for some years close friends ofGoethes; Jacobis essay, Zufllige Ergieungen
eines einsamen Denkers in Briefen an vertraute Freunde, was published by Schiller in
Die Horen III, 8 (1795), and received Schillers approbation (Gaier, 169, note 1).
71 Gaier, op.cit., 158ff. and passim. The same general point was made by E.M. Wilkinson
as early as 1952, in the essay The Poet as Thinker: On the Varying Modes of Goethes
Thought, repr. E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and Thinker, London:
Arnold, 1962; see e.g. 133f., 145f.
22
Introduction
Man bedenkt niemals genug, da eine Sprache eigentlich nur symbolisch, nur bildlich
sei und die Gegenstnde niemals unmittelbar, sondern nur im Widerscheine ausdrcke.
Dieses ist besonders der Fall, wenn von Wesen die Rede ist, welche an die Erfahrung nur
herantreten und die man mehr Ttigkeiten als Gegenstnde nennen kann, dergleichen
im Reiche der Naturlehre immerfort in Bewegung sind. Sie lassen sich nicht festhalten,
und doch soll man von ihnen reden; man sucht daher alle Arten von Formeln auf, um
ihnen wenigstens gleichnisweise beizukommen.[]72
[We never give enough consideration to the fact that language is actually only symbolic, only figurative, and that it can never express its objects directly, but only as a
reflection. This is especially the case when we consider entities which are at the limits
of our experience and which could be called activities rather than objects, such as are
perpetually in operation in the realm of natural science. They are intangible, and yet we
must speak of them; so we search out all kinds of different formulae, in order to get at
them metaphorically, at least [].
As a procedural ideal, he sets metaphor alongside other kinds ofthought and

discourse, as part of a complex and versatile network which aims to articulate all the kinds ofknowledge available at a given time, and all the means of
working at the limits of that knowledge including areas which may be at
the limits of human capacity:
Knnte man sich jedoch aller dieser Arten der Vorstellungen und des Ausdrucks mit
Bewutsein bedienen und in einer mannigfaltigen Sprache seine Betrachtungen ber
Naturphnomene berliefern, hielte man sich von Einseitigkeit frei und fate einen
lebendigen Sinn in einen lebendigen Ausdruck, so liee sich manches Erfreuliche
mitteilen.73
[But if one could make well-considered use of all these types of perception and expression, and convey ones observations on natural phenomena in a multiple language
[discourse], if one could keep free of one-sidedness and capture vivid meaning in vivid
expression, many things of profit could be communicated].
72 Farbenlehre, Didaktischer Teil, Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie,

AA 16, 203f. These are not the final remarks ofthe Farbenlehre, but only ofthe section
on Nachbarliche Verhltnisse.
73 Farbenlehre, Didaktischer Teil, Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie,
AA 16, 203f.
23
Nevertheless, he is critically strict about the use of metaphor. He accepts the idea
that everything in the natural world is a Gleichnis ofGod and thus related;
but dryly points out that this analogy can mean anything or nothing:
Jedes Existierende ist ein Analagon alles Existierenden; daher erscheint uns das Dasein
immer zu gleicher Zeit gesondert und verknpft. Folgt man der Analogie zu sehr, so fllt
alles identisch zusammen; meidet man sie, so zerstreut sich alles ins Unendliche.74
[Everything in existence is an analogy of everything else; which is why our lives always
appear to us as simultaneously both connected and separate. If we pursue the analogy
too far, everything becomes identical with everything else; if we avoid it, we are left with
an infinity of isolated details.]
He differentiates metaphorical thought and language from strictly scientific

thought and language, as concerned with rational exposition of things tangible and known:
Weder Mythologie noch Legenden sind in der Wissenschaft zu dulden. Lasse man diese
den Poeten, die berufen sind, sie zu Nutz und Freude der Welt zu behandeln. Der wissenschaftliche Mann beschrnke sich auf die nchste klarste Gegenwart.75
[Neither mythology nor legends can be tolerated in science. They should be left to poets,
whose vocation it is to use them for the pleasure and benefit of the world. The man of
science should confine himself to the clear and immediate present.]
But even a scientist may have to go beyond the clear and immediate present
to communicate his ideas; and Goethe regards metaphor and mythology as
a permissible part of the multiple discourse needed for the transmission of
human knowledge.76 For himself, he acknowledged metaphor as indispensable:
he described himselfto Frau von Stein in 1781 as der ewige Gleichnismacher;
and in old age added the invective:
Gleichnisse drft ihr mir nicht verwehren, [Dont forbid me metaphor,
Ich wsste mich sonst nicht zu erklren.77 Or I cant make my meaning clear]
74
75
76
77
Maximen und Reflexionen 554 (from Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre), AA 9, 571.

Maximen und Reflexionen 560, ibid., AA 9, 572.
Ibid.
[The perpetual metaphor maker]; Goethes letter of 8 March 1781, AA 18, 572; Invectiven
(in Gedichte aus dem Nachlass), AA 2, 432; both cit. L.A. Willoughby, On the Study
24
Introduction
Modern metaphor theory and negative metaphor

If metaphor was usually acknowledged in the eighteenth century as central
to human thought processes and indispensable in the articulation of new
ideas, how does modern metaphor theory take us beyond this? In the last few
decades, metaphor theory has not principally been concerned with inquiring
minds: indeed, in the form re-established by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(1980ff.), it has preferred to be concerned with unthinking everyday usage.78
We shall need to return to some oftheir work shortly. But since Goethe and
others in the eighteenth century tended to view metaphor in the broad context
of human knowledge and culture, it is helpful to begin a little further back
in the twentieth century, with a theorist who also put all branches ofhuman
knowledge and their various discourses into a single frame.
In his philosophy of symbolic forms, one ofErnst Cassirers fundamental
points is that language itself involves a metaphorical process, in that it transposes cognitive or emotive experience into sound [and also presumably into
written signs].79 Language is thus one of many symbolic forms through which
man gives sensuous form to his ideas on what he perceives. As Birgit Recki
puts it, there is thus thought outside language: all the media are concerned
with the sensualization of sense.80 This instantly puts a helpful theoretical
foundation under the relations explored by intermediality; for in this view,
of Goethes Imagery (1949), in Elizabeth M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, Goethe:
Poet and Thinker, London: Arnold, 1962, 123.
78 See e.g. George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago/London:
University ofChicago Press, 1980, and George Lakoff & Mark Turner, More Than Cool
Reason, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
79 Language and Myth (Sprache und Mythos, 1925), tr. S.K. Langer, New York: Dover, 1946
87, 95; also The Philosophy ofSymbolic Forms (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 1925),
esp. Vol.2, Das mythische Denken, tr. Ralph Manheim, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1955, chapters 1 & 2; and the essay on Goethe und die mathematische Physik, in
Idee und Gestalt. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1971; cf. Recki, Cassirer and the Problem of Language, in Paul
Bishop and R.H. Stephenson (eds), Cultural Studies and the Symbolic, Leeds: Northern
Universities Press, 2003, 120, esp.12ff. Throughout, Cassirer uses wissenschaftlich
[scientific] to signify the operations oflogical thought in general, not only the work of
natural scientists.
80 Recki, op.cit., 2ff., 13ff.
25
moving from one medium to another is not a sudden sea change, but part
of a continuing process of giving palpable form to ones thoughts. However,
such moves between media cannot be arbitrary; and the choice of medium
cannot be random. Some things can be conveyed in language, others only in
other media. Scientific accuracy, logical thought and theoretical precision,
for instance, are only possible within language and mathematics. There is
thus what Cassirer calls ein umfassendes Bezugssystem [a comprehensive
system of connections] built up between the human mind and the world by
the different branches of thought and discourse, with language as the most
versatile medium:
Da das Wirkliche fr uns [] nicht anders als in diesen Funktionen zu erfassen ist,
da Sprache und Mythos, Kunst und Religion, da mathematisch-exakte und empirischbeschreibende Erkenntnis fr uns nur gleichsam verschiedene symbolische Formen
sind, in denen wir die entscheidende Synthese von Geist und Welt vollziehen: so gibt
es fr uns Wahrheit nur insofern, als wir jede dieser Formen in ihrer charakteristischen
Eigenart begreifen und uns zugleich die Wechselbezglichkeit vergegenwrtigen, in
welcher sie mit allen andern zusammenhngt.81
[The real cannot be grasped other than upon the basis of these functions, and thus
language and myth, art and religion, mathematically exact and empirically descriptive
knowledge are [] different symbolic forms, [] in which we execute the decisive synthesis of spirit [mind] and world: since this is so, we admit oftruth only insofar as we
comprehend each ofthese forms in their individual character and at the same time realize
the interdependence in which all of these forms stand in relation to one another.]82
According to this view, reference within language to music, or the inclusion

of episodes set to music, musical performance, etc., would refer the reader to
a kind ofthought or experience perceived as best conveyed through music, or
particularly associated with music. (The same would also be true of reference
to visual media, e.g. in a later age the inclusion of photographs in a text). This
accords with Lagerroths point that intermedial reference suggests some form
of otherness alongside the main text; but Cassirer puts the whole process
into a wider frame, and his theory is potentially applicable to a much wider
range of textual and other works than Lagerroth envisages.
81
82
Cassirer, Goethe und die mathematische Physik [], 69; cit. Recki, op.cit. 11f.
Tr. Colin Guthrie King, Recki, op.cit., 11 & 19, note 31; my additions in square
brackets.
26
Introduction
Another fundamental concept of Cassirers concerns different kinds

of thought within language. Cassirer considers that man has to organise his
understanding of phenomena by means of myth before (s)he can organise
them scientifically. That is, before (s)he can say objectively which characteristics are proper to a given phenomenon because they occur in every instance,
and relate it to others of the same type or species, (s)he has to pass through
a stage of preoccupation with a single quality suddenly perceived in a single
instance:
All the intellectual labor [sic] whereby the mind forms general concepts out of specific
impressions is directed towards breaking the isolation of the datum [] relating it to
other things and gathering it and them [] into the unity of a system [] Mythical
thinking [] bears no such stamp [] in this mode, thought does not dispose freely over
the data [] but is captivated and enthralled by the intuition which suddenly confronts
it [] the sensible present is so great that everything else dwindles before it.83
In this respect, Cassirer thinks, mythical thinking is congruent with metaphorical thinking, which also concentrates exclusive attention on a selected
aspect ofthe object viewed, not on the whole.84 These two kinds of cognitive
experience (the vivid encounter and the recognition of type and context)
together and reciprocally make up a great deal of mental life. But Cassirer
persistently associates metaphorical thinking with primitive stages ofthought,
and implies that it disappears as soon as scientific thinking is possible.85 So
despite his perception of all the media as complementary, Cassirer considers
that a synthesising, totally truthful statement on the world is only possible as
an ideal. Nonetheless, for Cassirer there is one form oflanguage which offers
the nearest approximation to it: poetic language86 can convey clear ideas about
experience and yet, unlike scientific thought and language, can also retain
the sensuous immediacy and forceful impact of metaphorical perception.87
83 Language and Myth, ed.cit. 25, 32.
84 Ibid., 90f.
85 Ibid., 32 and passim. On the ambiguous reputation of metaphorical thought and language
in earlier periods, see e.g. Marie-Ccile Bertau, op.cit. 795 and passim, and Andreas
Musolff, Ignes fatui or apt similitudes? the apparent denunciation of metaphor by
Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes Studies XVIII (2005), 96113.
86 Meaning not merely verse or heightened diction, but deliberately maximised communication, closer to but broader and more versatile than rhetoric in its resources.
87 Language and Myth, ed.cit., 98f.
27
This has obvious affinities with eighteenth-century concepts of different

Vorstellungsarten combined to produce our best approximation to truth,
and with Goethes idea of a mannigfaltige Sprache. Yet it seems to burden
poetic language with more responsibility than even Goethe was inclined to
lay upon it, and at the same time to curtail the possibilities of collaborative
enterprise between different branches of thought and different arts.
A little later in the twentieth century, this restriction is lifted. Metaphorical
and scientific thought are seen to belong together as complementary tools
in cognitive enterprise, and metaphor is no longer seen as primitive. M.H.
Abrams, amongst others, makes the point that metaphorical thinking is characteristic of any theory which tries to advance beyond the current limits of
scientific knowledge or of human perception:
Metaphysical systems [] are intrinsically metaphorical systems [] Any area for investigation, so long as it lacks prior concepts to give it structure and an express terminology
with which it can be managed, appears to the inquiring mind inchoate [] Our usual
recourse is [] to cast about for objects which offer parallels to dimly sensed aspects
oft the new situation, to use the better known to elucidate the less known, to discuss
the intangible in terms of the tangible.88
Max Black goes a stage further:

We need the metaphors in just the cases where there can be no question as yet of the
precision of scientific statement. Metaphorical statement is not a substitute for formal
comparison or any other kind ofliteral statement, but has its own distinctive capacities
and achievements.89
This restores the wide perspective originally opened up by Cassirers theory of

symbolic forms. Metaphorical thought and language can convey things which
scientific forms of discourse cannot encompass; and both kinds of thought
and language can operate alongside other media and the Vorstellungsarten
appropriate to them.
88 M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953,31f.
89 Metaphor, in Black, Metaphors and Models, New York: Cornell University Press,
1962,37.
28
Introduction
In debates on metaphor during the 1960s, Black and others refined their
concepts of what these distinctive capacities and achievements of metaphor might be, and also of what metaphor cannot do. One of Blacks main
points is an important demarcation between scientific thought/language and
metaphor: a metaphorical statement does not have to be factually true to work.
Instead, it hinges on what Black calls a system of associated commonplaces,
current within a given culture and language community and thus readily and
freely evoked among the communitys members. Metaphor arises and operates within a given culture (though it may spread beyond its original source);
and to outsiders may appear meaningless or bizarre. This is helpful for present
purposes: the idea of cosmic harmony originated with the Greeks, and was
precisely understood by eighteenth-century readers who knew their Classics,
whether or not they actually believed in the planetary order or cosmic music.
It is still understood today, but much more vaguely; we have forgotten what
the system of associated commonplaces was. To take a more extreme example,
the idea of pitch fluctuation as rhythm is incomprehensible now. It was used
at one time, but is no longer readily and freely evoked, and fails completely
as a metaphor even though there is a logical connection within musicology.
Insofar, as Ted Cohen observed in 1978, metaphors are surprisingly like jokes.90
As we saw in Forsters Howards End, they involve beliefs held in common by
members of a given culture; and are a rich source for writers, whose readers will
quickly understand the point because the commonplaces involved are readily
and freely evoked. Like the punch-line of a joke, metaphor delivers an instant
and powerful encounter with an aspect of its object which is received as true,
whether or not it actually is so. This poses a dilemma for the present study.
Examining the meaning encompassed in eighteenth-century musical metaphor
is most uncomfortably akin to explaining eighteenth-century jokes: it has to
be done, because modern readers do not share all the system[s] of associated
commonplaces, but it has to be done without spoiling the punch-lines.
But if metaphors need not be true to work, what kind of truth (if any)
do they carry? Black suggests that because they set up a connection between
two domains which is either new or different from the one conveyed in
conventional or factual language, they cause the two domains to interact
in our perception:
90 Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy, in Sheldon Sacks (ed.), On Metaphor,
Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 8.
29
A memorable metaphor has the power to bring two separate domains into cognitive
and emotional relation by using language directly appropriate to the one as a lens for
seeing the other; the implications, suggestions and supporting values entwined with
the literal use ofthe metaphorical expression enable us to see a new subject matter in a
new way. The extended meanings that result, the relations between initially disparate
realms created, can neither be [] predicted nor [] paraphrased []. Metaphorical
thought is a distinctive mode of achieving insight.91
In this interactive view, metaphor brings a considerable cognitive value added

element to our perception: it makes us see not only the target domain (to
which terminology from another domain is applied) in a new light, but also the
source domain (from which the idea and terminology were taken). Thus if we
speak of cosmic harmony, something is conveyed both about the cosmos and
about musical harmony; if we say music is the language offeeling, something
is conveyed both about music and about language. Moreover, this broader
perspective can open up even further because the literal meaning and/or usual
associations of a particular phrase can be retained alongside the metaphorical
connotations conveyed, in what Cohen has called twice true statements.92
This term is particularly apt when applied, in an eighteenth-century context,
to the idea that music is based on mathematical proportions. Applied to polyphonic music, it is simply a statement offact. But in the context of eighteenthcentury French controversies and cultural politics, it acquires metaphorical
force as assertion of a world-view opposed to the primacy of feeling and to
the associated polemic in favour of homophonic music.
These examples also serve as a reminder that metaphor can restrict our
perspective as well as enhancing it. Metaphor tends to suppress the aspects of
both source and target domains not involved in the link it is making.93 The
idea of cosmic harmony highlights polyphonic music and obscures other
kinds; the idea of music as language highlights melodic music and song, but
obscures other kinds of music, as well as aspects oflanguage concerned with
rational argument or precise verbal communication. Metaphor can thus convey
Black, Models and Archetypes, in Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and
Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, 236f., and Models and Metaphors,
op.cit. 414.
92 T. Cohen, see Notes on Metaphor, JAAC 34 (1976), 24959, esp.252ff. and Figurative
Speech and Figurative Acts, Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 66984, esp.671, 678f.
93 See e.g. Cohen, op.cit., 9f.; Black, Models and Metaphors, op.cit., 414.
91
30
Introduction
certain cognitive truths very forcefully; e.g. the excitement of new insights
and interrelations revealed by its operation of connecting two domains in new
ways. But they will probably not be well-balanced truths; for these, metaphor
needs to be complemented by other forms of discourse.
In the final point pertinent here, Black remarks that a metaphorical
system of associated commonplaces need not depend on the pool available in
a given culture: metaphors can be supported by specially constructed systems
of implications.94 An author can invent a new set of connotations other than
those normally attached to a given phenomenon, or attach new values to the
existing metaphorical connotations it carries. This idea is especially helpful
in textual criticism of all epochs. Modern readers may well be familiar with
Gnter Grasss snail, which he associates with slow progress as opposed to
the usual connotations of slow progress.95 The particular and unusual connotations which Schiller attached to harmony, or the extraordinarily vivid
if opaque connotations which Goethe attached to the singing and playing
of the gypsy family in Novelle, also exemplify this possibility. These jokes
will not be instantly understood by members ofthe cultural community. But
provided that the author establishes a given set of connotations for a given
feature within a work, readers will soon follow and accept the metaphor
for the duration of the work, whether or not they agree. These points have
important implications for the present study. Goethes metaphorical references
to music, in whatever form, do not have to correspond to contemporary musicological truths, or even to contemporary metaphor. But we do need an idea of
where he diverged from normal perspectives and traditions ofthe time, and
especially where he is expanding or restricting our view of music in relation
to the norms ofhis time, or we shall not be able to form an accurate idea of
how his musical references are meant to function in their context.
From the 1960s onwards, metaphor theorists have been concerned to
bring more systematic clarity and more precise detail into the accounts by
94 Models and Metaphors, op.cit. 43.

95 See esp. Tagebuch einer Schnecke; also Der Butt, in which his word-plays on (August)
Bebel and Bible set up a network of metaphorical connections between religious faith
and the political faith of the Social Democrat supporters, whilst remaining literally
applicable to the avid readers of both sacred texts.
31
Black, Cohen and others. This involves a vast literature, and can only be dealt
with here very selectively indeed.96
Lakoff and Johnson97 established (though did not invent) the cognitive
approach to metaphor, and some basic concepts and terminology:
Metaphor arises as a conceptual connection made between one domain of experience
or knowledge and another;
This conceptual process involves the mapping of selected aspects ofthe source domain
on to the target domain;
The conceptual metaphor usually brings with it certain entailments (connotations,
associations) [e.g. the idea of music as sensuous rhythmic sound can carry connotations
of seductive physical appeal and moral danger, as well as of heavenly sweetness].
They emphasised that metaphorical thought and language are a general human
capacity, not merely a literary speciality; and that entailments as well as conceptual metaphors are nurtured and influenced within a particular culture,
and therefore tend to change over time with that culture. They also make an
important point which links up with Cassirer: a conceptual metaphor may
be realised not just in language, but in other media or even in actions.98
These concepts will provide a basic structural framework for the present
study. Ifthe conceptual metaphors can be found by which eighteenth-century
German culture linked music with other phenomena, we can also see what
entailments each habitually carried. It should then be possible to see whether
(for example) the disparate pianist and musician figures mentioned above
embody variant entailments of the same conceptual metaphor, or belong
to different conceptual metaphors and carry different connotations; and in
96 For fuller accounts oflater twentieth-century metaphor theory, which includes investigations into how metaphor is structured, recognised and understood, and hence applicable in anthropology and in the development of artificial intelligence, see e.g. Ning
Yu, The Contemporary Theory ofMetaphor, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1998;
esp.347; Bertau, op.cit. passim; F.R. Ankersmit & J..J.A. Mooij (eds), Knowledge and
Language: vol.3, Metaphor and Knowledge, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993, esp.117; Anselm
Haverkamp, Theorie der Metapher, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1983; Mark Johnson, Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1981.
97 Opera cit.
98 Metaphors We Live By, 156ff.
32
Introduction
both cases it should be possible to see why. According to Cassirers theory of

symbolic forms, we should be able to follow the same conceptual metaphor at
work whether it is realised in narrative prose, song, musical episode, or some
other form. However, there is as yet no guidance for accommodating the
historical differences to which Abert drew attention and which were noted
above with Forster. Nor is there much information about the basis on which
conceptual metaphors set up links between domains. Perceived similarity may
help to some extent; but even in common examples (e.g. music as a language)
there are manifest discrepancies between the two domains which could easily
inhibit metaphorical connection.
Alongside these efforts of the cognitive school, and now mostly within
it, a different line of inquiry has been pursued which does offer further possibilities. Usually termed the semantic theory of metaphor, it is here represented
by JosefStern.99 This approach emphasises the workings offigures of speech
in their linguistic context; and this context can include the whole scenario in
which they are spoken (which could be anything from a given social context
to a dramatic situation with input from visual and additional sound effects).
Within this broader perspective, Stern also sharpens the focus of our perspective on metaphor. The perceived similarity between two domains, elsewhere
viewed as culturally pre-established or created by the metaphor itself, is here
set alongside the idea ofsalience:100 features in a source domain are selected
as salient and mapped on to similarly selected features ofthe target domain.
The idea of active selection seems to me valuable, especially when the main
purpose of the metaphor is to highlight certain features and hide others (as
in Rousseaus musical polemics). A feature regarded as salient may appear
so because it suggests pertinent similarities in the target domain; but it may
also be selected for cultural or other reasons, as well as serving the specific
purposes of the author. I have frequently used salient in what follows, to
avoid puzzling use of similar for two domains where no similarity is apparent, and thence to see more clearly what the perceived similarity was thought
to be, and why.
Sterns approach offers a solution to the problems ofhistoricity outlined
above. If a metaphor does not yield meaning, he suggests it can be restored
99 Josef Stern, Metaphor in Context, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
100 See Stern, op.cit., 14953.
33
to metaphorical life by being set in its linguistic and cultural context.101 The
meaning of a metaphor in an obscure passage or episode does often become
clear if we look at other instances, in the same author or elsewhere. In this
view, considering the metaphorical usage of other writers in Goethes time
becomes not merely desirable, but essential. Moreover, for this procedure to
work it will be necessary to look first-hand not only at isolated phrases, but
at sections of text long enough to show what the context was. This is tiresome insofar as it makes for multiple and full examples, and restricts the use
of space-saving paraphrase. But only by this means are we able to see what
conceptual metaphor is at work, what entailments it carries, and how such
an instance compares with others. And after all it means that we are hearing
the jokes, complete with punch-line, from the horses mouth. Better still, at
this historical distance the procedure affords a check on whether the sense
of apparently still meaningful and familiar metaphors really is the same i.e.
depends on the same conceptual metaphor and carries similar entailments.
Putting the metaphors in context also helps to solve the problem of
how long the long eighteenth century is deemed to be for present purposes.
Obviously, it makes no sense to take a fixed cut-off point: metaphorical usage
did not change overnight on the stroke of 1800, nor yet at Goethes death
(1832). Instead, I have followed through particular conceptual metaphors and
their entailments in their textual context, to a point where it becomes clear
whether or not a cultural shift is underway. In some cases, for instance, both
conceptual metaphors and their entailments seem to be largely peculiar to
Goethe; and I have followed them as such (especially in his late work). In
others, notably in conceptual metaphors linking the domains of music and
language, I have found similar conceptual metaphors but divergent entailments
and value judgments. Space does not allow an adequate sample ofRomantic
writers to show anything like their full range; but I have tried to give enough
examples oftheir writing to show the fault line along which Idealist thought
on human identity and the primacy ofspirit was splitting away from the old
century focused on Man as integrated in physical Nature. There were writers
(E.T.A. Hoffmann, for instance) who worked to some extent on both sides
of it. But ragged though it is, this fault line forms the boundary of the long
eighteenth century for the purposes of this study.
101 Op.cit., 307 f.
34
Introduction
More recent developments in cognitive metaphor theory have produced further refinements and more sharply focused terminology. For example, Antonio Barcelona refines Blacks theory of interaction between two
domains; pointing out that although an individual metaphor cannot usually be reversed, it is possible for mappings between two domains to occur
simultaneously in both directions. This he prefers to regard as two separate
metaphorical transactions, since they may not be based on the same perceived
similarity, or carry the same entailments. In the same volume, Mark Turner
and Giles Fauconnier develop the idea of multiple metaphors operating
side by side in a given statement, or blended metaphors where elements of
two separate domains come together to illuminate a target domain.102 For
present purposes it may not matter greatly how such features are classified;
but these ideas are helpful when dealing with the complex metaphorical
relations through which musics elusive nature is conveyed, especially where
both positive and negative implications are maintained side by side (as for
instance in the mixed connotations attached to the beauty of musical sound
when seen as a seductive semblance of meaning).
The most consistently useful among recent studies have been those by
Zoltn Kvecses (2002, 2005, 2006).103 He confirms and often extends a
number of points made by earlier theorists, and important here. For instance,
he restores to prominence the idea that metaphor is not solely a linguistic
phenomenon, but a form ofthought realisable in artistic media, actions, even
social and legal institutions.104 In this view, episodes in eighteenth-century
writing set to music or describing music can be considered as part of an underlying conceptual metaphor and connected firmly to the core ofthe text and to
episodes in other media (e.g. dance), not simply marginalised as production
options. Kvecses also refines the idea ofthe selectivity of metaphor in choos102 Antonio Barcelona (ed.), Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A Cognitive
Perspective, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2000, Barcelonas introduction 115, esp.7ff.,
and Mark Turner and Giles Fauconnier, Metaphor, metonymy and binding, ibid.
13345.
103 ZK, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; ZK,
Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005; and ZK, Language, Mind and Culture: A Practical Introduction, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
104 See e.g. ZK, 2002, 5765, 7991; ZK, 2006, 5161, 125f., 1428.
35
ing aspects ofboth source and target domains; pointing out that metaphorical
mapping selects not only which aspects, but also how broad the perspective
or how closely detailed the focus on these chosen aspects is to be.105 In eighteenth-century reference to music we shall find writers choosing everything
from sweeping reference to all musical phenomena, through use ofmusic to
mean one aspect selected for prominence, down to focus on the timbre and
resonance of a single note. Again, this selection serves to focus attention on
certain aspects and to hide others: it is often rewarding to ask what a given
metaphor conceals, as well as what it reveals. Alongside these developments,
Kvecses broadens and differentiates the range offactors which may account
for this selection. Like others, he regards metaphor as motivated by human
concern or experience. But he sees the selection of aspects of source and target
domains as governed by a range of possible factors: cultural stereotype, vivid
personal experience, the cognitive preference serving a particular ideology, or
new metaphorical relations set up for a particular work. And in his view the
perceived similarity which these selections bring to the fore may also cover a
wide range: from evident similarity of some kind, through affinity suggested
by cultural or linguistic convention (including grammatical gender), down
to a less obvious point of comparison such as structure, or further additional
similarities which the metaphor itself may bring to the fore.106
Kvecses broader view also makes much greater allowance than most
for the historicity of metaphor, and for a diachronic perspective on metaphor
usage. He points out that a shift in cultural values (within the same culture or
between different cultures) may be marked not merely by the lapse or rise of
given metaphors, but by changes in the values and implications attached to
the same metaphor.107 Conversely, there are ways in which metaphors remain
consistent and durable: as for example in an extended metaphor which may
underpin a whole episode of a work, metaphors which persist across different
cultures and geographical contexts (universal metaphors), and metaphors
which persist across time, recurring in writing from widely different eras
(mega-metaphors): Kvecses identifies The Great Chain of Being as one
105 See e.g. ZK,2002, 10912; ZK, 2006, 124, 22832.
106 See e.g. ZK, 2002, 6974, 210f.; ZK., 2005, 67ff., 241ff., 285f. 2913; ZK 2006, 85, 119,
3346; and passim in all.
107 See e.g. ZK, 2002, 18396; ZK, 2005, 103f., 292ff. and passim; ZK, 2006, 16778.
36
Introduction
such.108 As Andreas Musolffhas shown with regard to political discourse, the

processes of metaphorical concept-formation and the persistence or change
oftheir formulations can be studied in what is called discourse history, based
on a corpus oftexts collected over a certain number of years.109 Unlike many
cognitive theorists of metaphor, Kvecses thus offers concepts which allow
for metaphor development through literary tradition, such as John Hollander
traces in his study ofharmony, The Untuning ofthe Sky (1961), and Margaret
Ives has shown in Schillers philosophical concept of harmony.110 In the
present study, a review of metaphorical traditions and of their reception
and development in the eighteenth century will be a major area of investigation: from traditional sources, especially from Plato and Aristotle, this epoch
received a considerable amount of conceptual and verbal metaphor involving
reference to music So we shall need to look at this traditional material and
the detailed implications it carried into eighteenth-century thinking and
texts. This study thus has important features in common with discourse history; insofar as it aims to find the underlying conceptual metaphors involving
music, to trace their entailments and functions in context, and to show the
kinds of modification made by writers in the course of the century. But it is
closer to textual and literary criticism insofar as I have made no attempt to
give a complete listing and classification of the conceptual metaphors concerned with music; aiming instead to show how and why these conceptual
metaphors function (in traditional or in developed form) in the context of
whole passages and occasionally in whole works.
A final point raised by Kvecses is presented only in the form of a conjecture. He adds the possibility of what I would call negation, or cancelling [ where] [] a certain metaphorical way of conceptualizing a target
108 See e.g. ZK, 2002, 12139; ZK, 2005, 1764; ZK, 2006, 1557.
109 A.M., Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe,
Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, esp.11245.
110 Hollander, Princeton, NJ, 1961; 10, 165 and passim. Despite the intervening decades,
it is interesting to see that Hollander too emphasises the cultural origin of beliefs on
music and the metaphors they generate, as well as (like intermediality) emphasising
the self-referential nature of many musical references and musical episodes in texts. See
also Ives, The Analogue ofHarmony, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1970; also
MHRA Monographs 13, Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1970.
37
is canceled and replaced by an opposite metaphorical image.111 For present

purposes this concept of negative metaphor will prove indispensable. Since
musical metaphor in the eighteenth century was so often associated with a
particular world-view, the negation ofthat world view often entailed a negation ofthe musical metaphor too. The conceptual metaphor ofdisharmony,
for instance, runs alongside the conceptual metaphor ofharmony; and both
undergo important changes in the eighteenth century in how they are valued
and in the connotations they carry. The same is true of negative metaphor
attached to the idea of music as language. The recurrent idea of music as vague
(cf. Ross above and Barenboim above) carries little meaning until it is identified as an entailment of a negative conceptual metaphor: music is not like
a language. These negative metaphors have limited efficiency and meaning
apart from their positive opposite; but in association with it, they engender
complex metaphor networks capable of fine nuance, yet carrying considerable force. As far as I know, the concept of negative metaphor has not been
developed so far in literary or music criticism; but it offers a vital framework
for discussion here of some influential eighteenth-century metaphor groups
and the cultural preoccupations which fed into them.
Models, analogies and other metaphor-related structures

Recent metaphor theories have also considered metaphorical thought and
language in relation to other kinds, especially logical or scientific thought and
language. Attention has been paid from Black onwards to features similar to
but not identical with metaphor: models (especially as used in the sciences),
and analogies (especially as used in rational argument).112 Lakoff, Johnson
111 ZK 2005, 262f. K. uses American spelling, which I have kept in the quotation.
112 See e.g. Black, Models and Metaphors, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, esp.219
43; Stella Vosniadu and Andrew Ortony (eds), Similarity and Analogical Reasoning,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, esp. R.J. Spiro et al., Multiple analogies for complex concepts [], 498531, and the editors introductory remarks, 117;
Bernhard Debatin, Timothy Jackson & Daniel Steuer (eds), Metaphor and Rational
38
Introduction
and others of the cognitive linguistic school differentiate between conceptual metaphor and related figures frequently recurring in argument, such as
metonymy, synecdoche and analogy.113 For present purposes, I shall ignore
most of these distinctions. This is convenient, but not arbitrary. Metonymy
works in the same way as metaphor, but makes its conceptual connection
between two different aspects of the same domain; synecdoche works similarly in taking the part for the whole (as in Give me a hand). But since the
field of music available for reference in the eighteenth-century perspective
was so wide and so diversely evaluated, the different aspects of it were often
treated as belonging to different worlds and world-views. They can thus be
regarded as separate domains, linked by metaphor, with much less distortion
than might arise in assessment of other domains or other epochs.
In models and analogies, perceived similarities are selected between two
domains for cognitive purposes, as they are in metaphor. But the similarities
selected are strictly limited in number and type, because they are meant to
support a specific argument or suggest an explanation for a given phenomenon. (Both, that is, work more like allegory than like metaphor, insofar as
aspects ofthe narrative are simplified to ensure the emergence ofthe moral
or point of the story at the end). Usually, as several theorists have pointed
out, models and analogies rest on similarities of structure or another common
property; and they are often expressed in similes, brief or extended, so that
awareness of distance between the two domains is retained.114
Treating musical models and analogies as musical metaphors is thus potentially more problematic; but I have nonetheless done so for several reasons.
The main one is to leave space to consider how prominent specifically musical
allusion is within a given conceptual metaphor. Within the idea ofharmony,
for instance, cosmic order is sometimes more prominent than musical sound;
within conceptual metaphors linking language and music, so-called song is
Discourse, Tbingen: Niemayer, 1997, passim; and Andreas Musolff, Metaphor and
Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates about Europe, Basingstoke/New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, esp.309.
113 See e.g. Metaphors We Live By, 35ff.; essays in Barcelona, op.cit.; and Kvecses (2002),
esp.143225, ZK 2005 and 2006 passim. Also Mark Turner and Giles Fauconnier,
op.cit.
114 See e.g. Black, 22233; Musolff., op.cit., 309.
39
sometimes more rhetorical than musical. Such differences need to be noted

in order to assess how music and musical reference are functioning in such
instances. But there are linguistic reasons too. It is now broadly agreed that
scientific thought and language are not as distinct from metaphor as Cassirer,
Black, and until recently many scientists assumed; insofar as scientific truth
involves not only facts, but hypotheses about them and interpretation ofthem,
conducted in a language medium whose intrinsic metaphoricity is now more
widely acknowledged.115 In most eighteenth-century writing concerning music
there is little danger of confusion between metaphorical thought and language
and scientific argument, or between metaphorical thought and language
and plain statement. For example, Rousseaus polemic selectivity is obvious;
and even within poetry Goethe differentiated clearly between language and
poetic forms which drew on areas associated with musical metaphor, and
language which was closer to factual statement and rational argument (as
e.g. in epigrams). But precisely because of the eighteenth-century tendency
to synthesise truth from many different discourses, awareness of ordinary
language, factual statement and logical argument (or fictional representations
of these) needs to be maintained where they run alongside metaphor and
form part of its context, even part of the same statement.
The sociology of music

This concept originated as part ofAdornos philosophy of music.116 and is thus
strictly speaking out of turn in discussion of metaphor theory. Nonetheless,
I have raised it here because it deals with what Peter J. Martin has called the
115 See e.g. Peter D. Smith, Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the WorldView ofScience, Oxford: Legenda, 2000, 528; Debatin/Jackson/Steuer (1997), op.cit.,
17. Spiro et al. (Vosniadu/Ortony (eds), 1989, op.cit. 498531) have even noted that the
tailored simplicity of analogies and models used in scientific argument has led to oversimplification, and pleaded for more complex constructions. Cf. also Musolff s criticism
of the genes/memes model used by Richard Dawkins, Musolff, op.cit., 11719.
116 See e.g. Hamilton, op.cit., 15391.
40
Introduction
social processes through which meanings are constituted and sustained, and
[presumably by contrast with the abstract philosophy of music] the processes through which real people, in real situations, both make music and
make use of music.117 In short, it deals more systematically and fully with
what Lowinsky called the ideology of a given culture and community; and
as we saw with Forsters Beethoven audience, that tends to generate metaphor
rather than musicology. As Barenboim perceived, the musical metaphors of
a given society and culture usually tell us more about that culture than they
do about its music. However, a caveat is required here. Martin points out that
the social and cultural context also to some extent determines intramusical
reference and conventions:
A more or less common frame of reference [] the appropriate expectations with which
to interpret what they hear in a culturally competent way. Such knowledge and expectations can range from the vague general assumptions about what would be an appropriate
course of events at [] a formal concert, or a disco, or a rain dance, to highly precise
ideas about style which enable the expert to distinguish Brahms from Schubert, John
Coltrane from Sonny Rollins.118
These conventions involve recognition of musical stimuli which raise expectations of specifically musical events to come i.e. which do not necessarily
refer listeners outside the piece at all.119 Spitzers study has shown that there
is such a thing as intramusical metaphor, and he shows in detail the role of
metaphor in musical thought.120
There is no reason to suppose that this process did not operate among
musicians and the musically informed in eighteenth-century Germany as
elsewhere. But as we saw, German musical culture ofthe time was remarkable
uneven. The twentieth-century transfer of musical forms (fugue, counter-
117 Peter J. Martin, Sounds and Society. Themes in the Sociology ofMusic, Manchester/New
York: Manchester University Press, 1995, viiff., xi, and esp. chapter two, The Social
Construction of Musical Meaning, 2566. Cf. also Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and
Music: Britain 18761953, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
118 Martin, op.cit., 53.
119 Ibid., 55. Martin cites L. Meyer and several other writers; I have not distinguished their
contributions here, but he of course does so.
120 Michael Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
41
point, sonata) to narrative writing, such as those envisaged by Lagerroth and

considered recently by Alan Shockley and earlier by Horst Petri,121 implies a
grasp of musical structure which many ofthe eighteenth-century writers who
drew on musical metaphor simply did not possess certainly not the main
members of what I loosely called the literary collective (Klopstock, Herder,
Goethe, Schiller). Goethe in particular did not feel part ofthe musically competent community; commenting even to Zelter that ich kenne Musik mehr
durch Nachdenken als durch Genu und also nur im allgemeinen [I know
music more by mental effort than by enjoyment, and so only in a general
way].122 Though less extreme than Forsters Helen Schlegel, he was certainly
the kind of music lover to whom Barenboims strictures would apply: he
habitually thought of music in non-musical terms, and declared a preference
for music to which he could imagine something from ones own head and
heart.123 At one time or another, he tried out most ofthe ideas on Barenboims
list, from harmonious spheres to Gretchens songs to the singing company of
the Wanderjahre and the quartets offour reasonable people conversing, even
through to hysterical shepherds.124 His view of music does seem to have been
love, the hard way, to use Barenboims phrase. It could at times reduce him
to einer krankhaften Reizbarkeit [an unhealthy oversensitivity];125 and even
in sober scientific vein he is full of contrary emphases: Wre die Sprache
nicht unstreitig das Hchste, was wir haben, so wrde ich Musik noch hher
121 Shockley, Music in the Words: Musical Form and Counterpoint in the TwentiethCentury Novel, Burlington: Ashgate, 2009; Petri, Literatur und Musik: Form und
Strukturparallelen, Gttingen: Sachse & Pohl, 1964.
122 Letter of 19 June 1805, AA 19, 481. More comments to this effect are collected by Hedwig
Walwei-Wiegelmann, Goethes Gedanken ber Musik, Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1985,
51f.
123 Conversation with Eckermann, 12 January 1827.
124 See respectively Faust, Prolog im Himmel and Gretchen scenes passim; Wilhelm
Meisters Wanderjahre IIIi, letter to Zelter 9 November 1829, and Eridon in Die Laune
des Verliebten (1767/68), who in Scene 8 tears up his music and gnaws the pieces in a
frenzy.
125 Letter to Zelter from Eger, 24 August 1823, AA 21, 557. This was the time ofhis late and
fruitless passion for the young Ulrike von Levetzow; and as he commented, not only
the distinguished musicianship of soloists at spa concerts, but even the band of the local
rifle corps, could affect him deeply.
42
Introduction
als Sprache [] setzen.126 The extra-musical connections he made led him at

times to sudden insights (on Beethovens deafness, for example), as well as
into some famously unfortunate reactions such as his rejection ofSchuberts
song settings, and his prolonged campaign about the minor third.127 Yet the
sociology of music in Goethes time is crucial to our understanding of his
musical reference in his work. As we shall see, his views were formed by the
myths, ideologies and metaphors of music which circulated in the society and
culture ofhis time, and any musical experience he met had to be understood
in large part through one or another of these myths and metaphors.
Critical treatment of Goethe and music and

some procedures followed here
Most ofthe sociological information on Goethes musical encounters is wellknown; but since it conspicuously lacks any unifying factor, it has proved an
awkward theme for critical treatment. Twentieth-century musicologists and
literary critics explored the data ofGoethes personal encounters with music,
found no overall coherence or theory of music, and remained puzzled.128
126 [If language were not indisputably the highest thing we have, I would set music even
higher than language]; on sound phenomena in Physikalische Wirkungen, Schriften
zur Wissenschaftslehre, AA 16, 862.
127 Commenting that it would hamper Beethovens social behaviour rather than his music
(letter to Zelter from Karlsbad, 2 September 1812, AA 19, 672. On Beethoven and
Schubert, see e.g. Walwei-Wiegelmann, op.cit., passim; Lorraine Byrne, Schuberts Goethe
Settings, Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, 2003, 356, esp.324; Robert Spaethling,
Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe, Colombia SC: Camden House, 1987, 3844;
and on the saga ofthe minor third, see Claus Canisius, Goethe und die Musik, Mnchen/
Zrich: Piper, 1999, 194ff. and passim.
128 This is especially the case with studies by Friedrich Blume, Goethe und die Musik, Kassel:
Brenreiter, 1948, and H.-J. Moser, Goethe und die Musik, Leipzig: Peters, 1949. The
most illuminating account remains Aberts Goethe und die Musik (qv), of 1922! Several
literary critics have followed W.C.R. Hicks in asking the unanswerable question Was
Goethe Musical? (PEGS, NS 27 (1958), 73139), and finding contradictory evidence. In
43
The collective volumes on his work published around the millennium usually omitted the topic.129 One of the most recent surveys, by Hans Joachim
Kreutzer (2003), is made briefly in the context of a study of the persistence
ofthe Faust theme via nineteenth-century opera. Kreutzer explicitly excludes
musical metaphor in the Faust text from his survey (57), and thus concludes
da die Musik im Faust eine Musik der Phantasie ist, keine reale Musik irgendeiner Epoche [that the music in Faust is imaginary music, not the actual
music of a given epoch].130
Yet Kreutzer also stresses that the musical elements in Faust are an integral
part of the work;131 and they have drawn critical attention as such from an
early stage. Two ofGermanys first women academics, Helene Herrmann and
Margarethe Bressem, dealt at length with musical episodes in Faust as part of
their consideration of its form in relation to its content, especially its metrics
and verse-forms.132 A continuing critical tradition looks at Goethes texts as
prepared for and received by composers.133 And in recent years, musical reference has been acknowledged as integral to some of his narrative structures,
129
130
131
132
133
recent years, Walwei-Wiegelmann (op.cit.) lays out the data most clearly; and Canisius,
op.cit., makes a consistent attempt to find the key to Goethes views through his studies
of acoustics and other scientific enterprises.
E.g. Matthias Luserke (ed.), Goethe nach 1999. Positionen und Perspektiven, Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001; Lesley Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Goethe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. An exception is Paul Bishop (ed.),
A Companion to Goethes Faust: Parts I and II, Rochester NY/Woodbridge: Camden
House, 2001, which includes some consideration of music in Ritchie Robertsons article
on Literary Techniques and Aesthetic Texture in Faust, 127.
Hans Joachim Kreutzer, Faust: Mythos und Musik, Mnchen: Beck, 2003, 84.
Kreutzer, op.cit.,46 and passim.
In 1916ff. and in 1931 respectively. Full details are given in the bibliography; Herrmanns
study was published over several numbers of a periodical.
See e.g. Byrne, op.cit. (2003), and Kreutzer, op.cit.; Herrmann Jung (ed.), Eine Art
Symbolik furs Ohr. Lyrik und Musik, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002; Derek McCulloch
(Caf Mozart) (ed.), Goethe and the Guitar: Songs and Ballads c.1800 [notes to
CD], Windsor: Danubia Discs, 2002; Thomas Frantzke, Goethes Schauspiele mit
Gesang und Singspiele 17731782, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998; Benedikt Holtbernd,
Die dramaturgischen Funktionen der Musik in den Schauspielen Goethes, Frankfurt:
Lang, 1992; J.W. Smeed, Famous Poets, Neglected Composers: Songs to Lyrics by Goethe,
Heine, Mrike and Others, Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, 1992; and J.W. Smeed,
German Song and its Poetry, 17401900, London: Croom Helm, 1987. Spaethling (op.
44
Introduction
and/or to the thought and cultural reference embodied in them.134 With the
help of the critical and conceptual resources outlined above, this study aims
to develop this last critical trend by looking at the workings ofthe eighteenth
centurys main conceptual metaphors involving the domain of music as they
function in eighteenth-century writing and especially as they function in
Goethes writing. Hollander and Ives have shown it can be done. But they
took a whole book for one conceptual metaphor; this one book has to deal
with several metaphors and their variations.
I have tried to deal with this large scope in various ways. It has been economical to go to the traditional sources of metaphor which the eighteenth
century inherited, and then show how its writers drew on them; but this is not
done simply to trace original sources (in any case impossible). The intention
is to find the literary nurseries in which particular conceptual metaphors
were nurtured; and thus to find the rationale for connotations traditionally
attached to certain aspects of music and not obviously meaningful to modern
readers. I have then considered the two main concepts of musical structure,
mathematical proportion and rhythm, since they produced a curious mix
of literal and metaphorical thought, negative and positive metaphors and
complex metaphorical interaction. Remaining sections are concerned with
positive and negative, one- and two-directional metaphors linking music and
language; and finally with complex conceptual metaphors in which cosmic
harmony comes to include the human voice, and is sometimes envisaged as
all-encompassing whole, sometimes as dynamic sequence.
Some other procedures should also be acknowledged here. The American
metaphor theorists from Lakoff and Johnson onwards (usually) acknowledge
their debt to French theorists of metaphor and language such as Jacques Lacan,
Paul Ricoeur, and Paul de Man; I have taken this for granted, and have not
cit.) belongs here too, insofar as he gives extensive coverage to Goethes sequel text to
Mozarts Zauberflte.
134 See for example Trunz in the Hamburger Ausgabe (HA), vol. III, on Faust (1949ff.);
Ritchie Robertson, Literary Techniques and Aesthetic Texture, in Paul Bishop op.cit.
(2001), 127; and notably Giovanni Sampaolo, Raum-Ordnung und Zeit-Bewegung:
Gespaltene Naturerkenntnis in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren, Goethe Jahrbuch 2007,
15360, esp.159.
45
gone back to these sources.135 For quotations from Goethe, I have identified
sources in a full form which should make them easily locatable in any edition;
references are given here from the Artemis Ausgabe simply for convenience,
as the only small-format edition which includes a large number of letters
and conversations. The exception to this is the text of Faust, for which I
have relied chiefly on the Hamburg edition, supported by the Frankfurt and
Munich editions.
Translations are provided for all quotations from German and French
sources; they are mine unless otherwise stated. This is not because no adequate
translations exist but because in each case I have tried to make the metaphor in
question re-appear in English as vividly and precisely as possible, at the price
of stylistic consistency from one passage to another. Stage or film versions of
eighteenth-century works are considered only when they seemed useful to
make a point concerned with metaphor, especially with Goethes metaphor.
This particularly applies to Faust: for full coverage, readers are referred to
Osman Durrani (ed.), Faust: Icon of Modern Culture (Mountfield: Helm
Information, 2004), and Beate Agnes Schmidt, Musik in Goethes Faust:
Dramaturgie, Rezeption und Auffhrungspraxis (Sinzig: Studio, 2006). The
overall aim ofthis study is after all not to be exhaustive, but to show how conceptual metaphor from the domain of music contributed in eighteenth-century
thought and language to what Goethe called a manifold language, and what
Cassirers philosophy envisaged as the sensualisation of sense (Recki).
135 Essays by these authors and others appear in Anselm Haverkamp, Theorie der Metapher,
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983.
Part One
Traditional Conceptions of Music
2 Robert Fludds representation of the The Divine Monochord as basis of cosmic order,
Utriusque Cosmi Maioris [] vol. I, i (Oppenheim: de Bry, 1617) reproduced by courtesy
of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, the
University of Manchester. See note in List of Illustrations.
Very broadly speaking, there are two traditional conceptions which define
fields of metaphorical reference to music in eighteenth-century thought, and
underpin the further associations which Goethe and others developed for
their own use. The first associates music with order, form and harmony an
idea which includes coordination as well as striking consonance. The other
associates music with disorderly and irrational forces of every kind, both
inside and outside the human mind. These basic conceptions are reasonably
familiar to modern readers. But the features of each perceived as salient in
Goethes epoch, and the networks of further associations attached to each,
may not be so familiar; especially since the concept of music as disorderly
and/or irrational is both peculiar and internally divided, though very well
established as a general idea. It is peculiar because it depends on what Kvecses
has provisionally called metaphorical negation:1 i.e. music has been perceived
as disorderly because it is not, or does not function, like something else. And
it is internally divided according to the selected feature with which music is
implicitly or explicitly contrasted.
The first of these features is harmony. Where music or phenomena are
perceived as lacking in harmonious qualities such as proportion, coordination, or agreeable sound, metaphors of disorder focus on the overlapping
ideas of disharmony, discord and dissonance sometimes including other
aspects, such as unison, perceived as detrimental to harmony. For claritys
sake, I have treated both harmony and its negatives in complementary chapters one and two below. The second feature with which music is contrasted
is language. Here the field of reference is subdivided according to the aspect
of language taken as salient. Where the focus is on language as vehicle for
rational thought and clear meaning, then music is grouped with poetic language as the negative opposite of clear thought and conceptual expression.
But since the range of musical sound goes well beyond human capacity to
speak, sing or hear, the most powerful associations with disorder are attached
to music perceived as an a-linguistic sound medium. In this view, music can
bypass both content and forms of verbal thought and expression, either to
elicit an instinctive response from the listener, close to physical movement
and dance, or to suggest a disembodied movement of mind or spirit, too swift
1
Zoltn Kvecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge University

Press 2005, 262.
50
Part one
and subtle for language. Thus perceived, music wields power which the intellect can neither understand nor control. These two negative metaphor fields
of music vis vis language are dealt with respectively in Chapters Three and
Four below, together with some ofthe more specialised negative connotations
which Goethe and others developed for their own purposes.
Chapter One
The Greek tradition

Perhaps the most familiar and most ancient associations with music centre
on the idea of harmony. But the eighteenth century inherited a more complex conception than the vague impression of agreeable consonance which
the word harmony is likely to evoke now among general listeners. Andrew
Barker points out that outside musical contexts, [harmonia] means fitting
together, adapting or adjusting one thing to another; and that within
music its prime sense was the fitting together of notes of an instrument
according to their mathematically proper ratios, its tuning to a particular
system of intervals and pitch [somewhat like a modern scale] within which
melodies could then be constructed.1 Although the meaning of such an ancient
term must be partly conjectural,2 an idea of consonance of more than one note
or timbre, and thence of coordinated diversity, seems to have been present
from an early stage.3 Even when Greek music was still predominantly monophonic, an awareness of the different tonal quality of instrument and voice,
In Greek Musical Writings: I, The Musician and his Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984, esp.163ff., 244 and notes. See also Hschen MGG 5, col.1589, and W.C.K.
Guthrie, A History ofGreek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971,
vol.I, 220.
See A. Barker, loc cit. esp.168; also 228f. and notes 14450. In MGG 5, Hschen shows
that even within music the term harmonia had acquired eight different meanings by
the sixteenth century (col.1609). Cf. also the illustrated anthology by Jrgen-Eckardt
Pleines, Harmonia, Hildesheim: Olms, 2004.
See A.Barker, 163 and note 111 (concord); and D.M. Randel, The New Harvard Dictionary
of Music, [NHDM], Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap (Harvard), 1986, 3467.
52
Chapter One
tonic and octave, seems to have been present when they sounded together.4
Platos term heterophony certainly indicates something ofthe sort.5 And the
idea was sufficiently well established in philosophical discourse for Aristotle
to use it metaphorically (in a simile) to explain the weakness ofPlatos system
of property; excessive unification of the state, he suggests, is as if you were
to turn harmony into mere unison.6 In fact, harmony seems to have been
used as a generally applicable idea from very ancient times; parallels between
musical and other kinds ofcoordination underlie Platos Republic, Aristotles
Politics, and much else.7
If metaphorical reference to harmony was ancient, one particular subset
of metaphors within that field was older still. From earliest times, harmony
was associated with the Pythagorean concept of harmony of the spheres
(transmitted e.g. via Platos Timaeus and Aristotles more critical De Caelo),
where the harmony of the diatonic scale served as analogue for the vast
cosmic order of the orbiting planets.8 Pythagoreans generally believed that
Man was unable to hear the music of the spheres, or to participate in it.9
Harmony was also used as analogue for the coordinated diversity of faculties within nature and within the human individual the microcosm, or little
world of man, contained within the cosmos passing into medieval times
4
5
6
7
8
See NHDM, Harmonia (362), Greece I and I,3 (346f.), and Heterophony, 377.; also
Platos definition of harmonia in Laws, 665a, cit Andrew Barker, op.cit., 149.
Laws, VII, 812D; (cf. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, when the strings give one sound
and the poet or composer ofthe melody gives another (IV, 380). See also Heterophony,
NHDM 377, and Andrew Barker, op.cit. 163 and notes 1078.
Politics, II,5,14, ed./tr. Ernest Barker, Oxford 1946ff., 51.
See esp. Andrew Barker, sections on Plato and Aristotle passim, and (e.g.) 22849.
NHDM, Harmony of the spheres, 369; Andrew Barker, 248f., especially note 261;
Guthrie, op.cit., vol.1, 220ff., 295ff.; Stuart Leggatt (ed. & tr.), Aristotle: On the Heavens
I & II, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995, 290b12, 13941, 241f. See also MGG 10, cols.
1790ff. Jamie James traces the evolution of these ideas from Pythagoras onwards, in
The Music ofthe Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order ofthe Universe, London:
Abacus, 1995.
Barker I, 240, note 261, draws attention to Platos Republic (616b617c) as the source for
most ofthese ideas. Francis Cornford discusses some ofthe mechanisms involved in the
planetary harmonics, and some of Aristotles criticisms of Pythagorean arguments for
mans inability to hear them: F.C. (ed. & tr.), The Republic ofPlato, Oxford: Clarendon,
1941ff. See also Leggatt, loc.cit., and James, op.cit., 2078.
53
as the concepts of musica mundana and musica humana respectively.10 And

these metaphors passed to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with
undiminished force, despite some changes of emphasis in the values attached
to them. Hollander notes that sixteenth-century French masques maintained
in dance formations, music and presentation an allegory of complex heavenly and human harmonies, appealing chiefly to the intellect as such despite
the concurrent development of other musical values.11 James shows in detail
how the idea of mathematically-based cosmic order was adapted in successive ages to explain links between music, the heavenly bodies and the human
soul, veering between what might now be seen as pre-scientific astronomy
and something closer to mystical and Hermetic thought, even to magical
formulae.12 Meanwhile, metaphorical reference to harmony tended to recur
in philosophical discourse wherever the world was presented as a complex
but divinely ordered whole. At the beginning of the period in focus here,
Johannes Kepler revived the Pythagorean concept in his Harmonices Mundi
(1619); at the end, August Wilhelm Schlegel defended it in his Vorlesungen
ber schne Litteratur und Kunst I (18012) because it acknowledged complex
analogous relations between musical notes, phenomena ofthe natural world,
and the complexities ofhuman existence.13 In between, Leibnizs Monadologie
(1714)14 and Shaftesbury and the Cambridge Neo-Platonists made the concept common currency.15
Two recurrent ideas in this philosophical tradition are particularly important for present purposes. The first is the familiar point that the basis for the
10
11
12
13
14
15
Mainly via Boethius: see NHDM, 369; Leggatts Introduction to the De Caelo, esp.38; also
Andrew Barker, op.cit., 22832 and notes; NHDM, Musica 2, 516; and John Hollanders
introduction to The Untuning ofthe Sky, Princeton University Press 1961, repr. Hamden:
Archon, 1993.
Op.cit., 192ff.
James, op.cit., covering figures from Pythagoras to Newton, including the Hermetic
tradition, 3179.
Kepler, see NHDM, 369; Schlegel, ed. Jakob Minor, 1884, 252f, 257; cit Paul Moos,
98f.
Hschen, MGG 5, cols. 1602ff.; Lowinsky, op.cit. 179ff.; and esp. Rolf Christian
Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, vol. I, Mnchen: Fink, 1969, passim.
I.e. Antony Ashley Cooper, 16711713; see R.L. Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury,
London 1951, 17ff., 68ff.
54
Chapter One
ordered cosmic harmony was perceived to be divinely ordained mathematical proportion. Each planet moved in proportion to the others, and each
part ofthe universe was proportionate to the other parts and to the whole.16
Where this mathematical, measurable basis for harmony is emphasised, we
find harmony increasingly equated with regularity, symmetry and orderliness
there is greater emphasis on coordination than on diversity, and beauty and
excellence are virtually equated with proportion. Certainly, this seems to be
the predominant emphasis when the term is used in the earlier part of the
eighteenth century. Shaftesbury, for instance, insisted that music was founded
on universal laws of proportion:
Shoud a Writer upon Musick declare, That the Measure or Rule of Harmony
Was Caprice, or Will, Humour or Fashion, tis not very likely that he shoud be heard
with great attention, or treated with real Gravity. For HARMONY is Harmony by
Nature, let Men judge ever so ridiculously of Musick Tis the same case, where Life
and MANNERS are concerned. The same numbers, Harmony, and Proportion have
place in MORALS; and are discoverable in the Characters and Affections of Mankind;
in which are layd the just foundation of an Art and Science.17
And Leibniz also declared that music reflected what Man could grasp and
reproduce of the perfect symmetry of God:
Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos ames, mais il les possede sans bornes; Lordre,
les proportions, lharmonie nous en enchantent, la peinture et la musique en sont des
echantillons; Dieu est tout ordre, il garde tousjours la justesse des proportions, il fait
lharmonie universelle.18
16
17
18
See NHDM, arithmetic and harmonic mean (50f.), and harmony ofthe spheres, 369;
A. Barker, both vols passim, esp. vol.I, 163ff., 244 and notes; Platos Timaeus, 35ff., 47
(The Dialogues ofPlato, ed. Jowett, 4th edn, Oxford 1953, III, 721ff., 733f.). Very recently,
it has even been suggested that Plato arranged his treatises into mathematically proportionate numbers oflines, so that not only the argument oftheir content, but also their
symbolic form, contributed to the advancement of understanding the universe: see Jay
Kennedy, Apeiron (University of Texas at Austin) June 2010, and Julian Baggini, The
Guardian 30 June 2010.
Advice to an Author (1719), III,3, Characteristicks, 5th edn, Birmingham 1773, vol.I,
353. See also Brett, op.cit. 104.
Essais de theodice sur la bont de Dieu etc., Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C.I. Gerhardt,
Berlin 1875, vol.6, 27; cit Lowinsky, 182 and note 40. Not sparks (tincelles), as Lowinsky
55
[The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He possesses them without
limit ; order, proportion, harmony make us delighted with them [the perfections], music
and painting are small samples ofthem. God is all order, He keeps forever exactitude of
proportion, He makes the universal Harmony]
So strong were these connotations of order that even discord, and the disorderliness which it suggested, was accommodated within the divine scheme of
things. Leibniz suggested that discords were deliberately placed in music by
the composer to enhance the beauties of concords, just as God allowed evil
in order to enhance the beauty of goodness19 and the painter used shadow
to enhance light.20 Music was thus not the only model for the harmonious cosmos; but it seems to have been especially popular in the early and
middle eighteenth century, because music was itself to some extent based
on mathematical proportion. As Lowinsky explains, techniques such as harmony and counterpoint (i.e. vertical and horizontal structuring of musical
compositions),21 forms such as canon and fugue, were cultivated not merely
as a matter of aesthetics, but because they accorded with the rationalist ideology of a systematic universal order apprehended by reason.22
The second point of particular interest is that the traditional notion of
harmony implied a kind of double structure in the universe as Lowinsky
puts it, a temporal succession or sequence, and an order of the simultaneous, or hierarchy.23 (In fact, both concepts seem to involve both space and
time in varying degrees). This double structure is inherent in, for example,
the world order envisaged by Plato, where each successive stage of Creation
emanates from God.24 Hschen shows that it also appears in ancient musicology, where harmony could denote a scale or mode (i.e. a sequence of
translates, but something like samples (chantillons); petite quantit dun produit, qui
permet den apprcier ou den faire connatre les qualits (Petit Larousse Illustr, Paris
1974, 341.
19 Conversation cum domino Stenonio de libertate, 27 November 1677 (Libert et Optimum,
section 5); in Textes Indites, ed. C. Grua, Paris 1948, I, 271.
20 Dialogue avec Dobrzensky (Libert et Optimum section 22), ed.cit. 365f.
21 NHDM, 366ff., 205ff.
22 Lowinsky, op.cit. 179ff.
23 Ibid., 180.
24 Timaeus, esp. sections 3047, ed.cit. 717ff.
56
Chapter One
notes at proportioned intervals) as well as the art of singing together with an

accompaniment.25 Furthermore, as R.C. Zimmermann explains, the idea of
such a structure was part ofthe body ofHermetic lore which enjoyed revived
popularity in eighteenth-century Germany. Based on Neo-Platonist philosophy and on the Pansophic tradition,26 Hermetic lore associated harmony
with the idea of the golden chain which linked each stage in the hierarchy
of Creation with the one below and above; and also linked successive past
ages with the present:
Die Hermetik analogisiert als emanatistische Philosophie aus dem Groen und Ganzen
von Gott und Welt ins Kleine und Einzelne. Sie geht aus von einem die Analogie erst
ermglichenden Glauben an die gttliche Wesenheit aller Dinge,an die Panharmonie
aller Weltgesetze als Ausdruck des Gttlichen. So kommt sie zu ihrer Vorstellung einer
zweifachen Aurea Catena, die einmal horizontal in der Zeit gedacht den Konsensus
aller Weisen, als die geheime Tradition bedeutet, und zum andern als die eigentliche
Aurea Catena Homeri vertikal im Raum gedacht die Verbundenheit aller Naturwesen
vom Grten bis ins Kleinste, also den Kosmos aller Dinge.27
[Hermetic lore, as an emanatistic philosophy, draws analogies between the great totality
ofGod and Cosmos and the small and individual. Its starting point is a belief (without
which the analogy would be impossible) in the Divinity of all created things, and in
the universal harmony of all cosmic laws as an emanation ofthe Divine. Thus Hermetic
lore arrives at its concept of a twofold Golden Chain, of which the one (envisaged horizontally in Time) signifies the concensus of the Wise [in each generation], the secret
tradition. The other, as the actual Homeric Golden Chain (envisaged vertically in Space)
signifies the interconnection of all created things, from the greatest to the least, and
thus the Cosmos of all things].
Lowinsky points out that Leibniz theory of pre-established harmony envisages a very similar double connection between monads both a hierarchical
one (from God, the greatest, downwards), and a sequential one;28 and he
cites Leibniz principle of continuity as another example:
25 MGG 5, cols 1609ff.

26 See esp. W. Peuckert, Pansophie, 2nd ed Berlin 1965, 2 and passim; cit. Zimmermann, 29.
Unfortunately for present purposes, Peuckert does not discuss harmony separately.
27 Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, I, 29.
28 See esp. Monadology, sections 47ff., 56ff., 71ff ; ed. & tr. R. Latta, London 1898, 243ff.,
248ff., 258ff.; see also Lowinsky, 180.
57
Selon moi, il rgne une parfaite continuit dans lordre des Successifs, ainsi il en rgne une
pareille dans celui des Simultans, laquelle tablit le plein rel, et renvoye aux Rgions
imaginaires les espaces vuides.29
[In my opinion, the order of Successive things is governed by a seamless continuity, as
is the order of Simultaneous things. This continuity establishes the fullness of reality,
and banishes void spaces to the realm of imagination].
At first sight, since this analogy between all created things is based on similarity and mathematical ratio, and all phenomena emanate successively from the
Divine nature, the salient properties ofthe cosmos thus envisaged appear to
be order and homogeneity. But in fact a strong awareness of the diversity of
individual components was usually included in this perception, especially after
Leibniz. Leibniz regarded the harmonious universe as perfect, insofar as was
possible, because it offered as great variety as possible, along with the greatest
possible order.30 He seems to have envisaged the divine order of Creation
not as static, but as a living developing whole; with the possibility that the
individual monad, in successive reincarnations, might rise from one level of
the hierarchy to another.31 And as Zimmermann points out, the Hermetic
concept of two-directional Aurea Catena also presented universal harmony
as comprehensive, but not as homogeneous:
Es handelt sich immer um Einzelglieder, die sich gleichen und berhren, aber sonst vllige
Selbstndigkeit haben. Die Kette ist also kein Band. Was aber an Homogenitt fehlt,
wird ersetzt durch die Totalitt; die Kette umschliet alle Weisheit, alle Natur.32
[They are always envisaged as single links [in the chain], which are similar and tangent
but which otherwise possess complete independence. The Chain is thus in no way a
fetter. But what is lacking in homogeneity is made up in totality: the Golden Chain
encompasses all wisdom, all Creation]
29 This comment is, as Lowinsky says, taken from a letter to Varignon, although he misquotes the reference. See Leibniz Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie, tr.
A. Buchenau, rev. and annotated E. Cassirer, 3rd rev. ed. Hamburg 1966, vol.2, 557.
Comments on circumstances of publication are given there 74ff.
30 Monadology, 58, ed/tr. cit., 249.
31 Monadology, 71, 75, 82; ed.cit., 258ff., 265.
32 Zimmermann, op.cit., 29.
58
Chapter One
The traditional concept of cosmic harmony thus encompassed both an association with perfect symmetry and an association with coordinated dynamic
diversity; and both an idea of coordinated simultaneous hierarchical order
and an idea of coordinated relations in sequence, a living continuity.
Eighteenth-century developments of the traditional

metaphor of harmony
This composite notion of harmony recurs frequently in eighteenth-century
writing. Herder, for example, felt that music comprehended das ganze innere
Gefhl in seiner Weite und Tiefe, and also led us above ourselves to perceive
wie alles vielartig zusammenstimme, und [] im liebevollen Zwist sich harmonisch auflse.33 Schillers concept of musical harmony, which he used
as metaphor and model for the ideal human condition and much else, is
summarised by Margaret Ives as either a combination of different notes or
the progressive form of the musical work as a whole.34 Yet there are shifts as
the century progresses: the idea of sequence comes to the fore, sometimes
in relation to the concept of simultaneity and sometimes almost eclipsing
it. These later concepts of harmony, where emphasis falls on the diversity of
individual units and/or on their relations in sequence, are complex in origin;
and to understand them we need to be aware of other ways in which the eighteenth century associated music with the individual. This field of metaphorical
reference is therefore discussed in Part IV below. For the moment, we shall
concentrate on the older and simpler Pythagorean association of musical
harmony with divinely-ordained cosmic order and mathematically-based
symmetry, and try to establish what connotations it carried.
33
[inner feeling in all its breadth and depth how all things in their diversity chime
together, and in this loving difference resolve themselves harmoniously], Adrastea,
Suphan XXIII, 561. See also Moos, 54.
34 M.C. Ives, The Analogue of Harmony, Duquesne 1970, esp.1322. Schiller, Cambridge
University Press 1991, esp.120ff., 136ff ; and essays by Sharpe and others in A Companion
to the Works of Friedrich Schiller, ed. Steven D. Martinson, Camden House 2005.
59
One of the most persistent (and still familiar) aspects is a sharp sense
of contrast between the perfection of heaven and the imperfection of earth.
This seems to have been particularly strong where the notion of sequence
and development within the cosmos was absent; leaving a static picture of
the cosmic hierarchy, in which Man might be above the forms of animal life
but was unable to achieve the absolute perfection of its infinite Creator, 35 and
unable to see the cosmic pattern: Leibniz pre-established harmony was not
perceptible to the human units forming part of it.36 Nor did the human voice
contribute to it: Man is still small in Leibniz scheme of things.37 However,
Man was perceived by some thinkers as able to perceive the Divine order
in Nature, and able to create a semblance of it in his art. Shaftesbury called
the poet a just Prometheus under Jove, who forms a Whole, coherent and
proportiond in itself, with due Subjection and Subordinacy of constituent
Parts.38 Music in particular served as an earthly analogue for heavenly harmony and order charmingly audible to the senses, yet immaterial, with a
symmetrical form analogous to that of higher and spiritual things. Leibniz
considered that:
Les plaisirs des sens qui approchent le plus des plaisirs de lesprit, et sont les plus purs
et les plus suers [surs], sont ceux de la musique, et ceux de la symmetrie, [] car il est
ais de comprendre les raisons de lharmonie ou de cette perfection qui nous y donne
du plaisir.39
[The pleasures ofthe senses which approach most closely to the pleasures ofthe mind,
and are the purest and the clearest, are those of Music and of Symmetry for it is
easy to understand the reasons for that harmony or perfection in them which gives us
pleasure].
35
36
37
38
39
See e.g. Leibniz Monadology, 47f., ed.cit. 243ff.

Monadology, esp.57, 78ff., ed.cit. 248, 262ff.
Leibniz may have felt this structured universe as rather inhuman: paradoxically, he
confessed to a strong preference for homophonic music, as more moving (Letter to
K.Hanfling, 1709; cit. K. Mller/G. Kronert (eds), Leben und Werk von G.W. Leibniz,
Frankfurt a.M. 1969, 216.
Advice to an Author [I,3, ; in Characteristicks, ed. cit vol.I, 207]; cit. Brett, 105.
La Flicit; in Sagesse et Bonheur, VII, 11, Textes Indites (Grua), 2, 580.
60
Chapter One
Johann Mattheson, whose work on the theory and practice of music influenced
a wide public of middle-class readers and amateur music-makers, also spoke
of music as:
Die Geheimni-volle Musik [] der Engel Zeitvertreib und Dienst: die himmlische
Wollust: Der Vorschmack der ewigen Freude, und das Ehren-Kleid des unschtzbaren
Wortes Gottes: andere Plaisirs reichen diesem nicht das Wasser, sind auch mit einander
grsserer Gefahr und Materie unterworffen; dahingegen diese fast ganz spirituel ist und
die Seele occupiret.40
[That mysterious art ofMusic, the duty and the pastime ofthe Angels, a heavenly lust,
a foretaste ofEternal Joy, and the robe ofhonour in which is clothed the priceless Word
of God. Other pleasures are far behind these, and are more adulterated with material
danger. But music is almost wholly spiritual, and occupies the soul].
Ifthese were the fields of reference and the habits of reference that eighteenthcentury German writers inherited, what did they make of them? Herders
concept of harmony (Wohlklang) is predominantly shaped by the idea of
organised sequence, in association with other metaphors of music;41 so he will
need to be considered at later stages. Schiller did not read Kepler, according
to Peter-Andr Alt; but he seems to have encountered Hermetic teachings
and Leibniz model ofthe universe, as well as Plato and Shaftesbury, at a relatively early stage.42 His formative experiences of music, whether domestic or
dramatic, were predominantly homophonic (i.e. fairly simply structured, with
one leading melody and subsidiary accompaniment);43 so that his feeling for
music was shaped by rather different associations and metaphor groups, and
40 Neu-Erffnetes Orchestre, Hamburg 1713. 32f. Matthesons best-known treatise was Der
vollkommene Capellmeister, Hamburg 1739, which includes a list ofhis numerous other
publications on the final unnumbered page, after the Register. See also H. Turnow, MGG
8, cols. 1795ff.
41 The essays of the new Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder, ed. Hans
Adler and WulfKoepke, Camden House 2009, do not discuss harmony as such; Gerhard
Sauders essay on Herders poetics connects his idea ofWohlklang with melody rather
than harmony, for reasons understandable in context (Herders Poetic Works, His
Translations, and His Views on Poetry, op.cit. 30530, esp.310f.).
42 Alt, Schiller: Leben Werk Zeit, Beck 2000; see e.g. vol.I, 113ff., 121, 230f., and vol.II,
438, 445. Also Ernst Cassirer, Schiller und Shaftesbury, PEGS NS XI (1935), esp.3946,
and 52ff.
43 See esp. R.M. Longyear, Schiller and Music, University of North Carolina Press, 1966,
733; also Alt, vol.I, 213ff., 421f., and vol.II, 478, 565ff.
61
has a strong but oblique relation with his concept of cosmic harmony.44 He
too thus needs to be considered at a later stage. Goethe, however, serves as
an excellent example ofthe reception and development ofthe older conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony, with its primary associations of order and
symmetry. This is not because his usage of the metaphor was confined to it;
Goethe often deliberately sets the traditional metaphor of cosmic harmony
against other versions; so that his deployment of it and his incorporation of
musical reference into it can be seen more clearly. It is thus his thought and
writing which will concern us for the rest of this chapter.
Goethes reception and development of the traditional

concept of harmony
Goethe did not of course have access to all the cultural nurseries of this
metaphor at once. Although he was surrounded by the influence of Leibniz
and Shaftesburys thought from an early stage,45 it seems he did not actually
read Kepler, Shaftesbury and Leibniz until 1791, 1813, 1817 respectively, Platos
Timaeus not until 1804, and Matthesons Capellmeister not until 1819.46 In
the interim, his reception of it could be highly selective (as in his focus on
Shaftesburys view of evil as the inevitable other side of the coin of good),47
or critically caustic: Lavaters version of eternity, for example, depended too
much in Goethes view on a source bowdlerising Leibnizs universe:
44 Studies after Ives stress the importance ofthe concept ofharmony for Schiller, but rarely
consider the structural aspects; see e.g. Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller, Cambridge
University Press 1991, esp.120ff., 136ff ; and essays by Sharpe and others in A Companion
to the Works ofFriedrich Schiller, ed. Steven D. Martinson, Camden House 2005 (which
does not consider Schillers concept of harmony as such).
45 See e.g. Nicholas Boyle, Goethe, The Poet and the Age, Oxford University Press/Oxford
Clarendon, esp.vol.I, passim.
46 Heinz Nicolai, Zeittafel zu Goethes Leben und Werk, HA vol 14, 416, 476f., 489 and
passim: letter to Zelter on Mattheson, 4 January 1819, AA 21, 318; Humphry Trevelyan,
Goethe and the Greeks, Cambridge University Press 1942ff., 251 note 2.
47 In Zum Schkespeares Tag, 1772; see DjG II, 85.
62
Chapter One
eine Seele, die in dem groen Traum vom Weltall, Sonnendonnern und Planetenrollen
verlohren, sich ber das Irdische hinauf entzckt, Erden mit dem Fus auf die Seiten
stst, [] fr die mikromegischen Gesichte, Analogie in unsern Krften, Beweisstellen
in der Bibel ausklaubt.48
[a soul lost in the great dream ofthe cosmos, rolling planets and sounding suns, working
itself into an ecstasy above all earthly things, kicking away the earth beneath it, and
scrabbling about in the Bible for texts supporting microcosmic visions and analogies
with our human powers.]
Goethe came fairly late to polyphonic music too. The sacred music which
Goethe heard in his youth was predominantly homophonic J.S. Bach had
already passed out offashion.49 So when he first encountered Palestrinas polyphonic motets in Rome under the guidance of Philipp Christoph Kayser,50
he was fascinated and astonished: this music is etwas Auerordentliches, und
[] ein ganz neuer Begriff, and even more so the unaccompanied polyphony
of the Sistine Chapel choir in the context of Michelangelos frescoes.51 Not
until later still was he introduced to the music of J.S. Bach, thanks to his
musically and personally more robust mentor Carl Friedrich Zelter and to
the organist J.H.F. Schtz in Berka.52 However, it is obvious from his skit
on Lavater that he knows both the concept of cosmic harmony and its salient features for metaphorical application; in fact, he had encountered the
idea at a very early stage when he read the writings of the Pansophists, and
Hermetic lore.53
48 Review in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1773, ofLavaters Aussichten in die Ewigkeit,
in Briefen an Zimmermann, vol.III; DjG III, 89.
49 See Lowinsky, op.cit. passim.
50 See Paul Winter, Goethe erlebt Kirchenmusik in Italien, Hamburg 1949, and Cristina
Ricca, berlegungen zu Goethes rmischer Rezeption des geistlichen dialogisierten
Liedes, in Hermann Jung (ed.), Eine Art Symbolik frs Ohr, Frankfurt a.M. 2002,
15165. On Kayser, see Walwei-Wiegelmann, 1289, plate 10.
51 On church music in Goethes youth, see Abert, op.cit. 13f, M. Friedlnder, 280ff., Canisius
27f. On his experiences in Italy [something wholly extraordinary, an entirely new concept], see esp: Italienische Reise, Rom, Nov., 1787, 22 February 1788, 14 March 1788
(AA 11, 482f., 571f., 582, 577).
52 See esp. Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1814 (AA 11, 865; Abert, op.cit., 43ff.; Dora Wahl, Goethe
und Zelter damals zu Wiesbaden, Jb der Sammlung Kippenberg NF I (1963), 105ff.
Also Walwei-Wiegelmann, 1289, plates 25 (Zelter), and 28 (Schtz).
53 Zimmermann, esp. vol. I 259ff. and passim, offers a detailed study of this thought and
Goethes encounters with it. Canisius shows that Hermetic ideas persisted in his thinking,
63
These biographical data are familiar and frequently rehearsed; but it seems
to me that they are very important here, a crucial part ofthe cultural context
that we need to interpret Goethes metaphors of harmony. For Goethe first
met harmony with its ancient Pythagorean associations to the fore: not primarily as a musical phenomenon, but as a verbally evoked concept of cosmic
structure, in which the idea of beautiful coordinated sound (not necessarily
a prominent idea at that) was a verbally described corollary to the vision of a
beautiful coordinated universe. As Claus Canisius points out, it is this older
sense of harmony as fitting together, coordinating, which Goethe applies
in his critique of Diderots comments on colour in chapter two of Essai sur
la peinture (1799), where Goethe insists that harmony is a higher broader
concept of coordination which can be [metaphorically] applied to both colour
and music.54 And this idea of eine hhere allgemeine Harmonie, divine
coordination which we see figured in music, is still the salient association
for him when he does finally encounter J.S. Bach:
Wohl erinnerte ich mich bey dieser Gelegenheit an den guten Organisten von Berka
[Schtz]; denn dort war mir zuerst [] ein Begriff von Eurem Gromeister geworden.
Ich sprach mirs aus: als wenn die ewige Harmonie sich mit sich selbst unterhielte, wie
sichs etwa in Gottes Busen kurz vor der Weltschpfung mchte zugetragen haben.55
and especially influenced his attempts later in life to construct a Tonlehre (passim,
esp.212ff.).
54 Goethe und die Musik, Mnchen: Piper, 1999, 132f.; and Diderots Versuch ber die
Malerei, AA 13, 238ff., esp.241f.
55 Though frequently cited in Goethe musical criticism old and new, this letter to Zelter
does not appear in main editions of Goethes works (WA, HA, AA, FA), nor in the
edition by Max Hecker ofDer Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, Frankfurt 1913,
repr. Bern 1970. Matters are not helped by the fact that several older critics, even the
meticulous Abert, quote it with incomplete or incorrect references or with none at all.
But it does appear in the early edition by F.W. Riemer [the tutor of Goethes son and a
member of his household from 18031812], Berlin 1833f, part IV, 337f. (cf. also 329); in
the edition by Ludwig Geiger, Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, Leipzig 1902,
vol.2, 495; and in the edition by Will Vesper, Goethes Briefwechsel mit Zelter, Berlin
1914, 213. Both Riemer and Geiger place it as the Beylage [enclosure] in Goethes letter
of 17 July 1827, and as a continuation of his letter of 21 June 1827. Cf. WA IV, 42, 259.
The MA (H.-G. Ottenberg, Edith Zehm (eds), Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter,
MA, vols 20.1 20.3, 19918), solves the problem: the Beilage was never dispatched, but
is accredited and printed in vol.20.3, 833.
64
Chapter One
[Indeed I did recall on this occasion the kindly organist ofBerka [Schtz]; for it was there
that I first began to understand your great Master. I spoke it aloud: as though Eternal
Harmony conversed with itself, as we imagine Gods mind just before the Creation of
the Universe].
This is a cosmological vision, a piece of emanatistic philosophy, in

Zimmermanns phrase;56 in which Goethe (in accordance with Plato and
Leibniz) imagines God still self-contained, just before the outward movement into Creation begins. The music is not in the foreground of Goethes
simile; but rather (in accordance with Leibniz, Mattheson and others) the
agency which makes palpable to the human mind a vivid idea of what is
beyond sense. And although Goethe casts himself in the role ofnarrator (I
spoke it aloud), the human being is not himself part ofthis heavenly system;
again, in accordance with the traditional view that man could not hear the
music of the spheres.
Goethes Faust
As far as Goethes literary deployment of the traditional metaphor is concerned, Goethes Faust (both Parts) is the main work of interest; and the
figure ofFaust in his study is an excellent starting point. For when Faust takes
down this secret volume/From Nostradamus very own hand (419f.), Goethe
is aligning him as a link in the Golden Chain of wise men, who have their
eighteenth-century counterparts in the lovers ofHermetic lore in his own day,
but whose provenance goes back through the Pansophists of the historical
Fausts epoch to Plato and the Pythagoreans;57 and also with the simultaneous
56
57
Vol.I, 29.
See in particular Schne, VII,2, 213 (Nostradamus), 214 (on Goethes connection between
this alternative cosmology and his eventual attempts at a Tonlehre), and 216 (on some of
the sources for his reception ofthe idea ofchains from earth to heaven, and the harmony
of the spheres). Also Trunz, 495ff., Friedrich/Scheithauer, 186 and passim, esp. under
names of writers (e.g. Welling, v. Helmont, Swedenborg, Paracelsus). Zimmermanns
discussion is focused on imagery connecting harmony with the whole and melody with
the individual (220, 262ff.),; but he does give full information about how Goethe came
65
hierarchy of Leibnizs coordinated universe. However, when Faust contemplates the diagram ofthe Macrocosm in his book, it is not only the link with
past philosophy and superhuman order which are evoked; Goethe presents
the vision in vividly sensuous terms of present impact:
Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
[How it all lives and moves and weaves
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Into a whole! Each part gives and receives,
Wie Himmelskrfte auf und nieder steigen,
Angelic powers ascend and redescend
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!
And each to each their golden vessels lend;
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Fragrant with blessing, as on wings
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
From heaven through the earth and through

all things
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen (447ff.)58 Their movement thrusts, and all in harmony

it sings!]
In this sustained metaphor, it is interesting to see which of the traditionally

salient elements are included and which are not. The underlying metaphor
of cosmic harmony is present chiefly as animated symmetry: each element
interacts and interweaves with others to make a whole, heavenly powers move
up and down in the hierarchy and pass golden vessels from one to another,
they move from heaven to fill the earth. But harmonious sound is only one
of several sense impressions which their motions create. The golden vessels
passed from one heavenly power to another evoke the Golden Chain of
Hermetic lore; these beings move on wings fragrant with blessing, and they
sing harmoniously through the universe as they go. But like the Pythagorean
harmony ofthe spheres, imagined by man but inaudible to him, such balanced
communication between heaven and earth is only possible from the heavenly
side: there is no suggestion here of a horizontal sequence of development,
by which Faust might come to be part of this harmony. For him, it is indeed
only a spectacle (454), and he turns away in sensual and intellectual frustration (455ff.).
58
to know the Hermetic writings (esp.11ff., 45ff., 185ff.). See also Goethes Ephemerides
(AA 4, 959ff.), and Dichtung und Wahrheit II,8, AA 10, 375ff. In two books Pansophie
(Berlin, 2nd edn, 1956) and Gabalia (Berlin, 2nd edn, 1967), Will-Erich Peuckert gives
extensive information on the four writers mentioned above and on other philosophers,
but does not discuss harmony as a concept.
Tr. David Luke, Goethe: Faust Part I, 17.
66
Chapter One
However, this metaphorical episode is not isolated. It is fresh in our

minds as readers when Faust, refusing to accept his exclusion both from heavenly harmony and from the Earth Spirits lesser totality of natural forces and
humanity,59 challenges the cosmic system with his festive solemn greeting
and the chalice of poison he has brewed for himself (7346). What follows
is an aural shock, both for Faust and for readers, even more so for a potential
theatre audience; this time music comes suddenly and loudly to the forefront.
For the heavenly powers respond to the challenge: they pervade, not to say
invade, the earthly sphere with their harmony (737ff.), an irruption signalled by church bells and choral singing (Glockenklang und Chorgesang).
But it is immediately apparent that we are faced with an alternative version
of the traditional harmonious universe. For one thing, this music is not a
verbal figure of speech, but literally music, and polyphonic music at that.
Apart from the bells, and Fausts reference to choirs/choruses (746), Goethe
specifies (as in oratorios and cantatas) the roles of the different voices: the
angels; the women (who, according to Biblical accounts, went to the borrowed tomb to embalm Christs body and found it missing); and the disciples
now left behind on earth by the risen Christ. And Faust hears their singing
as polyphonic not this time merely as structured, but as including voices of
different timbre and pitch: welch tiefes Summen, welch ein heller Ton (742)
[what a deep resonance, a bright high tone]. So although they are associated with the traditional cosmic harmony by Fausts epithets (Himmelstne
(763), Himmelslieder (783)), the kind of heaven they represent is specifically the Christian one, as is immediately clear from the text of their song:
Christ ist erstanden (737) [Christ is arisen] and from its tonal context, the
Glockenton (773). The pagan tradition ofPlato and the Pythagoreans has
been overlaid by the Christian theology and forms familiar and dominant in
Goethes epoch. This music is presented as an Easter hymn, and its text spells
out exactly how the new harmony between heaven and earth is envisaged in
Christian theology.60 What is more, there are no visual counterparts to this
See Faust, 5019; where the Earth Spirits operations are described in terms of symmetrical movements very similar to those ofthe Heavenly Powers, but entirely without
the musical or other connotations of harmony.
60 In fact, the hymn covers the message of Whitsun as well as Easter. The risen Christ
redeems mortals from original sin die verderblichen erblichen Mngel (739f.); his
59
67
vision, golden or otherwise. Paul Requadt suggests that this emphasises the
transcendental quality ofthe scene; but as we saw, this is not gnzlich immaterieller Klang [wholly immaterial sound], but earthly singing with basses and
trebles, with the bells of (we assume) a nearby church61 and the personae of
both song and story clearly human, apart from Christ. Nonetheless, since the
previous vision is so recent in our reading memory, this one may well strike us
as spiritual by contrast with Fausts sensuous delight in the earlier vision; the
love between heaven and earth depicted here has no sensuous components,
though the music has.
Even so far, two things are becoming apparent. One is the way in which
Fausts earlier vision ofthe cosmic harmony, and the traditional antecedent it
evoked, are coming into play as part ofthe context for interpretation ofthis
second version of cosmic harmony. Already we can see beginning a network
of metaphorical allusion, cited by Stern, Max Black and others as one of the
many possibilities of metaphorical thinking.62 The second is the roughness of
the distinction made in this chapter between an older concept of harmony
emphasising system and symmetry, and a newer one emphasising the diversity of the individual components of the harmonious whole. Manifestly,
basses, trebles and the personae they represent are diverse, each contributing
something different to the whole Easter story of redemption. But I shall stick
with the distinction nonetheless, because of the importance of the earlier
conventional associations with cosmic harmony as point of reference for this
newer version, updated to the Christian era. For Faust ends up in the same
suffering and death are redemptive (heilsam); and because he has risen from the womb
of death and decay to a new life (797ff.), mortals may break their bonds, and the disciples particularly need not feel bereft: though he is reunited with the Divine Creator
(schaffender Freude nah), his humanity (Sterblicher, 738) means his spirit is with them
(Euch ist er da, 807). See esp. Schne, VII,2, 227229; here special emphasis is laid
on the angels text as to be sung, and on the precise detail of the Biblical passages and
Christian doctrine evoked for much of this episode.
61 Goethes Faust I, Munich: Fink, 1972, 87ff ; cp. better focused comment in Schne
(227ff.)
62 See esp. JosefStern, 16681, and Max Black: Metaphors can be supported by specially
constructed systems of implications, as well as by accepted commonplaces they can
be made to measure and need not be reach-me-downs (section Metaphor in Models
and Metaphors, Cornell University Press 1962, 43).
68
Chapter One
position as the human entity in both Pythagorean cosmos and Pansophic

Macrocosm he cannot perceive himself as part of the harmony. This time,
however, it is his own choice which excludes him. As Requadt points out, this
is a cosmic harmony which positively invites Faust, by the redemptive agency
ofthe risen Christ, to be included in it: das Himmlische an dieser Musik ist
ihre Totalitt [the heavenly characteristic of this music is its totality]63. But
he cannot believe in the Gospel message expounded in its text:
Die Botschaft hr ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube
Zu jenen Sphren wag ich nicht zu streben,
Woher die holde Nachricht tnt,64
[Indeed I hear the words, but I have no belief
I dare not strive towards those gracious spheres
From which this Gospel sounds].
Therefore he yet again turns away, from the spheres which sound this
Christian harmony. However, his reaction to the music as earthly church
music is different from his reaction to its text. To his mind, harmony recedes,
and with it all notions of cosmic structure (76984). The singing and the
Sabbath bells become merely sweet sound, evoking nostalgic memories of
times when he did have faith and did feel at one not just with heaven, but
with the natural world at Easter, in Spring. To this world he now turns; and
though the singing still continues, he hears it differently (783f.). This music
has now acquired different connotations, and moves for the moment outside
the scope of this chapter.
We are not confined as readers to the same perspective as Faust in either of
the episodes just considered. And at two further points in the play, the traditional concept of cosmic harmony is both evoked and significantly modified to
present the cosmic context in which Fausts existence is to be seen. The first of
these occurs very near the beginning ofPart I, in the Prolog im Himmel. We are
presented with the heavenly hierarchy: the Lord is enthroned with the heavenly hosts around him, and the three archangels (Raphael, Gabriel, Michael)
step forward, each present a solemn stanza of praise, and complete it with a
joint chorus echoing Raphaels opening stanza (24370). This opens the frame
63 Op.cit., 87.
64 Lines 765ff.
69
for the Lords dialogue with the fallen angel, Mephistopheles, in which they
make the wager over Faust, the exemplary human being below on the earth;
and the Lord finally turns to the archangels as die echten Gttershne (344)
[the true Sons ofGod], giving them instruction before Heaven closes and the
archangels go their separate ways (349). At several points, the language ofthis
section refers us to the harmony of the spheres. Raphael begins with it:
Die Sonne tnt nach alter Weise
In Brdersphren Wettgesang (243f.).
[As ever on its way the Sun resounds
Among its brother spheres the rival songs]
There are references to the prescribed orbit ofthe sun as a Donnergang (i.e.
engendering loud sound as it moves, 245f.), and to the Sphrenlauf (258)
(features which occurred in Goethes early parody ofLavaters source for his
view of eternity). And the inter-textual reference to the Biblical Book ofJob,
which provides the model for the Lords wager on Faust with Mephisto, also
directs us to a cosmology in which symmetry and song are combined:
Wo warestu/ da ich die Erden grndet? Weissestu/ wes jr das mas gesetzt hat? oder
wer vber sie ein Richtschnur gezogen hat? Da mich die Morgensterne miteinander
lobeten/ vnd jauchzeten alle Kinder Gottes.65
[Where wast thou when I laid the foundations ofthe Earth Who hath laid the measures thereof or who hath stretched the line upon it? [] When the morning stars sang
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?]
In accordance with the traditional image of cosmic harmony, there is a great

deal ofbalanced movement and symmetrical contrast, a chain offorces (261f.)
verbalised by Gabriel and Michael in their description ofthe forces of nature
on the planet earth below them (25167).66 But these heavenly creatures are
Martin Luther, Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch, Wittenberg 1545, repr. Darmstadt
1973 (Das Buch Hiob, XXXVIII), vol.I, 957f. Cf. the King James Authorised Version
( Job 38, 47).
66 See Schne, VII,2, 1647, esp.165f., on Pythagorean models and relation to Aristotles
doubts about the audibility of the spheres. Also Trunz, 493, Requadt, 40f., and esp.
W. Ro, Vorspiel auf dem Theater und Prolog im Himmel [], Wirkendes Wort 12
(1962),238.
65
70
Chapter One
not part ofthe harmonious cosmos; they contemplate it, and praise its eternal
durability, herrlich wie am ersten Tag, without comprehending (ergrnden)
Creation or the Creator of these unbegreiflich hohen Werke (248f., 269).
Indeed, they are promptly informed twice that their view ofthe ordered and
enduring cosmic harmony is inadequate. Mephisto first opposes his counterperspective:
Von Sonn und Welten wei ich nichts zu sagen,
Ich sehe nur, wie sich die Menschen plagen (279f.)
[Of Suns and Worlds I find no words to speak,
I only see how human beings wreak
Confusion on each other]
and his countering musical metaphor, the altes Liedchen [same old song]
produced by the erratic grasshopper motions of man (28790). And the
Lord then bids them include in their enduring thoughts of celebration and
praise the unsymmetrical and incomplete, the partial (in both senses) and
imperfect, which constitutes human nature (3449) the sphere to which
the play then moves. Cosmic harmony, in short, is to include man; and symmetry is not enough.
Some critics have been much exercised over whether the Archangels
opening hymn should be sung or merely declaimed;67 but there are two reasons why this seems to me to miss the point. The first depends on an external
antecedent which, as far as I know, Canisius is the first and so far the only
commentator to point out.68 The Kabbalistic writings ofRabi Eleasar contain
a Creation myth in which angels are appointed to sing praises ofheaven during
the day and ofthe earth by night; but it is said that when human beings also
sing, gewinnen die Oberen an Kraft, da sie erkennen und ergreifen knnen,
was sie vorher nicht vermocht.69 Canisius applies this to the Poets image of
Einklang in the Vorspiel, and to Goethes comments on Bach [cited above];
but it seems to me almost to paraphrase the Lords instruction to the Angels at
67 See e.g. Atkins, 17, Trunz, 493, Requadt, 40, Cotti, 55.
68 Canisius, 215f.
69 Sefer ha-Sofar, II, fol. 18b, Die oberen und unteren Gesnge; in Ernst Mller (ed.),
Der Sohar: das heilige Buch der Kabbala nach dem Urtext, sel. and tr. Mller, Wien: H.
Glanz, 1932, repr. 1982. Cit. Canisius, 216.
71
the end ofProlog im Himmel that the dauernden Gedanken oftheir hymns
need to be supplemented by the musica humana, or die unteren Gesnge in
Rabi Eleasars words. In the light ofthis, it would be fitting for the Archangels
to sing or chant, and for the Lord and Mephisto to speak as they put forward
their respective views ofthe cosmos below. The second reason for finding this
controversy inappropriate involves intratextual reference. If we look at this
passage in its textual context, we find ourselves not at the heart of heavenly
harmony, but at the court of its Creator, surveying his realm. The old view of
cosmic harmony with its symmetrical perfection is a topic of discussion and
the source for several verbal metaphors; but it is a distant sight (Anblick)
first expounded by the Archangels (who do not engage with it emotionally,
as Faust does) and then subjected to critical appraisal as incomplete. Any
music involved is very much secondary to the rhetoric of the cosmological debate. There are many indications of the rhetorical dynamics necessary,
especially a marked difference of metre and tone between the Archangels
stanzas and the rest of the scene, in which the Lord converses (sprechen)
with Mephisto before turning to instruct the Archangels. This is made palpable not only in the change of line-length, and from stanzas to continuous
verse, as the Lord and Mephisto begin their exchanges (271343), but also
in contrasting vocabulary register and rhyme scheme: Mephisto is allocated
colloquial levels and slightly doggerel rhyming couplets, whereas the Lords
speech remains predominantly closer to the Archangels gravity and to their
alternating rhymes. The listener needs to hear these changes in rhythm, rhyme
and tonal quality; and also needs to hear distinctly the different arguments
the speakers convey. So overall it does, paradoxically, seem possible to argue
that the formal and thematic features ofthis passage are realisable both with
singing (of the three stanzas and chorus) and without it (e.g. with hymnic
declamation of all three angelic stanzas and chorus).70 Interestingly in this
70 Again, Schne is illuminating in his analysis. Although he speaks ofthe im hohen Ton
gehaltenen oratoriumsartigen Eingang (165), he notes in his prefatory remarks that
Goethe took great pains in the Ausgabe letzter Hand to organise the text on the page
so that spoken and sung passages, and significant changes in verse form, were clearly
differentiated, and sung sections clearly indented ; but that there were zweideutige Flle
which had to be decided ad hoc (VII, 2, 92f.) Following Goethes edition, the text of
the Archangels paean in the Frankfurter Ausgabe is not indented.
72
Chapter One
context, one ofthe two 1980s British productions ofFaust I and II based on
R.D. Macdonalds translation did not depend on music, while the other made
a special feature of it.71 There are a fair number of these either way passages
in Goethes work, and they will need to be dealt with more fully later. But
meanwhile what we have seen of the Prolog shows that we cannot simply
assume that all other-worldly angels, spirits, and hovering figures sing,72
or even that supernatural beings either sing, or speak in song-like metres.73
According to the possibilities set out above, the Lord does not sing, and even
the Archangels do not necessarily need to. We shall need to return to this issue
of song/speech later, in relation to other metaphorical scenarios.
The second occasion on which the traditional cosmic harmony is evoked
as the context for Fausts life occurs at the opening of Part II (Anmutige
Gegend). This time we see it from the point of view of the Earth and the
order of Nature; it is the Elves, rather than the planets, who hover about
the exhausted Faust, gracefully rather than symmetrically, and in small compass (schwebend bewegt, anmutige kleine Gestalten). Their movements are
accompanied and ordered by a light polyphony led by Ariel, the spirit of
the air; his opening song evoking the restorative natural powers of sleep and
growth is accompanied by wind chimes (i.e. his element, and an instrument
played by a natural force). The Elves then sing and move singly, in pairs and
larger groups, alternating and combining (SD 4634), as they work through
four stanzas representing the four watches of the night (4626, 463465).
Nonetheless, the traditional, symmetrical cosmic order is not absent. It is
several times evoked in the language of this scene, especially in the second
stanza of the Elves song: the sacred vertical chain of heavenly bodies, great
stars and small, near and distant, their heavenly light mirrored by their earthly
reflection in the lake, and the whole symmetry presided over by the greatest star visible at night, the moon (46429). There is ordered [horizontal]
sequence, too: the sacred light of the Sun will unfailingly appear when the
71
Glasgow 8 November 1985 and London 28 March 1988 respectively; see editors note
to R.D. Macdonald, Faust: the Play in Production, Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to
Goethes Faust, Parts I and II, Camden House 2001, 283.
72 Cotti, 55, Requadt, 40.
73 Ritchie Robertson, Literary Techniques and Asthetic Texture, in Bishop, Companion
Faust, 10.
73
four watches of the night have run their course; if in the Prolog the Sun had
a vorgeschriebene Reise [allotted course], now we are told that the earth
also is bestndig (4682) [constant], turning to meet the light which comes
over it stufenweise (4701) [step by step]. And the music of these planetary
movements is audible to the Nature spirits, if not to Faust:
Tnend wird fr Geistesohren
[Sounding clear for spirit ears
Schon der neue Tag geboren. (4667f.) See, the new-born day appears]
Perhaps because ofthis traditional imagery, the scene is sometimes taken for
a full-scale sound-and-light depiction ofthe musica mundana.74 But rather it
represents a lesser variant of cosmic harmony, the harmonies of earthly Nature.
The movements ofthe Elves, not those ofthe planets, make the music here;
and their movements are literally accompanied by polyphonic music (it is
audible to us if not to Faust), as opposed to the traditionally inaudible music
of the planets. From this standpoint, the sun, the dominant star of the universe, is too great for this harmonious natural microcosm, and its direct light
is unbearable for the Elves. Accordingly, Goethe extends the original cosmic
harmony metaphor even further by representing the Sun not by even greater
forms of harmonious tnen, but by musical instruments playing outside the
conventions of polyphonic tonality altogether, by overwhelming noise:
Ungeheures Getse verkndet das Herannahen der Sonne
Welch Getse bringt das Licht!
Es trommetet, es posaunet,
Auge blinzt und Ohr erstaunet,
Unerhrtes hrt sich nicht [](4671ff.).
[Immense noise announces the approach of the Sun.
With what noise the light is coming!
What a trumpeting and drumming,
Eye is dazzled, ear dumbfounded,
Mystery, things we may not hear]
74 See e.g. G.L. Pinette, Ariels Gesang und die Musica Mundana, Festschrift fr Helmut
Motekat, Mnchen 1970, 36ff., and Tnendes Licht in Goethes Faust, Jahrbuch des
Wiener Goethe-Vereins, NF 76 (1972), 5ff.
74
Chapter One
Paul Friedlnder has pointed out the antecedents ofthe solar imagery in Dante,
and its particular connection with the Neo-Platonic tradition of thought,
including the fifteenth-century Florentine Marsilio Ficino.75 And it seems
to have been from Ficino that Goethe drew the parallel between perception
of musical harmony and perception of the suns light as symbols of Mans
apprehension of cosmic order beyond his senses.76 As with Leibniz, musical
harmony is not the only analogy deployed. Here, Goethe has used the musical and the visual side by side, to depict a harmonious natural world within
the greater cosmos. From this environment the restored Faust then emerges,
now willing to accept the smaller sphere as enough for his continuing quest
(4679ff.). He speaks in iambic pentameters, a solemn measure as Trunz notes,
and with a striking terza rima rhyme scheme which echoes Dante.77 Again,
we have a sustained musical metaphor deployed to present a cosmology; and
again this is a version, an updating ofthe old analogue. The cosmology, the
main visual metaphor, the verse form and indeed the musical form (if we
count Goethes experience ofPalestrinas polyphonic motets in Rome, though
this allusion may not have been accessible to his contemporaries) all refer
us to fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Italy and to Neo Platonism. And the
negative implications of the old analogue cosmic harmony is inaccessible
to man are neutralised by the Neo-Platonist shift of emphasis to the phenomenal world: everything our senses perceive is sacred in the sense that it is
an analogue of the divine and universal, and we can thus access these realms
through the world of phenomena.78 That is the gist of Fausts new insight
Rhythmen und Landschaften im Zweiten Teil des Faust, Weimar 1953, 7ff., 11ff. See
also Schne, VII,2, 4048, esp.404 and 407f. on the Gesang and the ungeheures
Getse, which Goethe did wish to have audible in the theatre. Also Pinette, Tnendes
Licht,5ff.
76 See Pinette, Tnendes Licht, 5ff., Musica Mundana, 37ff.; and Goethes Farbenlehre
(Historischer Teil), AA 16, 259ff., 328ff. Goethes own reading ofPlatos Timaeus seems
to have been less concerned with harmony than with questions of optics and colour
perception; on these, cf. Schne, 409f., Trunz, 534f.
77 Trunz, 533f., Schne, VII,2, 408f.
78 For this optimistic vein ofNeo-Platonism, see e.g. Shaftesburys dialogue The Moralists:
A Philosophical Rhapsody: All Natures Wonders serve to excite and perfect this Idea
oftheir Author. Tis here he suffers us to see, and even converse with him, in a manner
sutable [sic] to our Frailty. Part III, Section 1, Characteristicks [], vol.2, London 1773
75
75
as he begins afresh; and we have just seen it realised in the foregrounding

through musical setting of the harmonies of the natural world, and in the
colours which surge into the pleasant landscape as the Himmelsklarheit of
the sun descends into the valleys (468992).
By the time we reach this fourth instance of metaphorical reference
to the older idea of cosmic harmony, we have the other three as part of the
context in which we interpret this episode. The Lord does not reappear and
the phrase does not recur; but here too die Sonne tnt nach alter Weise, we
know the wider context within which this natural microcosm is now revealed,
and within which Faust is to pursue his quest. And we see that whereas Faust
rejected or could not participate in the earlier manifestations of cosmic order,
he is now both able and willing to do so so we do perceive this as a moment
of clarity and progress.
But a more fundamental perspective is also now beginning to open. In all
these instances the old idea of cosmic harmony has kept, first and foremost,
its association with cosmology; it is a metaphor for a world view. However,
it is presented as a metaphor which, though still live for Goethes contemporaries, is old-fashioned, and no longer linked to a system in which they
believe it never appears with the status of an absolute. Faust in his study
and the Lord in His heaven criticise the world view it conveys as inadequate.
In the two scenes where it enables a new beginning for Faust in his quest
to understand the universe, the world view it carries (though still discernible) is overlaid with later cosmologies (Christian, Neo-Platonist), and its
salient characteristics are modified: symmetry becomes something closer
to ordered movement and arrangement, the four watches of the night represent physical, rather than mathematical, proportions. The analogue of
musical harmony, in whatever form, is usually set alongside visual imagery
for cosmic harmony (this is true of all instances considered except the Easter
Chorus), and thus made relative. It seems to me that this usage puts Goethes
deployment of cosmic harmony firmly into a category recently defined as
self-conscious anachronism;79 drawing readers critical attention not only to
[first ed. 1709], 370f. This and many other passages also refer to the planetary system and
to the Sun, as Center [sic] of this planetary World! Mighty Being, Brightest Image,
and Representative of the Almighty! (ibid.).
79 Franziska Schler, Progress and Restorative Utopia, in Bishop, op.cit., 183.
76
Chapter One
this remote past cosmology, but also to those of later ages and of their own
day. As such, the analogue of cosmic harmony becomes one of his many
means to achieve a vividly immediate dramatic presentation of the Past in
the Present, the broad diachronic perspective on Western traditions and
habits of thought which has received growing appreciation in recent decades.80 But other fields of musical reference contribute to this as well, and
to them we must now turn.
80 See esp. R.H. Stephenson, The Diachronic Solidity of Goethes Faust, in Bishop,
op.cit. 244, 247, 263f. and passim. This offers a review both of ways in which Goethe
attempted to trace the ramifications of [] what we know as Western culture, and of
the considerable critical work which has shed light on them.
Chapter Two
A Negative Metaphor of Harmony:

Music as Disharmony, Discord, Dissonance
Like harmony, the idea of music as a disorderly and subversive force is ancient,
going back at least to Plato and Aristotle. But it has usually been less conceptually clear; and perhaps for this reason more controversial and sometimes
highly charged. R.A. Sharpe acknowledges the possibility of uneven transmission of ideas when he comments that:
Our concepts of music and of the arts in general are concepts with a history, concepts
which change with other changes in society [] A result ofthis is that at any one time,
a concept may contain [] ideas of different ancestry that may conflict.1
But the association of music and disorder existed alongside its opposite from
a very early stage. And although the association has proved tenacious and
powerful, the concepts through which it was articulated and the connotations they carried have varied considerably through the ages. This chapter
deals with associations of disorder attached to music or phenomena perceived
as lacking the qualities ofharmony proportion, coordination, or agreeable
sound. In other associations of music with disorder, the point of reference
is language; these language-orientated negative metaphors are dealt with in
Chapters Three and Four.
Philosophy of Music: An Introduction, McGill/Queens University Press, 2004, 166.
78
Chapter Two
Disharmony, discord, dissonance2

Although these concepts are defined in terms of their opposites (harmony,
concord, consonance), they have not traditionally been regarded as equal
opposites of the idea of harmony.3 Neither Plato nor Aristotle has much
to say about discord as such, despite considerable interest in the mechanics
of sound, voice and hearing.4 This seems to be because both were chiefly
interested in harmonious phenomena, in mathematically based relations and
in the scientifically accessible. Aristotle describes colours that depend on
well-ratioed numbers as like concords in their domain, whilst other colours
and sounds are dismissed as not in numbers, or in some incommensurable
relation of excess and deficiency.5 However, the topic recurs frequently in
the work of their pupils and commentators, through whom their ideas were
passed to Western Europe; and from these it is clear that discordant features
were not conceived as such in absolute terms, but as heard within the context
of a particular mode or style.6 A note sounded discordant or concordant in
2
4
5
6
These three terms are grouped together because between them they cover the range of
qualities opposed to various aspects ofharmony. In modern English, they are to some
extent interchangeable; the OED gives both musical and extra-musical senses for all
three. But disharmony carries general want of harmony or agreement as its primary
sense, and the musical connotations (discord, dissonance) as secondary meaning. With
the other two, this priority is reversed; and both Barker and NHDM as technical writers on music use discord and dissonance, but not disharmony (cf. Shorter OED, 1973
repr. 1991; NHDM dissonance and cross-references; Barker, op.cit. vols I and II, index
under discord). It therefore seems apt here to use disharmony and its cognates to
signify something at odds with a general order or overall structure, where the musical
reference is relegated to the background; discord to signify something at odds with
its musical and/or general context, with the secondary idea of unpleasant sound as a
symptom of this dislocation; and dissonance where the idea of unpleasant sound is
primary, and the idea of dislocated order secondary.
Grapa (104f., 130f.) makes this point chiefly in connection with Diderot and Rousseau;
but it seems generally true after the seventeenth century and sometimes before cf.,
in discussions of harmony, Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the
Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 63f., Hollander, 332ff.
See esp. Barker, vol. II, 5365, 6684.
De Sensu, 43940, Barker II, 74 and notes, also 66f.
For these writers, their provenance and their channels of influence, see section introductions to Barker I,205ff., II, 119ff. On the various harmoniai, see vol.I, 163ff., II, 1417;
and on the related idea of tonoi, II, 1727.
79
relation to the intervals around it; which meant that the same note could
be discordant in one musical context, concordant in another.7 Furthermore,
the idea of concord required that the two notes ofthe interval be not merely
attuned (i.e. with vibration frequencies which brought them accurately within
the range of the given mode), but also equal in prominence to the ear:
Concordance is the coincidence and blending of two notes that differ in height and
depth of pitch [] when a high and a low note are plucked, and present to the hearing
one single blend [] then it is called concordant. But ifthe hearing apprehends the lower
note, or the higher, to a greater degree, this sort of interval is non-concordant.8
The idea ofbeautiful or ugly sound (consonance or dissonance) is mentioned

occasionally in connection with concord/discord9 (and may simply have been
taken for granted); but the idea of concord as unified blending, and discord
as unreconciled entities sounding together, is reiterated frequently and seems
to have been prominent. Aristides Quintilianus reasserts it in his compilation
of musical knowledge De Musica (2nd4th century AD):
Concordant notes are [] such that when they are struck simultaneously, the melody
is no more conspicuous in the higher than in the lower: discordant notes are [] such
that when they are struck simultaneously the character ofthe melody properly belongs
to the one or the other;
and Barker points out that it can be traced back to ideas in Plato, Aristotle
and several others10.
It thus seems that discordant intervals and harsh sounds were acceptable,
even expected, ifthey occurred in the context of a suitable mode, e.g. the war-
9
10
The note nete, for example, had been used in the accompaniment as a discord with
paranete and a concord with mese, but avoided in the main melody which required
only concords. See pseudo-Plutarchian treatise De Musica, which paraphrased and
commented on Plato and Aristotle among others: Barker, I, 2235.
Barker II, 233f. The quotation is from a minor author cited by Porphyry, a noted NeoPlatonist; see II, 22931, On attuning, see Barker II, 168f. (Aristoxenus), 214f. (Adrastus),
and 283 (Ptolemy), all of whom wrote around the 1st3rd centuries AD, and sought to
combine both the mathematical and the empirical approaches to music theory.
Ptolemy, Harmonica I,4, Barker II, 284.
Vol.II, p.409, and esp. note 58; II, p.233, note 105; also e.g. Aristotle on mixture (De
Sensu), Barker II, p.75 and notes 246.
80
Chapter Two
like Phrygian, or the Dionysian style involving aulos music;11 or as part of

a melodic sequence enabling progression towards a concord.12 But Barkers
documents also indicate clearly that by the time of Plato and Aristotle the
segregation of modes was much loosened in both theory and practice.13 And
if theorists were searching for ways to combine more than one mode, and
musicians had the skill and the instruments to modulate between one mode
and another ifthey chose,14 it seems unlikely that such practices were always
regarded as lamentable degeneration. Yet Plato and Aristotle did so regard
them, particularly in the case of singer and accompaniment. Their reasons
for doing so involved several factors, some of which (song text and chosen
rhythm) will be discussed later in this chapter. The main point of interest
here is that discord begins to acquire metaphorical sense in connection with
disregard of modal conventions. Accompanists played the same tune as the
singer, but not necessarily in unison (at the same pitch) as had originally been
usual. They could play an octave higher or a third below (consonant intervals); but they might add melodic embellishments of their own, including
discords, and thus step out of coordination with the singer and out of their
11
12
13
14
This emerges clearly from the pseudo-Plutarchian compendium On Music (1st2nd c. AD),
which shows extensive selectiveness of modes and intervals within their range, as well
as of instrument and of vocal style, according to genre and occasion (Barker I, 21927).
Aristides Quintilianus (1st4th century AD) presents styles, modes and tonoi in more
sophisticated and differentiated groupings, but still according to perceived character
(Barker, II, 432f. and notes). The kind of actual music denoted by these terms is hard to
determine. E.g. the Phrygian mode was usually held to be harsher-sounding and brisker
than others, to involve the aulos and to have connections with Dionysian genres, yet Plato
allows it in his state as representing bravery and steady fortitude (Barker I, 1417, 2846;
Republic 399a, Barker I, 131,167). Athenaus calls the Lydian mode shrill, and the Aeolian
lofty and bold which turns out to mean suitable for drinking songs and everyone who
is boisterous (Barker I, 282, 284). Barkers comments suggest (loc cit resp,) that these
discrepancies are partly due to relative pitch (the Lydian was high-pitched), and to variation in the instruments: the aulos especially could be anything between crude and loud
or low and sweet. Cf. Aristotle on Phrygian and Dionysian, in Politics, Barker I, 181.
Notes are discordant and not concordant if the interval between them is a tone or a
diesis [smaller than a tone]: for the tone and the diesis are an origin of concord, but
are not yet concord (Minor authors, Barker II, 213 and note 11, and Aristoxenus, II,139,
159f., 168).
Vol.I, 164ff., esp.167; vol.II, 15ff., 21ff.
Barker, I, 164f, II, 217.
81
allotted role as secondary player.15 The perceived infringement of expected

relations thus attaches strongly negative values to versatile musical skill, even
where unpleasant sounds are not involved. It is in this context that we need
to understand Platos preoccupation with what is right and lawful in music,
and his otherwise bizarre degree of loathing for the versatility of popular
musicians:
Enthralled beyond what is right by pleasure, they mixed lamentations with hymns and
paeans with dithyrambs, imitated aulos songs with their kithara songs and put everything together with everything else;
excesses which he writes off as disorderly Bacchic frenzy.16 Though much more
relaxed, Aristotle also considered carefully what music to allow for what purpose.17 Interestingly, the pseudo-Plutarchian treatise De Musica, written much
later (1st2nd centuryAD), mounts a spirited defence ofPlatos credentials as
musicologist, and of the discriminating deployment of harmoniai, concord
and discord by ancient musicians.18 Given the uncertain relation between the
philosophers ideological selectiveness and actual musical practice, and Platos
self-confessed reliance upon professional musicians,19 this may have been just
pious defence of convention. But convention it was, sufficiently established
to support metaphorical usage: Aristides Quintilianus (1st4th century AD)
uses discord to designate two incompatible lines of argument.20
Such conventional associations with harmony and disharmony persist
with remarkable consistency into Western Europe in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries,21 although diverse values may be attached to them.
Ruth HaCohen shows how, in Shakespeares Merchant of Venice, the idea of
15
Plato tries to reinstate the old unison accompaniment (Laws 812d, Barker I, 162f, notes
10512, esp. note 111; also I, 52f. Platos list of opposites put together (speed/slowness,
high and low pitch) fits the concept ofdiscord outlined above, but he does not use the
term.
16 Notably in Republic and Laws: Barker I, 127ff., 140ff., 1557.
17 Mainly in Politics; Barker I, 17082.
18 Barker I, 22031.
19 Republic, 399a400b, Barker I, 1314; and Barkers notes on Damon, the theorist on
whose ideas Plato relies most (I, 1689, II, 64f., esp. note 42.).
20 De Musica, Barker II, 392f., 533.
21 The debt of later writers to Antiquity is indicated by Christensen (op.cit., 26ff., 72ff.,
89f.; Salazar, 22f., 315, 60ff.; Grapa, 102ff., also Hollander passim.
82
Chapter Two
cosmic harmony and of harmonious music as its earthly model marks the
proprietary arrogance of Christian theology and culture; leaving Shylock
excluded as a Jew, a man who hath no music in himself , and Jessica, as a recent
convert, culturally adrift.22 And while she maintains an estranged distance
(I am never merry when I hear sweet music), Shylock finds Christian music
hideous dissonance, vile squealing.23 Hollander shows how later seventeenthcentury English literature tended to reduce both harmony and discord to
the merely mortal sphere. For example, in Drydens ode Song for St Ceciliass
Day (1687) and in his cantata Alexanders Feast (1697), the Biblical idea of
dissonant musical sound (the Last Trumpet) dissolving Creation has become a
sustained rhetorical conceit; the idea that music shall untune the sky becomes
merely the end of the myth of cosmic harmony, the end of the world of the
performance.24 In seventeenth-century Europe and in later English thought,
however, disharmony not only retains its stature but is presented as integral
to the harmonious system (cosmic, musical, or other), having a necessary
function within the harmonious whole. Leibniz analogy between discords
in music, shadow in painting, and evil in the universe is probably the most
famous example all being designed by their (M)maker to enhance the beauty
of their positive opposites, concord, light and goodness:
Quemadmodum Musicus non vult dissonantias per se, sed per accidens tantum, quando
ipsis postea correctis melodia perfectior redditur, quam sine ipsis fuisset, ita Deus non
vult peccata nisi sub conditione poenae corrigentis, et per accidens tantum, ut requisita
ad complendam seriei perfectionem
Je crois que Dieu a cr les choses dans la dernire perfection, quoyque cela ne
nous paroisse pas en regardant les parties de lunivers. Cest peu pres comme dans
la musique et dans la peinture, car les ombres et les dissonances relevent tellement le
reste; et le savant auteur de tels ouvrages tire un si grand avantage de ces imperfections
particulires pour la perfection totale de louvrage quil vaut beaucoup mieux de leur
22
Between Noise and Harmony: the Oratorical Moment in the Musical Entanglements
of Jews and Christians, Critical Inquir y32 (2006), 25077, esp.2506; cf. Merchant of
Venice V,1.
23 Ibid., and Act II, Sc.5.
24 Op.cit., 332ff., esp.404ff., 410ff.
83
donner place que de sen vouloir passer [] Je [] ne puis en expliquer le detail. Pour
cela, il faudroit connoistre lharmonie generale de lunivers, au lieu que nous ne connoissons quune tres petite partie.25
[ Just as the musician does not will dissonances as such, but virtually as incidental,
because when he has resolved them the melody is made more perfect than it would
have been without them, so also God does not will sins as such except with corrective
punishment, and virtually as incidental requisites for fulfilling the perfections of the
whole sequence [of actions] []
I believe that God has created things in their most perfect form, although that is
not apparent to us as we contemplate the universe in part. It is rather like music and
painting, because shadows and dissonances throw the rest into such sharp relief; and
the wise author of such works draws from these particular imperfections such a great
advantage for the perfection ofthe work in general that it is much more worthwhile to
give them room than to attempt to do without them [] I cannot explain in detail. For
that one would need to know the overall harmony of the universe, whereas we know
only a very small part.]
Although Leibniz retains Aristotles concept of harmonious perfection as

based on number and measurement, he also uses examples from geometry
(which he takes as part ofCreation) to show that even there not all relations
can be expressed in numbers, and that measurable and unmeasurable exist side
by side. So though he states elsewhere that music and symmetry are the pleasures closest to spiritual perfection,26 here he argues that God has preferred
a world of imperfect men and unmeasurable figures to an alternative perfect
world without them.27 This inclusive view of non-harmonious immeasurables emerges in Shaftesburys Characteristicks as well. Disharmony of various
sorts is sometimes contrasted with mathematically-based concord as in his
assertion that Knavery is mere Dissonance and Disproportion, at odds with
those Numbers which make the Harmony of a Mind,28 and in his defence of
Symmetry and Proportion as the founding principle of all things in Nature
Conversatio cum domino Stenonio de libertate, 27th Nov 1677, Libert et Optimum, section 5; and Dialogue avec Dobrzensky, 25th Jan 1695, Libert et Optimum section 22, in
Textes Indites, ed. Gaston Grua, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948, vol.I, 271
and note 33, 365f. resp.
26 La Flicit: Sagesse et Bonheur, VII, 11, ed.cit. vol.2, 580.
27 Dialogue avec Dobrzensky, ed.cit., vol.1,.3668.
28 Advice to an Author, I,iii (1710), ed.cit., vol.I, 207.
25
84
Chapter Two
and in Art.29 But elsewhere the harmonious world order is said to rest on a
broader idea of structure, a system of complementary opposites:
Tis [] from this Order of inferior and superior Things, that we admire the Worlds
beauty, founded thus on Contrarietys: whilst from such various and disagreeing
Principles, a universal Concord is establishd.30
Here disharmonious entities assume the role of necessary shadows, providing

the different other required for the overall harmony of opposites.
In all the instances considered so far, the full opposite ofharmony is not
disharmony, which can only exist in the context of a system, but chaos i.e.
something not only out of number, in Platos phrase, but out of any kind of
system. Such a state is often presented in terms of anti-music: conflicting
sounds, overwhelming or hideous noise i.e. strong discord and dissonance
in a musical sense, cacophony. As we saw, Plato complains of the moral and
social disorder embodied for him in the conflicting musical genres and disorganised sounds of popular musicians, even though the result is musically
pleasing. Shylocks vile squealing denotes a rejected world-view which threatens his own; the Last Trumpet, Biblical or derived, is not just a nasty noise
but a terrifying sound denoting the end of an ordered cosmos. Undoubtedly,
the perception of music as an entity with qualities at odds with the cosmic
order depends heavily on its capacity to differ from and to exceed the scope
of language, factors to be considered below. But musics perceived capacity
to break out of rules and systems, to suggest a different order, or even the
breakdown and absence of order, is made strikingly evident in associations
with unresolved discord and dissonance. At best, a system (musical, cosmic,
or anything between) must be re-devised to resolve and contain it. At worst,
discord and dissonance represent a force which threatens not just the listeners
ears, but the very coherence of mind, society and world.
29 Ibid., 353.
30 The Moralists, A Rhapsody (1709), ed.cit., vol. II, 214.
85
French and Italian thought:

Disharmony as part of the cosmic order
In learned French and Italian seventeenth-century discourse on music, the
perceived threat posed by music apparently recedes as confidence in rational
systemisation grows. For example, in his detailed study of Le culte de la voix
au XVIIe sicle, P.J. Salazar shows Athanasius Kircher ofthe Collegio Romano,
the Jesuit theologian and theorist Marin Mersenne, and the Italian philosopher and anatomist Petrus Gassendi all firmly encapsulating discord within
the harmonious systems of music and of the cosmos.31 But an undercurrent
of suspicion remains. Although the latter two authors are moving towards
scientific analysis (of musical acoustics and vocal anatomy respectively), we still
find Mersenne extolling musical unison as a purer expression ofharmony with
God than harmonious diversity, and defending the bass voice register as plus
proche du silence et du repos, and thus a suitable foundation for music.32
As discourse on music became more scientific and more culturally central in eighteenth-century France, confidence in rational systemisation grew
further; and musics disorderly force appeared for a time less threatening,
even a positive asset. The most famous systematiser, Jean-Philippe Rameau
(16831764), sought to prove that all music was foundationally harmonic
in structure; he considered harmony separately from counterpoint for the
first time, and tried to identify quantifiable principles which governed all
musical phenomena.33 He pursued what Thomas Christensen terms a dialectic between musical and non-musical ideas,34 developing metaphorical
usage alongside scientific. But because he tried to reconcile so many disparate elements in his thought, and wrote opaquely, Rameau did not become
31
Usually alongside light and shadow in painting; see Salazar, op.cit. Paris 1995, 29ff., 55ff.,
66ff. and passim. They predate Leibniz; Salazar suggests Epicurus as their source (71).
32 Salazar, 158ff.; [closer to silence and rest], ibid. 58f. and note 38.
33 In Rameaus Trait de lharmonie, 1722, the ratios of a divided string; in later work the
relations between harmonics set up by the vibrations of a corps sonore: see Christensen,
46, 1231, 63, 13542, 1657, and passim.
34 Op.cit., 4.
86
Chapter Two
popular.35 Instead, individual ideas entered mainstream discourse with powerful ideological associations. Harmony once again became a buzzword,
complete with pre-scientific associations of wholeness.36 Dissonant intervals
now became not merely stepping stones in a harmonic progression, but a
necessary energising element, a percussive force which drove the sequence
towards consonant resolution: Rameau associated consonance with equilibrium and stasis, dissonance with motion.37 And the idea of motion in music,
progression through a sequence of chords, is presented not only as the source
of melody but also as a means to modulate between modes (chiefly major
and minor) hitherto separate, even including chromatic and enharmonic
intervals outside the usual range.38 This livelier harmony, in which disharmonious sounds drove musical progression forward from lesser consonance
to fuller consonance, proved appealing despite Rameaus parallel attempts to
quantify it as a hierarchical order, with minor derived from and secondary
to the major mode.39
When Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Encyclopdistes set about demolishing Rameaus credibility, they did so partly by means of another metaphor
altogether: music as language, as expression. Nevertheless, dissonance now
became something of a buzzword too, and, paradoxically, gradually regained
its status as the threat of potential chaos. As Caroline Jacot Grapa explains, the
question of relations between perceived norm and perceived difference were
urgently relevant in every sphere from politics to private life; including the
problematic status of idiotismes in language, dissonance/discord in music,
the non-conformist in cultural, social or national life; i.e. in general le valeur
de certains effets de rupture dun ordre, and the even more difficult question
35
36
37
38
39
Christensen, 1215, 236ff., 301ff and passim; although Christensen shows that he drew
extensively on Descartes, Mersenne and others: 7786, 135ff., and passim.
Christensen, 26; this at a time when predominant taste in music was moving away from
counterpoint towards homophonic structures; see esp. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and
Ideology in Eighteenth-century Music, 163ff., and Christensen, 31, 63.
Christensen, 636, 106ff., 123ff., 185ff.
See esp. Christensen on modulation, 16975, and on chromatic and enharmonic genres,
199208.
Christensen, pp.185ff., 1979.
87
of entities which appeared to fall outside any norms at all.40 At first, though
the Encyclopdistes disagreed with Rameau,41 they seem in several respects to
take up and develop his thought. Rousseaus articles in the Encyclopdie, for
example, also treat consonnance and dissonnance as interdependent factors within harmony, and equally applicable in music and in other fields.42
Like Leibniz, he envisages harmony as relations both vertically and horizontally, i.e. consonant notes of different pitch heard simultaneously, and
also a sequence of such chords. In a sequence of chords he follows Rameaus
idea of dissonant sound as enabling transition from one harmony to the next,
enhancing individual harmonies by contrast, and driving the sequence forward
to make a connected whole:
Il ne suffit pas de faire entendre la dissonance, il faut la rsoudre; vous ne choquez
dabord loreille, que pour le flater ensuite plus agrablement []
Il faut un sens, il faut de la liaison dans la musique [] la dissonance est donc un
son tranger qui sajote ceux dun accord pour lier cet accord dautres.43
[It is not enough to introduce dissonant sounds, they must also be resolved; you are
only assailing the ear at first in order to flatter it more agreeably later there must be a
sense in music, things must hang together; for dissonance is an alien sound added to
those of a chord to link this chord with others].
Most strikingly, Diderots satire Le Neveu de Rameau, though only published

later and posthumously, brought to a head the issues of rational system versus
inspired eccentricity, society versus loner, harmonious totality versus lhomme
dissonant.44 And here the threat of chaos seems ever present; Grapa points
40 [The value of certain effects of rupturing a system]; Grapa, LHomme [et le] dissonant
au dix-huitime sicle, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997 (the title reads differently on
spine and title page), 17, 1722, 127ff. and passim.
41 Christensen, 13, 21095. Unlike Rousseau, DAlembert took issue with Rameaus concepts of dissonance and harmony on mathematical grounds (Christensen, 2725).
42 In effect treating dissonance as a synonym of disharmony and discord; see Encyclopdie:
Dictionnaire Raisonn des Sciences, des Arts et des Mtiers, ed. D. Diderot & J. le R.
dAlembert, Paris 1754, vol.4, Consonnance, 49f., Dissonnance, 1049f.; vol.8,
Harmonie, 50ff. also Grappa, 12731.
43 Ed.cit., Dissonance, vol.4, 1050; Harmonie, Vol.8, 501.
44 Andr Billy gives the complicated history of this dialogues composition and publication, explaining that Diderot worked on it at various times between 1761 and 1774;
Goethes German translation appeared in 1805, and the first French version in 1821.
88
Chapter Two
out that this nephew is a literary embodiment of Platos nightmare other,

the irresistible musician/poet who has the expertise to become anything
whatever and to imitate all things, who:
will make great efforts, before large audiences, to imitate everything [] thunder, and
the noises of winds and hail and axles and pulleys, and the voices of [] instruments
of every kind, and even the sounds of dogs and sheep and birds: and his diction will
consist entirely of imitations by voice and gesture, or will include just a smattering of
narration,
and has to be excluded (though admired) because the state cannot contain
him within its system.45 Diderots philosophical narrator (Moi) gives several
bravura depictions ofthe nephews imitative skills, well aware that Lui may
be not merely disharmonious, but chaotic:
Il entassait et brouillait ensemble trente airs italiens, franais, tragiques, comiques, de
toutes sortes de caractres. Tantt avec une voix de bassetaille, il descendait jusquaux
enfers; tantt sgosillant et contrefaisant le fausset, il dchirait le haut des airs, imitant
de la dmarche, du maintien, du geste, les diffrents personnages chantants: successivement furieux, radouci, imprieux, ricaneur [] jamais hors de ton, de msure, du sens des
paroles et du caractre de lair [] On faisait des clats de rire entrouvrir le plafond.
Lui napercevait rien; il continuait, saisi dune alination desprit, dun enthousiasme si
voisin de la folie quil est incertain quil en revienne, sil ne faudra pas le [] mener droit
aux Petites-Maisons [] Sil quittait la partie du chant, ctait pour prendre celle des
instruments quil laissait subitement pour revenir la voix, entrelaant lune lautre de
manire conserver les liaisons et lunit du tout; semparant de nos mes et les tenant
suspendues dans la situation la plus singulire []46
[He sang thirty arias, Italian, French, one on top of the other, all mixed up, tragic,
comic, by all sorts of characters. Sometimes he descended to the depths of Hell with a
deep bass voice; sometimes he forced his voice into a high falsetto, cutting the air as he
mimicked the various singing characters in gait, pose and gesture by turns enraged,
gentle, imperious and mocking always hitting the right tone and tempo, the sense of
the words and the type of aria There was a shout of laughter fit to raise the roof; but
See A. Billy (ed.), Diderot: Oeuvres, Paris: Gallimard, 1951, 1407f; also Christensen,
210ff., 291; Grapa, 128f., 1447. L.W. Tancock offers a more sophisticated critique in
the introduction to his translation: Diderot: Rameaus Nephew; DAlemberts Dream,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, 1624.
45 Republic, 397a398a; Andrew Barker, op.cit. vol.I, 128f.; Grapa, 1024.
46 Ed.cit. 454f.; cf. also Tancock, ed.cit. 102f.
89
he noticed nothing, and continued, seized by a transport of spirit, an ardour so close to

madness that he may not return from it, may have to be taken straight to Bedlam If
he left the singing role, it was to take up the instrumental parts, only to break off again
suddenly and return to the vocals, entwining one with the other in such a way as to keep
the relations between parts, and the unity of the whole; overwhelming our souls and
holding them suspended in a most bizarre situation].
Yet all is not as chaotic as it seems. This bundle ofcontrarietys, ofvarious and
disagreeing principles, to use Shaftesburys terms, is in Shaftesburys sense the
greater harmonist, said toconserver les liaisons et lunit du tout [to preserve
the relations [between parts] and the unity ofthe whole]; and knowing how
to handle dissonant intervals within harmony:
Vous voyez [] que nous savons aussi placer un triton, une quinte superflue, et que
lenchanement des dominantes nous est familier. Ces passages enharmoniques dont le
cher oncle a fait tant de train, ce nest pas la mer boire []47
[we also can strike a tritone [augmented fourth] or an augmented fifth, we are familiar
with consecutive fifths [parallel dominants]. Those enharmonic passages that dear uncle
has made such a fuss about arent really all that difficult].
And once the nephew has relocated the force of music to the imitation of
nature and passion, the system of harmony and contained dissonance no
longer matters. The elder Rameau is presented as a dessicated has-been,48 the
younger shrugs offhis skills as mere technique, and the conversation ends as
arbitrarily as it began.49
Rousseaus Dictionnaire de musique (1768) adds more ideas which subvert
the older idea of harmonious order. In his article unisson, he acknowledges
traditionally divergent opinions on the status of unison (two notes at the
same pitch) in relation to harmony; like the Greeks and Rameau, he equates
it with zero in a numerical sequence and thus counts it as a non-interval.
Whereas Mersenne had followed Plato and Aristotle in deducing from this
47 Ed.cit., 413f. Transl. Tancock, Penguin Classics ed., 54f. These are all notoriously dissonant intervals, the last especially traditionally excluded from tonal music (see NHDM,
under Parallel chords, section parallel fifths, ed.cit. 6070).
48 He is praised for his operas, mocked for his unintelligible theories, and credited with
foreseeing his own fall from fashion in the musical world (ed.cit., 397).
49 See esp. Tancocks introduction, ed.cit. 2431.
90
Chapter Two
that unison was complete and perfect harmony, Rousseau suggests that it may
be consonant but cannot be harmonious, and gives it the function of suggesting consonant unanimity. However, he declares it preferable to polyphony as
musical sound, in accordance with his polemic in favour of melodic music.50
At this point, unison carries little metaphorical charge; but in a context
where full harmony was increasingly seen to depend on diversity in its constituent parts, the nullity and sameness of unison laid it open to negative
associations (which Goethe, for example, exploited in Wilhelm Meister).
Meanwhile, Rousseau pursues his attack on the old concept of harmony in
the article Unit de Mlodie, advocating homophonic music which builds
up harmony in sequence, and complaining that even the polyphony of sacred
music charms at first, but soon assails the ear: le bruit mtourdit peu peu
[] et je suis enfin ennuy de nentendre que des Accords51 [the noise gradually
numbs me and I end up annoyed at hearing nothing but chords]. Harmonic
music has become its opposite, noise.
Two interesting developments can be seen in these mid-century French
debates. One is that sound-qualities, consonance and dissonance, have now
moved to the centre of the concepts of harmony and disharmony/discord/
dissonance: in Le neveu de Rameau and in Rousseaus writing, the described
sounds made by dissonant man and music add strong concrete force to what
are after all theoretical polemics. The other is an important sea-change in the
concept ofharmony, both as musical phenomenon and as metaphor for wholeness, and therewith a shift in the idea of disharmony/discord/dissonance.
Lowinsky considers that Rousseaus polemic marks the death of a cosmic
metaphor: No longer is polyphony a metaphysical cipher [] in Rousseaus
view of music all echoes of a harmony ofthe universe are dead.52 But harmony
as mathematically based cosmic order had plenty of metaphorical life in it:
enough to underpin Adrian Leverkhns efforts to construct a dissonant musical anti-universe in Thomas Manns Dr. Faustus (1947), and enough to be still
50 Dictionnaire de musique, Unisson, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres Compltes, ed.

Bernard Gagnebin et al., Vol.V, crits sur la musique, la langue et le thtre, Paris:
Gallimard, 1995, 11403.
51 Ed.cit., 1143. See also esp. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and Ideology in Eighteenth-century
Music, 1902.
52 Op.cit., 192.
91
live today. Rather, this is the moment when mathematically-based harmony

ceases to be a valid scientific explanation for all music;53 and also the moment
when the concept ofharmony expands alongside the old one, and in the way
suggested by Rameau. It becomes a more dynamic concept: harmony built up
in sequence, as dissonant/ disharmonious intervals are resolved within it; and
it becomes a greater totality, including the characteristic tone of each living
thing, and that most diverse of contrarietys, the human voice.
Reception of these changes in German representations

of disharmony within cosmic order
The nature of this important shift in the concept of harmony, and its implications for disharmony/discord/dissonance, can be seen very clearly in the
work ofJohann Gottfried Herder, who had read most ofthe French authors
concerned, helped to publicise these ideas in Germany, and deployed them
with gusto himself. The fourth ofHerders Kritische Wlder reviews the contributions which the Eulers, und DAlemberts und Diderots und Mersenne
und Gravesande und Sauveurs have made to acoustics, reviews Rameaus
work on harmony and harmonics, and even refers to the exaggerations of
Greek efforts to draw analogies between music and other domains. But it is
obvious that Herder has radically different concepts of music from theirs:
he is indifferent to the musical structures and relations which they attempt
to explain, apparently (like Rousseau) envisaging music as mainly homophonic, and relocating the full force ofharmony/consonance and discord/
dissonance to the timbre of a note or succession of notes, and the energy of
music to their impact on the listener:
Sie [Rameau et al] erklren nichts vom einfachen Tone selbst; nichts von der Energie
desselben aufs Gehr; nichts von der Anmuth derselben, einzeln und in der Folge [].
Es ist Erfahrung, da gewie einfache Tne, unabhngig von Hhe und Tiefe, von Strke
53
Christensen argues that much modern music theory nonetheless works within Rameaus
frame of chordal generation, harmonic coherence, tonal identity (306).
92
Chapter Two
und Schwche, von Lnge und Krze, ihrer innern Art nach, verschiedene Eindrcke
auf uns machen. Der eine trift [sic] uns gleichsam glatter und heller; ein andrer rauher
und finstrer []54
[They explain nothing of the simple note itself, nothing of its impact on the ear, of
its grace, singly or in sequence Experience shows that certain simple notes, regardless
of high or low pitch, strong or weak volume, long or short duration, simply by their
intrinsic quality, make diverse impressions upon us. One strikes us as quasi smoother
or lighter, another as harsh and sombre]
Herder explains the varied impact of music on the listener, and different
reactions of different listeners to the same music, by different degrees of sensitivity and training in the apparatus of ear and nerves; and sees the infinitely
varied timbre of musical sounds as matched to the infinite variety ofhuman
physical and emotional feelings:
Alle Elastischen Krper tnen; nicht alle sind fr uns auf einerlei Weise empfindbar:
so mu es auch unter den Momenten einzelner Tne eben so viel verschiedene Klassen
geben [] und zwar [] in Absicht auf [] Empfindbarkeit der Beschaffenheit und
Art. Diese Beschaffenheit ist zuerst widrig und angenehm: und denn gibts unter jeder
dieser Hauptgattungen so viel Unterklaen, als es widrige und angenehme Gefhle in
uns gibt. Jedes derselben mu sich aus einem Ton, oder aus einer Mischung von Tnen
erregen lassen und es endlich so viele Arten der Tne und Schlle geben, als es braucht,
um alle Empfindungen in uns zu erregen.55
[All elastic bodies sound, but they do not all impinge upon us in the same way; the impact
of individual notes must thus be classified in appropriately different ways, according
to their character and type. This character is primarily pleasant and unpleasant; and
within these two main groups there are as many sub-categories as there are pleasant
and unpleasant feelings within us. Each ofthese must be aroused by a note, or blend of
notes, and there must be in the end be as many types of notes and chords as are necessary to arouse the full range of feelings in us.]
In this view, both consonance and dissonance (and their many subdivisions,
such as stimulating or soothing music, harte und weiche Schlle, Tne und
Tonarten) are complementary parts of a universe of sound reflecting the totality ofhuman experience. But the individuals place within this cosmos is not
always secure. Herders late treatise on sacred music, Ccilie (1793), ends with
54 The fourth Wldchen was conceived and discussed in the 1770s, but published posthumously in 1846; see esp. FA Herder vol.2, 9627.
55 Op.cit., 101. Sections 67 passim; Suphan IV, esp.90ff., 94ff., 100ff. 106.
93
a rhapsody on Die Tonkunst which attempts to combine the old metaphor of

cosmic harmony (traditionally inaudible to Man) with this new idea of musical harmony as metaphor for the totality ofliving things and their individual
notes. The speaker begins confidently with his soul a leiser Himmelston
[soft heavenly note] joined by des Wohllauts ewige Kette [harmonys eternal
chain] to Gods harmonious universe. But chaos and cacophony threaten; amid
the trials of earthly life, umringt von Thiergeheul und Hllenstimmen [surrounded by howling beasts and voices of Hell] the speaker is overwhelmed
by doubts until ein Lied der Andacht [a sacred song] reassures him:
Verlassener, was zagest du
In trber Einsamkeit?
Gott, der den Gang der Sterne kennt
Kennt auch der Menschen Herz []
Was zagest du? Der Erde Noth
Geht wie ein Traum vorbei;
Und was dir heute Milaut dnkt,
Ist morgen Harmonie
Why tremble in sad isolation

Lonely and apart?
The Lord who knows the planets courses
Knows the human heart
Why tremble? For these earthly trials
Are but passing dreams;
Tomorrows glorious harmony
Today harsh discord seems.
He then, feeling small within the vast cosmos, prays to harmony to be joined
first to the reinen Ton [clear note] of each created being, then through der
Seelen Einklang [concord of souls] in friendship to der se Wohlklang
[sweet harmony] of general human love and kindness, as part of infinite
progression zu welcher Symphonie der Symphonien? [to what symphony
of symphonies].56 This final symphony of symphonies is a distant prospect:
the polyphonic structure of cosmic harmony has receded almost to vanishing point (though it is still present). The immediate link between individual
and world is a network which builds up in sequence; first as one tone accords
with another (Einklang), then as others connect; and the resulting totality,
Wohlklang, becomes not merely consonance and agreeable sound, but takes
on the structural function formerly associated with harmony, as the chain of
being, des Wohllauts ewige Kette.
56
From the fifth vol. of Zerstreute Bltter ; Suphan vol.16, 25367, rhapsody 26872; see
esp.271f. Herder sometimes mixes these metaphors rather than coordinates them: the idea
of newly murdered Abel given song to console Eve, then mightier strains to convey spiritual longing before departing for heaven on his one note, is not an impressive myth for the
origin of music. Herders verse does sometimes sound like a bad Victorian hymnalist.
94
Chapter Two
This structural function of melody is possible because yet another major

shift is taking place in the concept of harmony. Herder sees music as held
together not by mathematically-based relations, but by what he calls das Band
der Folge [the bond of sequence], a complex idea which combines rhythmic
sequence with musical phrasing, patterns of rise and fall in pitch, and relations between successive types of musical section or movement. This concept
is not made explicit until he begins to consider analogies between music and
language; and since it became widespread and influential, will need to be
considered more fully in later chapters. For the moment we can note that, as
in Le neveu de Rameau, disharmony/discord/dissonance also make similar
shifts. The concept retains its old associations with forces which appear threatening and disorderly but are in fact contained within an ordered framework
(cosmic, musical, social). Yet the element of dissonance has come to the fore
as awareness grew that human beings do not always fit into a system, do not
have the clear celestial perspective and do not experience the world as orderly.
So the more harmony and its sequence expand to include the totality of
human feelings and experience, the more dissonance, even cacophony, comes
into play as metaphor for traumatic experiences, especially those which test
human beings to their limits. Herders Thiergeheul und Hllenstimmen
suggest threats to safety, civilisation and salvation; Rameaus nephew makes
a vast range of sounds, pleasant and unpleasant, but he is described in terms
which suggest destruction (of the building they are in, of his own sanity),
and the extreme impact he has on his listeners.
Schiller and Goethe

Beyond this point (in Herders fourth Wldchen and elsewhere), the idea of
harmony/consonance, disharmony/dissonance also includes the idea oflanguage and voice, so this thread must be picked up again in later chapters. But
two German authors in particular seem to have taken up the idea of cosmic
harmony as order encompassing chaos, harmony encompassing disharmony,
and made their own peculiar use ofthis conceptual metaphor. Schiller seems
to use harmony/disharmony primarily to indicate a mode of existence in the
self or the world; the connection with sound is often present, but does not
95
always function as one might expect. In his later work, harmony is wellknown as a highly developed and specialised concept, with musical associations in the background.57 Where these come to the fore, as in the review ber
Matthissons Gedichte (1794) or in the poem Der Tanz (2nd version 1800),58
harmony is envisaged much as in Herder: a (primarily melodic) coordination building up with each step in sequence and held together by des Takts
melodischer Woge [the melodious wave of rhythm], whilst des Wohllauts
mchtige Gottheit [the might god ofharmony] governs the whole dance of
these lesser harmonies. Matthisson is commended for:
jene musikalischen Effekte, die durch eine glckliche Wahl harmonierender Bilder und
durch eine kunstreiche Eurhythmie in Anordnung derselben zu bewirken sind [] die
liebliche Stetigkeit in ihrer Sukzession [,..], die Modulation und die schne Haltung
des Ganzen.59
[those musical effects which can be attained by happy choice of harmonising images
and mastery of rhythm in the disposition of them, by graceful continuity in their succession, by the modulation and poise of the whole].
In Der Tanz, the connection with the older idea of cosmic order is made
explicit: die Harmonieen des Weltalls [cosmic harmonies] are based on der
begeisternde Takt, den alle Wesen dir schlagen [the living rhythm pulsing
in all things], and analogous to der wirbelnde Tanz, der durch den ewigen
Raum/ Leuchtende Sonnen schwingt in khn gewundenen Bahnen [the
whirling dance which through eternal space/ Swings glowing planets in their
arching paths] (ll.2731).
57
58
59
See esp. Margaret C. Ives, The Analogue ofHarmony, Duquesne University Press, 1970,
esp.1322; also as No.13 of MHRA monographs, Louvain: Nauwelaerts 1970. Because
Schillers concept is so specialised, it tends to be discussed without reference to the musical connotations: see e.g. Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller, Cambridge University Press
1991, esp.120ff., 136ff., 162f. The recent volume of essays edited by Steven D. Martinson,
A Companion to the Works ofFriedrich Schiller, Camden House 2005, does not consider
the concept as such; but essays by Martinson (Maria Stuart: Physiology and Politics,
esp.214f.) and Sharpe (Concerning Aesthetic Education, esp.149ff., 164) do locate it in
the context oftheir topic. The essay by von Stransky-Stranka-Greiffenfels, by contrast,
has Schiller and cosmic harmony entangled with Mozart and sonata form, and chaotic
disharmony muddled with the wrong sense of Schlsser schleifen [filing locks, instead
of razing castles] (Die Ruber: Structure, Models and an Emblem, op.cit., 108).
NA 2 I, 299.
NA 22, 276f.
96
Chapter Two
The idiosyncrasy of Schillers usage emerges where qualities associated

with disharmony/discord/dissonance are prominent within this harmony.
Except for his use of Disharmonie to denote lack of moral and physical
coordination,60 in his early work unbalanced or disorderly states tend to be
conveyed through extreme visual expression, gesture and movement: e.g.
Karl Moors ranting and wild gestures (Die Ruber), Ferdinands grimaces
and sulks (Kabale und Liebe). But, also from an early stage and in parallel to
ideas of harmony, Schiller sees the harmonious cosmic order as fragile, even
illusory: i.e. his view is similar to Herders, but more sceptical and extreme. As
Werner von Stransky-Stranka-Greifenfels points out, Franz Moor thinks he
can sweep away symmetry, beauty and heavenly order by violent force.61 This
sense of threat and of the fragility of cosmic order increases to almost panic
levels where musical associations with harmony are brought into play; Schiller
suggests that powerful disorderly forces, in human beings or the world, are
thereby unleashed. In the poems Laura am Klavier (1781) and Die Macht des
Gesanges (1795),62 for instance, music is a force and a threat, allied with dark
magical powers, evoked as an overwhelming torrent of water, and dissonant as
well as disorderly. In Laura, Seelenvolle Harmonieen [spiritual harmonies]
and angelic harps are matched by wollstig Ungestm, [lustful riot] des
Donners Orgelton [the organs thunder] and verlornes Heulen [abandoned
howling]; the planets are not orderly, but aufgejagt vom Schpfungssturm
[chased by Creations tempest], and the heavenly connection is dubious: Ists
die Sprache, lg mir nicht/Die man in Elysen spricht? [Is this deceive me
not the language ofElysium?] In Die Macht des Gesanges, musics power is
as close to death and the Fates as it is to heavenly powers (ll.1114); and the
ostensible happy ending of a return to the natural through song is the kind
of disingenuous cultural regression which Schiller deplored in Rousseau.63
Even in Der Tanz,64 rhythm acts as restraint for den tobenden Sprung [the
60 Versuch ber den Zusammenhang der thierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen
(1780), section 25, NA 20, 73.
61 Die Ruber, V,1; essay in Companion to the Works of Friedrich Schiller, 108.
62 NA 1, 53 (notes 2 II A, 57f.) and 1, 225f.
63 ber nave und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA 20, 42; in relation to sthetische Briefe,
see E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby, The Whole Man in Schillers Theory of
Culture and Society [], in S.S. Prawer, R. Hinton Thomas, L. Forster (eds), Essays in
German Language, Culture and Society, University of London Institute of Germanic
Studies 1969, 181.
64 NA 2 I, 299.
97
manic leap], and disorder constantly threatens: im wilden Gewirr durcheinander/Strzt der zierliche Bau dieser beweglichen Welt [in wild confusion
collapses/The delicate structure ofthis moving world]. The cosmic harmony
is not stable and reassuring, but threatens to sweep the human listener away:
Dich ergreift nicht der Strom dieses erhabnen Gesangs? [Are you not seized
by the torrent ofthis sublimest song?] (ll.1315, 238). There are several reasons for Schillers view of music as ambiguous; but even thus far it is clear
that associations with disorder and dissonance are at least as active for him
as associations with harmonious order, cosmic or otherwise.
In the previous chapter, we saw Goethes remarkable capacity to pick up
metaphorical associations together with their cultural context, and to store
them away for deployment in diverse ways sometimes decades later. This is
also in evidence with ideas of music as disharmony/disorder. An early contribution to Lavaters Physiognomische Fragmente suggests that he associated
Rameau less with mathematical pedantry than with coordinated diversity
and well-balanced energies, at one with himself and the world:
Die vollkommenste, liebevollste Harmonie hat diese Gestalt ausgebildet. Nichts Scharfes
[] an dem ganzen Umrisse, alles wallt, alles schwebt ohne zu schwanken []. Diese
Gegenwart wirkt auf die Seele, wie ein geniales Tonstck []. Es ist die Wahrheit, die
Richtigkeit, das ewige Gesetz der stimmenden Natur, die unter der Annehmlichkeit
verborgen liegt []. Sieh diese Stirne! Diese Schlfe! In ihnen wohnen die reinsten
Tonverhltnisse.65
[The most complete and graceful harmony has formed this figure His outline has
no sharpness anywhere, all contours flow and float, yet are not fudged This presence
affects the soul like a genial piece of music. It is the integrity, the rightness, the eternal
law of harmonising Nature which underpin this air of affability. See this brow, these
temples within them dwell the purest tonal relations].
But his translation ofLe neveu de Rameau (18045) shows that he also understood the dissonant outsider; his detailed explanatory notes show that he
understood the issues at stake in Diderots polemic, and he too equates the
use of dissonance in music with (French) attempts to convey the full range of
human emotions, whilst harmony (whether old-style German polyphony or
65
Hanna Fischer-Lamberg (ed.), Der junge Goethe, Neu bearbeitete Ausgabe Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1973, vol.V, 198. Cf. his accompanying note to Philipp Erasmus Reich, 19 April
1775, vol.V, 22; and R.C. Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, vol.II, 230f., on
Goethes concept of this type of individuality.
98
Chapter Two
Italian bel canto, harmony built up in melodic sequence) is applied to technical musical skill in producing fine sound:
Der Italiener wird sich der lieblichsten Harmonie, der geflligsten Melodie befleiigen, er
wird sich an dem Zusammenklang, an der Bewegung als solchen ergtzen [] Die andere
Partei hingegen hat [] den Sinn, die Empfindung, die Leidenschaft [] vor Augen
[]. Seltsame Harmonien, unterbrochene Melodien, gewaltsame Abweichungen und
bergnge sucht man auf, um den Schrei des Entzckens, der Angst und der Verzweiflung
auszudrcken. Wie der Italiener mit dem Gesang, so verfuhr der Deutsche mit der
Instrumentalmusik. Er betrachtete sie auch eine Zeitlang als eine besondere, fr sich
bestehende Kunst.66
[The Italians will cultivate the sweetest harmony, the most agreeable melody and
take delight in consonance and movement for their own sake The opposing [French]
party is focussed on meaning, feeling, passion Strange harmonies, broken melodies,
violent modulations and transitions are sought out in order to express the cries of
delight, fear and despair The Germans treated instrumental music much as the Italians
treated song and did indeed for a time regard instrumental music as a separate and
independent art].
Whether directly or indirectly, Rameaus notion of major and minor also

seems to have entered his thinking; chiefly in the Tonlehre (1810ff.), where
major and minor are presented as complementary opposites ascending and
descending from the tonic by the same intervals, with minor derived from
the major much as dissonance is formed within harmony. Press-ganged into
his doctrine of diastole and systole, this became bad science and led to pointless arguments with Zelter;67 but the issue of major and minor becomes an
extended and slightly disturbing metaphorical episode in the narrative of
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (IIIi onwards). When the company first try
out Wilhelms song, the slower bass of Christophs tempo is no threat to the
harmony of song or society: ein heiterer Gesang hielt noch einige Zeit die
Gesellschaft fr das Ohr zusammen, die dem Blick bereits auseinandergegangen war [the sound of cheerful singing kept together for the ear the group
66 Goethes notes on Musik, after the translation text in AA 15, 103941. He cites a (favourable) account by Rousseau of the elder Rameaus work, ibid., 1052ff.
67 See correspondence with Zelter, AprilJuly 1808, and 31 March 1831/14 April 1831, 24
April 1831; Walwei-Wiegelmann collects the main documents (20311), and Canisius
offers further explanation (166205).
99
which had already scattered out of sight]. But that night Wilhelm is scared by
an entsetzlichen Ton [a dreadful sound] droning like a great organ pipe; and
when the song is performed after the feast the following day, it moves from
a harmonious duet with choral accompaniment to a kind of disharmonious
counter-duet, then to a disturbing unanimity within a fugue:
Beinahe furchtbar schwoll zuletzt die Trauer; ein unmutiger Mut brachte, bei Gewandtheit
der Snger, etwas Fugenhaftes in das Ganze, da es unserm Freunde wie schauderhaft
auffiel. Wirklich schienen alle vllig gleichen Sinnes zu sein und ihr eigenes Schicksal
eben kurz vor dem Aufbruche zu betrauern. Die wundersamsten Wiederholungen []
schien[en] zuletzt dem Bande selbst gefhrlich; Lenardo stand auf und alle setzten sich
sogleich nieder, den Hymnus unterbrechend.
[Finally the sadness swelled almost frighteningly, a rebellious boldness and the singers
skill brought something fugue-like into the singing, which our friend received with
horror. In very deed, all seemed to be of entirely the same mind in bewailing their lot
so soon before they went their separate ways. At last these extraordinary repetitions
seemed a threat to the company itself; Lenardo rose and everyone sat down immediately, breaking off the hymn].
Only after Lenardo has reminded them of was unter uns fest steht und was
beweglich ist [what is fixed amongst us and what is moveable], and recommended erfreulichen aufmunternden Tnen [satisfying, animating tones],
do they regroup into a harmonious whole as they depart, perceptible from
the godlike vantage point of the terrace:
sein Wink setzte die ganze Gesellschaft in singende Bewegung [] und der angestimmte
Wandergesang ward immer heiterer und freier; besonders aber nahm er sich sehr gut
aus als die Gesellschaft in den terrassierten Schlogarten [] von hier aus das gerumige Tal bersah68
[His signal set the entire company in motion and song, the march which they struck
up became ever more cheerful and free; and it was heard to particular advantage as the
company on the castle garden terrace looked out over the whole spacious valley].
Some ofthis narrative seems to evoke apparent disharmony contained within

an overall harmonious order, perceptible from a higher plane but not to those
involved i.e. the old idea of world order. Some of it seems to rely on the newer
68 AA 8, 33643.
100
Chapter Two
idea of harmony, as animated sequence built up in ones, twos and smaller

groups into a larger whole. But as with Schiller, the associations with disorder are very strong and markedly peculiar. For one thing, it looks as though
Goethe tends to associate discord/dissonance not only with anger, rebellion,
sadness, etc, but with the contraction of spirit and loss of energy he attributed
to the minor mode, by contrast with the erfreulichen aufmunternden Tnen
he attributed to the major mode.69 His equation of etwas Fugenhaftes in das
Ganze with a kind of unison (wirklich schienen alle vllig gleichen Sinnes zu
sein) looks completely contradictory. He understood what a fugue was, since
he had already used the related canon form to end the arguments in the first
scene of Egmont : Sie stoen an und wiederholen frhlich die Worte, doch
so, da jeder ein anderes ausruft und es eine Art Kanon wird70 [They clink
glasses and repeat these words cheerfully, but in such a way that each calls out
something different and it becomes a kind of canon]. The ideas underlying
this episode seem to be akin to Rousseaus: this part of the Wanderers song
is not harmonious precisely because the constituent parts are not diverse,
so harmonious coordination is not possible. Hence the narrators powerful
negative reaction (beinahe furchtbar schauderhaft gefhrlich) to what,
as a musical performance, would be innocuous enough; and hence also the
intensely negative value attached to unison. As far as I know, this ferocious
metaphorical charge is peculiar to Goethe; although, as we saw, the potential
for it lay in the traditional idea that unison did not count as an interval in
relation to the key-note, and in Rousseaus equation of unison with non-harmonious unanimity.71 Goethe had already used unisono in the interpolated
story Wer ist der Verrter?, to indicate Lucidors unhealthy subordination
to his father (I,8);72 here it suggests unhealthy unanimity against Lenardos
authority, which his address seeks to assuage.
Such episodes rarely carry enormous weight in their immediate context;
but they tend to recur, so their significance and metaphorical force shift and
accumulate as they react with each other, with the rest ofthe work, and with
the readers own cultural context. One good example is the ill-defined dread69 Cf. Walwei-Wiegelmann, loc.cit.
70 Egmont, Sc.1, AA 6, 16.
71 See section on Rousseau and others above, and esp. his article Unisson in Dictionnaire
de musique, ed.cit. 1140ff.
72 Wanderjahre I,8, AA 8, 100.
101
ful noise which shook the building and disturbed Wilhelms sleep, and which
recurs in Lenardos account ofhis visit to the mountain weavers community
(III, 5). The originator is St Christoph, hitherto presented as a harmless gentle
giant who carries the societys burdens and underpins their songs with his deep
bass voice. Though his story (interpolated as Die gefhrliche Wette in III, 8) is
presented as a Schwank [anecdote of an exploit], it recounts a thoughtless
action with dire and lasting consequences. The relation between his past as
riotous student and his present as humble load carrier is never explained, and
neither is the cause ofthe throbbing noise he generates. So although Lenardo
finds it harmless (III, 5), the reader shares to some extent the anxiety of the
weavers; the noise reinforces their dread ofthe Maschinenwesen [mechanical
ways] already infiltrating their valleys, and the subsequent breakdown oftheir
values and way of life. Both they and the members of the Turmgesellschaft
are soon forced to dismantle their harmonious system in favour of a new and
uncertain order, either in America or in Europe; and the societys rules for
the new harmonious order do not promise well: religious freedom but no
Jews? the sick and the criminal to be confined together in a special enclave?
Disorder, it seems, is an energising force as well as a threat;73 and the various
metaphors of musical anti-harmony which Goethe draws on in the novel
help to suggest this ambiguity. They also help to suggest that the harmonious
systems they subvert are necessary and splendid as well as faulty, impermanent and sometimes slightly ridiculous.
A similar use of metaphors of disharmony/disorder, accumulating over
a long work as negative complements to concepts ofharmony, can be seen in
Faust. We have already followed some of Goethes successive versions of the
cosmic harmony model in Faust, to show the continuity, variety and development in human concepts ofthe cosmic order. These are countered by diverse
anti-harmony metaphors, mainly associated with Mephistopheles and his
allies; and some of these make use of the disharmony/discord/dissonance
73
Hannelore Schlaffer accounts more convincingly than most for the oddity of these
new plans, and for St Christoph and his alleged prank, grouping him with the barber
as a failed surgeon (by comparison with Wilhelms eventual success); see her Wilhelm
Meister: Das Ende der Kunst und die Wiederkehr des Mythos, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989,
esp.15660. On the interplay throughout the novel between order and disorder, see
e.g. Eric A. Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976,
esp.2549.
102
Chapter Two
group to suggest disorder inside or outside a particular world, and to subvert or relativise the idea of cosmic order. The literally discordant songs of
Auerbachs Keller, the very unangelic choirs of witches and warlocks on the
Brocken with the verflucht Geschnarr [damn snorting] of instruments
(4050f.), the Kapellmeister ofWalpurgisnachtstraum with his insect orchestra
and the unisonen Dommeln [unisono droning] of the reeds, parody with
their animal noises not only Christian heavenly harmonies but the musica
humana of voices and instruments, and the Classical legends: Es eint sie
hier der Dudelsack/ Wie Orpheus Leier die Bestien (4341f.) [The bagpipes drone unites them here/As Orpheus lyre the beasts]. In a recent study
approaching Faust through the tradition of epic, Arnd Bohm has shown that
Auerbachs Keller and its songs are not simply local colour or a representation
ofMephisto dragging Faust through mindless pleasure, but a systematic and
detailed parody of Platos idea of a group of friends as a harmonious model
for a harmonious state and cosmos. These friends are out oftune and out of
temper with themselves and each other; far from being a model ofharmony,
they support Mephistos view ofthe universe as full of meaningless noise and
pointless activity, and of Man as trivial animal (e.g. in Mephistos own song
of The Flea (2205ff.)).74
By comparison, the full choral celebrations which end the Klassische
Walpurgisnacht, and the verse evocation of Dionysian disorder at the end of
the Helena/Euphorion episode, appear less disharmonious because they evoke
myths ofthe natural world order despite (respectively) the primitiveness of
their notions of deity and the hideous cacophony they make:
Und nun gellt ins Ohr der Zimbeln mit der Becken Erzgetne,
Denn es hat sich Dionysus aus Mysterien enthllt;
Kommt hervor mit Ziegenflern, schwenkend Ziegenflerinnen,
Und dazwischen schreit unbndig grell Silenus ohrig Tier.
Nichts geschont! Gespaltne Klauen treten alle Sitte nieder,
74 Arnd Bohm, Goethes Faust and European Epic (Camden House, 2007); see his chapter
5, 11137, esp.12131. Bohm does not consider the negative implications of music, and
thus finds it surprising that Mephisto should sing (op.cit. 129). But his singing seems in
line both with the recurrent negative metaphors subverting or denying cosmic harmony,
and with Mephistos other songs (e.g. the vicious serenade to Gretchen, and his song
and dance with the witch in the Walpurgisnacht).
103
Alle Sinne wirbeln taumlich, grlich bertubt das Ohr. (100305).

[And now smite the ear the brazen sounds of cymbals and of brasses,
Dionysius has revealed himself from deep in holy mysteries,
Stepping out with cloven-footed satyrs dragging satyr women,
In amongst them the shrill braying of Silenus long-eared ass.
Nothings sacred! Cloven hooves are trampling down all seemly ritual,
Setting all the senses reeling, horribly the ears assailed.]
However, the force of Satanic anti-harmony returns in the furchtbarer

Posaunenschall von oben (SD10570) with which Mephisto engages battle
for the corrupt and bankrupt Empire and for Fausts land annexation, using
illusory Schreckgetn to terrify the opposition:
Schallt wider-widerwrtig panisch, Fills all the vale with hideous Panic
Mitunter grell und scharf satanisch Loathsome sound, at times Satanic,
Erschreckend in das Tal hinaus.
Terrifying, shrill (1076383)
The Kriegstumult im Orchester [battle noise in the orchestra] is here restored

to order simply by theatrical music: zuletzt bergehend in militrisch heitre
Weisen (10783) [finally modulating into cheerful military music]. The cosmic
order is ultimately reasserted by the angels song in Grablegung; but this is
perceived by Mephisto as dissonance: Mitne hr ich, garstiges Geklimper
(11685) [I hear discordant sounds and horrid twangings]. It seems that perception ofharmony or disharmony depends on the perceivers position within a
particular whole: and that this whole can be anything from a musical system
to the universe at large.
***
Goethes use ofthe metaphor of cosmic disharmony within harmony seems
to me to present a highly sophisticated view ofthings. It makes clear that the
concept of cosmic harmony is an inherited tradition, not an active belief; and
yet this relativised and ironised concept of harmony stands for a wholeness
of being and totality of perception which are posited as both estimable and
indispensable. This in turn enables him to present the fundamental human
experience of partial knowledge and partial truth with all its attendant hopes
and frustrations. It is unlikely that a modern writer would select this particular
metaphor for that purpose: neither harmony nor disharmony now carry
the strong existential resonance that they carried in the eighteenth century,
104
Chapter Two
although the metaphor still has some force. But Goethes use of conceptual
metaphor as such is very much in line with modern thinking, in two respects.
Firstly, as Lakoff and Johnson explained in Metaphors We Live By (1980),
metaphors enable us to construct a provisional assessment of things, and
thence cope with the provisional and partial nature of even scientific knowledge as well as with conflicting subjective responses.75 They are thus not
merely a matter of language, but of how we structure experience. Secondly,
for this reason these constructs can be manifested within a given culture not
only in language, but in public institutions, private choices of life-style, or
works of art.76 Goethe seems to have grasped this possibility very fully when
deploying his metaphors; media other than language are very often brought
in, sometimes by evocation and description within language, sometimes by
incorporation of sections rendered in other media. In the case of cosmic
disharmony within harmony, both music and musical reference are drawn
on to make strongly palpable to the ear the varying kinds of splendour and
excitement of a perception ofharmony, and the varying kinds of dreadfulness
and degrees of threat to order posed by types of disharmony. These are all
rooted in one cultural tradition or another (including that of Goethes own
day), so have no absolute validity. But they make it difficult for the reader
either to believe completely in the myth or to ignore such elements of partial
truth as it may convey. We recognise various kinds of order and various kinds
ofthreat to it, whether or not we believe in angels, devils and elves; but the
concrete physical impact of varied sound (linguistic or musical) pushes us
towards engagement with the constructed meaning of life being presented.
Goethe demands both an open mind and an interactive commitment, which
must have been a difficult combination even then.
Especially 22038 and passim. Cf. also Max Blacks comment that we need the metaphors in just the cases where there can be no question as yet ofthe precision of scientific
statement (Metaphor, in Models and Metaphors (1962), 37.
76 See Kvecses, Language, Mind and Culture (2006), 5160 and 245f.
75
Chapter Three
A Negative Metaphor of Language:

Music as Irrational, Music as Voice of Feeling
Chapters Three and Four deal with negative views of music generated by
comparison with language. Though well-established as clichs, the ideas
listed above do not make sense as propositions until we realise that they are
metaphors, which map the domain of language on to music1 and then find
music falling short. Where music is seen as irrational, it is found wanting as a
medium ofthought and clear meaning. But not all thought is strictly rational;
and clear meaning can be transmitted through features which language shares
with music (e.g. voice, sound, rhythm), as in poetry and emotive speech. In
such cases, poetic and/or emotive speech tends to be separated from rational
language and considered alongside music as voice of feeling. These fields of
metaphorical reference are often deemed to include fundamental questions
of human status and identity, since language is perceived as an exclusively
human faculty, and the human voice as a specially developed characteristic
organ. The status and functions of the voice, and the status and functions
of music without the voice, had been controversial and continued to be so
1
They are now generally acknowledged as metaphor in philosophy of music; see e.g.
Peter Kivys Introduction to a Philosophy ofMusic, Clarendon 2002, and Malcolm Budds
Music and the Emotions: the Philosophical Theories, Routledge 1985/92, both of which
outline and examine the history ofthese ideas. In musical criticism there is uneven acceptance. Deryck Cookes The Language ofMusic, Oxford University Press, 1959 (and many
reprints) establishes some recurrent metaphorical conventions within a particular section
ofWestern vocal music, but wholly without awareness of metaphorical processes; whereas
these are constantly considered in (e.g.) Joseph P. Swain, Musical Languages, Norton
1995, and the essays in Jenefer Robinson (ed.), Music and Meaning, Cornell University
Press, 1997, esp. Marion Guck, Two types of metaphoric transference, 20112. These
works are however concerned with metaphor from other domains used in experiencing
and describing music, not with aspects of music which can be deployed metaphorically
to describe other phenomena.
106
Chapter Three
throughout the eighteenth century;2 and both could carry connotations of

disorder or subversion in some form.
Alongside these conceptual metaphors runs the perception of music as
much wider in range than language, because the range of musical sound goes
well beyond human capacity to speak, sing or hear. In this view, language and
thought can be almost wholly eclipsed. Music can by-pass both the content
and the form of verbal thought and expression, either to elicit an instinctive
response from the listener, close to physical movement and dance, or to suggest a disembodied movement of mind or spirit, too swift and subtle for
language. Thus perceived, music can carry very strong associations with disorder, as subverting human norms of clear ideas, logical argument and rational
behaviour. And it can be linked either with the sub-human and animal or
with the super-human and divine, as the writer chooses.
Like metaphors ofharmony and disharmony, metaphors relating to music
and language could of course be realised in other media as well as in its verbal
text. Where music is brought into play as medium ofthe irrational or offeeling, oral forms poetry, rhetoric, declamation and song tend to feature in
drama, and in other genres as narrated episodes. Where music is deployed as
medium ofthe sub-and super-human, forms of stylised movement, mime and
dance are often found alongside music and language, as enacted or narrated
episodes. Instrumental players, whether solo or group, tend to be subsumed
into these associations as operators on an audience or as communicators of
some kind,3 especially in narrative genres. So when R.A. Sharpe observes that
for four centuries language has been a model in terms of which we understand
music,4 he is both quite right and seriously misleading. The model is very much
older, and not alone; we goes well beyond the English middle-brow lovers of
2
3
See P.J. Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIime sicle [], Paris: Champion, 1995; and
Mary Sue Morrow, German Aesthetic Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic
Issues in Instrumental Music, Cambridge U.P. 1997.
Salazar shows how and why this thinking was so tenacious in the 17th century (e.g. in
Marsilio Ficino, and in the work ofthe Italian anatomist Pierre Gassendi, op.cit. 6071)
and beyond. Morrow traces the growth of independent critical criteria for instrumental
music in middle-class cultural periodicals during the latter half of the 18th century.
R.A. Sharpe, Philosophy ofMusic: an Introduction, Montreal: McGill-Queens University
Press, 2004, 167.
107
Western classical music whom he avowedly has in mind;5 and the language/
music model has produced not only understanding, but myth, mistrust and
fear. Later chapters below deal with the language/music metaphor and the
kind of understanding it encouraged, whether by comparison or by contrast.
But the following complementary Chapters Three and Four are concerned
with metaphorical thinking which fostered a tradition of myth, mistrust and
fear towards music, and with the negative conceptual metaphors which these
reactions in turn produced. More precisely, they deal with issues which arose
from the perception that music was at once a communicating language and
not really a language at all; from the awareness that maths-based theories of
harmony did not explain the powerful physical effects music was perceived
to have on human beings; and from the perception that musics structural
basis in rhythm gave it measure and order, but also beat, and thus a strong
and dubious connection to physical movement and dance. Chapter Three
deals with two entailments of the conceptual metaphor music is not like
language: the idea that music is irrational, and the idea that it represents the
voice offeeling. Chapter Four deals with two further entailments: iflanguage
is the medium ofthe human sphere, music can extend beyond that sphere and
beyond language, as medium ofboth sub- and super-human realms: exciting,
terrifying, and beyond human control.
Plato and Aristotle

Again, the cultural conventions underpinning these metaphors became widely
known through Plato and Aristotle, although they speak of them as already
well established. Platos basic premise is that all music is representational
and imitative;6 and that its means of imitation are rhythm and melody.7
He defines these respectively as order of movement and order ofthe voice;
5
6
7
Op.cit., 1ff and passim.

Eg. Laws 668a, Andrew Barker vol.I, 152, and passim; as Barker points out (153 note 76),
it is not certain how widely his view was accepted at the time.
Especially considered in Republic 397402a, Barker vol.I, 12836.
108
Chapter Three
and suggests that it is an exclusively human talent to organise pitch, volume

and timbre of the voice, or movement of the body: while none of the other
animals attains a perception of order in these two things, the nature of man
alone does possess this.8
But for his own purposes (to establish the blueprint for an ideal, rationally conceived state), Plato cannot simply accept musical sound and rhythm as
such, nor even the role of songs and dances in ritual and social life as he knows
it. He wants music to convey certain sorts of content, as a language does, but
observes that what he takes to be the conventions by which music communicates are often disregarded. Musics counterpart to rules of vocabulary, syntax,
or semantic convention are apparently inadequate or wholly absent:
The Muses would never [] compose words suitable for men, and then give the melody
a colouring proper to women, [] put together melody and postures of free men, and
then fit to them rhythms proper to slaves and servile persons, or [] start with rhythms
and postures expressive of freedom, and [] give them a melody or words of opposite
character to the rhythms [] But human composers, weaving and jumbling all such
things nonsensically together, [] tear rhythm and posture away from melody, putting
bare words into metres, setting melody and rhythm without words, and using the kithara and the aulos without the voice, a practice in which it is extremely difficult since
rhythm and harmonia occur with no words to understand what is intended, and what
worthwhile representation it is like.9
In this view, any music without a fixed social context and semantic framework,
and most especially instrumental music, is equated with Bacchic frenzy:
There appeared as instigators of unmusical law-breaking composers who, though by
nature skilled at composition, were ignorant of what is right and lawful in music. In a
Bacchic frenzy, and enthralled beyond what is right by pleasure, they mixed lamentations
with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, imitated aulos songs with their kithara songs,
and put everything together with everything else, thus unintentionally [] alleging that
music possesses no standards of correctness, but is most correctly judged by the pleasure
of the person who enjoys it.10
8
9
10
Laws 664e665a, Barker vol.I, 149.

Laws 669ce, Barker op.cit. 154.
Laws, 700de, Barker 156f.
109
Thus many ofthe suggestions Plato makes for the restriction of music to certain genres, harmoniai and instruments are less to do with moral disapproval
than with a desire to make music more like a language to give it specific
conventional meaning discernible by reason. Hence his approval of the old
order in which genres such as hymn, lamentation, dithyramb, were clearly
differentiated not just by function but by prescribed metres and rhythms as
well as prescribed harmoniae and prescribed instruments.11 The kithara, for
instance, was for highbrow music with a serious purpose;12 whereas the auloi
(double pipes, akin to oboe though often translated as flute) were for popular music and Dionysian rituals, dubious not least because the player could
not by definition use his voice at the same time, but could indulge freely in
whatever musical feats his skill could coax from the instrument.13
On the other hand, Plato perceives that music, with or without text,
seems able to communicate with remarkably fresh and direct force when it
imitates states of mind:
Rhythm and harmonia penetrate most deeply into the recesses of the soul and take a
powerful hold on it [] whenever anyone lets music entrance his soul with its piping,
and lets it pour into his soul through his ears, as though through a funnel, the sweet and
soft and mournful harmoniai we were discussing [], when he uses up the whole ofhis
life humming, enraptured by song, then [] if he has anything of the spirited element
in him, this man will temper it like iron, [] but if he persists in entrancing it without
ceasing, he will eventually dissolve it and melt it away.14
The soul is apparently envisaged as a persons a-rational faculties, roughly

equivalent to character and emotional temperament.15 Musics perceived facility in penetrating to the soul does not cause Plato to confine it to the emotions.
But he does regard it as specially apt for occasions (worship, festivals, leisure)
where rational argument is not required. And in particular he wishes to harness its power to establish desirable patterns ofbehaviour in children not yet
11
12
13
14
15
Ibid.; also esp. Republic 397401b, Barker I, 12835.

Laws 700b, Barker vol.I, 156. See esp. Barkers general explanation, vol. I, 93ff.
See Barker I, passim, esp.52f.
Republic 401d, 411ab, Barker vol.I, 135, 137f.
In Book VII of the Politics, 1333a, Aristotle defines it as divided into two parts, one of
which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle
[], is able to obey such a principle (ed. Stephen Everson, Cambridge University Press,
1988, 177).
110
Chapter Three
amenable to rational argument. Hence the grave and lengthy discussions (in
both Republic and Laws) as to which harmoniai and which instruments shall
be allocated to which type of occasion, or allowed in the state at all; and in
particular which instruments and types of song are suitable for children and
other groups, and whether they should learn to play and sing themselves or
merely be encouraged to listen.16
The last of these issues strikes the modern reader as odd; but this is an
area where Plato saw particular danger. Even with a text, the poet/performer
and his accompanist could choose any subject and imitate almost anything
if they chose, including the outrageous, undesirable and frivolous:
He will make great efforts, before large audiences, to imitate everything [] thunder,
and the noises of winds and hail and axles and pulleys, and the voices of salpinges and
auloi and syringes and instruments of every kind, and even the sounds of dogs and sheep
and birds [] his diction will consist entirely of imitations by voice and gesture, or will
include just a smattering of narration []
If there came to our city a man with the expertise to become anything whatever
and to imitate all things, and if he brought with him his compositions and wanted
to present them in public, we should do him homage as a sacred and marvellous and
delightful person, but would [] send him off to another city [] while we ourselves
would employ a more austere and less delightful poet [] for our own good, one who
would imitate the diction of the good man, and utter his words in the ways which we
laid down at the beginning.17
It is crucial that children and citizens should not admire, much less imitate,
the subversive skills of the master musician.
Add to this the perception that musical and poetic skills, and their
influence on the audience, are a divine gift and a source of pleasure, but also
mechanisms not widely understood, the province of experts rather than rationally accessible phenomena.18 This does not square with the fact that Plato
16
17
18
Barker vol.I, esp.12763.

Republic 397398a, Andrew Barker I, 1289. Salpinx and syrinx are instruments, the
first a kind of metallic trumpet usually used for signals rather than music, the second a
variety of Pan-pipe; cf. Barker, 16.
Plato disclaims expertise on the harmoniai, especially on the analogies said to exist
between movements of the soul and movements of respective rhythms/melodies of
respective harmoniai. As Barker explains, he relies extensively on Damon, a philosopher
and music theorist, agreeing with Damons advocacy of close analogy between prescribed
111
discussed acoustic theories in his Timaeus and elsewhere. His attitude seems
(to me) to be that the analogous relations between the sounds and rhythms
ofthe various harmoniai and the vibrations ofthe receptive soul were matters
oftradition and convention, not demonstrable by observation and deduction
through rational argument; and that the numerical abstractions of acoustic
theory were at odds with the powerful immediacy of musics effect upon its
hearers:
But suppose [] that you grasp the number and the qualities ofthe intervals related to
high and low pitch of sound, and the boundaries of the intervals, and the number of
systemata that have risen out of them. These systemata were identified by people in the
past, and they handed down to us [] the practice of calling them harmoniai; and in the
movements ofthe body they identified other, similar inherent features which, they say,
we must measure by numbers, and call rhythms and measures []. When you grasp them
in this way, then it is that you have become an expert; [] But the indefinite plurality
inherent in any kind of thing makes you [] indefinite in your understanding.19
The final straw is musics strong appeal and strong connection, through rhythm,
with physical movement and dance. Even when sanctioned by relaxation, festival or ritual, human inability to keep still can always spill over into excited
movement, dance or even Bacchic frenzy, unless restrained.20
Platos preferred solution is to prescribe not only worthy subject matter,
but also simple techniques for both poetry and music, keeping music, words
and movement in strict harness. Only the harmoniai are to be kept which
imitate the sounds and cadences of desirable behaviour; no intricate instruments will be necessary; and only the rhythms that are those of an orderly
and courageous life will be allowed. In short, his preferred model for music
is the human voice, speaking and singing within its normal range; and his
preferred model for movement is the human body, moving and dancing within
an approved range.
harmoniai of a culture and its public ethics, but not actually understanding the technical arguments. See Republic, e.g. 399a, 424c, Barker vol.I, 131, 140, and esp. Barkers
appendices on the harmoniai as Plato presents them, and on Damon, 1638, 1689.
19 Philebus, 17ae, and passages from Timaeus, quoted and explained by Barker, volume II,
Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, 615, esp.635. Also Republic 400ab, Barker I, 1334,
where it is agreed to take Damons advice on technical aspects.
20 E.g. Laws 653de and 664c, Barker I, 141 and 149, on children; Laws 653d654d, 665ad,
on adults including the elderly, ibid., 141f., 149f.
112
Chapter Three
Although he admits that his scheme is unrealistic, Plato envisages that

lawgivers will operate like orators, using fine words and flattery backed up by
compulsion. As lawgivers work to persuade composers, so composers work
to persuade children and citizens:
For these [educational] purposes there exist what we call songs. These are really incantations that work on their souls, seriously aimed at what we call concord (symphonia);
but because the souls of the young cannot bear seriousness, they are called games and
songs and practised as such [] In the same way the lawgiver who acts correctly will
persuade the poet by fine words and flattery, and will compel him ifhe fails to persuade,
to compose correctly in his rhythms the postures of men who are [] in all respects
good, and to compose their melodies in his harmonia.21
Songs will thus become the models for and the means to rightness ofliving,
and will embody the cultural ethos of the society which makes them.22
Whether or not Plato understood the nature and workings of music, in
Republic and Laws he treats musical harmoniai and rhythms as rhetorical
resources, and manages musics irrationality by reducing it as far as possible
to a language.
Although Aristotle is more pragmatic and more willing to accept musics
role in social and communal life, his views are similar. Essentially, music imitates
states of mind, and the relation between the two is made via convention:
Melodies themselves do contain imitations of character [] the harmoniai have quite
distinct natures from one another, so that those who hear them are differently affected
and do not respond in the same way to each. To some, such as the one called Mixolydian,
they respond with more grief and anxiety, to others [] with more mellowness of mind,
and to one another with a special degree of moderation and firmness, Dorian being
apparently the only one of the harmoniai to have this effect, while Phrygian creates
ecstatic excitement.23
But he places a number of different emphases which enhance the idea of

music as irrational. One is to stress the contrast between music/musicians
and the gravity ofserious behaviour. He suggests that children in education,
21
22
23
Laws 659d, Barker I, 147f, and passim.

Republic, 397401 and passim; Barker I, 12839; Laws 664b71a, 799c; Barker
14859.
Politics, VIII,v [1340ab], Barker I, 175f.; see also Barker I, 17680, esp.179f., where
Aristotle refers readers to expert opinion for a precise account of every detail of music
and its effects.
113
free men, gods and others whom one should take seriously might listen to
musical professionals, rather than acquiring musical skills themselves, because
normal human posture is distorted when playing:
We may also consider here the assumptions we make about the gods, for the poets never
describe Zeus as singing or playing the kithara; rather, we say that such practitioners
are vulgar artisans, and that what they do is not for real men, unless they are drunk or
joking []
Auloi should not be introduced into education, and neither should any other instrument proper to professional experts, [] the aulos is not a moral instrument but rather
one that excites the emotions, so that it should be used in the kinds of circumstances
where the spectacle offers more potential for katharsis than for learning. Let us add that
the aulos prevents the player from using words; and this is another fact about it that
militates against education. [] The fable told by the ancients about the auloi also has a
sound rational basis: they say that Athena invented the auloi and then threw them away.
It makes a good story to say that the goddess did this because [] it distorted her face;
but it is more likely to have been because training in aulos-playing contributes nothing
to the intelligence, knowledge and skill being things that we attribute to Athena.24
Another is to consider a wider range of functions for music in society, and

thence much more detailed relations between music and feeling, taking
sensitivity to music as a general human trait of which the state must take
account:
It is clear [] that all the harmoniai should be used, but not all [] in the same way. The
most moral ones should be used for education, while the most [] inspirational ones
should be used when we listen to other people performing. For a passion that strongly
affects certain souls occurs in all, varying only in that it may be greater or less: this is
the case [] with pity and fear, and with inspired ecstasy too. Some people are capable
of being entirely possessed by this last disturbance, but [] when these people make
use of melodies that greatly excite the soul, [] they are put right again, just as if they
had been given medication and purgation (katharsis). This must also happen to those
who are particularly prone to [] emotion of any kind, and to others []: katharsis and
alleviation come to all, and pleasure with them.25
This perception of sensitivity to music as a general human trait is intensified by

his view of musical imitations as unprecedentedly close to the real thing:
24 Politics, VIII,5, 1339ab, Barker I, 173.; Politics VIII6, 1341ab, Barker I, 1779.
25 Politics VIII,7, 1342a, Barker I, 180.
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Chapter Three
There exist in rhythms and melodies likenesses, most closely approximating to the
realities, of anger and mildness, courage and moderation and their opposites, and of all
other dispositions [] for our souls are altered when we hear such things. Habituation
in feeling pain and pleasure in likenesses is close to being affected in the same way by
the realities themselves.26
Music is thus credited with uniquely strong and wide-ranging powers of communication to the soul, especially the emotions. But it is a faculty that can be
used for good or ill. On the one hand, Aristotle observes:
a close relation of some sort between the soul and harmoniai and rhythms, which is why
many wise men say either that the soul is a harmonia, or that it contains one.27
On the other hand, music can be grouped with sleep, drink and dancing as
means to physical relaxation and pleasure; it communicates directly to the
body.28 And although he allows this as legitimate, it is here that musics power
seems potentially most dubious; in efforts to please popular taste, the professional musicians reduce harmoniai and performance to sensuous pleasure
alone, forgetting their normal character and stance:
It is commonplace for a depraved audience to cause changes in music, so that they mould
both the characters of the technical experts who dance attendance on them, and their
bodies, because of the movements involved.29
Aristotles response to this is to advocate moderation and good taste; he recommends simple songs and instruments for public use, and shows no sign of
Platos tendency to reduce music to an ersatz language. He does, however, see
many similarities between performing musician/poet and orator. His Rhetoric
notes that emotions produce a change or difference in our attitude as judges,
and that the orator needs to exploit this to persuade the listener. So Aristotles
sections on style tend to stress the importance ofthe human voice, the most
imitative of all our members, the rhythms suitable to each emotion, and a
carefully harmonised deployment of vocal timbre, volume, pitch, etc. i.e. the
same resources as the poet/singer in order to undermine the rational argu26
27
28
29
Politics VIII,5, 1340a, Barker I, 175.

Politics VIII,5, 1340b, Barker I, 176.
Politics VIII,5, 1339a, Barker I, 173.
Politics VIII,6, 1341b, Barker 179.
115
ment ofthe opposition.30 As Peter Dixon explains, even in the time ofPlato
and Aristotle rhetorical eloquence had a reputation for moral ambiguity,31
for the same reason as music: it is perceived as able to subvert rationality and
judgment, as well as supporting them, through its appeal to sense and emotion.
This Greek view of musics splendours and miseries passes directly into Latin
culture. Horaces On the Art ofPoetry presents the speaker/singers eloquence
as a kind of pathetic fallacy, which can equally well be deployed to produce
bad showmanship, Orphic magic, or impressive poetry.32
The power of the performing singer/player over his audience thus
becomes part of an ancient and durable tradition ofthe special force of vocality in human communication (albeit backed by gesture and mime rather than
dance). In his study of Die Macht des Mndlichen [the power of vocality],
Peter Philipp Riedl speaks of the Kontrollmacht attributed to the speaker
over his hearers: Man traute dem gesprochenen Wort in der ffentlichkeit
beinahe alles zu, im Positiven wie im Negativen33 [The spoken word in public
communication was credited with almost infinite powers, for good or ill]. This
myth of irresistible, if morally ambiguous, eloquence fuelled both continuity
and constant variety in the metaphor ofthe speaker/singer, from Greek and
Roman times to nineteenth-century Europe and beyond in the domains of
rhetoric, literature and music. Riedl shows how speakers ability to sway their
audience was attributed variously to rules, tricks, or force of passion.34 John
Hollander points out that the power of musical sounds to affect a hearer
has always been [] as much a literary idea as an observed phenomenon []
the figurative notion of eloquence, effective utterance in the abstract35 persisting long after the culture of harmoniai and movements of the soul had
disappeared. The NHDM section on Rhetoric shows how powerful and
30 Esp. Book II, chap.1, Book III, chaps,1,2,8,; The Rhetoric ofAristotle, tr. J.E.C. Welldon,
London: Macmillan, 1886, 114, 2248, 248f., esp.225.
31 Rhetoric, Methuen 1971, chapter on Classical theory, 815.
32 Ll. 73408, esp.95ff., 193ff., 380ff.; tr. T.S. Dorsch, Classical Literary Criticism, Penguin
1965ff., 81ff., 86ff., 92f.
33 Die Macht des Mndlichen: Dialog und Rhetorik in Heinrich von Kleists ber die
allmhliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden, Euphorion 98 (2004), esp.13336.
As Riedl shows, Kleist tries the further possibility of gambling on the chance rife in an
unharmonious and arbitrary universe.
34 Ibid., 13350, passim.
35 Hollander, 162220.
116
Chapter Three
all-pervasive the interaction between ideas of rhetoric, poetry and music

has been and still is, not only in forms such as recitative and oratorio, but in
a general belief in the ineluctable musicality of human utterance that is as
historically resilient as it has been theoretically elusive.36
Eighteenth-century development of this inheritance

Eighteenth-century German culture inherited this whole tradition in strong
flow. Belief in the irresistible power of music to induce feeling reappears
undimmed in Leibniz, who like Plato wants to harness it for the benefit of
society:
Durch Tne kann ein Mensch in alle Affekten, in jeden Zustand versetzt werden []
Sind Gesnge vermgend, das Gemth in die hchste Freude zu setzen, knnen Krieger
durch Trometen- und Kriegslieder [] belebt und angefeuert werden, kann berhaupt
die Musik alle Affekten erregen: so kann auch jeder sodann durch eine lebhafte []
Wiederholung dieser Gesnge sich selbst Affekten erregen.37
[Musical tones can put a human being into any emotion, any state of mind If songs
are capable of moving the spirit to the highest joy, if soldiers can be roused and urged on
by drums and martial songs, if music can arouse all and any emotions whatsoever, then
every man can rouse these emotions in himself by lively performance of these songs.]
Again, the basis for this belief is the view that music imitates feelings, sometimes literally as in Johann Matthessons gleeful praise of opera:
Weil man in selbigen gleichsam einen Confluxum aller Musikalischen Schnheiten
antreffen kan. Da hat ein Componist rechte Gelegenheit seinen Inventionibus den
Zgel schieen zu lassen! Da kan er auff unzehlige Art Liebe, Eifersucht, Ha []
Begierde, Gleichgltigkeit, Furcht, [] mit tausenderley Vernderungen und Anmuth
sehr natrlich abbilden.38
36
37
38
Ed.cit., 698700, esp.699.

G.G.Leibnitii Opera omnia, Geneva 1768, vol.VI, part I, p.306; Herder translates from
the Latin in citing this against Kant, in his Kalligone, Suphan XXII, 179ff., esp.190f.
Neu-Erffnetes Orchestre, Hamburg 1713, 160f.
117
[Because we find in opera as it were a conflux of all the beauties of music. There the
composer will find a real opportunity to let rip with his inventive talents! In countless
ways he can depict love, jealousy, hate [,..], desire, indifference, fear, [] in a thousand
varieties and all with grace and naturalness].
Yet again, the view is widespread that music imitates feelings with deceptive
and unparalleled closeness. As Johann Adam Hiller recognised,
wir haben so viel Vertrauen zu dieser Art der Nachahmung, und wir sind dabei so wenig
auf unsrer Hut, da wir fters einen Sinn durch den andern tuschen lassen; oder wir
lassen dem Gehr Dinge vorstellen, die sich sonst fr dasselbe gar nicht schickten []
wir glauben sie in den Tnen zu finden, und wir finden sie wirklich darinnen, so weit
sie sonst davon unterschieden sind.39
[We are so trusting ofthis form of imitation, we are so little on our guard, that we often
allow one sense to be deceived by another, or allow our hearing to be presented with
things which are not normally apt for it we believe we perceive them in the music, and
we really do perceive them, however remote from music they would normally be].
Remarkably, these last two speakers are not philosophers, but practising
musicians and musicologists. C.P.E. Bach went even further, insisting that:
ein Musickus nicht anders rhren kann, er sey dann selbst gerhrt; so mu er nothwendig sich selbst in alle Affeckten setzen knnen, welche er bey seinen Zuhrern erregen
will; er giebt ihnen seine Empfindungen zu verstehen und bewegt sie solchergestalt am
besten zur Mit-Empfindung. Bey matten und traurigen Stellen wird er matt und traurig.
Man sieht und hrt es ihm an.40
[A musician cannot move his hearers if he is not moved himself; he must of necessity
be able to rouse in himself all the feelings which he wishes to rouse in his listeners. He
communicates his feelings to them and thus can best rouse them to sympathy. In slow
and mournful passages he becomes slow and mournful. People can see and hear these
feelings in him].
Here, any sense of analogy between music and feeling has disappeared entirely.
Music is identified with the communication ofthe performers feelings to the
listener, on the basis of their common humanity and the performance gestures which Aristotle so much loathed. And this identification of music with
Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, in F.W. Marpurgs Historisch-kritische
Beytrge, I,6, Berlin 1755, 518f.
40 Versuch ber die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen, III,13 (1753, repr. Leipzig 1957, 122).
39
118
Chapter Three
feeling, real human feeling communicated between performer and listener,

became a rooted cultural and literary idea of the kind Hollander describes.
Rousseau, whose views on music were widely publicised in Germany via the
cultural and musical periodicals,41 dismissed the unmusical as personnes mal
organises [] plonges en consequence dans une insensibilit maladive
[ill-compounded persons, in consequence mired in an unhealthy lack offeeling], lacking a faculty common to all humanity.42 Even Herder and Schiller,
who knew all about the artifice of creating an illusion of emotion, accepted
the view that music appeals directly to the soul, by-passing the intellect, and
contrasted it with the clearer impression made by visual art:
Das Ohr ist der Seele am nchsten [] Das Gehr allein ist der Innigste, der Tieffste,
der Sinne. Nicht so deutlich wie das Auge ist es nicht so kalt: nicht so grndlich wie das
Gefhl [touch] ist es auch nicht so grob; aber es ist so der Empfindung am nchsten,
wie das Auge der Ideen und das Gefhl der Einbildungskraft.43
[The ear is closest to the soul on its own hearing is the most intense and profound of
the senses. Less clear than the eye, it is also less detached; less earthy than touch, it is
also less crude. But it is thus closest to the emotions, as the eye is to ideas and the touch
to imagination].
der Weg des Ohrs ist der gangbarste und nchste zu unsern Herzen. Musik hat den
rauhen Eroberer Bagdads bezwungen, wo Mengs und Correggio alle Malerkraft vergebens erschpft htten.44
[The ear is the shortest path to our hearts, and the most accessible. Music subdued the
barbarian conqueror of Baghdad, when Mengs and Correggio would have expended
all their painterly force in vain].
41 E.g. F.W. Marpurgs Historisch-kritische Beytrge, I,6, Berlin 1755, carried not only Hillers
article cit. above, but also Rousseaus Lettre sur la musique franoise, 57ff. Hillers own
periodical, Wchentliche Nachrichten und Anmerkungen, die Musik betreffend, Leipzig
176869, subsequently Musikalische Nachrichten und Anmerkungen, Leipzig 1770, carried several comments on Rousseaus ideas (e.g. WN 17, 128; MN I, 1ff.).
42 Musique, effets de la, article in the Encyclopdie, ed. Diderot & DAlembert, vol.10,
Paris 1765, 903.
43 Herder, Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 110ff.; cf. also FA Herder, vol.2, 9627.
44 Schiller, ber das gegenwrtige Teutsche Theater, NA 20, 85.
119
Effects of music on the body: French and Italian thought

Eighteenth-century commentators were strongly aware, like Plato and Aristotle,
that musics power over human feeling derived partly from its impact on the
body through rhythm as well as sound. This was not always seen as a problem. Herder, following his mentor Johann Georg Hamann, suggested that
music had originated in the bodily rhythms of work, and had common origins
also with gesture and dance, describing Greek dance as sichtbar gemachte
Musik.45 But philosophers from Baumgarten to Kant consigned beauty in all
the arts to the realm of a-rational feeling, esteemed well below reason. Even
Kant, who allowed feeling separate status between reason and the senses,
was unable to decide whether music was merely angenehm (an agreeable
sensation) or a well-designed schnes Spiel von Empfindungen [beautiful
play of feelings] and worthy of aesthetic appraisal. On the whole he apparently inclined to the physical view, comparing music with Stoff zum Lachen
[matter for laughter] in its pleasurable agitation ofthe diaphragm, and with a
heavily scented handkerchief in its tendency to bombard the neighbourhood
with its effects!46 Even Herder explains the impact of various types of sound
as almost an invasion ofthe body, setting up physical vibrations in the nerve
which in turn set the soul vibrating; the receptive ear has ein Saitenspiel
von Gehrfibern (a harp of auditory fibres), as though the ear itself were an
instrument played upon by music.47
This sense of musics influence on the body, and its common ground (in
rhythm) with physical movement and dance, was reinforced by a tradition of
the physicality ofthe voice which impinged on the listeners ear. As PhilippeJoseph Salazar shows in his detailed study, anatomical investigations of vocal
45 E.g. Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 120f. W. Nufer, Herders Ideen zur Verbindung von
Poesie, Musik und Tanz, Germanische Studien 74 (1929), still offers detailed information and helpful insight into these ideas and their development.
46 For a lucid general account of this transitional epoch, see A. Nivelle, Kunst- und
Dichtungstheorien zwischen Aufklrung und Klassik, de Gruyter 1960 (rev. 2nd ed.
1971), 181, 184ff., 231 and passim. Also Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, esp. 51, 53f.,
ed.cit. 324f., 32830.
47 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 102, 103ff.
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Chapter Three
organs, human and animal, had been made in Italy and France in the sixteenth
to eighteenth centuries.48 In almost all ofthese, attempts to interpret the results
scientifically ran alongside metaphorical interpretation, and continued to do
so well after studies of sound (acoustics) had been separated from the voice
and its associations.49 These metaphorical associations extended the idea of
human voice well beyond simple linguistic transmission of a message. Some
focussed on the idea ofthe voice as instrument ofthe soul and thus as concrete
manifestation of the intangible inner (wo)man. Whether speaking or singing, pitch, timbre and volume ofthe voice were held to show not merely the
sex and relative age ofthe individual, but also the temperament; as e.g. in the
mid-seventeenth-century works ofAthanasius Kircher and Marin Mersenne,
and in Mersennes parallel between harmonised voices of different character,
pitch and timbre and a well-balanced combination of humours:
Les quatre voix [] reprsentent les quatre lments: la basse la terre, la taille leau,
lune et lautre tant lies comme leau coulant sur le sol en un mesme globe; lair
la haute-contre, qui entretient avec la taille le mme rapport que celle-ci avec la basse et
que lair avec les deux autres lments; au feu le dessus.50
[The four voices represent the four elements: the bass has earth, the tenor has water,
both linked like water flowing over the earth in the same globe; the counter-tenor has
air, which maintains with the tenor the same relation which this has with the bass and
which air has with the two other elements; and the treble has fire].
Other works, particularly those developed from anatomical studies at Padua,

took the full range ofhuman and animal calls and cries not merely as expression of passions and needs, but as a sophisticated system of communication, in which the vocal apparatus is highly lauded and instrumental music
48 Le culte de la voix au XVIIe sicle. Formes esthtiques de la parole lge de limprim,

Champion 1995. His chapter headings show how these studies spawned several specialised metaphorical associations in perceptions of the voice, especially in France.
49 E.g. in the works of the deaf mathematician Joseph Sauveur at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and in Ernst F.F. Chladnis Tonfiguren (1802) at its end. See Salazar,
85f., especially note 172 on Sauveurs papers for the Collge Royale and the Acadmie
royale des sciences, delivered 16971707, published 1730, 1743.
50 Salazar, 59 on Mersennes ideas of voices at different pitch, 5861. See also 313 on similar
ideas in Kircher, and in general Salazars section La voix est une analogie, 2936.
121
regarded as an analogy of it.51 Another view took the human voice as part of
the phenomenon of sound less as acoustics than as audible manifestation
of a much larger whole than the individual. Whether as the human expression of universal harmony, the voice of nature, or as human articulation of
things beyond human ken, the voice of prophets, kings, magicians, poets
was a portal through which the infinite was made manifest in the finite
world.52 All of which involved the bombardment of the ear and its faculties by sound, according to the physicist Pierre Gassendi;53 and all of which,
as he and others pointed out, had negative possibilities. The voice of feeling
or prophecy could be feigned, as in oratory or lying, and the voice could
degenerate into a merely animal cry which offended against the humanity
of speech/song. Paradoxically, the very physicality of voice, without which
humans could not communicate, was a weakness: angels and spirits did not
need this medium, but communed directly soul to soul.54
Such problematic associations with the human voice did not disappear
as a less mechanistic approach to these phenomena took over. As Rdiger
Campes study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary language shows,
the shift from rules of rhetoric to preoccupation with sincerity and emotional
appeal was in some ways a shift to a different type of rhetoric and a different
set of techniques. Enlivening the dead letter with the spoken voice and its
potentially emotive tonality was, after all, a device for persuasion: Campe
speaks ofdie Lockung des Ausdrucks, the seductive quality added to language
by the expressive voice, acknowledging the problematic nature ofthese techniques for sincerity.55 So it is that Rousseau can expect his readers to follow
the metaphorical connections when St Preux, in La Nouvelle Hloise (1761),
51
Salazar gives the early example of Casserius (1600), who established the high status of
the voice for some time: see esp.21ff., esp.24f.
52 Again, chiefly in Athanasius Kirchers Musurgia universalis (1650) and Mersennes
Trait de la voix in his Harmonie universelle, 1636; Salazar, 2950ff., 5661, 15761; and
especially Salazars section Les metamorphoses de la voix. His later chapters deal with
special cases such as poet, king, etc.
53 Opera omnia 1658; in this connection see esp. Salazar, pp.6671.
54 Salazar, pp.717, and chapters Les mtamorphoses de la voix, and Variations de la voix
mystique.
55 Affekt und Ausdruck. Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18 Jahrhundert,
Niemeyer 1990, 277.
122
Chapter Three
interprets a piece of music as la voix de la douleur, de lemportement, du dsespoir [the very voice of grief, of outrage, of despair], and uses both music
and emotional interpretation in his attempt to persuade Julie to capitulate
to feeling. And they would also follow when this vocal manipulator writes
with detached critical wit to an emotionally neutral friend, on the very same
piece of music.56
Music can damage your health

Given all these powers attributed to voice, speech, song and instrument, it is
not surprising that we find fear or mistrust among eighteenth-century reactions to music. Hiller (in 1755) worries that die Musik hat geheime Zugnge
zu dem Herzen, die wir noch nicht entdecket haben, und die wir vor ihr
zu beschtzen nicht imStande sind; and even suggests that music can be a
threat to health:
Eben diese heftigen Bewegungen unsers Herzens, die ihr [der Musik] so viel Ehre machen,
sind ihr auch am ersten [] nachtheilig. Unser Herz ist mehr fr die ruhigen und sanften
Empfindungen eingenommen; es wird durch die gewaltsamen zu stark angegriffen.57
[Music has secret ways into our hearts, which we have not yet discovered and which we
are not able to protect from it The violent agitations of our hearts which are musics
greatest triumph are very likely to be harmful to them. Our hearts are more attracted by
quiet and gentle feelings, they are too violently assailed by the powerful emotions].
Lowinsky notes similar attitudes in Rousseau; e.g. in his Dictionnaire de

musique, where he explicitly rejects the expressive discords perceived in
Rameaus harmonies; and even in Mozart.58 Wieland laid down similar strictures for the Singspiel in the 1770s:
56
57
58
Part I, Letter 48, and Part II, Letter 23.

Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, ed.cit., 523, 542.
Op.cit., esp. 193f; also Rousseaus article Expression, ed.cit., 820. See esp. Robert
Spaethling, Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe, Camden House 1987, 14974,
esp.161, 17074.
123
Die Musik [] hrt auf, Musik zu seyn, sobald sie aufhrt, Vergngen zu machen. Alle
wilde, sturmische Leidenschaften [] liegen auer ihrem Gebiet.59
[Music ceases to be music when it ceases to be pleasant. All wild and stormy passions
are outside its remit].
Even Herder in later life came to approve ofPlato and Aristotles restrictions
on music, because its influence is so pervasive and elusive that it can affect
all faculties, and stamp a nations character: sind musikalische Weisen (wie
ihr Name sagt) Weisen und Wege der Empfindung: werden sie nicht, mit
Worten verbunden, wirkliche Denkweisen?60 [If musical modes, as their
name suggests, are modes and forms of feeling, will they not, when combined with words, become modes and forms ofthought?]. It seems that this
metaphor music as an irrational power, appealing directly to human feeling
and directly conveying human feeling was so well established that it was
not always recognised as a metaphor, but taken literally and translated into
practice by musicians, composers and writers. Although Rousseaus prose
evoked ardent torrents of passion, his music (e.g. in Le devin du village, as
Lowinsky shows) seems tonally feeble by contrast; and neither he nor the
Singspiel came anywhere near the tonal, harmonic and rhythmic complexity ofMozart, yet Mozart apparently agreed with them in principle. Only at
the end of the century do we find Schillers clear exposition of the analogy
at work here; and even then his idea of its workings is startlingly similar to
that of earlier writers, even including Plato and Aristotle:
Nun besteht aber der ganze Effekt der Musik [] darin, die innern Bewegungen des
Gemts durch analogische uere zu begleiten und zu versinnlichen [] Da nun jene
innern Bewegungen (als menschliche Natur) nach strengen Gesetzen der Notwendigkeit
vor sich gehen, so geht diese Notwendigkeit und Bestimmtheit auch auf die uern
Bewegungen, wodurch sie ausgedrckt werden, ber;. [] Dringt nun der Tonsetzer
[] in das Geheimnis jener Gesetze ein, welche ber die innern Bewegungen des
menschlichen Herzens walten, und studiert er die Analogie, welche zwischen diesen
Versuch ber das deutsche Singspiel, in Smmtliche Werke, [no ed.] Leipzig: Gschen,
1839f., vol.34, 86.
60 Adrastea (180104), Suphan XXIII, 343; cf. Nufer, 43f. (The word Herder uses is nearer
tune than mode, but the pun is important). Herder echoes Platos idea that songs should
embody the cultural values of the society which produces them.
59
124
Chapter Three
Gemtsbewegungen und gewissen uern Erscheinungen stattfindet, so wird er aus
einem Bildner gemeiner Natur zum wahrhaften Seelenmaler.61
[Now the whole operation of music consists of accompanying and manifesting the inner
movements of the soul by analogical outer movements And since these inner movements, being human nature, proceed according to strict laws of necessity, this necessity
and precision is transmitted to the external movements by which they are expressed. If,
then, the composer can penetrate the secrets of the laws which govern the movements
ofthe human heart, and ifhe studies the analogy which arises between these emotional
movements and certain outward phenomena, he will no longer be a mere depicter of
common nature but a true painter of souls].
Rationality restored if possible

Alongside the continued perception of music as harmful in varying degrees,
there was also remarkable continuity, as well as variety, in ideas on how to
restrain and contain musics operations usually by attempting to rationalise
its imitative functions. One idea was that music should imitate features from
Nature a fashion for Tonmalerei which drew scorn even from Hiller:
da kann man hren, Seiger schlagen, Enten schnarren, Frsche quacken, und bald wird
man auch darinnen die Flhe niesen und das Gras wachsen hren.62
[You can hear the clocks strike, the ducks quack, the frogs croak, and soon youll even
be able to hear the fleas sneeze and the grass grow].
But the most vigorous efforts were made to rationalise musics irrational
force by linking it to language either by combining it with language, or by
attempting to treat it as a language, even sometimes both. As early as 1606,
ber Matthissons Gedichte, NA 22, 272. The reference is to Friedrich von Matthisson, a
poet (17611831), not to the musicologist and writer Johann Mattheson (16811764).
62 Op.cit., 532. Two old critical works are still extremely helpful in their detailed accounts
ofthese complicated mid-century discussions: Arnold Scherings Die Musiksthetik der
deutschen Aufklrung, Zeitschrift der internationalen Musikgesellschaft VIII (1907),316f.;
and Hugo Goldschmidts Die Musiksthetik des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihre Beziehungen
zu seinem Kunstschaffen, Zrich/Leipzig: Rescher, 1915, repr. Olms 1968, 38ff.
61
125
Joachim Burmeister had set up a system equating music and rhetoric feature
by feature.63 Some French Rationalists tried to systematise music in similar
detail. J.B. Dubos suggested that it moved the listener by closely imitating the
tonal fluctuations and rhythms of the impassioned speaking voice: les tons,
les accents, les soupirs, les inflexions de voix64 [the tones, accents, sighs, voice
inflections]. Batteux also equated individual notes with individual letters and
syllables, and preferred music to be like a language:
pour ainsi dire parlante, o elle a un sens net, sans obscurit, sans quivoque [] Il ny a
pas un son de lArt qui nait son modle dans la Nature, et qui ne doive tre, au moins, un
commencement dexpression, comme une lettre ou une syllabe lest dans la parole65
[as it were speaking, having a precise meaning, no obscurity, no ambiguity There is not
a sound ofthis art which does not have its model in Nature, and which ought at least to
be the beginnings of expression, as a letter or syllable is in spoken language].
Even Kant accepted this rationalisation, envisaging musical reception as a

series of contraptions which would have done credit to Heath Robinson:
Der Reiz [] [der Musik] scheint darauf zu beruhen: da jeder Ausdruck der Sprache
im Zusammenhange einen Ton hat, der dem Sinne desselben angemessen ist; da dieser
Ton [] einen Affect des Sprechenden bezeichnet und gegenseitig auch im Hrenden
hervorbringt, der denn in diesem [] auch die Idee erregt, die in der Sprache mit solchem Tone ausgedrckt wird; und da, so wie die Modulation gleichsam eine allgemeine
jedem Menschen verstndliche Sprache der Empfindungen ist, die Tonkunst diese fr
sich allein in ihrem ganzen Nachdrucke, nmlich als Sprache der Affecten, ausbt.66
[The charm [of music] appears to lie in the fact that every linguistic expression in its
context has a particular tone appropriate to its meaning; that this tone indicates the
feelings ofthe speaker and reciprocally evokes these in the hearer, and in turn evokes in
the latter the idea which is expressed in this tone in language; and that, just as voice
modulation is like a universal language offeeling, understood by everyone, music works
with voice modulation alone in all its force as a language of the emotions].
Musica Poetica, Rostock 1606; cit. Hollander op.cit. 197f. See also Hollanders comments on ensuing developments in recitative, 176ff., 194ff.
64 J.B. Dubos, Rflexions Critiques sur la Posie et sur la Peinture (1715), Utrecht 1732, 364;
cit. Goldschmidt 38ff., q.v.
65 C. Batteux, Les beaux arts reduits un mme principe, Paris 1746, 264f.
66 Kritik der Urtheilskraft, I, 219; ed.cit. 328.
63
126
Chapter Three
The parallel tendency among musician/composers was an attempt to create

arbitrary conventions linking particular emotions, temperaments, even bodily
shapes, to particular musical rhythms and timbres in short, to codify and
establish the musical language. Mattheson considered the Greek modes and
modern keys in this context in his Neu-Erffnetes Orchestre (1713); and in
his widely read Vollkommener Capellmeister (1739) tried hard to match each
dance-rhythm precisely to a particular type of emotion, character and body
movement.67 It is the internalised metaphors of music as irrational and music
as voice offeeling which underlie a number of otherwise bizarre specifications
for dramatic music performance. Gottsched thought that cantata composers
should allocate particular voices to particular characters or emotions in
terms which suggest little progress beyond Mersenne:
Sie sollten auch einer Mannsperson, die singend aufgefhret wird, eine mnnliche Baund Tenorstimme geben, z.E. dem Neide, dem Zorne, dem Stolze, den vier Jahreszeiten,
u.d.gl. den Alt und Discant aber fr weibliche Personen, z.E. die Liebe, die Schnheit,
die Tugend, die Vernunft, die Gottesfurcht, u.d.gl. behalten.68
[And for a male character presented as singing, they should use a masculine bass and
tenor voice for example envy, anger, pride, the four seasons, etc. and reserve alto and
treble for female characters, for example love, beauty, virtue, reason, piety, etc].
Even in later and less hidebound Enlightenment thought, Lessings discussion

of incidental music is based on the assumption that each musical movement
has one dominant emotion; so he suggests that entracte music should fit the
mood ofthe preceding act, and not include a second movement which could
give away what was to follow: die Musik wrde ihn [the dramatist] verrathen, wenn sie die folgende Leidenschaft angeben wollte69 [Music would
spoil things for him if it gave away the passion of the next act]. As late as
1780, J.J. Engel could state categorically that eine Sinfonie [= instrumental
piece, sometimes overture], eine Sonate, u.s.w. mu die Ausfhrung einer
Leidenschaft, die aber in mannigfaltige Empfindungen ausbeugt, enthalten70
67
68
69
70
NEO, Hamburg 1713, III,2,pp.231ff.; VC, Hamburg 1739, II,13, 224ff.

Critische Dichtkunst, II,1,iii, 3f.
Hamburgische Dramaturgie St. 26f., ed.Mann, 108.
ber die musikalische Malerey, Berlin 1780, 29. This must have stuck in the cultural
memory: Eduard Hanslick cites it in his arguments against music as feeling, Vom
Musikalisch-Schnen, 9th rev.ed. Leipzig 1896, 21.
127
[An instrumental piece, a sonata, and so on, must contain the exposition of
one passion, although it will range through many different nuances].
This insistence that music be confined to language of feeling seems
at first to underlie the insistence by Rousseau and others that music must
sing in order to move the hearer: La Musique doit donc ncessairement
chanter pour toucher, pour plaire, pour soutenir lintrt et lattention.71 It
conveys not only their preference for homophonic music, but also an apparently rational preference for vocal music i.e. music with text and singer(s).
Certainly, they complain that music is vague by comparison with language.
Without the greater precision of expression afforded by the text, they found
music mere sensuous tinkling which quickly sated the listener,72 a stimulus
which roused feelings but gave them no definite direction or shape. Like Plato,
Hiller deplored musical feelings as zweifelhaft [ambiguous] without a text;
and Lessing complained that music confused the listener because it gave no
context for the feelings it aroused:
Itzt zerschmelzen wir in Wehmut, und auf einmal sollen wir rasen. Wie? Warum? Wider
wen? [] Alles das kann die Musik nicht bestimmen; sie lt uns in Ungewissheit und
Verwirrung; wir empfinden, ohne eine richtige Folge unserer Empfindungen wahrzunehmen; wir empfinden wie im Traume; und alle diese unordentliche Empfindungen
sind mehr abmattend als ergtzend.73
[One minute were dissolving in melancholy and the next were meant to be raging. How?
Why? Against whom? Music cannot specify these things, it leaves us in uncertainty and
confusion; we feel things without perceiving a proper sequence in our feelings, we feel things
as in a dream; and all these disordered feelings are wearisome rather than pleasurable].
Rousseau, article Unit de mlodie, Dictionnaire de Musique, ed.cit. 1144; cf. also
Herders insistence on Ton rather than Schall, rooted in die singende Sprache; Viertes
Wldchen, esp. II 8, Suphan IV, 117 and passim.
72 Rousseau uses this phrase even ofthe four-part psalms, which he perceives as a succession
of chords even though they obviously do have a text: Unit de mlodie, Dictionnaire,
ed.cit. 1143f.
73 Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St. 26f.
71
128
Chapter Three
Even Herder, who understood something of musical structure as well as tone,

complains about musics vagueness:
Musik als solche hat Nachahmung Menschlicher Leidenschaften; sie erregt eine Folge
inniger Empfindungen; wahr, aber nicht deutlich, nicht anschauend, nur uerst dunkel.
Du warest, Jngling! in ihrem dunkeln Hrsaale: sie klagte: sie seufzete: sie strmte:
sie jauchzete: du fhltest [] mit jeder Saite mit aber worber wars, da sie, und du
mit ihr klagtest, seufzetest, jauchzetest, strmtest?74
[Music as such has the imitation of human passions, and rouses a sequence of intense
feelings; it does so accurately, but not clearly or sharply, only very obscurely. You, young
man, have been in her dark auditorium,; she mourned and sighed, raged and rejoiced,
every fibre of your being felt these things with her. But what was it that she, and you
with her, were mourning and sighing, rejoicing and raging about?]
However, from the examples considered above we can see that the various
rational objections to music since Plato are not of a piece; nor is it always
the same kind oflanguage with which music is unfavourably compared, nor
is it always the same kind of music which is deplored. In Plato, the problem
arises because the physical and emotive power of sound and rhythm can in
mysterious ways destroy, as well as restore, rational judgment and the balance ofharmony and proportion. As Caroline Jacot Grapa points out, Platos
nightmare poet/musician who could imitate anything and everything suggests not just a world without harmony, but a world without language; and in
particular without language in its capacity to convey truth, offering instead
a mere semblance: voice which has nothing to say about the world or the
speakers state of mind, still less about the cultural values which its song is
meant to embody:
Un monde sans le rcit, sans la parole [] une imitation dconcerte de tout bruit, de
tout son, de tout ce qui a voix, enfin de langages sans substance [] jusqu ntre plus
que fragments de sens environns dincertain.75
74 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 161f.

75 Grapa, Lhomme et le dissonant au dix-huitime sicle, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford
1997, 1023. Cf. the section on Plato above, esp. his complaint about music which is all
imitation and no narrative, and his wish to use songs in which both text and harmoniai
reflect chosen social values.
129
[A world without narrative, without words, a disorganised imitation of all noise, all
sound, of anything which has voice, in short of languages without substance to the
point of being fragments of meaning surrounded by uncertainty].
This is also, as Grapa shows, part of the objection to Diderots nephew in

Le neveu de Rameau, whose language, like his opinions, behaviour, gestures
and voice, is all over the place.76 But at the heart of his diatribe there is in
fact an important truth acknowledged by his listener: Il y a de la raison,
peu prs, dans tout ce que vous venez de dire77 [There is reason, more or less,
in everything you have just said]. The nephew understands the important
perceived relation of melody and rhythm to declaimed language and voice
in song; and hence their analogous relation both to expression of feeling
and to instrumental sound. This enables him not only to produce virtuoso
musical imitations with his own voice; but also to explain in conversation
that music does not literally imitate the voice of feeling. This marks a shift
in perception ofthe problem. The invective which punctuates the nephews
conversation is directed solely at harmonic music based on mathematical proportions, especially Rameaus, on the grounds that it has no human interest or
emotional appeal. Truth, in the sense ofknowledge here analysis of society
and much else as well as music is conveyed exclusively through language,
especially in dialogue, though with rhetorical devices in plenty.78 But truth
in the sense of vivid human experience, accurately understood and rendered,
is conveyed in music, especially song. The philosopher Moi cannot say what
song is; but the nephew can explain it, sing and act it, and polemicise for the
kind of music (vocal or instrumental) which prioritises song: melodic, homophonic, and organised by rhythm (as opposed to mathematically calculated
harmonic intervals).
76 This essay was written 176174, and first publ. in Goethes translation 1805; see Andr
Billy, Diderot: Oeuvres, Gallimard: 1951, notes 1407. See esp. Grapa, op.cit. 749, and
the comments throughout Le neveu de Rameau of the philosopher (Moi) on the wild
variations ofthe musicians voice pitch, timbre, etc, and paradoxes, contradictions, etc,
in the meaning of what he says.
77 Neveu de Rameau, ed.cit., 454; cf. AA 15, 999.
78 On the language of Le neveu de Rameau, see esp. Grapa, 74ff. and 828.
130
Chapter Three
Music restored as the voice of feeling (Rousseau and Herder)

If, in the light of this, we look again at Rousseau and Herder, we can see
that their idea of music as voice of feeling has complex roots. Obviously, a
major factor is polemic for melodic music against harmonic, for rhythmically
organised expression of feeling against mathematically organised musical
technique and structure (e.g. counterpoint and polyphony). But a bigger
factor still is their concept of the common origins of language and music in
primitive human communication, articulated by the human vocal apparatus.79
As Rousseau put it in his Essai sur les origines des langues (1763, publ. 1782):
Avec les prmires voix se formrent les prmires articulations ou les prmiers sons,
selon le genre de la passion [] La colre arrache des cris mnaans que la langue et le
palais articulent; mais la voix de la tendresse est plus douce, cest la glote qui la modifie,
et cette voix devient un son []
Ainsi la cadence et les sons naissent avec les sillabes, la passion fait parler tous les
organes [] ainsi les vers, les chants, la parole ont une origine commune [] Les prmiers
discours furent les prmires chansons; les retours priodiques et mesurs du rhytme,
les inflxions mlodieuses des accens firent naitre la poesie et la musique avec la langue
[]80
[With the first voices there formed the first articulations or the first sounds, according
to the type of passion [which caused them] [] Anger forced out menacing cries which
the tongue and the palate articulated; the voice of tenderness was sweeter, the glottis
modified it, and this voice became a sound []
79 See the recent vol. of essays edited by Claude Dauphin, Musique et langage chez Rousseau,
Oxford: Voltaire Foundation (SVEC 2004: 08), 2004; notably those in the first section
Lespace des voix (147). Catherine Kintzler, in particular, brings out the moment of
physical vocalisation in Rousseaus thought as a concretising of the hitherto inchoate feelings within the self and a bridge across space to other conscious entities (who
may think differently), so that consciousness forms along with linguistic and musical
sounds: Musique, voix, intriorit et subjectivit: Rousseau et les paradoxes de lespace,
319, esp.411. Cf. also the essays by Jean-Franois Perrin, La musique dans les lettres
selon Rousseau: une coute du sensible, 209, and Jean Fisette, La gense du sens chez
Rousseau, 3947. The former argues that Rousseaus emphasis on common origins is
an attempt to make audible the musical language of feeling within the all too rational
language ofFrench; the latter argues that Rousseaus view of all vocal sound as signifier
anticipates the science of semiotics.
80 Essai, chap.12, ed.cit. 410f. The orthography of this edition has been kept here.
131
Thus it was that cadences and sounds came into being along with syllables, and
passion made all the organs speak [] and so also that poetry, sounds and words had a
common origin [] The first speeches were the first songs; the periodic and measured
recurrences of rhythm, the melodious inflections of spoken accents brought poetry and
music to birth along with language].
In this view, song and speech are part ofthe same physical process ofhuman
utterance, differing only in degree of sound modulation and rhythm involved.
Rousseau can thus speak ofthem as two languages, and of song as doublement
la voix de la nature (doubly the voice of nature).81 This leaves instrumental
music as a poor second to vocal music: Comme la Musique vocale a prcd
de beaucoup linstrumentale, celle-ci a toujours reu de lautre ses tours de
chant et sa mesure82 [Since vocal music preceded instrumental music by
some way, the latter has always derived its melodic phrases and measures from
vocal music]. Rousseau acknowledges no music between the splendours of
song and the miseries of harmony:
en quittant laccent orale et sattachant aux seules institutions harmoniques la musique
devient plus bruyante loreille et moins douce au cur. Elle a dj cess de parler,
bientt elle ne chantera plus et alors avec tous ses accords et toute son harmonie elle ne
fera plus aucun effet sur nous.83
[When it abandons vocal inflection and attaches itself to harmonic constructs, music
becomes noisier to the ear and less sweet to the heart. It has already ceased to speak,
soon it will have ceased to sing, and then for all its chords and all its harmony it will
have no effect whatever upon us].
In his perspective, the physicality of music is concentrated wholly in the

voice. The connection with movement and dance has disappeared, and so
has any awareness of an analogy between music and language: the two are
presented as congruent. This is not an aesthetic concept, but an ideological
perspective which reduces music to a rhetorical resource in the service of a
particular kind of language.
81
82
83
Essai, chaps. 14 & 19, ed.cit., 416, 427. See also Kintzler, who explains that Rousseau
preferred vowel sounds, as the flowing original unit of conscious utterance, to consonants
which he regarded as the products of breath impeded by teeth and palate (op.cit., 5f.)
Lettre sur la musique franoise (1753), Rousseau, crits, ed.cit. 294.
Essai, chap.17, ed.cit. 422.
132
Chapter Three
Herder was a music lover rather than a musician, but he is as vehement as

Rousseau against mathematically based systems of music; and often follows
Rousseaus argument closely,84 insisting on Ton, the melodic single note,
rather than Schall, the bundling of notes in harmonic music:
Man hat die verschiedene Zahl der Vibrationen einer Saite nach Lnge, Strke und
Gewicht, und daraus die Tne, und daraus die Verhltnie zwischen den Tnen, und
daraus die Harmonie und daraus die Komposition nach Regeln bis in die Algebra hineinberechnet;[] Sie erklren nichts vom einfachen Tone selbst; nichts von der Energie
desselben aufs Gehr; nichts von der Anmuth derselben, einzeln und in der Folge; von
allem Nichts [] Der Schall ist nichts anders, als ein dunkles Aggregat der Tne.85
[They have calculated the various vibrations of a string according to its length, strength
and weight, and thence the tones, and thence the ratios between the tones, and thence
harmony and thence composition by rules until it has become algebra [] but they tell
us nothing about the energy with which it [tone] impinges on the ear; nothing about
its grace, singly and in sequence; nothing of all that [] [Harmonious] sound is simply
an obscure aggregation of tones].
As Gerhard Sauder has recently pointed out, Herders late essay Die Lyra
(1795) re-emphasises the remarkable physicality ofhis view of poetry (spoken
or written), and the importance of its common ground with song.86 In his
84 As Pierre Pnisson points out, he perforce only read Rousseaus Essai [] when it was
published posthumously in 1782, and found bekannte Sachen [familiar things] in it
his own essay on the topic was written in 1771. See Pnisson, Tnen bei Rousseau
und Herder, in G. Sauder (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder, 17441803, Hamburg: Meiner,
1987, 18693, esp.186, note 3.
85 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 90, 91, 99. Herder had obviously done thorough research;
he explicitly cites Mersenne, Sauveur, DAlembert, Diderot and others, alongside Rameau,
as examples.
86 Die Lyra is included at the end ofTerpsichore, a collection ofHerders translations from
Jakob Balde: see FA Herder vol.8 ed. Hans-Dietrich Irmscher, 11735 and commentary
10203; Sauder, Herders Poetic Works, his Translations and his Views on Poetry, in
Hans Adler & WulfKoepke (eds), A Companion to the Works ofJohann Gottfried Herder,
Camden House 2009, 30530, esp.310. Sauder does not explain that both Musik
and Wohlklang carry implications of coordinated harmonious structure built up in
sequence, as well as of melodious sound: hence the need for the poets Energie to drive
the sequence forward to completion. Cf. Herders summary of dynamic structure in the
arts as Zusammenordnung ihrer Teile, producing for the onlooker a Folge glcklicher
Augenblicke [] mithin [] eine Art Musik seiner Seele. (ed.cit. 119).
133
search for aesthetic concepts for poetry and music, Herder encountered the
Greeks, their language and their society as an ideal musical culture:
Ein rohes, einfltiges, aber tiefer fhlendes Volk. Wir empfinden nur Schall, da sie das
Element des Schalles, den Ton, empfanden [] Vlker, die noch nher dem Gesange der
Sprache [] singende Vlker von der Art sind natrlich den Elementen des Musikalischen
Gefhls nher, als andre, die nur schallende Krper von Sylben und Lauten reden.87
[A primitive, uncomplicated race, but one which felt more deeply. We have ears only
for sound, whereas they could hear the basic element of sound, tone [] Peoples who
are still closer to the musicality oflanguage, singing peoples ofthis kind are by nature
closer to the elements of musical sense than those whose speech is only sonorous groups
of syllables and vocal noises].
He is aware that the equation of music with language is a metaphor, and that
he is looking back to the idea of an age when, as still perceived in contemporary
Italy, emotive language and music were literally one and the same:
Da sinds alsdenn nicht Metaphern, was wir von den Sprachgesange der alten Griechen
lesen, die gleichsam zween Abmessungen der Sprachtne mehr hatten, als wir, Harmonik
und Rhythmik keine Metaphern, wenn sie auch im Grundgefhl eines Tons tiefer
empfanden als wir. Noch ist die halbsingende Sprache der Italiener mit ihrer Natur zur
fhlbaren Tonkunst vereinigt.88
[We are not dealing with metaphors when we read ofthe singing speech ofthe ancient
Greeks, who had as it were two more measures of spoken tones than we have, harmony
and rhythm. And we are not dealing with metaphors when [we say that] they had a
much deeper basic sense of sound than we have. Even today the half-singing speech of
the Italians language is still combined with their nature into a music of feeling.]
His ultimate purpose is, like Plato, to harness music, this time for the purpose
of enhancing our knowledge of ourselves:89
87 VW Suphan IV, 106f.
88 Ibid., 107.
89 Jrgen Trabants essay in the Companion to the Works ofJohann Gottfried Herder, Herder
and Language, 11739, points out that Herder, like Leibniz, sees language as the essential
cognitive tool, without which thought processes cannot occur. He also notes that [like
Rousseau] Herder thought of language in physical terms, and envisaged the voice and
its utterance as the connecting point between individual and the world (see esp.11730).
Extending language by harnessing music and dance is thus a way of extending human
understanding of the emotions.
134
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Wenn die Natur keinen nhern Weg an die Menschliche Seele wuste, als durchs Ohr
vermittlest der Sprache, und keinen nhern Weg an die Leidenschaft, als durchs Ohr
mittelst der Schlle, der Tne, der Accente Muse der Tonkunst, welche Eingebungen
sind in deiner Hand, um die Physiologie der Menschlichen Seele zu entrthseln.90
[If Nature could find no more direct road to the human soul than through the ear by
means of language, and no more direct road to the passions than through the ear by
means of harmonies, tones and accents, Muse of music, what inspirations you have in
your hand to decipher the physiology of the human soul!]
In this view, the timbre of the single note is central its infinite variety, and
the infinite variety of human reaction and response, are crucial elements.91
But instrumental music as such remains problematic. This is not just because
it is secondary and derived from language:
Das Menschengeschlecht hngt in der Reihe seiner Individuen zusammen; also auch
in allen Erfindungen einzelner Individuen zusammen; also auch in der Sprache. Sie
erbt sich fort: sie wird [] immer verndert [] sie geht fort und bleibt ewig, wie das
Vorrecht der Menschen, die Vernunft. Wir wollen also so viel Zeiten annehmen, als
nthig ist, um diesem rohen Sprachgesange [] Vollkommenheit zu geben [] So ist
also ein feinerer Gesang wohlklingenderer Tne und Tonfolgen geworden; in welchem
aber noch immer Gedanke, Empfindung [] das Wesen, und Ton als Ton, Tonfolge
als Tonfolge [] untergeordnetes Nebenaugenmerk ist. Der Gesang ist noch immer
Sprache [] Aus der Sprache ging sie [die Musik] also aus [] Die Musik der Alten war
lebende tnendere Sprache, [] war Vokalmusik im hchsten edelsten Verstande; die
Instrumentalmusik ward spter, nur nach und nach, erfunden.92
[The human race is connected by the sequence of its individuals, and thus by all the
inventions of single individuals, and thus also by language. Language goes from one
generation to the next, is constantly changed, continues and remains constant, as does
the human prerogative, reason. So let us allow as much time as necessary for the development of this crude singsong language [] towards perfection [] Thus a more refined
song became more melodious tones and tonal sequences; but in them ideas and feelings
were still the essential; and tone as such, tonal sequence as such, were subordinate issues.
Song is still language [] So, music developed from language... And the music of the
ancients was a more vivid, more sonorous language, was vocal music in the best and
highest sense; instrumental music was invented later, and only gradually.]
90 VW, Suphan IV, 105.
91 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 958, where Herder repeatedly emphasises simple sound
as die Basis aller Musik and timbre as the crucial element in its influence on human
listeners.
92 VW, 11618.
135
For Herder, it is because in later cultural developments, language and music

have split and gone their separate ways. Language has become prosaic, philosophical, unpoetic; and music has also become unpoetic, i.e. harmonic.93 Only
certain instruments of the orchestra produce moving sounds; instrumental
combination tends merely to Schall (multiple sound) and thence to confused listening. So both language and music have lost the essential element
oflebendiger Ausdruck, vital expression, the medium of communication of
human experience between human beings. Herder suggests that this can be
recovered by cultivating what he calls musikalische Poesie [musical poetry];
and goes on to suggest that dance should also be developed in the same direction, less as a social art and more as an art of human expression.94 Even here,
Herder seems aware that this will restrict musical development; and later, in
his Adrastea (18013), he spells it out:
Anmuth ist in der Sprache; Zauberei in Tnen und Gebrden [] Musik mit Sprache
in Verbindung gebracht und dann von Gebrden untersttzt, fnet ein neues Feld der
Dichtkunst.[my italics].95
[Grace is in the language, enchantment in tones and gestures music brought into relation with language and reinforced by gesture opens up a new field to poetry].
The outcome of his ideas is after all not scientific, an aesthetic theory of
music, but the opening of a new field for poetry, versatile metaphors for literary exploitation.
From the examples considered so far, it is clear that enormous variation occurs within the values attached to the continuing metaphor of music
as irrational and/or the voice of human feeling. But there is an important
common factor. All these views have strong anthropocentric motivation, and
their focus is human experience of music, not musical sound as such. The
strongest negative reactions to music arise where it is perceived that human
faculties are challenged or threatened by music, i.e. pushed into uncomfortable degrees of emotion or physical sensation, beyond what mind or body
can comfortably understand or experience. The attempt to impose a view of
music as language offeeling is less an attempt to liberate music than an attempt
93 VW, 119.
94 VW, Suphan IV, 120ff.
95 Suphan XXIII, 332f.
136
Chapter Three
to impose a cognitive preference for the idea that music should behave as a
language. Even Herder, who loved music, uses the conceptual metaphor to
expand the range oflanguage (beyond the merely rational) at musics expense,
and to bring both music and human feeling within the range ofhuman understanding. Writers who link music with language to create an idea of powerful
utterance, with or without the addition of dance and gesture, also focus on
the human voicing of experience: speaking, singing, playing an instrument,
moving alone or with others.
Goethes reception of these conceptual metaphors

The related metaphors of music as irrational and music as voice offeeling were
thus endemic in Goethes culture, and crucially formative, as an ideology, in
shaping his personal response to music. He began with an extraordinarily
sharp ear for the sounds and rhythms of spoken language i.e. its common
ground with music and a receptive eye for the parallel effects of gesture and
dance. He records in Dichtung und Wahrheit da ich leicht den Schall und
Klang einer Sprache, ihre Bewegung, ihren Akzent, den Ton und was sonst
von uern Eigenthmlichkeiten, fassen konnte; and that during the French
occupation ofFrankfurt (1759) he visited the theatre daily, though following
the performance only through sound and gesture:
sa nun [] vor einer fremden Bhne, und pate um so mehr aufBewegung, mimischen
und Redeausdruck, als ich wenig oder nichts von dem verstand, was da oben gesprochen
wurde, und also meine Unterhaltung nur vom Gebrdenspiel und Sprachton nehmen
konnte.96
[so when I found myself in front of a foreign stage, I took all the more notice of movement, gesture and intonation because I understood little or nothing of the lines being
spoken, and thus was only able to amuse myself with the interplay of gestures and vocal
tones].
96 DuW III, AA 10, 1023.
137
This talent also produced his childhood success in declaiming Klopstock, the
Bible and other works in suitable tones, whether he understood them or not;97
and his early squib for the Darmstadt circle, Concerto Dramatico (1773), a
comic revue of musical tempi and styles re-created in words and onomatopoeic
syllables.98 In Leipzig (17658), he attended lectures on Batteux and other
Rational theorists.99 His formative experience of music was predominantly
of light, homophonic work simple church music, amateur music-making,
melodic Singspiele by Hiller and Rousseau, Italian light operettas,100 which
means that he had little experience of strong or complex musical sound until
his journey to Italy (17868). Among other things, this helps to explain his
lifelong antipathy to the organ:
Ein leidig Instrument [] sie verbindet sich so gar nicht mit der Menschenstimme und
ist so gewaltig []
diesen Kirchen- und Gemeinde-tyrann101
[A frightful instrument it doesnt combine at all with the human voice, and is just
overwhelming []
That tyranniser of church and congregation [].
Two other early influences are crucially important for Goethes development
ofthis conceptual metaphor and its entailments. The first is Herder. The time
they spent together in Strassburg (1771) was the period when Herders Kritische
Wlder and Fragmente ber die neuere deutsche Litteratur had been written,
and his Abhandlung ber den Ursprung der Sprache was nearing completion;
so that Goethe came into contact with all Herders ideas on musikalische
Poesie, and all his reading of the Greeks, of Rousseau and the French theorists, as well as much else:
DuW II, 91ff., 103.

AA 4, 15560.
Nicolai, 10, 14.
See e.g. Walwei-Wiegelmanns summary, op.cit., 228f. Canisius account is much fuller,
but muddles the chronology; Goethe only encountered J.S. Bach very much later (1814,
1827); cf. Walwei-W., 179ff.
101 Italienische Reise, Rom 7 March 1788, AA 11, 581; letter to Zelter, 15 August 1829, MA
20.2, 1256.
97
98
99
100
138
Chapter Three
Das bedeutendste Ereignis, was die wichtigsten Folgen fr mich haben sollte, war die
Bekanntschaft [] mit Herder [] Was die Flle dieser wenigen Wochen betrifft [,..]
kann ich wohl sagen, da alles, was Herder nachher allmhlich ausgefhrt hat, im Keim
angedeutet ward, und da ich dadurch in die glckliche Lage geriet, alles was ich bisher
gedacht, gelernt, mir zugeeignet hatte, zu komplettieren, an ein Hheres anzuknpfen,
zu erweitern.102
[The most significant event, and one which was to have the most important consequences
for me, was my meeting with Herder Of the fullness of those few weeks I can only
say that everything which Herder gradually completed later was already indicated in
its early stages, and that I was thus put in the fortunate position of being enabled to
enhance, expand and connect to larger issues all the things which I had thought, learned
and acquired thus far].
The idea of poetry as vocalised song, of music as absorbed into language to

voice human feeling and experience, as well as interest in folksong and Ossian
as oral poetry, thus became part of Goethes consciousness at an early stage,
plus much enhanced awareness of authorial technique and resources. So when
he writes to Frau von Stein, after a Pergolesi concert, wie die Musik nichts
ist ohne menschliche Stimme103 [Music really is nothing without the human
voice], this probably has less to do with Rationalism than with the idea of
music as voice of feeling, musikalische Poesie in Herders sense. Certainly
this idea underlies his dire restrictions on the use of wind instruments (one
at a time!) in the setting of an early Weimar Singspiel,104 his objections to the
organ cited above, and even his later jottings in the Tonlehre:
Verhltnis zur Menschenstimme.
Sie [Instrumente] sind ein Surrogat derselben. Sie stehen unter derselben. Werden
aber ihr gleichgehoben durch gefhlte und geistreiche Behandlung.105
[Relation to the human voice. They [instruments] are a substitute for it and are ranked
below it. But can be raised to the same status by sensitive and intelligent treatment].
102 Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit II,10, AA 10, 44154, esp.448f.

103 Early August 1782, AA 18, 684.
104 Das bestimmt den Ausdruk und man weis was man geniesst [That will focus the
expression and we can tell what we are hearing]; letter to Philipp Christoph Kayser,
20 January 1780, on Jery und Btely, AA 18, 481.
105 Tonlehre (1810, 1826) AA 16, 909; 984 on dating.
139
He makes the same complaint of mid-eighteenth century German music, and

of Romantic composers, that Rousseau and Herder made of Rameau: that
they have developed polyphonic, symphonic and other techniques fast ohne
weiteren Bezug auf Gemtskrfte [] [almost without reference to inner
powers], ber das Niveau der menschlichen Empfindung hinaus [] mir
bleibt alles in den Ohren hngen106 [beyond the level of human feeling it
penetrates no further than my ears]. In this view, music without the melodic
connection to voice and human feeling is a dubious assault on the hearing,
empty noise; with it, the full power of the voice is unleashed:
die hchste und zugleich schnste organische Kraftuerung, welche Gott und der
Natur hervorzubringen mglich war, die menschliche Singstimme.107
[The highest and at the same time most beautiful organic utterance of power which
God and Nature have managed to produce, the human singing voice]
The second important influence is Goethes rhetorical training. Rdiger

Campe sets this late in Goethes life as a serious interest, though showing how
closely rhetorical concepts shape the poem Maifest.108 But Goethe was a lawyer
by training, and for a time in practice; Nicolai records that his graduation
(1771) involved an oral Latin disputation on 56 Positiones Juris, and that he
subsequently functioned as advocate in 28 trials.109 Goethe also gave public
speeches (e.g. Zum Schkespeares Tag, 1771) at this stage. And his ironic comments in his review ofJ.G. Sulzers Die schnen Knste in ihrem Ursprung []
(1772), suggest that vague generalisations and poor reasoning can be hidden
from the uninitiated by Deklamation, spirited oral delivery.110 Goethe knew
very well by this stage what rhetoric and oral delivery could achieve, and how
they could be deceptive.
106 Anmerkungen zu Rameaus Neffe, AA 15, 1040; Conversations with Eckermann, Erster
Teil, 12 January 1827, AA 24, 199f.
107 Letter to Zelter, 1 February 1831, AA 21, 966.
108 Affekt und Ausdruck, Niemeyer 1990, pp.53754; in particular he cites Ernst Grumachs
study of Goethes sources, Goethe und die Antike, Berlin 1949, 893911, Campe p.537
note 44.
109 Op.cit., pp.18, 19.
110 H. Fischer-Lamberg (ed.), DjG, vol.III, p.94.
140
Chapter Three
Goethes development of these conceptual metaphors

in the Rousseau/Herder mode
Though Goethe encountered these concepts in his early days, he continued
to deploy them in his writing throughout his life. Like Rousseau, Herder and
Klopstock, he works with musical sound as a signifier in literary texts; but
he does so in an extraordinary range of ways. He draws on everything from
the smallest unit of sound through phrases and songs to lengthier performances; the implications may be positive or negative in varying degrees; and
musical metaphor may feature in the text as anything between passing phrase
to recurrent motif(s) or entire episodes.
As we saw, awareness of the timbre of sound was already high in the
musical discourse of the period; so when Goethe uses it he can expect readers to follow. Faust notes the tiefes Summen and heller Ton, respectively
mchtig und gelind [deep humming, bright tone, mighty and mild] of
the Easter choir voices, pleads Klingt dort umher, wo weiche Menschen sind
[Sound out where tender people are] when he cannot at first respond, and
finally produces a split reaction, emotionally to their sound and rationally to
the message of their language. Drawing on the established idea of response
to music as a human trait, Goethe shows Faust reminded of the humanity
in himself which he had just rejected. Later, Faust is alerted to the birth of
Euphorion by a reinmelodisches Saitenspiel [pure melodic strings], and
to the disaster of Philemon and Baucis by the singend Wimmern [singing
whimpering] ofLynkeus on the tower (9679, 11338f.). And when Euphorions
dancing antics become too orgiastic, Fausts and Helenas fear of disaster is
shown in a change of timbre, to wind and brass instruments:
Klingt es doch wie Hrnerblasen
ber Tal und Wlder drhnend;
Welch ein Unfug! Welch Geschrei!
What a noise like horns blasting

Harshly over vale and forest,
What unruliness and screaming!
(978590)
Such musical stage directions are incorporated in the text to indicate the
quality of a sound which the reader/listener should hear or imagine, and be
alert for the developments to follow.
141
In assessing such episodes, especially in Goethes dramas, some allowance

must of course be made for conventional instrumental symbolism, theatrical
signalling and incidental music.111 Apart from church bells, trumpets for royalty,
flutes or pipes for shepherds, and choruses of singing dancing peasants, etc.,
plucked stringed instruments (lute, guitar) conventionally carried connotations
of romantic assignments and exotic serenades. Woodwind was often used for
sensitive atmospherics, horns and brass denoted outdoor scenarios (hunting,
war), whereas keyboard instruments and sometimes guitars were associated with
domestic music making. There is conventional reference ofthis sort in Faust and
elsewhere; for example the pastoral gardeners ofPart II (men with theorboes,
women with mandolins) and most especially Mephistos vicious serenade of
Gretchen with his zither.112 But Goethes use ofthe timbre of sound also goes
beyond convention, for example in his use of the organ. Its perceived violent
power and incompatibility with the human voice are set to devastating effect
against Gretchen in Dom, along with the concentrated force ofthe voices chanting the Dies Irae.113 And in Anmutige Gegend, the colossal power ofthe cosmos
111 As Benedikt Holtbernd shows, Goethe wrote and directed extensively in various genres
of musical theatre (Singspiel, Schauspiel mit Gesang, etc), each of which offered different
ways of combining music and text, and many of which he tried out as foil to straight
plays (Die dramaturgischen Funktionen der Musik in den Schauspielen Goethes, Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 1992, esp.212ff.). But he tended to find these collaborations much less
satisfactory in practice than as concepts, for a variety of reasons including inadequate
personnel and inadequate finance.(See e.g. Ilse-Marie Barth, Literarisches Weimar,
Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971, 105ff., and Lesley Sharpe, A National Repertoire, Oxford:
Peter Lang, 2007, 2933, 144, 152, and passim). But a major part of the problem seems
to have arisen from his tendency to treat composers as quasi-poets, working to supplement his scheme according to the metaphor of music as like/unlike a language.
112 See e.g. E. Winternitz, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art, London:
Faber 1967, repr. 1979, esp. on the symbolism ofthe zither, 57ff. The classic study by J.S.
Manifold, The Music in English Drama from Shakespeare to Purcell (1956), is one of very
few to discuss details of theatrical signalling and incidental music, as opposed simply
to the performance of mixed genres. It is interesting to see from eighteenth-century
sources (e.g. Lessings instructions in St. 267 of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, the
stage directions in Goethes Faust) that the Shakespearean model seems to have been
perpetuated insofar as limited finances allowed.
113 This scene occurs in Urfaust, so his idea of the tyrannical force of the organ must have
been established early.
142
Chapter Three
at large by contrast with the earth and Nature is signalled by the Ungeheures
Getse [Dreadful cacophony] of drums and trumpets (466674).
More accessible to modern readers, but no less diverse, are the solo figures whom Goethe partly characterises through their voices and/or playing of
instruments. His master-musician figures are benevolent on the whole e.g.
the Musensohn (c.1774) calls the tune for the dance and governs the dancers
through rhythm,114 the gypsy-boy ofNovelle (1827) tames the lion, the harshness of princely justice and the ambition ofHonorio with his flute. But their
power is said to lie in their irregularity and irrationality: the Musensohns
movement is schweifen [an erratic ranging], not normal progression; the
boys melody is a Tonfolge ohne Gesetz, und vielleicht eben deswegen so
herzergreifend [a tonal sequence without rule [i.e. not within a conventional
scale], and perhaps for that very reason so moving]. The Mephisto of Part I,
in due Satanic style, uses songs to deceive and dominate Faust in his study,
and to reduce the students ofAuerbachs Keller (further) to irrational animals;
in Part II, his own power is subdued by the power of the angels songs who
rescue Faust, and the Greek Chorus leader rallies her charges after the wsten
Geisteszwang [dreadful oppression of the mind] of Euphorions music and
Fausts rhyming. In all these cases, the force metaphorically attributed to music,
especially when conveyed with the power of vocal organs, is drawn upon to
demonstrate the irrational force which these figures exert over others.
Similar things can be said ofGoethes diverse orator figures: e.g. Egmont,
Faust, Mephisto, Tasso, Lenardo. They of course use all the resources of marshalled argument, as well as language qualities (sound, rhythm, phrasing)
common to music. But music and musical reference are often brought in
to depict the special power of their speaking and influence. Tasso has his
Melodie und Rede, which contrast sharply with the rawness of feeling and
erratic behaviour which make him incompatible with court life.115 Mephisto
can summon up spirits, insects, etc, who respond to his bidding in sung choruses; the Wandergesellschaft respond to Lenardos addresses in their song,
sometimes with text variations embodying the values on which he has been
lecturing them.
114 AA 1, 22f.
115 AA 6, 313; like the perfect poet of Platos ideal state, Tasso is honoured, and banished.
But here the problem for the court and its ideal society is caused by Tassos behaviour,
not by his poetry.
143
With other solo figures, Goethe uses their song or performance to convey
to the reader/listener their subconscious thoughts, drawing on the traditional
idea ofthe voice as revealing the spirit within i.e. things which lie too deep
and unformed for normal language and which they would be unlikely to put
into words themselves. Gretchen is the best known example, singing folk songs,
prayers, fragments ofbawdy song; and Mephisto can evoke her instantly for
Faust by this trait: Wenn ich ein Vglein wr so geht ihr Gesang (3318).
Yet she is also a literary figure who owes something to Shakespeares Ophelia,
and to the Kindermrderinnen ofSturm und Drang drama.116 The Pilgernde
Trin of the Wanderjahre seems even closer to Ophelia; she has refined
behaviour and a most practised hand in her piano-playing, but shocks her
polite hosts by the lewdness and vehemence ofher song. Yet her story is never
fully revealed; the song-text which seems to explain it and her is unspecific;
the narrator and her two would-be lovers offer explanations but cannot solve
the mystery of her behaviour or her song, and the lovers find themselves
bewitched into acting with equal irrationality.117 Mignon and the Harper both
prefer to express themselves through song and playing rather than through
words; their story is revealed, but mainly through the words of others. In
such cases, the complexities ofhuman figures and experience emerge through
the relation and misrelation between aspects conveyed through speech and
those through song, gestures and movements. Herders idea of extending
the resources oflanguage with music/song and gesture/dance seems to have
permeated Goethes prose writing as well as his dramatic work, whether or
not the metaphor is also realised in actual music and or/dance. Yet not all
solo singers are deeply meaningful in this way. Philine sings with a cheerful
sensuality which conveys her unthinking approach to life; Klrchen sings with
intensity and self-awareness, but nothing is hidden her songs complement
and reinforce what she says.
116 See especially H.L. Wagners drama Die Kindermrderin, 1776; SuDr drama was not
confined to sensibility, but often wildly experimental in form whilst also imitating
Shakespeare (prose dialogue and interpolated songs), and attempting to address social
problems with what it hoped was gritty realism.
117 Wanderjahre I,5, AA 8, 6272.
144
Chapter Three
Goethes development of these conceptual metaphors

beyond Rousseau and Herder
So far, Goethes usage may be assessed as fairly conventional practice, of
Herders ideas in particular. And Herder remains an obvious influence where
musical tone and voice tone are used to depict a human quest for response
from another human being. But Goethe increasingly brings in refinements
of his own, exploiting his specially acute ear for vocal nuances, his sense of
the potential power exercised by the human speaker, and (as an increasingly
confident writer of both poetry and plays) his critical and self-critical eye
for the emotional manipulation and cultural posing which could be accommodated within the metaphor of music as voice of feeling. In many cases,
he opens multiple perspectives for the reader (as Rousseau had done on St
Preux), inviting both sympathy and critical distance. Particularly interesting
nuances emerge when the voice and response are transmitted between lovers.
Klrchen and Egmont, for instance, are ostensibly a stock example of aristocratic sexual exploitation, given Egmonts superior rank and power.118 But if
he can present himself confidently to the Netherlands people, produce the
common touch in his public speeches, and take risks for what he believes in
(including his love for her), she also takes risks, shows confidence in her own
judgment, expresses passion and courage in her songs, and shows alert intelligence in her speech. This makes credible the fact that she understands him
well when they are apart, and anticipates his wish not to die alone. Similarly,
Faust and Gretchen both have a particular ear for the others voice. IfMephisto
can evoke her instantly to Faust by her singing, she recognises Faust in her
madness only by his voice, Das war des Freundes Stimme [] den sen,
den liebenden Ton (44609). If Faust has his magically fluent speech (as
she sings in Meine Ruh ist hin), his persuasive eloquence and disputation
skills, she has a sharp ear for the discrepancy between his words and tones
and those in which others speak of God (341368). So it seems credible
that in the realm beyond speech toward which they finally move, Faust may
indeed sense her (ahnen), and follow.119 In this sensitivity to Fausts voice,
118 Cf. for instance, Le mariage de Figaro (Beaumarchais and Mozart), Schillers Kabale
und Liebe, and Mozarts Don Giovanni.
119 Cf. Salazar on language as a human trait which heavenly spirits dispense with: op.cit.,
717.
145
she has unexpected common ground with Helena, whom Faust woos with
all the mellifluousness of language he can muster, and the rhyme unknown
to Greek poetry as ever, orator/persuader and deceiver, but also fired by
profound love of Helena and all she represents, and pushing the boundaries
of both language and myth to accommodate her.
At other times, these devices can be used for comically discrepant effect.
Lotte plays her out-of-tune piano without pretension, and sings simple songs
in the best Rousseauesque tradition without knowing or caring that she does
so. Werther rhapsodises about this performance as though she were a female
Orpheus, familiar as he is with the literary tradition of musics miraculous
powers:
Sie hat eine Melodie, die sie auf dem Klaviere spielet mit der Kraft eines Engels, so simpel
und so geistvoll! Es ist ihr Leiblied. Und mich stellt es von aller Pein, Verwirrung und
Grillen her, wenn sie nur die erste Note davon greift. Kein Wort von der alten Zauberkraft
der Musik ist mir unwahrscheinlich. Wie mich der einfache Gesang angreift!120
[She has a tune which she plays on the piano with the power of an angel, so simple
and yet so brilliant. It is her favourite tune. And I am cured of all pain, confusion and
moodiness, as soon as she touches the first note. I believe every word ofthe old tales of
the magic power of music. How that simple song does move me].
For the reader, the idea of someone gushing over the particularly awful sound
of an out-of-tune piano is ludicrous, and puts several dents in Werthers selfimage of a man of passionate sincerity and exquisitely sensitive feeling. He
appears rather as foolish rhetorician and self-persuader, with an inevitable
literary echo of Rousseaus St Preux. Wilhelms pretension to artistic sensitivity and talent are similarly undermined when, despite his pretensions to
theatrical artistry, he reveals himself as an old-fashioned rationalist, rejecting
instrumental music for much the same reason as Plato:
Gibt uns etwas, das Herz und Geist zugleich mit den Sinnen ergtze, sagte Wilhelm.
Das Instrument sollte nur die Stimme begleiten; denn Melodien, Gnge und Lufe ohne
Worte und Sinn scheinen mir Schmetterlingen oder schnen bunten Vgeln hnlich
zu sein, die in der Luft vor unsern Augen herumschweben.121
120 Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 16. Julius, AA 4, 417.

121 [Lehrjahre II, 11, AA 7, 137. Schillers friend C.G. Krner complained that this attitude
was still widespread in 1795 (ber Charakterdarstellung in der Musik, Die Horen,
Tbingen 1795, I, v, 6, 101).
146
Chapter Three
[Give us something that will delight heart and mind as well as the senses, said Wilhelm,
the instrument should do no more than accompany the voice; for melodies, phrases
and runs without words or meaning seem to me like butterflies or beautiful coloured
birds, flying around in the air before our eyes].
His response to Mignons performance of Kennst du das Land, and the episode of the Theatralische Sendung in which Wilhelm repairs her zither, are
full of ironic discrepancy between ideal diction/song evoked in prose and the
actual sound being produced. The first seems close to parody of St Preuxs
raptures over the sounds ofItalian (which he does not understand); and the
second, where Wilhelm speaks and the Harper replies with occasional twangs
on his instrument, are reinste bereinstimmung [absolute consonance]
only in the pretentious imagination of Wilhelm.122 Later, when Wilhelm
visits the Pdagogische Provinz to check on his sons education,123 there are
echoes of the ideal state of Plato and Aristotle and their discussions of the
role of music in education similar grave speeches from the guardians on
what and how the children should be taught in this ideal province, and on
which music and instruments should be allowed.124 Meanwhile Felix, true
to Rousseauesque type, learns simple airs in Italian; and the awful sounds of
learner musicians are carefully muffled by sending them to live in isolation
in a wooded landscape, while learning that poetic text must take precedence
in musical setting.125 This is obviously an ideal state for musikalische Poesie,
but not so good for music and musicians.
122 LJ, III,1, AA 7, 137f; TS III,10, AA 8. 682.

123 On this episode (though not on the musical aspects or allusion to Plato/Aristotle),
see W.H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation, Cambridge UP, 1975,
1048.
124 I have not seen any critical reference to this allusion. But it seems to me justified by the
close resemblance oftopic and tone between Goethes speakers and those ofPlato and
Aristotle, and also by the close resemblance of the speakers situation in each context.
Education is a matter which both feel to be of urgent cultural importance (Goethe was
writing in the age ofPestalozzi and other pedagogic reformers and theorists); but their
ideas are only theory and unlikely to be put into practice, so these earnest disquisitions
are likely to languish as ideals. And anyway Felix has voted with his feet, and temporarily disappeared.
125 Wanderjahre II,8, AA 8, 268ff.
147
Goethe: Music and the undermining of thought and language

In most of the instances considered so far, music as irrational power/voice
of feeling is presented as fairly harmless. But this is not always the case. For
example, there is the possibility that language and music may be mere sound,
a semblance of meaningful communication; and trivial occurrences ofthis are
often presented as symptoms of more serious ills. Eduard and Ottilie play their
duet entirely according to the dynamics of their feelings, so that the music
is auf eine so liebevolle Weise entstellt [distorted in such a charming way].
This is the first sign to the company that Charlottes marriage and Ottilies
happiness are in danger; and contrasts markedly with the duet by Charlotte
and the Captain, both of whom have better command of themselves and
of the music.126 Lucianes intended tour de force solo falls flat as she reduces
the poets text to a jumble of vowels, spoils her declamation by a harsh and
unvaried tone of voice, and her movements by occasional gracelessness. She
cannot force the listeners response as she wishes; and the lack of feeling for
others which these symptoms betray damages not only Ottilie and Charlotte,
but eventually the whole group of her friends as they move from estate to
estate squandering its produce.127 Mephisto mocks the idea of meaningful
sound and speech in the rhyming sing-song ofthe monkeys and the witch in
Hexenkche (2380576):
Gewhnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hrt,
Es msse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen. (25656)
[People tend to believe, when they hear words
That there must be some idea to be heard].
To Faust, her spell is sonorous nonsense, ein ganzes Chor/Von hunderttausend

Narren, but it nonetheless marks the beginning of an epoch in his wager with
the Devil. Such incidents are comic on the surface; but are shown to have
destructive potential because they decry two crucial human attributes: meaningful language, and human feeling conveyed in music. And as Mephisto asserts in
the poem Etymologie, it is the sound of words which makes them deceptive:
126 Wahlverwandtschaften I,8, AA 9, 679.
127 Wahlverwandtschaften II,5, AA 9, 16574.
148
Ars, Ares wird der Kriegesgott genannt,
Ars heit die Kunst und A[rsch] ist auch
bekannt
Welch ein Geheimnis liegt in diesen
Wundertnen!
Chapter Three
Ares: the god of war, as every child can tell,
Ars means art, and arse is known as well
O, what a mystery lies in these miraculous
tones!128
Such ambiguous perspectives are even more apparent where Goethe draws
on musics perceived strong appeal to the senses, to depict conflicts between
human sensuality and other factors. Mephistos spirits sing hocus-pocus so
he can escape Fausts spell:
Du wirst, mein Freund, fr deine Sinnen My friend, your senses here will find
In dieser Stunde mehr gewinnen
More satisfaction in this hour
Als in des Jahres Einerlei
Than in an ordinary year (14368).
The poem Christel treats the sensuality ofthe peasant dance as rustic comedy;129
and Faust is given a song as an aphrodisiac by the witch of the Hexenkche
(25912). But such physical animation has powerful erotic potential which can
be destructive as well as life-giving; and Goethe also brings this out in longer
episodes involving music for instance the song of the Peasants gathered
under the lime tree (Faust I, Vor dem Tor, 9451010), also part of an episode
in the Theatralische Sendung.130 Both versions carry much darker connotations than at first appear. In the context of Faust, the song shows the earthy
underside of Easter celebrations, with a bitter foretaste of Gretchens fate in
its tale of mindless physicality and seduction, and sharpens Fausts frustration
because this is an unthinking state which he cannot share (cf. his response to
the peasants homage). In the Theatralische Sendung, it has the effect of rousing Wilhelm to a sensuality which he does not approve and cannot satisfy;
Philines attempts to seduce him only make matters worse, as does the arrival
of others who readily accept her offers. The narrator reinforces this by titillation of the reader: the title is given, but not the actual text, so we are left
to imagine what the narrator describes as nichts weniger als ehrbar [rather
indecent], normally sung von einem tanzenden gestikulierenden Paare [by
a dancing, gesticulating couple] adding details ofPhilines performance: die
feinen launigen Pfiffe, die geschickten Wendungen und artige Gebrden,
128 AA 2, 82.
129 AA I, 19f., 22f.
130 TS, IV,13, AA 8, 74051.
149
womit Philine die Zweideutigkeiten, indem sie sie verbergen zu wollen schien,
geltend machte131 [The neat whimsical tricks, the skilful turns of phrase and
charming gestures with which Philine brought out the double meanings of
the song even as she appeared to be trying to hide them]. Wilhelm seeks
solace with the Harper, whose music manipulates his feelings to pleasanter
effect only to have them rudely assailed as Philines lovers fall downstairs
tangled in her bedsheets and land at his door. The whole episode is comic;
but it draws on the perceived moral ambiguity of music and dance to show
Wilhelms confused judgment about sensual and ideal, serious and trivial,
both in himself and in others. A similar scene, where music and merriment
become erotic excess and emotional disaster, occurs in the Lehrjahre (V, 12,
13). Mignon dances wildly like a Maenad, banging on her tambourine; she
bites Wilhelm as he turns to escort Aurelie home, and he is unable to resist
when an unknown figure later joins him in bed. The lapse becomes a crisis
the following night, when the Harper starts a fire which destroys the whole
house, in which he apparently tries to sacrifice Wilhelms young son Felix.
Only when the whole company, especially Mignon, respond with restored
rationality and courage, is disaster averted; and by then the only singer is the
Harper, now mad.132 The multiple ambiguities ofthis episode extend beyond
the scope of the metaphors at issue here; but Goethe is at pains to show the
irrationality and strength ofhuman feelings by depicting them through song
and dance by contrast with plain language, to suggest their dangerous affinity
with what is beyond the control of reason.
Both metaphorical strands, irrational and voice offeeling, come together
in some longer episodes which depict events of major importance for the protagonists. Again, the multiple reference of such scenes cannot be fully dealt
with here; but a crucial core is the idea of music as affording both lebendigen
Ausdruck, vivid expression ofhuman feeling, and the release of irrational forces
which can undermine rationality and warp judgment, to the point of being
dangerous or even life-threatening. In Faust, for example, the Walpurgisnacht
and the Walpurgisnachtstraum ofPart I, and the Mummenschanz and Klassische
Walpurgisnacht ofPart II, are given musical accompaniment for part or whole
oftheir extent. This is partly justified in dramatic terms i.e. grounded in the
reality depicted in the text. For example, the songs in the Walpurgisnacht
131 TS IV,13, loc.cit.
132 LJ 12, 13, AA 7, 34960.
150
Chapter Three
mark a transition from natural to mythical environment as Faust and Mephisto

climb the Brocken (Faust, Mephisto and Irrlicht im Wechselgesang, 3870ff.);
then, after the intensification of sound effects of wind and trees described
from the Mittelgipfel, the wtender Zaubergesang of flying witches and
warlocks erupts. When the song ends, Mephisto draws Faust not towards the
summit where evil is traditionally enthroned, but towards an erotic dance
and song with the young witch while he partners the old one, away from the
vision of Gretchen as she appears in this mythology (an executed criminal),
and then towards the spectacle of Walpurgisnachtstraum. This last consists
entirely of stanzas which evoke a parody of an orchestra, successive figures
making parodies of normal human voices, movement, music and dance,
foolish rather than evil, ending Pianissimo, with the restoration of natural
sounds at dawn (4396f.). The Walpurgisnachtstraum has often been deemed
ill-placed;133 and it certainly breaks both dramatic and mythological continuity. In Walpurgisnacht, the dance with the witch signifies an erotic adventure which ends in disgust (4175ff.); while the other songs seem, in Platos
sense, to be songs which embody a culture here Gretchens, which casts
her out as condemned sinner and punishes her with death, represses natural sensuality and presents it through forms which distort the human body.
The Walpurgisnachtstraum does not fit into this scenario. However, as in the
figures of St Christoph (WJ), Luciane (WV), and even the Harper, Goethe
seems to have been interested in apparently harmless figures whose destructive effect is nonetheless great; and to have connected them with music to
signal this negative potential. In Walpurgisnachtstraum we have a bunch of
them whose capers and toots are amusing and gradually return us to natural
forms and a natural world only to meet the shock of raw prose and worse
events in the following scene where Faust discovers what has happened to
Gretchen, and the orator is for once incoherent with horror. What is more,
Goethes deployment of music and dance means that the audience has partly
shared Fausts distraction and confusion. While the vivid scene proceeds, it
is difficult to tell what is real and what is not, what is significant speech and
what mere sound, what is progression and what mere posturing, and above
all to discern what is actually happening.
133 E.g. Trunz, 525, Schne, 362f.
151
Similar confusion between apparent illusion and apparent reality

is created by the deployment of music and dance in the Carnival scene
(Mummenschanz) and in the Klassische Walpurgisnacht. In the first, the action
progresses from galant flirtation to greed, eroticism and massive deception
in the invention of paper money, and each group represents itself through
its gait, speech, song and dance. But the swindle only becomes apparent in
the following scene (Lustgarten), where the action is realistic. The Klassische
Walpurgisnacht is presented as healthier than its Northern counterpart because
it has a less distorted view of Nature, and its highest product is Helena, the
archetype ofthe beautiful woman. But while this lengthy episode progresses, it
is again difficult to tell whose utterance is meaningful and which action important, despite or because ofthe striking rhythm ofGreek and other metres, and
the great variety of voices, sung or spoken. Even the sung Meeresfest which
celebrates the origins of natural life in water, and starts Homunculus off on
his journey through evolution has a triumphant sung final chorus in which
the text is perilously close to doggerel. We can only see the full consequences
later, when the music (ofthe Euphorion scene) stops and the mythical figures
dissolve into the natural features they represent. This periodic dislocation of
sound and sense, style and substance, seems to be quite deliberate. It presents
us with a wealth ofvital expression and vivid sense impressions, forces us to
measure what we see and hear against what we have already seen and heard,
and contrasts sharply with the moments of sober spoken reflection recurrent
throughout the play.
In most of these examples, Goethe has again deployed what Franziska
Schler called self-conscious anachronism, reminding readers that their
own familiar models and metaphors are no more scientifically true than old
myths which may now seem quaint. The myth of musics irrational power,
whether represented by Orpheus, by Zaubergesang or by the single tone
which reaches the heart, means that music can be evoked to show the power
ofhuman feeling for both good and ill. And since a conceptual metaphor of
music as irrational force and voice of feeling is endemic in the culture of the
time, the audience or readership can be expected to follow both conventional
and more adventurous use of it.
Chapter Four
A Further Negative Metaphor of Language: Music as

Sub- and Superhuman, Music and the Daemonic
Since music was from earliest times seen as reflecting the cosmic order by
analogous mathematical proportions, it is not obvious why the capacity of
musical phenomena to extend beyond human perception and understanding should have been a problem. On the contrary, a strand of metaphorical
thought continuing from the Greeks to the present associates music with
heavenly realms. However, two different metaphor groups are involved in
this association. One concerns structure the mathematically coordinated
relations of opposites which constitute cosmic harmony, and within that the
coordinated relations between sounds which produce music. As Aristides
Quintilianus put it:
as no other things ofbeauty can be constituted except in concordance with the universe,
so music could neither be constituted, nor [] could its activity be so powerful, if it had
not acquired a stable and truly divine strength through the great resemblance it bears
to things above us [] What is especially peculiar to it is that it is constituted, like the
world of natural generation, out of opposites, and bears the image of the harmonia of
the universe.1
The other metaphor group is derived from mapping language on to music:

this time focusing on the special sonority ofthe singing voice, and the special
power attributed to singing utterance. In Christian tradition, the angels sing
praise to God, an idea which seems to be ofHebrew derivation. Many ofthe
pertinent texts in the King James Bible use words denoting heightened speech
rather than song (shouted cried, praising God, and saying, saying with a
1
De Musica, Book III, Chapter 9, in Andrew Barker, op.cit. vol.II, 507; on Aristides
Quintilianus, see ibid., 39299. Barker (ibid., p.392) considers that he cannot be earlier than the first century AD, and supports Aristides claim to be the first organiser of
a survey of musical knowledge as then extant.
154
Chapter Four
loud voice). But others (as well as the Psalms and the Song ofSolomon) use
the term song: the morning stars sang together at the Creation, the elders of
Revelation have harps and sing a new song, the modern Good News Bible has
the angels singing praises to God.2 Canisius cites a section ofthe Kabbala in
which Rabi Eleasar explains that the angels sing in praise of Creation, alternating between day and night songs, singing and listening to the songs ofthe
Children ofIsrael on earth, in a cycle of praise.3 Such heavenly utterance, its
special content marked out by special sonority and/or song, is sometimes
revealed to human beings on earth, in visions or miraculous appearances
angels appear to the Prophets or sing to the shepherds. Within this group,
the idea of heavenly special utterance and song thus persists with sublime
and attractive associations, alongside the more austere (and less widely used)
model of direct and languageless communion between spirits.4
However, there is also a Greek tradition of divine utterance and divine
music, focused mainly on the figure ofApollo and altogether more ambiguous
in its associations. Not only the god ofthe Sun (life-giving but dangerous to
mere mortals), Apollo was amongst other things the god of divinely inspired
utterance (prophecy, song and poetry) and head ofthe Muses. Greek mythology includes several tales ofthe dire consequences for those on whom his gifts
were bestowed/inflicted, and of his jealousy in guarding his supremacy: e.g.
his punishment of Cassandra for rejecting his advances, or his flaying of the
3
4
For example, Job 38,7; Isaiah 6, 14; Luke 2, 13; Revelation 5, 814. The Luther Bible
has similar terms covering both speech and song: in Luke, the angels lobten Gott und
sprachen, whereas the elders of Revelation (Apocalypsis) hatten ein jeglicher Harfen
[] und sangen ein neues Lied, und sprachen.
Goethe und die Musik, Mnchen: Piper, 1999, 215f. The psalm reference should be 42,8,
not 9 as he gives. The Kabbala reference is given as Sefer ha-Sofar, 11, fol.18b, Die oberen
und unteren Gesnge, Canisius 216.
Salazar, op.cit., 717. David Wellbery, in Lessings Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in
the Age ofReason, Cambridge U.P. 1984, points out that this idea also occurs in theories
of semiotics: Enlightenment semiotics generally, contains a notion of a progressive
semiosis moving from the pre-linguistic [] through distinct cognition [] to a perfect
philosophical language in which the semiotic character of knowledge is shed [] This
philosophical language corresponds to divine cognition which is intuitive and perfectly
distinct, an imageless and wordless language of pure knowledge (137). See loc.cit. for
other critical sources which he cites.
155
satyr Marsyas for presuming to rival him as musician.5 This strain of savagery,
in a god who also symbolised orderly and impressive beauty, is thought to have
persisted from his ancient origins and his relation to the figure ofDionysos;
similar ambiguity can be found in the figures ofthe Muses and ofOrpheus.6
The dichotomy in mythology was further underpinned by what became the
cultural dichotomy in Greek music, centred mainly on the kithara and the lyre
for serious music and paeans of praise, versus the aulos for popular music and
ecstatic religious occasions. The NHDM shows that Greek musical history
was in fact more diversified than this implies (though musicians gradually lost
in social status).7 But musics disturbing relation to both divine and hellish,
extremes beyond the human sphere into which human beings might nonetheless be drawn, was an association which became established. It underlies
the treatment ofthe gifted poet/singer in Platos Republic (we should do him
homage as a sacred and marvellous [] person, but [] would send him offto
another city, after pouring myrrh on his head and crowning him with wool);
and also the more detailed depiction of musics ambiguous status which Barker
gives from the Ion, a Socratic dialogue on the incompatibility of artistic and
prophetic utterance with knowledge and rational thought:
The Muse inspires people herself, and through these inspired people a chain of others,
filled with divine fervour [] All good writers of epic poetry utter all those beautiful
poems of theirs not as a result of skill, but inspired and possessed. So too with good
composers of songs: just as the Corybantes are out of their minds when they dance, so
these composers are out of their minds when they compose those beautiful melodies.
When they embark upon harmonia and rhythm, they are in a state of Bacchic possession, just as the Bacchic women draw out milk and honey from the rivers when they
are possessed, but not when they are in their right mind: the souls ofthe composers of
songs achieve just the same thing [] For the poets tell us that they gather their melodies
from the [] gardens and vales of the Muses, and bring them to us like bees, and that
5
6
See e.g. H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology, 6th edn, Methuen: 1964, 13445,
esp.111, 143; and Barker both vols, passim. Cassandra received the gift of prophecy, but
was condemned to be never believed.
The classic study by Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,
Cambridge 1903ff., repr. New York 1959, shows in detail how this duality came about.
See e.g. 389ff., 438ff., 45257ff., 46378ff ; her 451 shows Dionysos playing the lyre,
like Apollo. Cf. also Rose, op.cit. 173f., 254ff.
Ed.cit., 34650.
156
Chapter Four
they fly like bees too [] For a poet is a light, winged, sacred thing, and is incapable of
composing until the god has entered him and his wits have left him, and his mind is in
him no longer. Until he acquires this gift, no man can compose or sing prophecies.8
In this view, listeners are expected to recognise the special quality in the
utterances they hear. Rational thought and expression are overridden both
in these communications and in their reception; and the poet is not a master
musician/magician, but a humble medium:
The gods purpose in taking their minds away when using these prophets and divine
seers as their servants, is that we who hear them may know that it is not these people,
whose mind is not in them, who are saying these things that are of such value, but that
the speaker is the god himself, and that he is addressing us through them.9
The results of such divine usurpation over human reason may be not only the
striking beauty to which Plato refers, but also much darker utterances. There
was a long-standing association between music and madness and music and
magic, of which Barker gives many examples.10 A chorus from Aeschylus
Eumenides (5th century BC) may serve to illustrate both; it is the song ofthe
Furies as they lay enchantment and madness on Orestes:
Hear this hymn with which we bind you []
Let us link our chorus,
Since this has been decreed []
This is the song over the victim,
A frenzy, a mind-destroying madness,
A hymn from the Erinyes
That binds the mind, lyreless,
Withering to mortals.11
8
9
10
11
Republic 398a, Barker I, 129 and note; Ion 533e534b, Barker I, 125f. He points out that
Plato uses the same word for poetic utterance as for the utterance of oracles, because of
their shared divine origin (ibid., 126, note 10).
Ion 534cd, Barker I, 126.
See e.g. Barker, vol. I, 87ff., 279,and passim; and references to loss of mind/wits in sections from Ion quoted above.
Eumenides, 30611, 32833; Barker I, 87 and notes.
157
Other instances may be pleasanter (e.g. the Sirens song to Odysseus), but
they are no less destructive;12 and Barker cites a degenerate performance
type termed Magodia, involving magical verses and magic potions, more
like a warped version of a hypnotists demonstration than a dramatic work.13
Even Aristides Quintilianus, in his compendium of scientific knowledge and
understanding of music current in the first century AD or later, has a rather
nervous appeal to Apollo before, during and at the end of his book.14
However, precisely this affinity of music with both divine and hellish
powers enabled musics association from an early stage with powers ofhealing:
not only the restoration ofbalance between physical humours, but most especially the restoration of order to the mind after a fit offrenzy and possession.
Apollo was a god of healing, and also the father of Asklepios (Aesculapius),
the god of medicine adopted in Rome in the third century BC and thence
widely known.15 Musics role in healing was in itself ambiguous: while part
of its effect was attributed to the reassertion of balance (by appeals in song
and dance to Apollo, or by reassertion of appropriate harmony and rhythm),
part was connected with magic: Barker translates as incantations the songs
which Plato suggests should be sung over pre-rational children, to instil order
into their souls.16
The perpetuation of these metaphors in Shakespeare

It is difficult to say how directly these ideas were transmitted to the eighteenth century; but they seem to have continued fairly consistently into
general European culture (e.g. via knowledge of Greek and Latin literature
and mythology, and the work of Boethius (c. 480524AD), the De institu-
12
13
14
15
16
Cf. Barker, I, 72 note 68 (on the Sphinx as singer), and 87, note 170 on the Sirens.
In the compendium by Athenaius (160AD ff.), cit.Barker I, 279 and notes.
De Musica, Barker II, 401f., 508, 535.
See esp. Rose, op.cit., 136, 139f.
Barker I, 147ff., esp.148, note 67, 247 and notes.
158
Chapter Four
tione musica).17 Certainly they were well established by Shakespeares time:

Prosperos isle is full of noises and spirit songs until he renounces magic,
and Ariels enchantment and awakening of the mariners is depicted by and
achieved through song and music.18 The fairies ofMidsummer Nights Dream
sing and dance both to weave their magic and to depict their non-mortal
ways of being; Ophelia sings in her madness when she cannot speak what
she feels.19 Stage directions and text make explicit the heavenly, uncanny or
other supernatural associations: e.g. in The Tempest Ferdinand comments on
Ariels music as no mortal business, nor no sound/That the earth owes (I,2),
and Calibans noises are Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments [],
and sometimes voices (III,2). Moreover, the healing power of music here is
exercised by the very same force which raised the storm in the first place:
Where should this music be? I thair or thearth?

[] sure it waits upon
Some god o th island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my fathers wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. (I,2)
Nonetheless, we should note that Shakespeare does not automatically use

music for all sub-or supernatural beings and states. Hamlets fathers ghost,
for example, appears in a grim context with a grim message; the scene is
focused on his struggle to communicate with humans in speech, and does not
involve music (I, 1, 4,5). The enchantment and release of Titania and of the
lovers is achieved not with song, but with a herb and a spoken incantation
(II,2, III,3, IV,1). Similarly, such magic or heavenly apparition in Shakespeare
involves the suspension of normal reason; but in most plays it is conveyed
as an artificial sleep or a dream, removed or shaken off without dire consequences. In Hamlet, however, it receives more marked attention. Hamlet
has been to Wittenberg university, is given to thought and reasoning and
critical appraisal ofboth. Uncertain whether the Ghost is divine or devilish,
17
18
19
Cf. NHDM, Greece, 346; but Boethius title is wrongly given there as De musica.
The Tempest, Acts I IV passim.
Hamlet, esp. Act IV, sc.5.
159
spirit ofhealth or goblin damned, he sees how much the Ghosts appearance
threatens human faculties:
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do? (I, 4)
Hamlet does not sing in his distress as his trouble of mind approaches madness, his normal speech, gesture and movement lurch out of control at times.
It seems fair to regard the association of music with the sub- or superhuman
in these cases not simply as dramatic convention or signalling (though it may
serve such purposes too), but as deployment of a well-established metaphor
which can be realised in text or music or both, available alongside other
resources and metaphors for use as the author decides.
The reception and development of these metaphors

in eighteenth-century Germany
In eighteenth-century Germany, most of these traditional associations of
music with the sub- and superhuman can readily be found. As we saw, Leibniz
associated music with heavenly realms and harmony on the basis of mathematically-based perfection: Les plaisirs des sens qui approchent le plus des
plaisirs de lesprit, et sont les plus purs et les plus suers [surs], sont ceux de la
musique, et ceux de la symmetrie [The pleasures of the senses closest to the
pleasures of the spirit, and both the most pure and the most consistent, are
those of music and those of symmetry].20 Johann Mattheson worked largely
with the language-based idea of special utterance and song, even including a
suggestion of sanctified sensuous pleasure when he spoke of:
20 La Flicit, Sagesse et Bonheur, VII,11, Textes Indites, ed. Gaston Grua, Presses
Universitaires de France, Paris 1948, vol. 2, 580.
160
Chapter Four
Die Geheimni-volle Musik [] der Engel Zeitvertreib und Dienst: die himmlische
Wollust: Der Vorschmack der ewigen Freude, und das Ehren-Kleid des unschtzbaren
Wortes Gottes.
[The mysterious art of music, the angels pastime and their service; heavenly voluptuousness; the foretaste of eternal joy; and the robe of honour of the most precious
Word of God]
He then added a touch ofthe heavenly song metaphor by noting that music
is fast ganz spirituel [almost entirely spiritual].21 But alongside such notions
ran more ambiguous ideas of magic and das Wunderbare (the miraculous,
supernatural). Two articles in the essay collection by Wolfgang Miersemann
and Gudrun Busch22 show how controversial music was in some religious
circles. Burkhard Dohm brings out the frequency of mystic and Hermetic
concepts in the text ofPietist hymns, and also the importance of singing as a
means of spiritualising earthly life: die das Diesseits heiligende Dimension des
Gesangs.23 Whereas Rainer Bayreuther outlines a long and continuing tradition of doubts over the use of even sacred music in public worship, because
of the distracting ppigkeit [voluptuousness] of music unless it could be
securely linked to a religious purpose by its text.24 This fear of musics all too
unspiritual powers was not merely a sectarian obsession. In 1755, Hiller spoke
of musics effects in terms of enchantment and dream:
Wir lassen dem Gehr Dinge vorstellen, die sich sonst fr dasselbe gar nicht schickten
[], wir glauben sie in den Tnen zu finden, und wir finden sie wirklich darinnen []
Ist dieses nicht eine Art von Zauberey? [] Ist vielleicht eine geheime Neigung zum
Sonderbaren und Fremden Schuld daran? [] Es ist dieses ein Rthsel, das die Vernunft
nicht leicht lsen wird, weil es ihr gleichsam nur im Traume vorgelegt wird.25
[We allow things to be presented to our hearing which would otherwise be entirely unfitted for it, we imagine we find them in musical tones and we really do find them there.
Is this not a kind of magic? Is perhaps a secret penchant for the strange and uncanny
the cause of it? This is a riddle which reason will not solve easily, because it is presented
to her only as it were in a dream].
Neu-Erffnetes Orchestre, Hamburg 1713, 32f.
Pietismus und Liedkultur, Tbingen: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen Halle im Max
Niemeyer Verlag, 2002.
23 Heiligkeit im Diesseits. Hermetische Konzepte im halleschen und im herrnhutischen
Lied, Miersemann/Busch, 30516, esp.30610.
24 Pietismus, Orthodoxie, pietistisches Lied und Kunstmusik. Eine Verhltnisbestimmung,
op.cit. 12941, esp.13033. This stricture applied to other arts too, especially theatre.
25 Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, 534.
21
22
161
By 1768 he had become a little bolder, suggesting we should expect miracles of

music, like David the Psalmist;26 but in 1755 he was still torn between admiration and fear. Virtuoso pieces should be restrained by good taste from venturing into Unregelmigkeit [irregularity] and indulging their Neigung zum
Wunderbaren [penchant for the miraculous]. The glories of musics ventures
into the unknown, through which it attains eine fast gttliche Wrde [an
almost godlike status/dignity], must be tamed by a return to normal earthly
levels:
Man mu [] das Wunderbare der Musik nicht ganz nehmen. Man mu es nur gehrig
zu bestimmen und einzuschrnken suchen [] Unser Herz ist mehr fr die ruhigen
und sanften Empfindungen eingenommen; [] es verlanget dahero bestndig, da der
Knstler je eher je lieber von dem bernatrlichen und wunderbaren wieder zu dem
natrlichen und bewegenden herunter kommen soll.27
[The miraculous should not be entirely removed from music; we should simply try to
define and restrict it appropriately. Our hearts are more disposed towards the quiet and
gentle sensations; they therefore constantly require that the composer should descend
again as soon as possible from the supernatural and miraculous to the natural and
moving.]
Herder uses more trenchant terms, much closer to the Greek idea of possession
by a god. Though this is a Naturgesetz [law of Nature] and not a mythical
agency, the response of a human voice to another human voice forms a similar
chain of others, filled with divine fervour (Plato), and has the same power
to eclipse reason and engulf all who hear it:
Das Wort ist weg, und der Ton der Empfindung tnet. Dunkles Gefhl bermannet
uns: [] kein Bedacht, keine berlegung, das bloe Naturgesetz lag zum Grunde: Ton
der Empfindung soll das sympathetische Geschpf in denselben Ton versetzen!28
[The word has vanished, and the sound of feeling rings out. Confused emotion overwhelms us: no hesitation, no reflection, the unalloyed law of Nature determines: the
tone of feeling shall move each sympathetic creature into the same mode].
His formulation makes clear that this association of music with overwhelming
power is based on its eclipse of language: das Wort ist weg, and with it the
26 Wchentliche Nachrichten und Anmerkungen, Leipzig 1768, 17. Stck, 24/10/1768,
128.
27 Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, 538, 542.
28 ber den Ursprung der Sprache, Suphan V, 17.
162
Chapter Four
faculties of thought and reason.29 Elsewhere, his formulation of these ideas

brings them even closer to the model of divine possession, dithyrambic poetry
and Dionysian rites, rather than solemn religious observance:
Die Wollust der Tonkunst liegt tief in uns verborgen: sie wrkt in der Berauschung []
Nicht an Altren, sondern in wilden Freudentnzen entsprang [] die Dichtkunst []
wilde Vergngen, dem ungezhmten Tanz, eine rohe Musik.30
[The voluptuousness of music lies hidden deep within us; it affects us as intoxication
Poetry came into being not at altars, but in wild dances of ecstasy in wild pleasures,
unruly dance, primitive music].
Schiller too refers to musics eclipse of reason and direct appeal to senses and
feeling; but he tends to conflate poet and singer, and to lay more emphasis on
rhythm, as agent both ofheavenly cosmic order and of intense sensual abandon.
His poem Dithyrambe (1796) is not a dance, but in dance rhythms ironically
depicts the inspired poets claim to join the gods on Olympus he is calmed
and healed of his ecstasy by the divine nectar, but his claim to immortality
is an illusion.31 In Die Macht des Gesanges (1795), the power of song is based
on its sound, not its content, and likened to that of sorcery or of the Fates:
Verbndet mit den furchtbarn Wesen,
Die still des Lebens Faden drehn,
Wer kann des Sngers Zauber lsen
Wer seinen Tnen widerstehn?
Wie mit dem Stab des Gtterboten
Beherrscht er das bewegte Herz
29
Allied with those most dreaded beings

Who hidden spin the thread of life,
Who can loose the singers magic,
And who resist his musics power?
Messenger of the gods, he rules
The agitated human heart.32
Again, see Jrgen Trabant on the sources ofHerders conviction that conscious thought was
not possible outside language: Herder and Language, in Adler/Koepke (eds), Companion
to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Camden House 2009, 11739, esp.11727.
30 Herder, Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 90, and Fragmente ber die neuere deutsche
Litteratur, Zwote Sammlung, Suphan I, 310. See esp. Peter Michelsen, Regeln fr Genies,
in G. Sauder (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder, 17441803, Hamburg: Meiner, 1987, 22537,
esp.233ff. on Herders idea of dithyrambic inspiration and poetry. Cf. also Nufer, 56f.
31 NA 2I, 188; see also note NA 2 II B, 136, which points out that the title was altered to
make the reference to Dionysian inspiration more apparent.
32 NA I, 225f.; the poet is said to rule the heart as though with the staff of the messenger
of the gods, i.e. Hermes/Mercury; cf. FASchiller, I, 1021, which notes this staff was a
gift of Apollo.
163
By contrast, Die Knstler (1789) refers to der Dichtung heilige Magie [poetrys
sacred magic] as an agent of cosmic harmony;33 and in the second version of
Der Tanz (1795), the magical hand which constantly both breaks and restores
the form of the dance is rhythm, which lenkt die brausende Lust und die
verwilderte zhmt [guides the surge of excitement and tames its excesses].34
Nicola Gess traces this dual trend ofheavenly/sensuous from the early eighteenth century through to the late nineteenth, in gendered personifications
of music and their rational counterparts.35
Music as medium of metamorphosis and change

Because music was thus traditionally associated with realms or states of mind
outside the human norm, and outside normal expression through language,
it was also seen as a medium of movement between normal and sub- or
supernatural states. Added to musics reputation for being able to depict any
and all kinds ofhuman feeling, this view presented music as an exceptionally
fluid medium [by contrast with language], in which it was possible to pass
33 NA I, 213.
34 NA 2 I, 299, and note vol.2 II A, 217f., which points out that Schiller was much influenced
by Herders idea of dance as sichtbar gemachte Musik, and by Herders concept ofMa
[measure], here with emphasis on restraint. See also FA Schiller, I, 846, on correspondence between Schiller and Herder on the power of music. Norbert Oellers essay in the
Companion to the Works ofFriedrich Schiller (ed. S.D. Martinson, Camden House 2005),
Schillers Lyric Poetry, 1795, is surprisingly unhelpful. He deals with the first version of
Der Tanz, which is less closely crafted; and does not seem to understand the scenario of
a group dance, where dancers are executing pre-determined manoeuvres although they
appear chaotic; so he takes the opening of a clear path for the promenading couple to
be a figure of speech for music, and takes the reference to cosmic harmony as cultural
allusion rather than metaphor. (see 16987, esp.173ff.). The German also appears to
have been bowdlerised to some extent, possibly in translation by the editor.
35 Nicola Gess, La mich in Gesang zerrinnen Konstruktionen des Musikhrens
in der Literatur um 1800, in Karl Brunner/Andrea Griesebner/Daniela HammerTugendhat (eds), Verkrperte Differenzen, Wien: Turia + Kant, 2004. 5976. Also on
web, Goethezeitportal, 2008.
164
Chapter Four
from one state to another, or from one human extreme to another, with great
swiftness. Again, the qualities of language are being mapped on to music,
and a discrepancy perceived. Music is not of itself labile or flexible; but
music is not restricted by syntax and semantics, it can change rhythm, tonal
quality, pitch and volume much more rapidly than a speaker can change tone
and topic, especially when moving from one perceived extreme to the other.
This departure from the human norm of speech and thought was seen as
highly ambiguous. It was sometimes valued as marvellous: Mattheson, for
instance, praised music as a wonderful bond between the most sensuous
and most spiritual aspects of human nature, mediating between the divine
harmony of heaven and the imperfect harmony of earth, able to depict both
virtue and vice.36 Schiller also in theory approved of this ambiguity, noting
that the irresistible power of music, based on its physical appeal to the senses,
was balanced by its form: ihre Form rettet unsere Freiheit [its form restores
our freedom].37 But he nonetheless presents musics duality as a disturbing
and confusing experience: the verse of Die Macht des Gesanges cited above
continues by presenting the heart not as free, but as tossed and suspended
between extremes, at the mercy of the poets divinely given power:
Wie mit dem Stab des Gtterboten
Beherrscht er [der Snger] das bewegte Herz,
Er taucht es in das Reicht der Todten,
Er hebt es staunend himmelwrts,
Und wiegt es zwischen Ernst und Spiele
Auf schwanker Leiter der Gefhle
[Messenger of the gods, he rules

The agitated human heart,
He casts it down to realms of death,
Lifts it astonished to the heavens,
Holds it on feelings trembling span
Poised between seriousness and play]
In several poems, he likens the fluid medium of music to a torrent of water,

issuing from nie entdeckten Quellen [springs never yet discovered] and
though splendid and awe-inspiring, threatening to sweep the listener away.38
Herder chose a different elemental force as analogy for the same qualities,
speaking of music as ein lebender Wind [a living wind].39
One very practical benefit of this perceived facility of music for rapid
dynamic change and swift transition was musics employment in the theatre, to
36
37
38
39
Der vollkommene Capellmeister, e.g. Vorrede and Erster Theil, sections 2 and 3, passim.
Zu Gottfried Krners Aufsatz ber Charakterdarstellung in der Musik, NA 22, 295.
E.g. Die Macht des Gesanges, Laura am Klavier, Der Tanz.: NA 1,225f., 53, NA 2 I,
299.
Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 161f.
165
facilitate changes of mood and pace. This of course pre-dated the eighteenth
century by some way; but eighteenth-century writers noted it as problematic,
if useful. Lessing devoted two ofhis Stcke in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie
(176769) to the consideration of incidental music and entractes; noting that
its swift transitions were confusing and manipulative of audience emotions
unless clearly motivated by the text. He also suggested that the instrumental
entracte music should confine itself to the mood of the preceding act so as
not to give away the plot of what followed.40 In short, he wanted music to
behave as a language; although he conceded that it handled the appearance
of Voltaires ghost with greater success than the text:
ein Allegro aus dem E-moll, mit der nmlichen Instrumentenbesetzung des
Vorhergehenden, nur da E-Hrner mit G-Hrnern verschiedentlich abwechseln,
schildert [] die wahre wilde Bestrzung, welche eine dergleichen Erscheinung unter
dem Volke verursachen mu.41
[An Allegro in E minor, with the same instrumentation as the preceding section except
that horns in E alternated at various points with horns in G, depicts the real kind of
wild panic which would be produced among the people by such a manifestation]
Lessing seemed to think that music is in its element with ghosts; and gave the
key-signature and instrumentation for such music as a sort of vocabulary list,
to encourage the kind of unambiguous theatrical music he admired in this
performance. However, a further factor to be borne in mind is the influence
ofShakespeare (who used dramatic music extensively)42 on the thought and
drama ofthe Sturm und Drang writers.43 Their aim was to elevate Nature in
40 Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie St. 26 and 27, 28th and 31st July 1767 resp.; ed.
Mann, 1963, 10311.
41 Op.cit. St. 27, 111. Lessings designations do not correspond to modern instruments;
though it is clear that he means horns tuned to a different pitch and thence with a
different tone and timbre. According to NHDM, the most common horn is now a
double instrument in [= tuned to] B flat and F. It was only in the nineteenth century
that the addition of valves and other refinements made the horn more versatile; see
NHDM Horn (380f.) and Brass instruments (111).
42 See the classic study by J.S. Manifold, The Music in English Drama from Shakespeare to
Purcell, London: Rockcliff, 1956.
43 This group is often confused in modern music criticism with the tamer spirit of
Empfindsamkeit (sensibility); see e.g. Margaret Mahony Stoljar, Poetry and Song in
Late Eighteenth-Century Germany: A Study in the Musical Sturm und Drang, London :
Croom Helm, 1985. But although both were forms of reaction to the Enlightenment focus
166
Chapter Four
human behaviour and society; and Shakespeare (as recommended by Lessing)

was their model for dramatic form, dramatic characterisation, and dramatic
language, and for their ideal ofthe poet as divinely inspired natural genius.44
Nonetheless, it took some time for German readers and writers to come to
terms with the various aspects of his work. Most of the earlier translations
were in prose (Wielands, 176182, being the most widely read); and most
performance texts were for various reasons abridged or altered.45 So the plays
tended to be received piecemeal; individual characters, text passages or scenarios stood out, but the development of character, atmosphere, and attitude
tended to be lost. This was partly true even for those (Herder, Goethe, Lenz,
Schiller) who could read Shakespeare in the English original, and wrote critical
essays or attempted partial translations.46 Given this situation, the music in
Shakespeares drama was not imported wholesale as an element of dramatic
form.47 Initially, Sturm und Drang writers were attracted by Shakespeares use
ofthe fantastic and supernatural (witches, ghosts). H.W.v. Gerstenberg used
44
45
46
47
on reason, the Sturm und Drang writers (e.g. Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Lenz, Klinger)
experimented in language and form with a recklessness horrific to (e.g.) Wieland and
Hiller, and by about 1785 they had moved into other careers or other forms of writing.
Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St.15 (on Wielands translation), 69 and passim.
See esp. the classic studies by R. Pascal, The German Sturm und Drang, Manchester
University Press, 1953, and W.H. Bruford, Theatre, Drama and Audience in Goethes
Germany, London 1950, repr. Westport: Greenwood, 1974; and the recent survey of
German theatre repertoire by Lesley Sharpe, A National Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland
and the German Stage, Oxford etc.: Peter Lang, 2007, 100f. and passim.
See Pascal, Bruford, and the detailed survey in Lesley Drewing, Die Shakespearebersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voss und seinen Shnen, Eutin: Struve, 1999. In the later
1770s, when the actor/director F.L. Schrder began to stage Shakespeare in Germany,
the limitations of audience taste and theatrical resources dictated heavy cuts. Later,
Schillers and Goethes Classical tastes sought to correct Shakespeares formlessness;
see also Sharpe, 74f, 99f.
According to Fischer-Lamberg, DjG I, 455, note to 91, Shakespeares works were in
Goethes fathers library both in English and in Wielands translation. In general, see
Bruford, op.cit., The Theatre ofthe Seventies [1770s], and The Literary Drama ofthe
Seventies, esp.193207; Pascal, op.cit., The Revolution in Poetics, esp.23345, 25061,
2705; Drewing, 3491 passim, esp.7984.
Sharpe points out that in the late eighteenth century many theatres developed
Musiktheater as a separate genre, sometimes with a separate company; but up to that
point musical theatre and standard theatre influenced each other considerably. Weimar,
167
music to depict transitional states between this world and the next: in his
early play Ugolino (1768): sanfte, traurige Musik [soft, sad music] accompanies his hero as he starves to death in a castle dungeon, endigt erhaben [ends
sublimely] as he faces death nobly, and finally depicts the Wonnegesang
[song ofbliss] heard by his dying son as a portent ofheaven.48 But these writers were more consistently interested in Shakespeares portrayal of the huge
range ofhuman circumstances and the extremes ofhuman behaviour; and it
was Herder who realised that the songs in Shakespeare, which Wieland had
omitted, were crucial in depicting both. From the late 1760s, he translated
not only Ariels magic songs from The Tempest, but Ophelias songs, the Fools
songs from Twelfth Night (on melancholy, love and death) and Desdemonas
song of death from love, apparently casual but in context a portent ofher own
death. His advocacy offolk songs was also based on the realisation that they
conveyed mythological and cultural context, as well as depths ofhuman feeling.49 Interpolated songs thus became an additional formal resource, which
the author could use to convey anything from the singers (or players) state of
mind to the social, wider human or even cosmic context in which his figures
moved, and also to convey changes in these features. Yet paradoxically this
extension oftheatrical music was also a way of confining and harnessing musics
connection with forces outside rational control; like Voltaires ghost, it was
usually contained by the language of the play and by theatrical convention.
being small, kept the joint system of singer/actors well into the 19th c.; see e.g. 2933,
151f. and passim.
48 In general, see Pascal, 2713; and Ugolino, in Sturm und Drang: Dramatische Schriften,
ed. E. Loewenthal & L. Schneider, 2nd edn, Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1963, vol.
I. 59ff.
49 See esp. the essay by Stefan Greif, Herders Aesthetics and Poetics, in Companion to
the works of Herder, esp.15862; Pascal, 2713; Drewing, 7981. Herders collection
of folksongs and translations was finally published as Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern:
Volkslieder, in 1778/79.
168
Chapter Four
Music as manifestation of the daemonic:

Goethes development of this entailment
Where sub-or supernatural influences on human beings were perceived as
miraculous, whether from outside or inside human nature, they were sometimes bundled under the notion ofthe daemonic. Unlike the demonic or devilish, this was conceived as a powerful positive force, but one which might well
have destructive effects on the mere mortals who encountered or embodied
it. Though it seems to have much in common with the Greek idea of divine
possession, the precise meaning of daemonic varied from author to author.
J.G. Hamann, who retrieved it from Socrates and gave it wider currency in
his Sokratische Denkwrdigkeiten (1759), used it as part ofhis redefinition of
poetic status and activity, to denote the divine tutelary spirit which breathes
inspiration into poets and prophets, and dictates both utterance and action
of its chosen human agents (though Hamann envisaged Christian rather
than Apolline possession).50 Schiller retained it in this sense, as a term for
the qualities which made the artists work immortal, and were at odds with
the artists identity as individual mortal in a finite time and place.51 As far as
I can see, Herder and most of the Sturm und Drang writers did not use the
term, instead deploying the gentler Genius as tutelary spirit and Genie
to denote the quality of genius in writers and in the personalities who possessed, or thought they possessed it. Again as far as I can see, none of them
connected it with music.
50 See esp. James C. OFlaherty, The Quarrel of Reason with Itself: Essays on Hamann,
Michaelis, Lessing, Nietzsche, Camden House 1988, 5260 and passim. On Hamanns
reaction to the Enlightenment, see e.g. Bernhard Gajek & Albert Meier (eds), Johann
Georg Hamann und die Krise der Aufklrung (Acta des fnften Internationalen HamannKolloquiums in Mnster i.W. 1988), Peter Lang 1990. On Hamanns views on language
and his influence on Herder, see e.g. James H. Stam, Inquiries into the Origin ofLanguage:
The Fate of a Question, New York: Harper & Row, 1976, 13166.
51 See e.g. ber das Erhabene (179496), NA 21, 52, and ber die nothwendigen Grenzen
beim Gebrauch schnerFormen (1795), NA 21 27 and esp.321, note. Also Neunter Brief
of Briefe ber die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795ff.), NA 20, 333, and esp. note
NA 21, 259, and his reference to reineren Dmonen in Die Knstler (FA Schiller I, 209
and note 1009).
169
Goethe, however, developed it in his later years to denote a miraculous

and fearsome quality or force,52 and he saw music as one of its most powerful
manifestations. In his poem Urworte. Orphisch (1817), Daimon appears as
the first of the Orphic forces shaping the individuals existence, according
to Goethes notes something between horoscope and innate character.53 In a
slightly earlier letter, Dmonen is used wryly to denote capricious superhuman powers: he arrived in Weimar after the gremlins had pulled a few faces at
me, and keeps this wryness in most ofhis subsequent letters.54 But in recorded
conversations he gradually becomes more awestruck towards daemonic powers
in individuals whose influence is extraordinary and inexplicable, equally likely
to be benign or destructive. He cites Christ, Napoleon and his own patron
Karl August ofSachsen Weimar Eisenach;55 in conversation with Eckermann,
he adds Raphael, Mozart and Shakespeare to those set amongst humanity by
daemonic forces, adding that:
Dmonische Wesen solcher Art [Napoleon, etc] rechneten die Griechen unter die
Halbgtter [] Unter den Knstlern findet es sich mehr bei Musikern, weniger bei
Malern. Bei Paganini zeigt es sich im hohen Grade.56
[Daemonic beings ofthis kind [Napoleon, etc] were counted by the Greeks among the
demigods. Amongst artists it is found in musicians more often than among painters. In
Paganini it is manifest in a high degree.]
Several contributions to the Brown/Lee/Saine volume, Interpreting Goethes Faust Today

(1994), deal with the demonic, rather than the daemonic; and focus on Mephistopheles
and the supernatural elements in Faust, in relation to elements ofthe Gothic and preoccupation with absolute evil. This can have the effect of drawing Faust, and especially
Mephisto, towards Gounod rather than Goethe (especially in Harald Weinrichs contribution, Der zivilisierter Teufel (617). By contrast, contributions by Meredith Lee
(Fausts Harzreise, 8193) and Jane K. & Marshall Brown (Faust and the Gothic novel,
6880) show how Goethes treatment of these subjects differs from concern with the
depths of evil and from Gothic approaches to the supernatural.
53 Cf, AA 2, 617. Fausts Harzreise, 8193.
54 E.g. letter to Sulpiz Boissere, 11 October 1815, AA 21, 99; letter to Zelter 1 February
1831, AA 21, 965.
55 E.g. to Fr. Von Mller, 1809, AA 22, 615, and to Eckermann, 28 February 1831, AA 23,
743.
56 55 Conv. of 6 December 1829, 2 March 1831, AA 24, 373f., 469.
52
170
Chapter Four
He explains further that:

In der Poesie [] ist durchaus etwas Dmonisches, und zwar vorzglich in der unbewuten, bei der aller Verstand und alle Vernunft zu kurz kommt, und die daher auch so
ber alle Begriffe wirkt. Desgleichen ist es in der Musik im hchsten Grade, denn sie
steht so hoch, da kein Verstand ihr beikommen kann, und es geht von ihr eine Wirkung
aus, die alles beherrscht und von der niemand imstande ist, sich Rechenschaft zu geben.
Der religise Kultus kann sie daher auch nicht entbehren; sie ist eins der ersten Mittel,
um auf die Menschen wunderbar zu wirken.57
[There is certainly something daemonic in poetry, and particularly in instinctive poetry,
which cannot be fully grasped by intellect and reason, however great, and which therefore has such incomprehensible influence. The same is true of music to an extraordinary
degree, for it stands so high that no reason can attain to it, and it exerts an influence
which carries all before it and which nobody can account for. That is why religious
ritual cannot do without it; music is one of the prime means of exerting miraculous
influence on human creatures.]
This attitude is strikingly close to the Greek view of special humans as semidivine. It presents music as an extreme form of inspirational poetic utterance,
pure divinely-inspired sound uniquely meaningful yet completely beyond the
grasp of reason, but potentially hellish and threatening because it pushes human
beings (whether listener or inspired medium) to the limits oftheir faculties, to
thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls, as Hamlet put it. Certainly, allowance must be made in this particular instance for Goethes auditory shock when
confronted with Romantic tonality.58 But he himself dealt often enough with
the sub- and superhuman and with extreme experience; and in his Prolog (1821)
for the opening ofthe Berlin theatre, he challenged his audience to follow him
in doing so, using music to depict the shift to a non-human level:
Sie [the Muse of drama] tritt begeistert zurck als wenn sie etwas in den Lften hrte
Was ruft! Ein Dmon! Helfet mir bedenken!
Ich soll den Schritt nach anderer Seite lenken []
Nach Wunderbarem aber treibt michs, will es fassen.
Nun folgt mir gern, sonst mt ich euch verlassen.59
57
58
59
Conv. of 8 March 1831, AA 24, 472.

E.g. his response when Felix Mendelssohn played a piano version of Beethovens C
Minor symphony, 21/25 May 1830, AA 23, 700.
AA 3, 647.
171
[The Muse of drama steps back in excitement, as though she hears something in the air:
What calls! A daemon! Help me to decide!
I should direct my steps the other way,
But I am drawn to wondrous things, to grasp them.
Follow me willingly, or I must leave you.]
Goethe wished for Mozart, as composer ofDon Giovanni, to set Faust because
Mozart could handle the repellent, offensive and fearsome elements which
Faust involved; and Goethe himself wrote a sequel to The Magic Flute (an
opera which addresses profound questions about human existence in the
universe) with considerable theatrical panache.60 It seems rather that Goethe
feared not the daemonic in music as such, but the dissolution of the analogy with language through which he could partly understand it. Paganinis
violin playing and Beethovens symphonies were not amenable to this analogy. Usually, he was willing to modify his reaction when given help with
such music, e.g. by Zelter, or the young Felix Mendelssohn.61 But the shock
remained of an encounter with a force outside human faculties, yet vividly
present in the real world. He described Paganinis playing as diese Flammenund Wolkensule [this pillar of cloud and fire], like the divine manifestation
which guided the Israelites through the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.62
60 To Eckermann, 12 February 1829, AA 24, 313; Goethe regarded Mozart as one of the
daemonically appointed, etwas Unerreichbares in der Musik (Eckermann, 6 December
1829, AA 24, 374). Goethes sequel, Der Zauberflte Zweiter Teil. Fragment, AA 6,
109118, is a fairly detailed libretto working with the same characters and issues as the
original, and giving a detailed scenario outline. The action is incomplete, ending with
an infant Genius, son of Tamino and Pamina, who escapes the Queen of the Night.
See Robert Spaethling, Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe, Camden House 1987,
esp.123ff. and appendix 175ff. However, Sp. draws speculative parallels between the
cultural experiences of Goethe and Mozart which seem to me unhelpful Austrian
culture was very different from Goethes German background, and the two men developed very differently as characters.
61 See e.g. his correspondence with Zelter in 1829 on Paganini, [FA 11 (38), esp. letters of
17 May 1829. 9 November 1829, ed.cit. 123, 188f.], Walwei-Wiegelmann 4245; and Felix
Mendelssohns letter to his parents on his visit to Weimar, where Goethe asked him to
play Bach, Haydn and Mozart in chronological order, und ihn dann so weiter fhren bis
jetzt [and take him up to the present in this way] (21/24 May 1830, AA 23 697701).
62 Letter to Zelter, 9 November 1829, AA 21, 872.
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Chapter Four
Beethoven he described as working at the point where genius and self-destruction coincided:
da sehen Sie nur, was fr Teufelszeug, und hier wieder, was der Kerl fr Anmut und
Herrlichkeit hervorgebracht, aber der arme Teufel hats auch nicht ausgehalten, er ist
schon hin, es ist nicht anders mglich, wer so auf der Kippe steht, mu sterben oder
verrckt werden, da ist keine Gnade.63
[ Just look what fiendish stuff the man has produced, and then again what grace and
marvellous things, but the poor devil couldnt stand it himself, hes done for already,
and it was inevitable, people who teeter on the brink like that will die or go mad, theres
no help for it].
Daemons, demons and humans

Goethes work in general has many instances where music is brought in to
depict the sub- or superhuman, and he uses musics ambiguity (by comparison with language) to present it as terror or inspiration or sometimes
both. However, he differs in various ways from later usage of music to suggest this connection. For instance, he does not attempt to show or even suggest the purely transcendental; unlike (for example) Novalis in Heinrich von
Ofterdingen, or Tieck in Der blonde Eckbert, for whom the spirit world merged
seamlessly with the human realm of imagination, and music was a medium in
which both could blend. Still less does he suggest a scenario like that envisaged by the later nineteenth century and by Thomas Mann in Dr. Faustus,
where the human mind (especially the daemonic personality) attempts to
take over or displace the superhuman sphere.64 Nor, as Meredith Lee and to
Sulpiz Boissere, 4 May 1811, AA 22, 628. On Beethoven and Goethe in general, from
letters and conversations, see Walwei-Wiegelmann, 1927.
64 T.J. Reeds section on Dr. Faustus, in The Uses of Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon, 1974,
360402, is especially helpful in showing the intricate interactions of nineteenth-century
thought, especially Nietzsche, and twentieth-century events which Mann took account
of in his novel; and which made it possible for reputable historians to speak of a satanic
principle in world history when trying to account for Hitler (ibid., 361).Hanjo Kesting,
in his essay Krankheit zum Tode (Text + Kritik, Sonderband 1976, 2744) shows how
powerfully the idea of music as daemonic force affected German thought and culture
63
173
a lesser extent Jane K. and Marshall Brown make clear, is he fascinated by the
idea of absolute evil.65 Goethe rejected the suggestion that Mephisto was a
daemonic persona: der Mephistopheles ist ein viel zu negatives Wesen; das
Dmonische aber uert sich in einer durchaus positiven Tatkraft;66 and
(in line with Leibniz and Shaftesbury) does not take him very seriously as a
demon either. Instead, as with the conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony,
we are presented with sub- and super-human phenomena not as absolutes,
but diachronically, via certain cultural versions of them and their relations
to the human world. Music functions in most ofthese presentations by contrast with language: both sub- and superhuman phenomena carry potential
for disorder and ambiguity because they are at the limits of, or beyond, the
world ofhuman thought and language, thoughts beyond the reaches of our
souls. In particular, they may by-pass the processes of rational thought and
language, and appeal directly to body, spirit or feeling, or all three. In these
interactions, music is sometimes given the function of a quasi-language: a
medium sufficiently like a language to be understood, and sufficiently unlike
normal language to indicate the protagonists move into and return from the
sub- or superhuman. Dance and special ways of moving are also sometimes
part ofthis device. Zimmermann points out how various ideas of divine possession, including Shaftesburys idea of enthusiasm, are treated in Goethes
early hymnic poetry in terms which involve not only Greek myths, but also
the figures and teachings of Hermetic lore.67 This is especially prominent
in Wanderers Sturmlied, where the poets Genius raises him to the status
of semi-divinity, gttergleich, until he is allowed to fall into mortality and
mud. Apollo features prominently throughout, as life-giving deity liable to
jealousy, on whom, along with Dionysos and the Muses, the poet depends
(including Manns own) during this period, mostly taken as scientific thought rather
than metaphor and extended into political thought with disastrous results.
65 Brown/Lee/Saine, 1994: cf. note 52 above. Both articles point out that Goethes presentation is focused on earth rather than on supernatural phenomena. Brown/Brown emphasise that he explores the human response and resistance to the supernatural (op.cit.,
70), rather than the supernatural itself; and Lee shows how even in the Walpurgisnacht
Mephisto remains earthbound and shows no mysteries (op.cit., 85ff. and passim).
66 [Mephistopheles is much too negative a creature [for that]; whereas the Daemonic
manifests itself in decidedly positive activity]; conversation with Eckermann, 2 March
1831, AA 24, 469.
67 DjG II, 92118, 251ff.
174
Chapter Four
for the validity of his utterance.68 This is hymnic poetry, not music; but the
terms denoting song and singing are used (e.g. Sturmlied, 7) in this connection not only to denote special utterance, but utterance which the poet
cannot control he is medium, not master rhetorician. Both this poem and
the Musensohn refer to the poet as driven, finally collapsing variously on
the bosom of the Muses, or in the refuge of a hut. Harzreise im Winter and
An Schwager Kronos present variants on this; the latter poem has only the
defiant blast on the coachmans horn as the speaker hurtles into a hell identified with the flames of the setting sun, whereas Harzreise begs an unnamed
loving god for a tone on his psaltery which will heal suffering, and in turn
inspire psalms of gratitude. This combines the ideas of Apollo (lyre-player
and healer) and David, the Biblical psalmist who cured Saul; but catastrophe or cure are equally possible. Similar musical reference can be found in
the Zueignung prologue to Faust: far from being the master orator, the poet
describes himself as an olsharfe, an Aeolian harp, an instrument played by
the natural force ofthe wind (ll.27/8). In Faust II, the idea is extended to a full
episode around the figure ofEuphorion (9596ff.), son ofFaust and Helena. He
is born as a wingless genius, swiftly acquires a golden lyre, exactly like a tiny
Phoebus [=Apollo], and emerges as inspired poet through whose limbs the
sacred melodies move (9627), his whole body directly taken over by divinely
inspired music. The musical analogy is then realised in actual music: first a
charming, purely melodic string music sounds from within the cave, and then
an entire episode is specified with full choral accompaniment (SD 9678), until
the moment where Euphorion loses his powers, falls deep down into a dark
realm (9905), and the music ceases (SD9938). Here Euphorions attempts to
fly are, like his Dionysian abandon, his wild dancing and his refusal to walk,
signifiers of his pretensions to be superhuman. Half mortal and half myth,
he appears as a daemonic figure, like Beethoven in Goethes view pushing
68 Goethes first recorded reference to Apollo is dated at 1758, when he was nine (DjGoethe,
I, 50f.). Apollo seems to have embodied for him the qualities which he later associated
with the daemonic (qv above); but in these early references, the musical association is
marginal. Most ofthem (see DjG., Registerband, 16) are concerned with Apollo and the
Muses as divine inspirers of poets, with the question of whether or not Goethe is one of
the inspired (eg. I, 181), and with Apollo as literally a kind of super human, physically
and mentally, who puts to shame the mortals who vie with him (see esp. letter to Herder,
Oct. 1771, DjG II, 68f.). On Muses as inspiration, see esp. Zimmermann, II, 24ff.
175
himselfbeyond fixed limits with predictably catastrophic results. But while his
borrowed powers last, he operates what Schiller called der Dichtung heilige
Magie, divinely-inspired poetry magical in its power over others.
In all these instances, a curious double-take is evident: music is evoked
or added to denote the otherness of such utterance, but the superhuman
nature of the inspiration and the precarious position of the mortals who
receive it are made verbally explicit in text. In the Euphorion episode, the
chorus song-text and dance emphasise the magical charm ofhis poetry, whilst
the danger of the inspired poet is spelt out in the dialogue between Faust,
Helena and Euphorion. Like Plato, Goethe allies poetic language with music
in by-passing rational intellect and language. Yet poetic language is obviously
still language, and states clearly for protagonist and listener what is happening. This is also apparent in Rittersaal, where the text spells out what we (and
the court) see on stage. The ascendance of myth and fantasy is established
by the Astrologers spell to block rational thought: durch magisch Wort sei
die Vernunft gebunden! (6416ff.); and the figures of the courts collective
fantasy, Paris and Helen, are signalled as such by the music which is said to
emanate from their movements and surroundings:
Und nun erkennt ein Geister-Meisterstck!
So wie sie wandeln, machen sie Musik.
Aus luftgen Tnen quillt ein Weinichtwie,
Indem sie ziehn, wird alles Melodie.
Der Sulenschaft, auch die Triglyphe klingt,
Ich glaube gar, der ganze Tempel singt.
(6443ff.).
And now behold a spirits masterpiece!

Their every movement lovely music makes.
From airy tones it springs mysteriously,
And as they walk, all becomes melody.
The columns, frieze, faade together ringing,
And all the temple, so it seems, is singing.
These figures do not speak; they are not human, their media are movement
and music. But Faust, filled with divine inspiration and madness by Helenas
beauty, speaks directly to her and tries to claim her as real: Hier fa ich Fu,
hier sind es Wirklichkeiten (6553). The result is an explosion which knocks
him unconscious until Homunculus can interpret his dream of making Helena
real by entering her mythical world (6903ff.).
This Fabelreich (7055) constitutes the Klassische Walpurgisnacht ofAct
II in the second part of Faust, through which Faust pursues myths of the
origin ofHelena and beauty, in Helenas setting: the language and mythology
ofGreece (7073). In a parallel quest, Homunculus searches for the origins of
176
Chapter Four
natural life. Myths lie outside the realm of rational thought and language; yet
constantly interact with and inform human life and thought.69 This episode
demonstrates this interdependence by moving constantly between rational
and informative language, poetic language, sing-song language, and song.
The same is also true of Act III. In both acts, Faust encounters all that the
Greek world can tell him about nature, beauty, love and language (debates
with Chiron and other mythical figures, the eventual decision in favour
of the origins of life in water rather than fire, encounters with Helena and
with poetry, even with politics and power relations), as well as primitive
grotesques. But this is nonetheless a realm of myth and magic, not reality. So music, sing-song language and poetry emerge as ambiguous media:
equally likely to embody super-human truths superior to those conveyable
in rational thought and language, or a sub-human, sensuous semblance of
meaningful speech. For example, Mephistos exchanges with the griffins
on names, words and sounds, and Fausts seduction of Helena by teaching
her to rhyme, pick out the sound of words as an element which may drive
home, disguise or merely dissemble profound meaning. In one case we have
word-play (Greisen, Greifen, 7093ff.) and comedy, in the other a seriously
important encounter of two cultures:
Gefllt dir schon die Sprechart unsrer Vlker, [Since our peoples way of speaking pleases,
O so gewi entzckt auch der Gesang,
Our song will surely please you even more,
Befriedigt Ohr und Sinn im tiefsten Grunde Will satisfy your ear and mind profoundly.]
(9367ff., esp.9372ff.)
The sung episodes, especially the Sirens songs and the final chorus of the
KWPN (8484ff.) can equally well be mocking and misleading or a true guide
to the meaning of the festival and the origins of life in water through the
impulses of Eros. Only when Faust has passed through all these dreams and
myths, and finally renounces magical incantations (11405), do we begin to
see what he has really learned.
69 See esp. Ulrich Gaiers essay, Myth, Mythology, New Mythology, in Companion to the
Works of Herder, 16588. Gaier points out how strongly Herders thought is influenced
by Plato, Shaftesbury and others who emphasise the importance of inspiration (as divine
gift from above) and myth (as mans best conjecture about what cannot be scientifically known) (ibid., esp.16570); but he does not discuss musical metaphor in this
context.
177
Goethe also draws in various ways on Christian concepts of sub- and

super-human realms, and musics role within that tradition. Singing angels
and heavenly voices are one example, as we shall see; but Goethe invents and
modifies fairly freely. Zimmermann draws attention to the young Goethes
view (from Shaftesbury) that good and evil are two sides of the same coin.70
So magic is often presented as a counterpart to the heavenly, but within
the Christian tradition. Although we do occasionally find Shakespeareanstyle use of magic for Gothic effect (e.g. in Gtz and Clavigo),71 more often
magic appears as hocus-pocus rather than evil, and sometimes (as with Fausts
alchemy), as white magic, unorthodox ways of seeking to explore Creation.72
Again, human thought and language are the implicit or explicit norm: sub- and
superhuman realms and figures interact with language, and music sometimes
also with dance serves as signal of and medium for this interaction. Thus
Faust begins and ends with heavenly hosts, singing angels, the Lord and the
Mater Gloriosa, all suggesting a Christian super-human framework within
which human life (and the play) takes place. But this realm is not an orthodox heaven: it is linked firmly to earth and to language: at the beginning by
Mephisto and by the Lord, who condescends so menschlich mit dem Teufel
selbst zu sprechen (353), and at the end by successive church fathers, angels
and human figures who form a sequence of increasingly enlightened utterance (sung or spoken) as they progress from earth (Bergschluchten, 11844ff.)
towards an infinite presented as beyond language. In the course ofthe plays
action between these superhuman boundaries, music often serves both as a
device to denote a shift oflevel from human to sub-or superhuman, and also
to indicate voices from a different level intervening in the world of human
thought and language. Again, this usually takes the form of music plus text
in song. The Easter choirs, and the spirit choruses in Studierzimmer, react to
Fausts attempt to break out of his human limitations; the text of their song
70 Vol.I, 186ff ; in Goethes Zum Schkespeares Tag, in DjG, 1963 ed. Vol.II, 85.
71 An early version of Gtz has a ghost appearing to Adelheid (DjG II, 225 & note, 344)
after her poisoning and black magic against Sickingen (ibid., 214, 219); and as Clavigo
approaches Maries coffin, he takes the music to be partly that accompanying her funeral
procession, partly the voice ofMarie calling to him from beyond the grave (DjG IV, 91,
and note 346 on Shakespearean parallels).
72 See esp. Zimmermann II, 323 note 17; he makes clear, here and 250ff., how the overall
idea ofmagic often overlaps both with Hermetic concepts and aims and with the ideas
of inspiration and possession.
178
Chapter Four
tells us how they do so, and the music signals their difference as non-human
beings, whether with a heavenly message or allied to Mephisto (1259ff., 1447ff.,
1607ff., also 6591 in Part II). In these instances, music by-passes reason and
language to appeal directly and forcefully to feeling and the senses especially
when the spirits sing Faust to sleep so that Mephisto can escape (1506ff.).
But not every spirit appearance is conveyed in music (the Erdgeist in Part I
speaks throughout, though in incantatory style); and the device can also be
used for comic effect. In Auerbachs Keller, for instance, the students singing
marks their abandonment of coherent thought and language as they slide
into sub-human Bestialitt:
Uns ist ganz kannibalisch wohl,
Als wie fnf hundert Suen! (2293f., 2297)
Just like five hundred blissful pigs

Stuffed from eating each other.
In the Hexenkche, the sing-song half-speech of the monkeys and the witch
parodies meaningful speech and denotes their sub-human nature, accompanied by the unnatural magic music of her apparatus: indessen fangen die
Glser an zu klingen, die Kessel zu tnen, und machen Musik (SD 2532).
Perhaps Goethes best-known deployment of these metaphor entailments can be found in his depiction of Gretchen and her world. We are
accustomed to the idea that Gretchen sings at each stage of her relationship
with Faust, to express what she cannot say directly, in the manner established
by Shakespeare and recommended by Herder;73 and that the folk-songs and
work song she sings show her social and cultural milieu as well as her personal feelings. This includes the quasi-hymn Ach neige, and the figure ofthe
Mater dolorosa, which show the Christian symbols and language through
which she sees heaven and her relation to it.74 However, Goethe develops
these ideas to startling effect in the Dom scene and what follows; so that
Gretchens guilt and madness, the wild and distorted witches and warlocks of
the Walpurgisnacht, and particularly the role Gretchen plays in it as infanticide
mother, all appear to follow from the Christian idea of the Last Judgment
and her fear of it. Gretchen is attending the funeral mass for her brother; she
feels overwhelming guilt for his murder by Faust and Mephisto, her mothers
73 Esp. brought out by Barker Fairley, in his Gs F, 47ff.; GP&Th, 107ff.
74 See esp. Ritchie Robertson, Literary techniques and Aesthetic Texture, in Paul Bishop
(ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust: Parts I and II, 2001, 127, esp.1618.
179
death from Fausts poison, and her unconsecrated child. Again, Goethe uses
song, music plus text; but he devises the scene so as to bring home to us
the discrepancy between Gretchens instinctive thought-processes and fully
articulate language. Her guilt and panic are articulated for us in words by a
Bser Geist (3776ff.), not otherwise specified and not part of the normal liturgy; whilst her sense of utter rejection by Heaven is conveyed by the noise
of Amt, Orgel und Gesang, the Latin Dies Irae chanted by the choir, the
overwhelming sound of the organ. She can barely articulate her response to
this direct assault, and faints:
Mir ist, als ob die Orgel mir
Den Atem versetzte,
Gesang mein Herz
Im Tiefsten lste
I feel the organ

Is stifling me,
The chant is turning
My heart to water. (3809ff.).
The audience thus has a verbal depiction of her confused thoughts, the
frightening text of the Mass depicting the Last Judgment, and the force of
overwhelming musical sound to drive home a state of terror where thought
and language are scarcely possible. The transition of Faust and Mephisto
from the mountain forest to die Traum- und Zaubersphre of the Brocken
Walpurgisnacht is then denoted first by a Wechselgesang (Faust, Mephisto,
the will o the wisp), then intensified to a wtender Zaubergesang as witches
and warlocks scream and jostle their way to the mountain. But as Meredith Lee
shows, Mephisto does not get very far into spiritual levels, let alone absolute
evil; he gets halfway up the Brocken, talks a lot about sex, and dances with a
witch.75 There is somewhat more to the scene than this, since the human and
mythical creatures here represent the distortions and exaggerations of sex in
the repressive underside ofChristian church teaching (voiced viciously enough
by Valentin and the girls at the well). But both the shrill witch choruses and
the silly squeaks of the dilettante orchestra serve evil in earnest by distracting Faust and leaving Gretchen to her fate; and this reality is made brutally
palpable for the ear when we suddenly come up against Fausts exclamations
in the prose of Trber Tag. Feld.
In all these examples, a view is presented in which any moral distinction between heavenly and hellish is much less important than the existential
75
Op.cit., passim.
180
Chapter Four
distinction between sub- or superhuman and the human reality of rational

thought and speech. The heavenly is not always kind or blissful; the hellish
sometimes ridiculous rather than evil. Yet the most important occasions of
human life (love, desire, birth, inspiration, search for knowledge and ultimate
meaning, death) demand excursions outside the sphere of rational thought and
language, and interaction with whatever lies beyond. The basic metaphor of
music as a language, yet greatly exceeding language in scope, subtlety and sensuous attractiveness, means that music can be drawn on with or without a text,
to serve both as means and as signal for a shift in either direction, outside the
normal world oflanguage. Similarly, a return to speech can be used to indicate
a return to the level of real life. Again, not all such ventures are depicted via
music. Fausts journey to the Mothers, the primitive source of all concepts
and images, is marked by his reaction to the strange sound of the word: die
Mtter! Mtter! s klingt so wunderlich! [The Mothers! Mothers! How
strange it sounds!] (6217). And Apollos son is evoked only in text as Chiron
recommends Faust to Manto, daughter ofAesculapius, as Asklepischer Kur vor
andern wert [most worthy ofAesculapian cure] (7487), before they descend
to Hades to retrieve the shade of Helena. Nonetheless, the dangers of such
ventures for mere mortals are often emphasised: Wen Helena paralysiert,/
Der kommt so leicht nicht zu Verstande [Whom Helen has once paralysed/
Does not so easily recover] (6568f.). Musics connotations of ambiguity and
extra-natural forces help to suggest both the splendour of these forays and
the un-reality inherent in them. And in most cases where music has this
function, a text spells out for us what is happening; we are not encouraged
to roam outside the frame of language, even where things beyond thought
and language are being considered.
***
Traditional Concepts of Music, Reviewed

It seems clear from evidence considered in all four chapters above that some
very ancient conceptions and metaphors of music, and some of their original entailments, were still very much live in eighteenth-century German
181
culture. Concepts of harmony were of course no longer seen as scientific;

but the domain offered rich metaphorical potential, since both the ancient
connotations and newer developments of the metaphor were available for
deployment by authors and recognisable by readers.76 Goethe was able to
exploit this diachronic potential and suggest images of cosmic harmony or
divine inspiration from different epochs, to create a sense ofMans recurrent
preoccupation with the nature of the world and what lay beyond it.
However, a large part of the wealth of the domain lay in metaphors
based on a perceived negative. From earliest times, the absence of qualities
of harmony had also engendered metaphor; but as ideas were exchanged in
Europe and cultural debate proceeded, these metaphors came to be differently
evaluated. Non-harmony of several kinds came to be perceived as rich diversity, harmony was decried as rigid symmetrical conformity, or developed as
coordinated diversity; and writers could draw on all these possibilities as they
wished. Moreover, these developments seem to have diverged and diversified
not according to cultural or political boundaries, but according to views on
the world and on music, and Mans relation to both.
Negative metaphors based on the perception that music did not behave
as a language present a more diverse picture. It is important to note that both
the conceptual metaphor of music as a language, and its counterpart presenting
music as non-language, had many entailments which did not involve an idea
of potential disorder; these are dealt with in chapters seven and eight below.
But Greek philosophical ideas of language as vehicle for rational thought
and expression persisted as a norm; so that even in the eighteenth century
music could be conflated with non-rational language as both medium and
metaphor for the a-rational, irrational and chaotic within Man, and for anything beyond the reaches of our souls but mysteriously and vividly present
to human experience. The range of musics traditional metaphorical reference,
like Goethes Faust,
Wandelt mit bedchtger Schnelle
Vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Hlle (241f.)
[Moves with most suspicious speed

Through Heaven, Earth and Hell at need].
76 This confirms what Kvecses suggests in Metaphor in Culture (2005), 242, on the coexistence within the same culture of older and newer connotations for a given metaphor.
Part Two
Conceptions of the Structure of Music

and Their Influence on Musical Metaphor
3. Lady Hamilton as Goddess of the Dance, Friedrich Rehberg, engraved by Tommaso Piroli,
in Drawings faithfully copied from nature at Naples [] dedicated to the Right Honourable
Sir William Hamilton, 1794, copyright V & A images/Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
See note in List of Illustrations.
This section is focused on aspects of music which have so far been secondary
on eighteenth-century perceptions of musical structure and on the influence
of these perceptions on eighteenth-century usage of musical metaphor. The
Pythagorean and later Greek models of cosmic harmony had of course envisaged mathematical proportion as the structural basis for this harmony and for
harmonious relations within the individual and between individual and world.
For music itself, the Greeks had envisaged whatever scale of melodic intervals
(this scale again based on selected mathematical ratios) and whichever rhythm
was prescribed by the chosen mode.1 But as we saw in previous chapters, even
by the time of Plato and Aristotle these concepts were exceeded by the vast
range of possible sound phenomena, as instruments and instrumentalists
developed. The question ofhow music was structured was displaced for these
philosophers by the question of how music should be structured, in order to
comply with particular cultural and ideological priorities.
Eighteenth-century views on the subject were also affected by ideological dispute, as we saw in Part One above. In a remarkable demonstration of
the power of metaphor, Rousseau polemicised in favour of music as melodious sound analogous to voice, against Rameaus demonstration that music
depended chiefly on mathematically based harmony. This ferocious onslaught
became a largely successful attempt to impose a cognitive preference (the
importance offeeling over reason) on musical theory and practice and on cultural life, and to shift attention away from the totality of a structured cosmos
towards the human individual.2 Paradoxically, this view took strong root in
Germany, where music of many kinds was practised with particular distinction
(from J.S. Bach and Telemann through to Haydn, Mozart and Mendelssohn,
not forgetting Bachs sons or the Viennese composers); and in a century when
techniques of making and playing instruments and of composing music were
developing constantly.3
1
2
3
See above, and Andrew Barker passim.

See esp. E.E. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Music, in
Earl R. Wassermann, Aspects of the Eighteenth Century, 163205 and passim.
For a general overview see NHDM under Germany, esp. the section History (338)
and bibliography (339). The study by Morrow (see following note) tends to assume
that the views of middle-class musical journalists favouring vocal music as the voice of
feeling meant that instrumental music was hindered in its development until Romantic
values came to prevail. This is not the case, as is shown by (e.g.) the Mannheim School
(NHDM, 467ff.), and comments by Goethe and Herder on the Germans assiduous
186
Part two
Part of the explanation concerns the German middle-class public, who

suffered acutely from restrictions on individual freedom (articulated in
Lessings plays and explosively if ineffectually in Sturm und Drang drama).4
They were readers ofGoethes Werther and ofthe cultural journals featuring in
Morrows study,5 and usually also amateur players or singers themselves. They
understood the affinity between a melodic line in music and the tonal fluctuations ofthe speaking voice, which formed the basis for the analogy between
music and voice offeeling. But only those with some musical training would
give much thought to other aspects of music (e.g. harmony, instrumentation,
musical forms larger than the song) i.e. to the areas where analogy between
music and language did not work. However, even this does not account for
the widespread and vehement denigration of mathematical ratio as a basis for
music (in some cases as a basis for anything). The polemic makes a certain
amount of sense when mathematical symmetry is unfavourably contrasted
with musics sensuous impact on the listener: even Herder and Kant agreed
that mathematics could not explain this. But there must have been additional
considerations which made mathematics seem questionable, especially in
relation to music. Chapter Five thus explores eighteenth-century views on
mathematics and their effects on musical metaphor.
The question then arises of how musical structure was envisaged, given
the rejection of mathematical models. The preferred alternative was rhythm,
according at least to Herder and Schiller. But even at its simplest, rhythm is
a complex phenomenon and a complex concept; having as a minimum what
cultivation of instrumental music. The instruments collected in the Kunsthistorisches

Museum of Vienna, and in the collections in Berlin (now gathered in the Staatliches
Institut fr Musikforschung) show how keyboard instruments in particular developed
during this period. So do many ofthe illustrations in Walwei-Wiegelmann, qv. See also
the study by Michael Spitzer (2004), and the Introduction above.
For all their common concerns, there are considerable differences between these and
the dramas of sensibility; and even more differences between the boldness ofthought,
language and psychology in the literary Sturm und Drang and the musical period (mis)
designated by the same name. Contrast Roy Pascals classic study ofthe literary period,
and the studies on middle-class music of the epoch by Margaret M. Stoljar and David
Gramit (see bibliography).
German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental
Music, Cambridge UP, 1997.
Conceptions of the Structure of Music
187
NHDM calls both durational and accentual contrasts (i.e. long/short duration, strong/weak beat). Rhythm was preferred because of its closer affinity
to physical sound, movement and dance, especially in the depiction of sensuous and irrational aspects of human behaviour and experience. But it is not
immediately clear how different aspects of rhythm were evaluated, or why they
were assessed in particular ways, and thence how they functioned in musical
metaphor. These are important factors, since rhythm also underpins poetry
and dance and provides a structural framework in genres which combine any
or all of these media. Chapter Six therefore looks at some modern analyses
of rhythm, and thence at eighteenth-century concepts of rhythm and their
influence on its deployment in musical metaphor.
Chapter Five
This chapter is mainly concerned with a rather odd phenomenon of eighteenth-century Germany: the widespread denigration of the idea that music
was based on mathematical ratios. In general, Herder and Schiller found mathematics highly dubious as a measure of human knowledge and existence.1
In Goethes case, the aversion to mathematics was widespread and life-long;
Cassirer even termed Goethes attitude to mathematical sciences the tragischen Einschlag [element oftragedy] in his efforts in the field of scientific
theory.2 Yet at intervals he conversed with mathematicians and physicists,
read their works, and presented mathematician and other scientist figures in
his literary work without notably negative connotations. As his own scientific
studies and writings multiplied, he spent considerable time and effort in areas
where mathematics would normally feature prominently. So we shall need to
look presently at Goethe as a particular case, and take advantage of recently
increased critical interest in his scientific thought and language.
See e.g. Herders Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft (II, 15, 2) on exaggerated
claims for mathematics (FAHerder 8, 60914 and commentary); Hans Adler, Herders
Style, in Adler/Koepke, A Companion to the Works ofJohann Gottfried Herder, Camden
House 2009, 334. On Schiller, see e.g. Sabine Meinberger, Einfach (und) verwickelt.
Zu Schillers Liniensthetik, DVJS 79 (2005), 215 and note 48.
Goethe und die mathematische Physik. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Betrachtung,
in Ernst Cassirer, Idee und Gestalt, 2nd edn, Berlin 1924, repr. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1971, 35.
190
Chapter Five
Signs as analogues
It is worth noting that, outside thought on music, the idea of a shift from
mathematically based universe to feeling, speaking individual is somewhat
misleading.3 Mathematics continued to be valued; if anything, the shift was
towards a perception ofboth mathematical symbols and linguistic symbols as
signs, with a mediated and metaphorical relation to reality, as is evident in
mid-century thought on semiotics. David Wellbery traces an important shift
in attitudes to linguistic metaphor, from Gottscheds view of it as ornament
to Johann Georg Sulzers view of it as cognitive tool, vehicle for ideational
discovery, innovation and expansion, enabling Man to organise ideas about
what he sees. Sulzer explains these cognitive functions in terms of analogy
with geometrical figures, which he sees as functioning in a similar way to
linguistic signs:
Metaphor [] produces an effect similar to the effect offigures in geometry. Without
figures, which help the intellect precisely and accurately to define ideas that otherwise
would remain altogether confused and unusable, this science would still be in its infancy.
Likewise, metaphor helps us to distinguish and fix ideas, which without such aid would
remain agglomerated with the mass of our representations, and in this way metaphor
renders visible and sensible that which seems ungraspable to the intellect.4
Despite this awareness, as Wellbery illustrates from Moses Mendelssohn,

linguistic metaphor was deemed to evoke an idea with such vivid immediacy
that hearers felt they were looking at the phenomenon itself, not the linguistic
3
E.E. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Music, 1965ff., 163205,
esp. his summary on 192: the turn from the contemplation of celestial harmony and
mathematical order to the heart of man, the feeling heart ofthe individual, could not
have been stated more emphatically. This is seen best in Rousseaus writing; as L. notes
(ibid., 193202), in his musical compositions Rousseau was not adventurous.
See esp. David Wellbery, Lessings Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age ofReason,
Cambridge U.P. 1984, esp.77ff. and 260f. notes. He refers to Gottscheds Critische
Dichtkunst (1730ff.) and Sulzers Anmerkungen ber den gegenseitigen Einflu der
Vernunft in der Sprache (1767); Wellberys translation. Sulzers view accords with
much recent thought on the relation between scientific language and other kinds, as
well as with Cassirers view (1921) ofthe interdependence oflanguage, mathematics and
other forms of symbolic thought; cf. op.cit., 79f., and note 11 below.
191
sign. According to Mendelssohn, poetic language aims for this immediacy,

music (deploying audible natural signs) already has it; and Sulzer draws an
analogy with geometry, a branch of mathematics usually involving visual
diagrams and symbols, not merely numbers. But signs they all are, whether
similar or dissimilar to what they represent, not material reality.5 Schiller
makes the point explicit slightly later in the century (17823):
Unsre reinsten Begriffe sind keineswegs Bilder der Dinge, sondern blo ihre nothwendig
bestimmte und coexistierende Zeichen. Weder Gott noch die menschliche Seele noch
die Welt sind das wirklich, was wir davon halten [] Aber die Kraft der Seele ist eigenthmlich, nothwendig, und immer sich selbst gleich; das willkhrliche der Materialien,
woran sie sich uert, ndert nichts an den ewigen Gesetzen, wornach sie sich uert
[] so lang das Zeichen dem Bezeichneten durchaus treubleibt. So, wie die Denkkraft
die Verhltnisse der Idiome entwikelt, mssen diese Verhltnisse in den Sachen auch
wirklich vorhanden sein [] Eben so bedient sich die Grenlehre der Chiffern, die
nirgends als auf dem Papier vorhanden sind, und findet damit, was vorhanden ist in
der wirklichen Welt. Was fr eine Aehnlichkeit haben z.B. die Buchstaben A und B, die
Zeichen : und =, + und mit dem Faktum das gewonnen werden soll?
[Even our most precise concepts are not images ofthings, but merely necessarily determined and coexisting signs for them. Neither God nor the human soul nor the world are
really as we imagine them. But the human soul is distinct, necessary and consistent; the
arbitrary nature ofthe means through which it expresses itself does not affect the eternal
laws according to which it expresses itself as long as the sign stays faithful to the signified.
The relations between the idioms which our power of intellect devises must correspond
exactly to the relations between things as they really are In the same way mathematics
makes use of figures which exist only on paper, and finds by this means things that are
in existence in the real world. What resemblance is there between e.g. the letters A and
B, the signs : and =, + and , and the fact they are attempting to convey?]
He adds that such precise analogy between signs and real phenomena enabled astronomers to predict the appearance of comets or an eclipse of the
sun with accuracy centuries before the event; and points out that Columbus
successfully reached America by calculating that there must be another continent, even though he got the wrong one.6 Even Goethe likewise equates
mathematical, linguistic and other signs in his consideration of the various
5
6
Wellbery, op.cit., 809, esp.868. P.D. Smith discusses the re-discovery in late twentiethcentury theory of science of awareness oflanguage as signs: Metaphor and Materiality,
Oxford: Legenda, 2000, 721, esp.10.
Theosophie des Julius, NA 20, 123ff., 1267.
192
Chapter Five
formulae at Mans disposal for understanding the world and expressing his
thoughts; suggesting that truth might only emerge when all of them were
brought together in complementary statements:
sei und die Gegenstnde niemals unmittelbar, sondern nur im Widerscheine ausdrcke
[] man sucht daher alle Arten von Formeln auf, um ihnen wenigstens gleichnisweise
beizukommen. []
Mathematische Formeln lassen sich in vielen Fllen sehr bequem und glcklich anwenden, aber es bleibt ihnen immer etwas Steifes und Ungelenkes, und wir fhlen bald ihre
Unzulnglichkeit weil wir [] sehr frh ein Inkommensurables gewahr werden []
Knnte man sich jedoch aller dieser Arten der Vorstellung und des Ausdrucks mit
Naturphnomene berliefern [], so liee sich manches Erfreuliche mitteilen.7
[We never pay sufficient attention to the fact that language is only ever symbolic, only
figurative, and never expresses its objects directly, only ever indirectly for this reason
we seek out all kinds of formulae, so we can at least get at them metaphorically
Mathematical formulae can in many cases be applied conveniently and with good results,
but there is always something inflexible and clumsy about them, and we soon feel their
inadequacy because we become aware of unmeasurable things at a very early stage.
But if we could use all these different sorts of concept and expression with awareness
and transmit our observations of natural phenomena in a manifold language, many
things of interest could be conveyed.]
Mathematical ratios in the cosmos and in music

It is necessary to bear in mind that early Pythagorean thought made mathematics the basis not just ofthe structured cosmos, but also of structured relations
within music and between music and human individual. According to these
theories, the pitch of a note varied according to the length and rate of vibration ofthe string which produced the note (rapid vibrations producing high
notes, slower ones low notes); clear intervals between notes, i.e. a scale, were
produced when the mathematical relations between them could be expressed
7
Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil, Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie

(1810), AA 16, 203f.
193
in mathematical ratios. By analogy, the relation between music and the emotions was thought to lie in the mathematical relation between the rate ofthe
souls vibration under the influence of emotion, and the rate of vibration of
the string producing musical sounds.8 As we saw earlier, these analogies stayed
live in various connections, whether as part of the harmonious microcosm
ofthe individual in the world, or as part ofthe Saitenspiel von Gehrfibern
(Herder) in the ear ofthe sympathetic listener, responding to the single tone
of vocal cords or instrument.9 The great stumbling block or what became
so was the Pythagoreans further deduction that music, the universe, and
potentially much else could therefore be reduced to mathematical ratio.10
This was not always seen as a problem in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
thought on music. Kepler in his Harmonices mundi (1619) drew on it for his
concept ofthe harmonious universe; and also derived notes, scales, even tunes
from the mathematical formulae for the orbits ofthe planets.11 Leibniz used
it to explain the connection between music and the individual; and even suggested that music was a subconscious and hidden arithmetical exercise by the
soul: Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare
animi.12 In the wake ofLeibniz and his populariser Christian Wolff, Lorenz
Mizler (171178) founded a periodical and a learned society for the pursuit
8
10
11
12
Andrew Barker gives many and varied examples of these ideas in his second volume
passim. On early Pythagoreans, see e.g. 30, 36, 39, and his useful summary 28f. Barker
also commends W.K.C. Guthrie, A History ofGreek Philosophy, Cambridge University
Press, 1971, vol.I; see esp. Guthrie 220ff., 295ff. On later Greek reception ofPythagorean
thought, see Barker, vol.II passim under index references Pythagoreans, number. See
also Fludds diagram of the divine monochord, on title page of Part 1 above.
Herder, Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 102. Saitenspiel here is the equivalent of a set of
tuned strings. It is clear from the context that Herder means the network of auditory
nerves which carry the sound to the brain; not the ear passages or ear drum, which he
says are there to refine the sound which then impinges on the nerves.
This idea must have been widely known, since, as Barker shows, objections to it began
early and were very broadly directed at Pythagorean and later opinions. See e.g. his
translation from and notes to Theophrastus, Aristotles successor as head ofthe Lyceum,
c. 300 BC, op.cit., vol.II, 11018, esp.11114. Also Guthrie, op.cit., 225ff., 301ff.
See esp. NHDM Arithmetic and harmonic mean, 50f., and Harmony of the spheres,
369; and Lowinsky, 181.
[Music is a secret and unconscious arithmetical exercise by the soul]; letter to Goldbach
17 April 1712, Leibnitii epistolae ad diversos, ed. F. Korthold, Leipzig 1734ff., letter 154, cit.
Lowinsky, 181; see also ibid., 182, note 39, on a similar passage in Leibniz Monadology.
194
Chapter Five
ofmusikalische Wissenschaften, and lectured in Leipzig with the same aim;

distinguished members of the society included J.S. Bach and Telemann.13
Jean Philippe Rameau, butt of Diderots wit and Rousseaus invective (and
nonetheless successful composer of emotive operatic arias), attempted in his
Trait de lharmonie (1722) to show that the root of all music was the harmonics produced by a vibrating string, to which other musical phenomena were
related by mathematical proportion. And he famously pointed out that not
only the pitch of a single note but the timbre (tonal quality, later the focus
ofHerders view of music), varied with the number ofharmonics, since even
a single note was a composite of several harmonics.14 So the idea of music
as mathematically based can hardly be said to have been discarded. On the
contrary, in his Kritik der Urtheilskraft (1790) Kant stated that mathematical relations between musical notes, whether played simultaneously or in
sequence, were based on the number of sound waves which produced them
and were the basis of musical form and of musics appeal to the intellect.15
The problem for those who identified music with the human voice lay in the
perceived reduction of music to mathematical formulae: a set of abstractions
which addressed neither the sensuous pleasure of music to the hearer, nor
any aspect of listener response at all (since these lay outside its field). Like
Platos objection to the esoteric professionalism of musicians manipulating
their hearers by mechanical skills, this was seen as leading to cold and soulless virtuosity which belittled any connection between music and human
feeling. Johann Mattheson, who defended mathematics as a fleiige, arbeitsame Gehlffinn for the musician, and thought that niemand kan lieblich
singen oder spielen, wenn sein Gesang nicht vorher [] gleichsam abgemessen worden [an assiduous and useful helpmeet no-one can sing or play
13
14
15
Lowinsky, 1835; also J. Birke, Christian Wolffs Metaphysik und die zeitgenssische
Literatur- und Musiktheorie, Berlin; de Gruyter, 1966, 67ff. Cf Lowinsky, 184, note
47f. for the mathematical basis of the canon which Bach submitted as his inaugural
tribute to Mizlers society for musikalische Wissenschaften.
See T. Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment, Cambridge
University Press, 1993, esp.5ff., 26ff. As C. points out, Rameau later came to be hostile
to Pythagorean ideas of the primacy of number, holding that the first cause of music
was the corps sonore, the sounding body/instrument (ibid., 297301); and sent his
ideas to Christian Wolff, populariser of Leibniz ideas in Germany (301f.).
Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 53, ed.cit., 329.
195
melodiously unless his song has been measured out, as it were, beforehand],16
nonetheless complained that some went to extremes by reducing music to
the level of mathematical tables:
Die letztern machen die Music zu einer solchen mathematischen Wissenschafft, dabey
alle Zahlen, Linien, Maassen, Gewichte, ja alle Rechnemeister und Landmesser ins
Gewehr und Spiel kommen mssen. berdies thun sie mit ihrer Wnschel-Ruthe der
Ton-Lehre noch den Schimpf an, und machen sie dem mchtigen Einmahleins gar
unterwrfig.17
[The latter make music into a mathematical science in this way, so that all the figures,
lines, weights and measures have to be galvanised into action, they even bring in arithmeticians and land surveyors. And with this divining rod they add to their injury ofthe
theory of music the insult that it is subject to the omnipotent two times table].
Even Kant agreed that mathematics contributed nothing to musics charm:

an dem Reize und der Gemthsbewegung, welche die Musik hervorbringt, hat die
Mathematik sicherlich nicht den mindesten Antheil; sondern sie ist nur die unumgngliche Bedingung (conditio sine qua non) derjenigen Proportionen der Eindrcke in ihrer
Verbindung sowohl als ihrem Wechsel, wodurch es mglich wird sie zusammen zu fassen
und zu verhindern, da diese einander nicht zerstren, sondern zu einer continuirlichen
Bewegung und Belebung des Gemths [] zusammenstimmen.18
[Mathematics assuredly plays absolutely no part in the charm and the moving of the
spirit which music produces. It is merely the necessary requisite (condition sine qua non)
for proportionate impressions both in connection and in sequence, the means by which
they are coordinated and prevented from destroying each other so that they harmonise
together into a continuous movement and animation of the spirit].
It was this perceived reductionism which particularly roused the wrath of

Herder, who had followed the French controversies closely and weighed in
on Rousseaus side:
16
17
18
Capellmeister, Von der musikalischen Mathematik, Vorrede 6, & Erster Theil 2, 17.
Capellmeister, Erster Theil 12, 5.
16 Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 53, ed.cit. 329.
196
Chapter Five
Man hat die verschiedne Zahl der Vibrationen einer Saite nach Lnge, Strke und
Gewicht, und daraus die Tne, und daraus die Verhltnisse zwischen den Tnen, und
daraus die Harmonie und daraus die Komposition nach Regeln bis in die Algebra hineinberechnet; in allem, was am Tone gleichsam Physische Qualitt und Mathematische
Quantitt ist, ist die Akustik fast vollkommen.19
[They have calculated the different numbers of vibrations of a string according to its
length, strength and weight; and thence the notes, and thence the relations between
the notes, and thence the harmony and thence composition according to rules to the
point of algebra; in every attribute of sound which might be seen as physical quality
and mathematical quantity, acoustics is almost complete].
These last two quoted statements show clearly conflicting views arising because
different aspects of the domain of music are being taken as basis for metaphorical association with different qualities. Kant is speaking of the structure of a large part of music, the organising of notes into melodic sequence
and harmonic combination, and he derives Belebung und Bewegung des
Gemths [animation and movement ofthe spirit] from the combination of
both. Herder is here listing the acoustic features of music, not describing its
structure; for him, as we saw, the main focus of music is a very small part, the
timbre ofthe single note and its effect on the hearer. These two conceptions
continued side by side, even when the worst ofthe mid-century polemic had
died down.
Harmonics, acoustics and measuring the world

However, Herder was wrong insofar as acoustics had not in fact run its course
by the 1770s. As Salazar explains, the idea of quantifying sound, vocal or otherwise, had been available in Europe since the early seventeenth century, and
was especially advocated by Descartes as a way of distinguishing between harmony and disharmony.20 Salazar shows how fixation on the mechanics ofthe
human voice formed debate on the nature of sound in the French Acadmie
19 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 90f.
20 Op.cit. 77ff.
197
des Sciences in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, so that
sound for a long time meant vocal sound and its potential powers. Joseph
Sauveur (who was deaf !) was one ofthe first to exclude human language and
voice from his theory of sound.21 But with the idea of music as human voice
of feeling came the idea of timbre as all-important, because of its effect on
the listener. The human voice therefore remained a prominent feature in ideas
of musical sound, and did not disappear entirely from the frame of acoustic
studies until the Akustik ofthe physicist Ernst Florens Chladni (17561827)
in 1802. Herder actually read both Sauveur and Chladni;22 but at that late
stage ofhis life seems to have kept his original view that, like Rameaus Trait,
they were seeking to reduce music to mathematical relations. For him, physics
and mathematics could only explain the mechanics of sound (Schall), not the
single musical note (Ton) which strikes home to the soul:
Ist dieser einfache fhlbare Ton ein Gegenstand der Physik? [] Sie kann ihn nicht
untersuchen, nicht erklren [] Und die Mathematik eben so wenig. Diese nimmt ihn
fr den Unterschied zwischen den Schwingungen eines Krpers, in dem Raume, in der
Zeit: sie nimmt ihn also als Quantitt, als ein abstraktes Ganzes, das Theile hat. Lerne
ich dabei etwas, was seine Qualitt sey? Nichts.23
[Is this simple moving tone an object of physics? Physics can neither investigate it
nor explain it. And neither can mathematics. Mathematics views it as the difference
between the vibrations of a body in space and time: which is to say, mathematics takes
it as a quantity, as an abstract whole possessing parts. What does this tell me about its
quality? Nothing.].
In general, however, mathematics seems to have been accepted as a necessary technical ancillary. Schiller even pointed out in his Theosophie des Julius
(17823) that mathematics was a necessary resource for forming theories ofthe
metaphysical, though [in the absence of space travel] nobody returned from
the metaphysical realm to verify or refute these theories.24 And in notes for his
lectures on aesthetics (17923) he added that judging the height of a mountain,
Salazar, op.cit., 826, and Sauveurs Trait de la thorie de musique (1697), and other
writings 170730.
22 See Salazar, loc.cit., and Canisius, 150; Herder mentions Sauveur and others in VW,
Suphan IV, 90.
23 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 90, 92, 94.
24 NA 20, 127; also NA 21, notes.
21
198
Chapter Five
or the distance from earth to a planet, would necessarily involve mathematical

calculation; even though peinliche mathematische Regelmigkeit [pedantic
mathematical regularity] was not an aspect of beauty, and tended to be the
last resort of those with great ambition but small imagination. He seems to
have worried for a while over Kants daunting concept ofdas MathematischErhabene [the mathematical sublime]; but concluded that Kant had used it
as the opposite of praktisch, and that he therefore preferred the term theoretisch. And he agreed that size (Zahlgre) was an element in greatness and
in the sublime.25
Seen in this context, Goethes vexed and variable attitude to mathematics
seems less of a personal eccentricity and more of a piece with his time. The
inconsistency in his recorded comments, and the vehemence ofhis criticisms,
has caused puzzlement for some years. As early as 1958, Martin Dyck disentangled them from the distortions of pro- and contra-Goethe critical trends
in the immediate post-war period, and suggested that they should be read in
the light ofGoethes views on other types of sign.26 He also pointed out that
Goethe, like his contemporaries and many since, often identified mathematics
with measurement, and therefore tended to view it as technical skill rather
than intellectual discipline: Das Messen eines Dings ist eine grobe Handlung,
die auflebendige Krper nicht anders als hchst unvollkommen angewendet
werden kann [The measurement of an object is a clumsy procedure, which
can only ever be applied to living things in a completely inadequate way].27
Andreas Speiser dates this essay at 17845;28 in that case, it is roughly contemporary with Schillers thoughts in the Theosophie des Julius; but markedly
more negative in its judgment. However, in contradiction of his tendency
to equate mathematics with measurement, Goethe both acknowledged and
NA 20, 172ff., 23640; also NA 21, notes. On the mathematical sublime, see (e.g.) Rachel
Zuckert, Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime, Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism 61 (2003), 21732, passim. It concerns the means to calculate vastly large
quantities or distances: large, that is, in relation to human beings. The term is apparently
known to philosophers, but not now current among mathematicians.
26 PMLA 73 (1958), 50515.
27 Studie nach Spinoza, Schriften zur Wissenschaftslehre, AA 16, 841f., cit Dyck, 510.
28 AA 16, 978.
25
199
approved of pure mathematics, as H.B. Nisbet points out.29 Goethes particular difficulties lay with the rationalistic tradition represented by Descartes
and Newton, which sought to translate everything, wherever possible, into
quantitative terms:30
Die Mathematiker sind wunderliche Leute; durch das Groe, was sie leisteten, haben
sie sich zur Universalgilde aufgeworfen und wollen nichts anerkennen, als was in ihrem
Kreise pat, was ihr Organ behandeln kann.31
[Mathematicians are peculiar people; because of the great things they have achieved,
they claim to be a world-wide clique and are only willing to recognise what falls within
their field and what their medium can handle].
This claim to totality and objectivity he found mistaken, for reasons similar
to Schillers. He agreed with Kant that we cannot discuss Dinge an sich, and
are dependent on what we can perceive and articulate in the signs available
to us in this sense, Man is inevitably the measure of all things. But it soon
becomes clear that Goethe does not share Schillers confidence in mathematics
as applicable to the metaphysical, or even to the physical world:
Was er [der Mensch] von der Natur ausspricht, das ist etwas, das heit, es ist etwas
Reales, es ist ein Wirkliches, nmlich in bezug auf ihn. Aber was er ausspricht, das ist
nicht alles, es ist nicht die ganze Natur, er spricht nicht die Totalitt derselben aus []
Wir mgen an der Natur beobachten, messen, rechnen, wgen und so weiter, wie wir
wollen, es ist doch nur unser Ma und Gewicht, wie der Mensch das Ma der Dinge ist
[] Mit Duodezimal- oder Dezimalma wird nichts von der sonstigen anderweitigen
Natur des Dinges ausgesprochen und verraten.32
[What Man can say about Nature is something; that is, it is real, it exists, in its relation
to himself. But Man cannot say everything there is to say; what he describes is not the
whole ofNature, he cannot express the totality of it. We can observe, measure, calculate,
weigh up and so forth, as much as we like; but it is still only our own weight and measure, since Man is the measure of all things. Duodecimal and decimal measures neither
reveal nor express any qualities of a thing which fall outside their realm].
29 Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, Univ. ofLondon 1972, 50f. See also Goethe, Aphorismen
und Fragmente, AA 17, 771, where he recommends that mathematics should ihren eigenen
groen Geistesgang gehen and detach itself from practical applications.
30 Nisbet, 48ff.
31 Mathematik, Aphorismen und Fragmente, AA 17, 770, also Dyck, 514.
32 Conversation with Riemer, 2 August 1807, AA 22, 469f.
200
Chapter Five
Again, this seems contradictory: if mathematical signs are signs, like linguistic
signs, then they must also have an analogical relation to phenomena. But as
well as finding them rigid and inadequate, Goethe felt that their reference
to real phenomena could only be understood by specialists: ferner sind sie
auch nur innerhalb eines gewissen Kreises besonders hiezu gebildeter Geister
verstndlich. [And anyway they are only comprehensible within a certain circle
of minds specially trained for the purpose].33 He considered that the frame
of reference of mathematical signs was too narrow and too inaccessible; and
this seems to underpin his objections to Rameaus theory of music:
Es ist vieles wahr, was sich nicht berechnen lt, so wie sehr vieles, was sich nicht bis
zum entschiedenen Experiment bringen lt. Dafr steht ja aber der Mensch so hoch,
da sich das sonst Undarstellbare in ihm darstellt. Was ist denn eine Saite und alle
mechanische Theilung derselben gegen das Ohr des Musikers? 34
[Many things are true which cannot be calculated, just as many things are true which
cannot be proven by experiment. But Man stands so high that things otherwise undemonstrable can be demonstrated in him. What is a string and all the mechanical division
of it by comparison with the musicians ear?].
This may be in part the anthropocentric view of music inherited from Rousseau
and Herder; but mainly Goethe seems to be objecting to the way mathematical symbols are used, to eliminate the human observer and claim a complete,
objective knowledge of the world which he finds untenable:
Der Mathematiker ist angewiesen aufs Quantitative, auf alles, was sich durch Zahl und
Ma bestimmen lt, und also gewissermaen auf das uerlich erkennbare Universum.
Betrachten wir aber dieses, insofern uns Fhigkeit gegeben ist, mit vollem Geiste und aus
allen Krften, so erkennen wir, da Quantitt und Qualitt als die zwei Pole des erscheinenden Daseins gelten mssen; daher denn auch der Mathematiker seine Formelsprache
so hoch steigert, um insofern es mglich, in der mebaren und zhlbaren Welt die unmebare mit zu begreifen. Nun erscheint ihm alles greifbar, falich und mechanisch, und
er kommt in den Verdacht eines heimlichen Atheismus, indem er ja das Unmebarste,
welches wir Gott nennen, zugleich mit zu erfassen glaubt und daher dessen besonderes
oder vorzgliches Dasein aufzugeben scheint 35
Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie, Farbenlehre, Nachbarliche
Verhltnisse, AA 16, 204.
34 Letter to Zelter, Beilage, 22 June 1808, WA IV, 20, 90f. Cf. Also Maximen und Reflexionen, 707f., AA 9, 593.
35 Mathematik, Aphorismen und Fragmente, AA 17, 769.
33
201
[The mathematician is dependent upon the quantifiable, upon everything which can be
determined by measure and number, and thus to some extent on the externally perceptible world. But if we observe this last, to the best of our ability, intellect and strength, we
perceive that quantity and quality are the two polar opposites of perceptible phenomena.
This is why the mathematician develops his formulaic language so extensively, in order
as far as possible to comprehend the immeasurable world within his measurable and
countable realm. Thereupon everything seems to him accessible, comprehensible and
mechanical; and he falls under suspicion of a secret atheism, because of course he thinks
he can thus comprehend the ultimate Unmeasurable, which we call God, in his scheme
of things and thus remove any idea of Gods distinct or special existence].
John Neubauer has argued that Goethes often contradictory attitudes amount
to a rejection of mathematics.36 But his study leaves out of account Goethes
more positive presentation of mathematical symbols and practitioners in
his fictional work; which we shall need to consider presently. Meanwhile,
the influence of Goethes negative perception of mathematics on his use of
metaphor is striking: he has for the most part avoided using metaphorical
reference from the domain of mathematics, both in relation to music and
in relation to the universe at large. The oddity of this appears most obvious
in Faust, where one might think the aura of covert atheism he attached to
mathematics might have been useful in depicting both Faust and Mephisto.37
With hindsight and Thomas Manns Dr. Faustus (1947) as model, it is easy to
envisage Goethes Faust pursuing the absolute through mathematics in defiance of physical limitations, and Mephisto negating Creation by trying to
reduce everything to a mathematical formula. Instead, insofar as mathematics
appears at all, it is associated with misconceived procedures foolish and futile
attempts to measure the immeasurable, resulting in hocus-pocus and bombast. Even Mephisto mocks the futility of counting the parts ofliving things
(1936ff.); and though Wagner measures out and mixes his Lebenselemente in
the prescribed quantities (6849ff., 6990ff.), he only becomes productive, even
of his artificial Homunculus, when Mephisto lends a hand (6683f., 7003f.).
Similar satirical reference is made to the Proktophantasmist ofWalpurgisnacht
36
37
John Neubauer, Die Abstraktion, vor der wir uns frchten: Goethes Auffassung der
Mathematik und das Goethebild in der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft, in: Versuche
zu Goethe. Festschrift fr Erich Heller, 1976, 30520, esp.17.
Cf. J.W. Smeed, Faust in Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, 122f. on the
deployment of musics association with magic and numbers in Manns Dr. Faustus.
202
Chapter Five
I (who tries to rationalise away the witches on the Brocken, 4144ff.), and
to arguments over the precise number of Cabiri in the Meeresfest of Part
II (8175ff., esp.818699). These figures are myths, embodying ideas of the
divine and/or devilish, and only apprehensible by instinct, dance and dream,
not by rationalisation or by mathematical relations.38 And if music is the
medium and metaphor for the subhuman travesty ofhumanity and speech on
offer in the Hexenkche (SD 2532ff., 2591f.), the Hexeneinmaleins (2540ff.) is
even worse. This times table is said to be a waste of time even for the Devil
(2556); mathematical procedure is equated with what Zimmermann calls
kabbalistischer Zahlenhexerei,39 mystic meaning allocated to numbers and
mathematical relations:
Es war die Art zu allen Zeiten,
My friend, thats always been the way:
Durch Drei und Eins, uns Eins und Drei Spreading error by making play
Irrtum statt Wahrheit zu verbreiten
With three in one and one in three
(2560ff.).
It is of course also Mephistos brief stab at negating the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity; but the idea remains undeveloped.40
38
Both allusions to contemporary figures. The Proktophantasmist is a satire on Friedrich

Nicolai, the increasingly pedantic Berlin Rationalist who incurred Goethes wrath by
parodying Werther; the Cabiri were very early mythical figures (Goethe describes them
in his text as pitcher gods), varying in number from version to version ofthe myth, and
representing a series of ideas of god or gods, so their precise number is irrelevant. Both
Creuzer and Schelling, Romantics and scientists, had published studies of them. See
Trunz, 524, 573; Schne, FA I, 7ii, 358f., 56669.
39 Op.cit., vol.I, 208; Zimmermann points out that such searches for mystical relations
between Hermetic lore, numbers and music drew on the Pythagorean tradition and
continued among Hermeticists and respectable pre-scientific figures such as Athanasius
Kircher (1684) and the eighteenth-century theosophist F.C. Oetinger (170282); cf.
also Lowinsky on Mizler above.
40 Cf. Schne, FA 7/2, 287f.
203
Mathematics as a disadvantaged discourse

in a harmony of Vorstellungsarten
In all these negative examples, alongside the scientific and semiotic objections
which Goethe makes to mathematical procedures, there also seems to be an
underlying conceptual metaphor of mathematics as a language. Goethe, like
Herder, treats mathematics as though it were an inadequate language, with too
specialised a community of speakers. His aphorisms on mathematics contain
several comparisons of mathematical language with French, and with language
generally; to the effect that both media can achieve great things, both media
can be used for mystification, and both media can obstruct communication
as well as further it:
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen: redet man zu ihnen, so bersetzen sie es in
ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald etwas anderes.41
[Mathematicians are rather like the French; if you say something to them, they translate
it into their own language, and then it immediately means something different].
This underlying conceptual metaphor appears most strongly when mathematical procedures are applied to music in a context where the concept of
music as voice of feeling is culturally dominant (as in Herders strictures
on physics and mathematics applied to the single tone and its impact on the
hearer). But it also seems influential where Goethe considers mathematical
signs alongside linguistic signs (e.g. in Hexenkche, and in his comments on
formulae). In this view, mathematics has all the limitations of language, to
an even greater extent. Insofar as music was also regarded in some perspectives as an inadequate language, this brings mathematics and music into the
same field of comparison. If music is too vague and too sensuous to convey
precise ideas, mathematics is too abstract and too limited to convey vivid
impressions, it lacks the immediate and concrete impact perceived in poetic
language and music.42 As media, they are thus seen to have complementary
weaknesses; and this will become a factor in Goethes later deployment of
mathematical and musical reference.
41 AA 17, 772; see also 76772 passim.
42 Cf. Wellberys study of mid-century aesthetics, cit above.
204
Chapter Five
First, however, we must consider a more mundane reason why Goethe

might not have given mathematics a larger role in his poetic and scientific
work: he did not have the mathematical skills to do so. Nisbet considers that
his was a thoroughly unmathematical mind, and points out that Goethe gave
up even an attempt to study algebra43 [like geometry, rather more concrete
in its signs than pure figures]. Goethe himself admitted to this incapacity in
the Didaktischer Teil of his Farbenlehre:
Man kann von dem Physiker, welcher die Naturlehre in ihrem ganzen Umfange behandeln will, verlangen, da er Mathematiker sei. In den mittleren Zeiten war die Mathematik
das vorzglichste unter den Organen, durch welche man sich der Geheimnisse der Natur
zu bemchtigen hoffte; und noch ist in gewissen Teilen der Naturlehre die Mekunst,
wie billig, herrschend.
Der Verfasser kann sich keiner Kultur von dieser Seite rhmen, und verweilt auch
deshalb nur in den von der Mekunst unabhngigen Regionen, die sich in der neuern
Zeit weit und breit aufgetan haben []
Der Verfasser des Gegenwrtigen hat die Farbenlehre durchaus von der Mathematik
entfernt zu halten gesucht, ob sich gleich gewisse Punkte deutlich genug ergeben, wo
die Beihlfe der Mekunst wnschenwert sein wrde.44
[We can expect a physicist who aims to deal with a theory encompassing the whole of
Nature to be a competent mathematician. In the Middle Ages mathematics was chief
amongst the means by which Man hoped to unlock the secrets ofNature; and in certain
sections of the study of Nature mathematics is still quite properly dominant.
The present author cannot claim any such ability, and has therefore confined himself
to regions independent of mathematics, which have opened up in recent times on every
side []
The present author has attempted to keep his theory of colour entirely clear of the
field of mathematics, although there are several very obvious points where the support
of mathematics would have been desirable].
But there also seems to be a more scientific reason for his choices. He preferred
a scientific method which would indicate the connection between investigated part and the whole, including the role of the observing human being.
He has tried, he says, to set his Farbenlehre in the context of die allgemeine
43 Op.cit., 48f.
44 Verhltnis zur Mathematik, Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil, Nachbarliche Verhltnisse,
AA 16, 194f.
205
Naturlehre,45 in order to avoid one-sidedness, the assumption of totality,

objectivity and finality which he deplored in mathematical procedures. And
this method he found in analogy, metaphor and symbol:
Das Wahre [] lt sich niemals von uns direct erkennen: wir schauen es nur im Abglanz,
im Beispiel, Symbol, in einzelnen und verwandten Erscheinungen.46
[We can never grasp truth directly: we only perceive it by indirect reflection, in examples
and symbols, in isolated and related phenomena].
As Nisbet explains, Goethe was not alone in this preference. A sense ofNature
as a whole, including human existence, and a preference for analogy as a
method of investigation, were part ofGoethes debt to previous scientific traditions.47 What is more, Goethe knew very well the limitations of analogies:
they could suggest, but not explain or prove, yet they were commendable
precisely because of their obvious open-endedness:
Nach Analogien denken ist nicht zu schelten: die Analogie hat den Vorteil, da sie nicht
abschliet und eigentlich nichts Letztes will; dagegen die Induktion verderblich ist, die
einen vorgesetzten Zweck im Auge trgt und, auf denselben losarbeitend, Falsches und
Wahres mit sich fortreit.48
[Thinking in analogies has much to recommend it; analogy has the advantage that it
remains open and does not actually aim to have the last word; whereas induction is
harmful, it bears a pre-conceived notion as its aim and works towards it dragging truth
and falsehood along with it.].
In his artistic work as well as in his science, his idea of symbolism shows a
reciprocal and ongoing interaction between phenomenon, observer, and provisional expression of the observers concept in metaphor and symbol:
45 [A universal theory of Nature]; Verhltnis zur Tonlehre, Nachbarliche Verhltnisse,

Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil, AA 16, 203.
46 Versuch einer Witterungslehre, AA 17, 639; cf. Dyck, 514; see also conversation with
Riemer, 2 August 1807, AA 22, 70.
47 Op.cit., esp.1217.
48 Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, 532, AA 9, 567. Cf. Nisbet, 17 and note 68.
206
Chapter Five
Die Symbolik verwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee, die Idee in ein Bild, und so, da die
Idee im Bild immer unendlich wirksam bleibt, und, selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen, doch unaussprechlich bliebe.49
[Symbolism transforms a phenomenon into an idea, the idea into an image, in such a
way that the idea remains infinitely operative in the image, and even expressed in every
language existing would still never be uttered completely].
Such awareness ofthe interdependence of all areas of experience and knowledge, and thence insistence on the provisional nature of scientific statements
and on the symbolic nature of scientific language as well as other kinds,
has received renewed appreciation both in more recent studies of Goethes
scientific thought and in recent studies of scientific thought and language
generally.50 However, Goethe himself was especially interested to see how
such interdependence might work in practical life. He creates fictional scenarios in which mathematical thought and skill are set alongside a variety of
others; then explores the strengths and weaknesses of each type, and the kind
of thought and skills needed to counterbalance them to make a sustainable
whole. Of necessity, such scenarios involve a number of diverse characters and
events. But these are held together by a broad conceptual metaphor of harmony: a development from the Pythagorean idea of mathematical symmetry,
closer to the Leibnizian concept of as great variety as possible, along with
49 Maximen und Reflexionen 1113, AA 9, 639.

50 Cf. Nisbet, esp.629, and P.D. Smith, Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature
and the World-View of Science, 17801955, Oxford: Legenda, 2000, 592. D. Steuer, In
defence of experience: Goethes natural investigations and scientific culture, in Lesley
Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, Cambridge U.P. 2002, 16078,
also considers that Goethes thought on scientific method and procedure, especially his
resistance to purely analytical methods, and his insistence on the interdependence of
different fields of study and their language, remain pertinent. See also Sharpe, op.cit.,
263. Smith, in Was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhlt: Scientific Themes in Goethes
Faust, in: P. Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust: Parts I and II, Camden House
2001, and in Faust, the physicists and the atomic bomb. PEGS, LXXVII,2 (2008),
10112, considers both constant and shifting elements in scientific preoccupations and
in the public image of them. On recent reappraisals of scientific method and language
in a modern context, see esp. Smith, M&M, 528, Steuer, op.cit. 1757; also Steuer, Die
stillen Grenzen der Theorie. bergnge zwischen Sprache und Erfahrung bei Goethe und
Wittgenstein, Kln etc.: Bhlau, 1999.
207
the greatest possible order.51 As we saw in chapter two above, this concept
envisaged a construct including negatives and positives, even measurable and
immeasurable, each enhancing the other as complementary opposites, what
Shaftesbury called Contrarietys.52 In some versions ofthis overall harmony
in Goethes work, mathematic skills and relations become a component ofthe
harmony part of the totality and variety of human activities which, like
discords, sometimes assist and sometimes threaten the balanced continuous
life of the whole.
Although neither music nor mathematics necessarily plays a large part
in such scenarios ofthe diversified universal whole, both are usually present.
The Wahlverwandtschaften, for example, mainly explores analogies between
chemistry and psychology, and between managing the forces of nature in life
and in landscape gardening/household management. It is the Hauptmann who
brings mathematical skills and system to the social mix, mainly as foil to the
impetuous tinkering with nature and science which characterises Eduard.53
As we saw earlier, the varying degrees of skill, discipline and self-expression
which the group members bring to their social music-making (Charlotte and
the Hauptmann, Eduard and Ottilie, and Lucianes attempts to dominate everyone) appear in recurrent but minor episodes symptomatic of much larger
issues and larger evils, including an inability to handle signs, language and
metaphor.54 The one-sided view of music as voice of feeling and personal
expression, which they hold in varying degrees, is part of a much more serious one-sidedness manifest in them all in varying degrees, which eventually
wrecks their community.
However, there are instances where, as part of this attempt to explore
how such inclusive group harmonies of diverse skills and knowledge might
work or not, Goethe takes pains to bring both views of music (mathematically
based, coordinated structure, and tonal sound as voice offeeling) into the
same frame. On such occasions, his view of both music and mathematics as
quasi-languages becomes a factor, and he treats them as each compensating for
Monadology, 58, ed./tr. cit., 249; cf. chapters 1 and 2 above.

The Moralists, A Rhapsody (1709), vol.II, 214: see chapter 2 above.
See esp. P.D. Smith, Metaphor and Materiality, Goethe: Texting the Book of Nature,
2992, e.g. 5962, 669.
54 Cf. chap.3 above; also Smith, M&M, esp.45ff. and passim.
51
52
53
208
Chapter Five
the others weaknesses as medium. Unlike Herder, he was willing later in life to
modify the views of music which he held by natural inclination and early training; and allowed Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn and in particular J.H.F. Schtz,
supervisor ofthe Dukes small spa in Berka and a skilful organist and pianist, to
initiate him into the opposite kind of music, that ofJ.S. Bach.55 He responded
by comparing Bachs fugues to illuminierten mathematischen Aufgaben, []
deren Themata so einfach waren und doch so groartige poetische Resultate
hervorbrachten [Illuminated mathematical exercises, whose themes were
so simple and yet produced such wonderful poetic results].56 Musical sound
has here supplied the complementary sensuous force which Goethe found
lacking in the abstraction of mathematical formulae. The mathematical basis
of the fugue is apparent; but the musical end result is poetisch, i.e. both
sensuous and significant. The idea then becomes a scenario in Book II ofthe
Wanderjahre (18259). In the Pdagogischer Provinz, the interdependence of
disciplines ofknowledge and oftheir various modes of expression has become
an educational principle; and it is taught by taking sensuous musical sound
as corollary to the abstractions of mathematics:
indem wir die Kinder ben, Tne, welche sie hervorbringen, mit Zeichen auf der Tafel
schreiben zu lernen und nach Anla dieser Zeichen sodann in ihrer Kehle wieder zu
finden [] so ben sie zugleich Hand, Ohr und Auge und gelangen schneller zum
Recht- und Schnschreiben als man denkt, und da dieses alles zuletzt nach reinen
Maen, nach genau bestimmten Zahlen ausgebt und nachgebildet werden mu, so
fassen sie den hohen Wert der Me- und Rechenkunst viel geschwinder als auf jede
andere Weise.57
[We do this by having the children practise by writing the notes they produce in signs
on the board, then reading these signs and reproducing the notes accordingly. By this
means they exercise hand, ear and eye at the same time, and master spelling and writing
much more rapidly than one might expect. And since all this has to be done in precise
measurements and according to specified numerical systems, they learn the high value
of mathematics and arithmetic much more quickly than by other methods].
55
56
57
See esp. Walwei-Wiegelmann, 17981, and central (unpaged) sections 25, 27 & 28,
on Zelter, J.S. Bach and on Schtz. Most of these encounters took place in 1814 and
after.
Conversation with Genast, 6 June 1814, AA 22, 727.
Wanderjahre II.1.AA 8, 166.
209
Like Platos republic and Aristotles polity, this makes music part of an ideal
educational system which may or may not work. But it does deliberately offer
a broader perspective than Wilhelms exclusively self- and emotion-centred
treatment of music and song.
A similar endeavour underlies Goethes later presentation ofthe vehement
mid-century ideological conflicts over music in France and Germany, which
caused the view of mathematics as problematic in the first place. In Goethes
notes to his translation of Diderots Rameaus Neffe (1805ff.),58 under the
rubric Musik, he attempts to explain not only the perennial mathematical
structure versus voice of feeling issue, but also the bitter quarrels in France
(involving French v. Italian opera, centred on Gluck and Piccini respectively)
over whether text or music should take precedence in combined genres.59
Goethe manages the scenario, by omitting Rousseau altogether and taking
Rameau and his maths-based harmony into a separate note. He can then
concentrate on the first French controversy, contrasting the Italian bel canto
style, which favoured melodic sound over meaning, with Glucks insistence
on primacy ofthe text as expression offeeling, and the seltsame Harmonieen,
unterbrochene Melodien, gewaltsame Abweichungen und bergnge which
accordingly appeared in the music. Goethe goes on to suggest that both
approaches belong together:
Vielleicht lt sich kein Komponist nennen, dem in seinen Werken durchaus die
Vereinigung beider Eigenschaften gelungen wre, doch ist es keine Frage, da sie sich
in den besten Arbeiten der besten Meister finde und notwendig finden msse;
and then presents the mathematics v. voice offeeling controversy as a German

problem:
58
59
For Goethes notes on the text and on figures occurring in it, see AA 15, 102563, esp.
Musik, ibid., 103842. For Goethes notes on his acquisition of Diderots manuscript
from Schiller, and later publication history of both original and translation, see ibid.,
Nachtrgliches zu Rameaus Neffe, 106379.
Cf. NHDM, Text and music and cross-references, ed.cit. 842f.
210
Chapter Five
Wie der Italiener mit dem Gesang, so verfuhr der Deutsche mit der Instrumentalmusik.
Er betrachtete sie auch eine Zeitlang als eine besondere [] Kunst, vervollkommnete ihr
Technisches und bte sie, fast ohne weitern Bezug auf Gemtskrfte, lebhaft aus.60
[Strange harmonies, broken melodies, abrupt diversions and modulations Perhaps no
composer can be named whose works succeed completely in combining both characteristics; but undoubtedly such a combination can and must be found in the best works
of the best masters As the Italian treated song, so the German treated instrumental
music. He even regarded it for a time as a separate art, perfected its technical aspects
and practised it with zest, with very little reference to emotion].
This is a carefully constructed narrative fiction. By placing the reconciliatory

passage between the two types of controversy, he makes it apply to both.
In doing so, he explains the positions of the warring parties and also suggests that these partisan views belong together, as complementary opposites
within the whole range of musics possibilities. His analysis sounds bland
and tongue-in-cheek; but his judgment follows Diderot, whose eponymous
nephew commands both harmonic/mathematical and tonal/melodic skills
and understanding.61
Mathematics and mathematicians in the cosmos

The final two scenarios which concern us here developed from the continuous and intensive scientific studies which occupied Goethe for the remaining
two decades and more, almost to the end of his life. The first the episodes
ofthe Wanderjahre dealing with Makarie, the Astronomer and some associated figures (18219) is a fictional episode.62 But it comes at a stage of the
novel when not only Wilhelm and his son, but the Wandergesellschaft which
has so far contained them, are coming to the end of the present epoch in
60 Anmerkungen Goethes, Rameaus Neffe, AA 15, 1038ff.
61 Cf. AA 15, 951, and esp. chapter 2 above.
62 WJ Book I, chap.10 and Book III, chaps. 14 & 15. Aeka Ishihara, Makarie und das
Weltall: Astronomie in Goethes Wanderjahren, Kln: Bhlau, 1998, offers an illuminating study of many connections within the novel and links with old and new scientific
ideas outside it.
211
their lives; and unlike other episodes involving death and reappraisal of the
future (such as Mignons obsequies), it offers a tentative cosmic perspective
on the company in general, and on the place of mathematical and musical
skills within the world at large. The second Goethes Tonlehre (c.180026)
was certainly not envisaged as fiction. Goethe conceived it alongside the
Farbenlehre as a scientific enterprise to explore not only the nature of sound
(acoustics), but also human reaction to and experience of sound, so that musical sound (Klang) occupies the main place in it.63 The study progressed only
as far as a fairly detailed verbal diagram, which Goethe eventually set out in
tabular form (c.1810) and hung on the wall in his house.64 But it tentatively
presents a harmony, a scenario within which diverse aspects of music, including mathematics, find their place. It is instructive to look at these two episodes
together because both have a strong diachronic element they bring ideas
from past and present which the reader can then review in relation to each
other. And they are in many ways complementary studies. The Wanderjahre
version is humorous and ironic as well as elegiac, dealing with practical life
but also letting imagination hypothesise on the future. The Tonlehre is entirely
serious and as far as possible factual; yet many of its statements are inevitably
hypothetical links between ideas from various sources, established and otherwise. Although it considers only the sound phenomena perceptible to human
faculties, Goethe points out that in fact they extend into infinity:
Tonlehre
entwickelt die Gesetze des Hrbaren []
Das Hrbare ist im weiten Sinne unendlich. Davon werden aber beseitigt: Gerusch,
Schall, und Sprache.
Bleibt zu unserer nchsten Beschftigung: das musikalisch Hrbare (der Klang).65
[Tonal theory develops the rules governing audible phenomena Auditory phenomena
in the widest sense ofthe word are infinite. But here we have excluded noise, sound and
language; this leaves for our immediate attention the auditory phenomena of music,
musical sound].
63
See esp. Canisius, Chapters 1624, 150226; this offers the fullest and most helpful
study of the Tonlehre I have found.
64 See Walwei-Wiegelmann, illustration 47, unnumbered pages between 128 and 129.
Canisius reproduces the Tonlehre in its tabular form: see first pages of his Anhang,
22733.
65 AA 16, 906. See MS on title page of the Conclusion below.
212
Chapter Five
And both works arrive at similar conclusions about the laws which determine
music and life, and the place of mathematics.
Makarie and friends

When Wilhelm first meets Makarie, she appears as a frail and modest old
lady, trundled about in her bath chair by respectful young women; but
Wilhelm comes to appreciate the reverence shown to her after his dream
in the Astronomers observatory tower, where she appears as a bright and
benevolent morning star, counteracting his (very unusual) humility as he
contemplates the vastness of the heavens: Was bin ich gegen das All?66 The
wisdom she brings back to earth and leaves in archive form, the practical and
diplomatic arrangements she makes for the future ofthe society and its members, her apparently full and instinctive understanding of those around her,
make her a quite extraordinary link figure between the mundane workings
of the group with its imperfect members, and a higher world order which
extends even beyond the stars67 her orbit has gradually taken her to the
limits of the earths galaxy. At first, this looks like an imagined close-up
of the Pythagorean universe, and of the traditional relations between the
cosmos and the human individual. However, it soon becomes apparent that
the harmony is as much Leibnizian as Pythagorean a point underlined
when the Astronomer suggests that Makaries extraordinary skills are the
product of eines versteckten Kalkls a quotation ofLeibniz definition of
66 [What am I against the Universe?]; on this moment of Erschrecken und Erstaunen,

and others in Goethes work, see esp. Ishihara, 15468; also Rachel Zuckert on presentation of human confrontation with the starry heavens as an exemplary experience of
the sublime: Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime, Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 61 (2003), 21732, esp.219.
67 On the figure of Makarie, her antecedents and her contemporary affinities, see esp.
Ishihara, 11353; on her significance as symbolic figure, and her affinities with others
in the WJ, see Ishihara 198236.
213
music in its relation to cosmic harmony.68 Also in accordance with Leibniz

ideal of maximum diversity within harmonious order, Makaries companion
the Astronomer is her complementary opposite. Though praised as having
practical [Apolline] gifts (he is a healer, like Aesculapius, and knows the systems of star and Sun), he is also a defender ofthe abstruse Materie of mathematics, and als Mathematiker und Philosoph unglubig von Anfang.69 He
it is who performs the calculations which prove that she really has seen the
planets from the other side, even some which have not yet been discovered
on earth;70 thus finally giving her recognition and the freedom to influence
society members. Where others are awestruck by Makarie, the Astronomer
is startlingly matter offact, ifloyal and affectionate, calling her ein geistiges
Rderwerk, da, wie ja die Uhren uns tglich und stndlich leisten, dem
Gang der Gestirne von selbst auf eigne Weise zu folgen im Stande ware [A
piece of spiritual clockwork, capable of automatically following the movements of the stars in its own way, just as clocks do for us daily and hourly].71
This rather backhanded compliment (like her own shrewd financial dealings)
counteracts the possibility of seeing Makarie as a rather mad mystic. Goethe
also adds a development ofhis own: Makarie moves round the Sun in a spiral
orbit. Goethe observed spiral tendency in plant growth; and though the spiral
is a very ancient symbol, he gave it new significance as the tendency which
68 See above, and Lowinsky, 181f. This allusion to music has not usually been recognised.
But like Leibniz, it associates music with the cosmic system; and in the novel helps to
explain the otherwise bizarre insistence on the piano-playing skills of Angelas fianc
(qv below).
69 [As mathematician and philosopher sceptical from the beginning]; on this figure and
his antecedents among contemporary figures, see esp. Ishihara, 1621; on the astronomer
as mathematician, 948; on Makaries relation with him and with related figures such
as Montan, 8691, esp.187.
70 The planet Uranus had been discovered by Herschel in 1781, with the aid of a reflecting telescope; so this detail, and the Astronomers use of a strong telescope, refer the
reader to relatively recent scientific endeavours. See esp. Ishihara, 6281 on Goethes
astronomical studies; 82101 on his attitude to old and new developments in this science
and to the place of mathematics within it; and 4561 on Goethes doubts about the use
of advanced optical instruments to enhance powers ofthe human eye. They correspond
in several ways to his preference for das Ohr des Musikers as the point of reception for
human experience of sound.
71 Book III, Chap.15, AA 8, 483.
214
Chapter Five
ensures that a combination of polar opposites leads not to endless alternation

or combination, but to the qualitatively different next stage of evolution.72
The spiral orbit has thus brought Makarie to the limits of the then known
universe; the narrator leaves her with the hope that she will retain her connection with the earth and its planet system:
Dorthin [the limits of earths galaxy] folgt ihr keine Einbildungskraft, aber wir hoffen
da eine solche Entelechie sich nicht ganz aus unserm Sonnensystem entfernen, sondern
wenn sie an die Grenze desselben gelangt ist, sich wieder zurcksehnen werde, um zu
Gunsten unsrer Urenkel in das irdische Leben und Wohltun wieder einzuwirken.73
[No powers of imagination can follow her beyond that bourne; but we are hopeful
that such an entelechy will not leave our solar system entirely behind her, but when
she reaches its end will long to be back with us, and send her influence to work for the
benefit of our childrens childrens children in earthly life and well-being].
Like the Saal der Vergangenheit, this part of the narrative seems to me to
present a perspective on the cosmos not only from old age (younger people
tend to refer to their children when they imagine their descendants), but for
old age, i.e. readers both fond of and detached from the world, who understand
that there is always more to know than they will know, and that one must
make do meantime with beliefs, models and metaphors.74 Goethe has kept
the traditional distance between macrocosm and microcosm, the traditional
mathematical basis of astronomical movements, and (as we shall see) the traditional secondary association with music. But in order to link macrocosm
72 On Goethes theory of Spiraltendenz, see esp.Ishihara, 16976, 18286. Schler
(Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre,
Bishop, Companion, esp.187f.), following Schlaffer (Wilhelm Meister: Das Ende der
Kunst und die Wiederkehr des Mythos, 1980) has Makarie pursuing a circular orbit. This
is taking the metaphor of cosmic harmony in its strictly traditional form, but Goethes
text modifies it to make his own idiosyncratic and ironic version. In any case, the mistake seems to have been corrected in the Sonderausgabe ofSchlaffers study (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1989, e.g. 178, 191).
73 Book III, chap.15, AA 8, 484. See esp. Ishihara, 232ff. on the significance of hope in
Makaries functions generally, especially her role as morning star.
74 Black argues that it is the particular function of metaphor to step in when there can be
no question as yet ofthe precision of scientific statement. Metaphorical statement []
has its own distinctive capacities and achievements. (Essay Metaphor, in Models and
Metaphors (1962), 37.
215
and microcosm by more than mathematical calculation and logical reasoning,

he has invented an extraordinary intermediary figure in Makarie, who knows
the universe through experience. And because ofthis empirical knowledge, she
loves and works effectively for the welfare of everything and everybody in this
teeming microcosm, despite her appreciation of their occasional awfulness.
She is too physically frail to be god-like, and is first and foremost a loving and
actively benevolent figure, die Liebe here below and (the narrator hopes)
in due course gar von oben. Schler argues for a view of her as Marian;75
she does indeed have much in common with the Mater gloriosa, and we shall
need to revisit this idea later. But the concepts of priestess/artificial centre/
saint overlook the motherliness of both figures, and especially of Makarie,
who is shown as strikingly ordinary in her manner. She seems rather to be an
example of what has been called Goethes re-presentation oftraditional ideas
and familiar things, in order to make them usable for a coming age.76 If the
traditional universe is to hang together with the modern earth, something
like Makaries effective benevolence and shrewd knowledge will be needed
to bind them, hence the narrators rather rueful hope. The cosmic system
needs the spiral orbit, and the earth needs Makaries role as universal aunt,
adviser and planner.
This combination of clich and modernity is also evident as the company prepares to move to America or to embark on new ventures in the Swiss
mountains. Mainly at Makaries instigation, its members are paired off with
complementary partners and friends: e.g. the engineer Montan and his mysterious water-diviner. This pairing off is so thorough and systematic that it
suggests a parody of the marriages which traditionally end novels; but there
is no indication that this is meant to detract from its value.77 One of the
75 Op.cit., 18690.
76 See R.H. Stephenson and Patricia D. Zecevic, Das Was bedenke: on the content, structure and form of Goethes Wilhelm Meister, Martin Swales (ed.), London
German Studies V, University ofLondon: Institute ofGermanic Studies, 1993, 7994,
esp.858.
77 Schler (op.cit., 1879) following Schlaffer, assumes that Goethes irony must necessarily
be negative and destructive of what it ironises. But this is not usually the case, especially
not in late works such as WJ and Faust II. Goethe is aware that most human activity is
ridiculous from one standpoint or another, but rarely suggests that it is therefore worthless: the Xenien, and other products of destructive Unmut are usually marked as such.
216
Chapter Five
most interesting is Angela, closest to Makarie in nature (der Ordnung []

ergeben, in den reinsten Kreisen sich bewegend) and in name (Makarie signifies Heilige, Angela divine messenger, angel).78 For her, a remarkable man
is found, described at some length, and with oddly abrupt juxtaposition, as
master of both music and mathematics:
Gedachter junger Mann, nunmehr Werners Gehlfe und Geselle, ein frischer natrlicher Jngling und eine Wundererscheinung, empfiehlt sich durch ein eigenes Talent,
durch eine grenzenlose Fertigkeit im Kopfrechnen, wie berall, so besonders bei den
Unternehmern wie sie jetzt zusammenwirken, da sie sich durchaus mit Zahlen im mannigfaltigsten Sinne einer Gesellschaftsrechnung beschftigen und ausgleichen mssen
[] berdem spielte er den Flgel hchst anmutig, wo ihm der Kalkl und ein liebenswrdiges Naturell verbunden und vereint uerst wnschenswert zu Hilfe kommt. Die
Tne flieen ihm leicht und harmonisch zusammen, manchmal aber deutet er an, da er
auch in tiefern Regionen zu Hause wre, und so wird er hchst anziehend, wenn er gleich
wenig Worte macht und kaum irgend etwas Gefhltes aus seinen Gesprchen durchblickt. Auf alle Flle ist er jnger als seine Jahre, man mchte beinahe etwas Kindliches
an ihm finden. Wie es brigens auch mit ihm sei, er hat Angelas Gunst gewonnen.79
[The aforesaid young man, now Werners assistant and journeyman, a fresh, natural
youth and a miraculous phenomenon, commends himself by his distinctive talent, a
boundless ability in mental arithmetic, both in general and in particular amongst the
various entrepreneurs as they now work together since they must master the figures
in the extended sense of an equation for the whole company, and find a solution. In
addition, he plays the grand piano with extraordinary grace, in which his calculations
and his agreeable nature combine and coordinate to assist him in the most satisfactory
way. The notes flow lightly and harmoniously from his fingers, sometimes he indicates
that he would be at home even in darker regions, and thus he exercises a powerful attraction, though he speaks very little and his conversation betrays almost no emotion. At
all events he seems younger than his years, he gives an almost childlike impression. And
whatever he may be, he has won Angelas love].
Some features of this description make this Wundererscheinung sound

more like a newly discovered planet than a normal human being: his limitless capacity to deal in numbers which underlie the future existence of the
society, the calculation which informs his playing, his magnetic attraction
78 [Devoted to order, moving in the most rarified circles]; on Makaries name, see esp.
Ishihara, 113ff ; on her relation to Angela, 208ff.
79 Book III, chap.14, AA 8, 477f.
217
and possible darker side, being older than he looks, and the final element of
mystery about him.80 But whether they are closer to earth or to the larger
cosmos, all the members of this microcosm form pairs of contrarietys, the
units of which the harmonious universe is made.
Goethes Tonlehre
The Tonlehre, by contrast, remained in schematic form. As part ofhis preparation, Goethe consulted the acoustician Chladni, who demonstrated the
sound figures created by stroking a bow against a glass plate covered with
cork dust. But Goethe sought to deal with die akustische Wahrnehmung des
Menschen, not with individual phenomena of pure acoustics.81 He held discussions and correspondence over some years with Zelter and with Christian
Heinrich Schlosser, the nephew of his sisters husband Johann Georg, who
showed interest on the basis ofhis medical training. These mainly concerned
the problem of intervals in the minor mode scale (which could not be generated by division of a string according to mathematical relations), and other
forms oftemperament i.e. the modifications in tuning from purely mathematical intervals, to make a piece of music singable or playable in practice by
different instruments/voices.82 But Goethe objected to Schlossers identification of music with the inner world only;83 he wanted a system which would
accommodate both major and minor, and the full range ofhuman responses
80 Ishihara does not examine this figure closely, except to note a possible antecedent in
the merchant assistant and astronomer F.W. Bessel (op.cit., p.209, note 21). He is identified only as Mathematiker und Naturwissenschaftler (209); but his designation as
miraculous phenomenon and other features cited above suggest he has both earthly
and heavenly affinities, like Angela herself.
81 See esp. Canisius, 15059; Chladni was regarded as the foremost authority on acoustics,
and read by Beethoven amongst others.
82 On Zelter and Schlosser, see Canisius, 16786, 188205 and passim; on temperament,
see NHDM, 837f. As the latter makes clear, the idea of tuning to modify the pure
Pythagorean scale had been familiar in Europe at least since the 16th century.
83 Canisius, 202.
218
Chapter Five
to them, as part of a general theory of nature. This, after a suggestion from

Schlosser84 to try and explain the relation between major and minor, he found
in Leibnizs idea of the monads, the component units of the harmonious
universe. The idea of major and minor as related in terms of ascending and
descending scale intervals was Rameaus (as Goethe explains, the chord ofC
major from middle C upwards becomes, if the same intervals are retained,
the chord ofF minor downwards from middle C).85 But by linking this aspect
of music to expansion and contraction of sound monads, as though these
units of matter breathed in and out, Goethe brings musical modes, rhythm
and pitch fluctuation of melody into an analogous relationship with human
life and feeling (as did the Greek modes), and with Leibniz concept of the
cosmos at large the universal harmony.
Goethe also takes his idea ofthe origin of musical sound from Rameau:
the corps sonore, which Goethe calls einen klingenden Krper.86 He then
divides his general remarks into three sections: Organisch (Subjektiv),
Mechanisch (Gemischt), and Mathematisch (Objektiv). This apparently
odd sequence emerges because on the tables Goethe places subjective (the
human production and reception of musical sound) down the left hand side,
objective (the development of sounds, harmonics and scales mathematically
reckoned from the length of the vibrating string) down the right hand side,
and the mixed aspects (development of instruments, tuning, and combination with the voice) down the middle. This makes clearly visible the interdependence of all three. Instruments cannot be constructed without Einsicht in
die Ma- und Zahlverhltnisse [some grasp of mathematical and numerical
relations], the physics (such as Chladnis) of sound production. But musical
sound cannot be created without reference to the human being, who generates it through the voice, receives it through the ear, and responds both physically and mentally: aufregend zur Begleitung den ganzen Krper und eine
sinnlich sittliche Begeisterung und eine Ausbildung des innern und uern
Sinnes bestimmend [stimulating the whole body to accompaniment, sensuous and mental enthusiasm, determining the development ofboth inner and
84 Canisius, 196f.
85 Cf. AA 16, 9. Speiser, editors notes, 984.
86 First section of the TL, AA 16, 906; cf. Christiansen, passim, note 12 above in this
chapter, and chap.2 above. Canisius does not consider French sources/antecedents of
Goethes ideas, so finds the inclusion of animal voices strange: op.cit., 218.
219
outer sense].87 Goethe includes the timbre of the single tone, as we might
expect given his debt to Herder. But in the spirit of the earlier French and
Italian theorists and anatomists, he includes the human voices by age and sex
from the bass upwards, as well as the odd sounds produced by human vocal
apparatus, mechanical instruments, animals and birds. In this view, there is
not only a tonal scale, but a wide range oftimbres, through which music can
move as the sound-monads expand and contract, and the listeners soul
expands or contracts correspondingly. The Tonlehre remained a fragment, but
it is a serious attempt to come to terms with acoustics, with all phenomena
of sound. The mathematical aspects are embedded as ancillary factors in this
wider enterprise. Goethe here seems to conflate the organisation of music
through rhythm (a pattern of weak and strong, short and long) with the
universal structural principle of complementary opposites: Alle organische
Bewegungen manifestieren sich durch Diastolen und Systolen [all organic
movements manifest themselves in systoles and diastoles].88 It is on this rhythmic pattern, rather than on mathematical proportions, that Goethes universe
of sound was to be based.
Even Goethes more positive view of mathematics has not greatly increased
the very weak metaphorical force of mathematics in connection with music in
his work. The Ma- und Zahlverhltnisse support the Pythagorean cosmos;
but they have become a minor entailment of cosmic order, not the main
model for its structure. In Goethes perspective, mathematician figures are
marginal and slightly eccentric, sometimes dull but more often rather enigmatic. They are almost always presented as associates of figures, groups and
qualities much more central to cosmic order. But although their connection
with cosmic harmony is usually distant or indirect, they do have one: they
function as corrective contrast, restorers of balance though not balanced
in themselves, and are thus part of cosmic harmony. Some do not engage
in music (Astronomer, Wilhelms friend Werner and other business associates); others do (Angelas piano-playing statistician, the Hauptmann of the
Wahlverwandtschaften). And Goethe presents them much as Plato presented
musicians: variants on automated technician, knowledgeable expert and adept
dealer in hocus pocus.
87 TL, AA 16, 907.

88 Rhythmik, ed.cit. 908.
Chapter Six
Rhythm, however envisaged, becomes an increasingly important structural

concept in the eighteenth century: for music, cosmic order, and human life
in general. But although rhythm readily evokes something in most hearers
minds, it is not always clear what that something is; and this problem must
be addressed before we can establish what eighteenth-century writers and
their readers understood by it. Rhythm, observes Edward T. Cone, after
all exists only as a series of relations.1 This brief definition has advantages.
It avoids the ambiguity of movement in the NHDMs equivalent: rhythm
covers all aspects of musical movement as ordered in time;2 and it encompasses the widely different usage of rhythm advanced by various figures
considered in preceding chapters here. The Greeks considered rhythm both
as an organising principle in music and as an endlessly variable phenomenon
which, when fixed in different forms alongside agreed patterns of melody
and instrumentation, constituted the different modes most of which also
envisaged corresponding patterns of physical movement and dance. Johann
Mattheson attempted to classify different rhythms on a similar basis, as well
as insisting on measure as a necessary general prerequisite of music. Rousseau
and Schiller mainly envisaged rhythm as closer to metre, measure, and structure, speaking respectively ofles retours priodiques et mesurs du rhythme
and of a liebliche Stetigkeit in the succession of notes, rhythms, and har-
1
2
In the title essay in Robert P. Morgan (ed.), Edward T. Cone: Music, A View from Delft.
Selected Essays, University of Chicago Press, 1989, 22.
Ed.cit., under rhythm, 7005. As far as I can see, movement here is an unacknowledged
metaphor. Rhythmic beats and musical notes follow each other in a given sequence; but
movement is a vivid image which they evoke in doing so, rather than literally a property
of rhythm or pitch. Cf. R. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music, Oxford University Press,
1997, who coins the term quasi-spatial to deal with this problem (e.g. 14f., 22).
222
Chapter Six
monisierender Bilder.3 Whereas Herders concept of sequence, as well as

the patterns of complementary opposites and the dual rhythms set up by the
physical models of diastole and systole, arsis and thesis (Leibniz, Shaftesbury,
Goethe) tended towards an idea of overall rhythmic structure built up by a
pattern of contrasts into larger units.
Manifestly, there is more to rhythm than the idea of beat and measure
(strong/weak, long/short) this study has made do with so far. NHDM lists
textural rhythm, harmonic rhythm, melodic rhythm or timbral rhythm,
alongside the more familiar durational rhythm and accentual rhythm. And
although durational (long/short) and accentual (strong/weak) rhythms are
almost universally used,4 we shall find that eighteenth-century writers envisaged most of the other types as well. We need to consider what rhythm is,
and what it was deemed to be in the eighteenth century, in order to see which
aspects came into play for metaphorical reference. We shall also need to consider the relations between rhythm and metre (or in music, time-signature),
and between rhythm and repetition. Obviously, rhythm involves a pattern
perceived as recurrent. But the number of unstressed syllables in a line of
poetry and of notes in a bar of music does not always conform to the metric
schema gradually set up in the piece; and repetition alone is not enough to
constitute a rhythmic structure.5
It is now generally agreed that all types of rhythm are built up on a pattern of contrasts. As NHDM explains, this may be between strong and weak,
long and short, or various other contrasts of pitch, timbre, harmonisation, etc;
3
4
[The periodic and measured recurrences of rhythm graceful consistency harmonising images]; Essai sur les origines des langues, 12; and ber Mathissons Gedichte, NA 22,
276f.; see also Chapters Two and Three above.
NHDM, 7001; textural refers to crowding or thinning of notes within a given unit
of duration. Patterns of harmonic modulation, of contrasting melodic motifs and of
contrasts between the same motif played by instruments of a different timbre, are all
familiar units in Western music, though they would not always be considered as aspects
of rhythm. See also Scruton, op.cit., 2239.
Morrow uses repetition in the sense ofborrowing a motif or other feature from another
composers work (op.cit., 11216); Kivy, who does not discuss rhythm at all, takes repetition (in the sense of reprise of a given passage already played) to be a major structural
principle of Western music: op.cit., esp.153f. The term is used here in the more usual
sense of reiteration or recurrence.
223
but there is always at least a bipolar contrast (701). Simple bi-polar contrasts
have been and still are readily associated with bodily rhythms: diastole and
systole (the expansion and contraction ofheartbeat), pulse, breathing in and
out, tension and relaxation, arsis and thesis (raising and lowering ofthe foot
in physical movement or dance). NHDM suggests that repetitive rhythms
rooted in bodily movements, whether of work or of play, lie behind much of
the worlds instrumental music; and also that physiological processes provide
norms against which we register tempo (fast and slow) as well as rhythmic
patterns.6 Scruton even considers that it is only when we relate sound patterns to our own experience, physical or psychological, that we begin to hear
them as rhythm.7 This seems doubtful; not least because musical rhythm is
often much more complex, as e.g. in triple time or subdivided dual metres
with four or eight beats to the bar. And many listeners can appreciate rhythm
(e.g. complex drumming) without waiting for direct echoes of their own
experience. However, Scrutons point is important for a different reason:
such physiological rhythms are the basis on which metaphorical linking can
take place between music and life, in either direction. A given sequence of
musical contrasts can serve as analogy for any similarly structured physical or
psychological sequence: walking, running, galloping, sinking, rising, tension,
relaxation, even (eventually) stopping. As a rule, of course, this involves not
only rhythm, but patterns of pitch and timbre organised on a rhythmic basis.
Where the rhythms are subdivided or extended to make more complex patterns of contrast (e.g. four or eight beats to the bar within a dual rhythm, or
triple time and its multiples), they provided the basis for combinations with
melody, poetry and dance, which can in turn sustain more complex analogies.
It was metaphorical relations such as these which were conventionalised in
the Greek musical harmoniai. Plato preferred the sounds and cadences of
desirable behaviour, and the rhythms that are those of an orderly and courageous life; but he also acknowledged kinds of rhythm and tunings with the
general character of Bacchic frenzy, and even conventions differentiating
them according to gender and social status.8
6
7
8
Ed.cit., 704, 701.

Op.cit., 356.
Eg. Plato, Republic and Laws; see Andrew Barker, passim, and esp. Chapters One and
Three above.
224
Chapter Six
However, the stages which make up a rhythmic sequence do not simply

succeed each other they engender each other, each unit both deriving from
the previous one and setting up conditions for the next, so that a continuum
is created. Susanne K. Langer developed this idea at length in Feeling and
Form, again with the aid of physiological models:
Breathing is the most perfect exhibit of physiological rhythm: as we release the breath
we have taken, we build up a bodily need of oxygen that is the motivation [] of the
new breath []
The heartbeat illustrates the same functional continuity: the diastole prepares the
systole, and vice versa.9
Scruton agrees with her argument that we experience musical sequence in

virtual time, and adapts her phrase to coin the term virtual causality, to
describe the way in which each element of a rhythmic sequence sets up the
next.10 Here again Cones concise phrase proves helpful: if rhythm is a series
of relations, these relations are created and perceived as the ear registers contrasts ofbeat, duration, and whatever other feature (timbre, melodic phrase)
is deployed in a given piece.
The idea of virtual causality is also helpful when considering the relation between rhythm and metre. As in poetry, metre gives the basic scheme
of strong and weak pulses, long and short durational values, in a measure or
bar; each of which sets up the next. This schema is then repeated throughout
the work, or until the composer has reason to change it. And once we hear
the first complete pattern, we expect to hear it again: as Barenboim puts it,
the ear creates the link between the present and the past, and sends signals
10
Feeling and Form, London: Routledge, 1953, 126ff. In other respects, Langers analysis
is much less helpful than it might be, since she has an exclusively melody-orientated
conception of music. She does however point out the metaphorical nature of connections we make between music and feeling.
He considers her analogies unhelpful, and is at pains to refute her arguments (1667);
on virtual space and time in music, cf. Scruton, 745ff. But he seems rather vague about
the nature of virtual causality in rhythm, seeing it mainly in melody and tying it to
emotional experience in ways which seem to me both erratic and not very different
from Langers (see e.g. Scruton, 35f., 39f.).
225
to the brain as to what to expect of the future.11 The notes of music may
keep close to the scheme or vary (e.g. by doubling the number of notes in a
bar and halving their duration, or by displacing the usual stress on the first
note of each bar). But as long as the variations are compatible with the established metre overall, the music will create virtual causality: i.e. will present
a rhythmically coherent sequence. On this basis, the composer can add the
text sung by a voice and/or the steps and gestures of an accompanying dance
or moving figure(s). The range of possibilities stretches from almost complete
uniformity (e.g. in a march) to very great diversity (e.g. in multipart vocal
works, with or without dancers). The accompaniment need not duplicate the
voice part, and the dancer need not match each step to the note-values ofhis
accompanying melody; but as long as the participants work with the same
or compatible metres, the end-product is a sequence, a coordinated whole.
And unless the other elements in the music, song, dance and/or movement
conform absolutely to the basic metric scheme, there is (as in poetry) an
interesting tension between metre and the rhythmic patterns of the part or
parts constructed upon it.12 We register a development from what we heard
before, rather than sameness.
The relation between rhythm and repetition obviously overlaps to some
extent with that between rhythm and metre: the metrical unit is repeated for
the duration ofthe section. But repetition also includes larger formal units;
and here too virtual causality can be set up as for example in a refrain,
or in the return to a first musical theme after a divergent second section.13
But as Barenboim observes, for the ear, repetition is a form of accumulation; and he concludes that no exact repetition is possible, because time has
11
12
13
Daniel Barenboim, Everything is Connected: The Power of Music, ed. Elena Cheah,
London: Weidenfeld 2008, in essay Listening and Hearing, 28. This book is an eclectic collection of essays ranging over all Barenboims interests, from music to Spinozas
thought to Middle Eastern politics and his West-Eastern Divan orchestra. But the first
two essays, like B.s newspaper articles cited elsewhere, include astute and accurate comment on the hearing and receiving of musical sound, and often also on the metaphorical
mappings involved.
Cf. Scruton, op.cit., 248. Cone considers this tension a particularly interesting feature
of eighteenth-century music; see e.g.section IV of his essay Analysis Today, in Music:
A View from Delft, 49f.
Cf. the usage by Morrow and Kivy noted above.
226
Chapter Six
advanced and therefore places the second event in a different perspective.14 So

although repetition is an important structural principle in music, the return
of a given melodic theme, or the return to a given metre, can be made with
new possibilities (e.g. in timbre, key or pitch), and creates a sense of reaffirmation after an interim change. Even where different parts do repeat the same
patterns exactly, the end result can be complex (as e.g. in a strict canon), and
would not be heard as repetition.15 This accumulation also features in poetic
language a phrase repeated in a different context can present the same idea
from different angles, or possibly draw attention to the time elapsed and
experience gained since the first occurrence; but there is some kind of accumulation, of value added. The same may be true of experience of time: e.g.
we often register the seasons not as simple repetition, but as part of a rhythmic pattern in the flow oftime (last summer, this autumn, next spring). But
repetition does not have this possibility of added value in rational language,
unless such language shifts towards poetic language in rhetoric. Repeating a
statement may show emotion (e.g. disbelief, grief, mockery); but in rational
discourse it is redundant. The lapse of time adds nothing to the argument.
Rhythm, the body and dance: Descartes and Mattheson

In the eighteenth century, rhythm was envisaged with a sophisticated relation
to metrical and other forms of regularity, and with well-established patterns
of metaphorical reference dependent upon it.16 Although this was a far from
primitive age, with a very highly developed musical culture, basic physiological
14
15
16
Barenboims brief expos offugue and sonata form shows how diversely musical repetition can be applied: Listening and Hearing, op.cit., 2732.
See NHDM, 128, under Canon 5); also the illustrated example which NHDM gives
under rhythm, where very simple repeated drumming patterns are combined by rhythm
into a highly intricate whole (704).
This applies, of course, to general culture and its discourse. Composers and other musical
professionals may or may not have shared in these developments, since musical rhythm
was part of their craft rather than a feature of metaphorical significance.
227
models for rhythm were widely current mainly because emotions were still
closely associated with the body. In musical culture, at least, this seems to be
due to the unlikely combination ofDescartes (15961650) and the composer
and writer of popular music manuals, Johann Mattheson (16811764) both
systematisers in their thinking, but otherwise with little in common. In his
Les Passions de lme (1649), Descartes explains the emotions in terms of
physiological reactions: sensations from the outside world are transmitted
via nerves from the sense-organs to the soul (seated in a gland in the brain),
which then transmits its reactions to the internal organs, nerves and muscles.17 Emotions result mostly either from dilation of the heart-chambers
and increased pulse-rate (which bring about faster circulation of the blood,
and more heat and agitation in the body); or from restriction of the heartchambers and slowing of the pulse-rate, which have the opposite effect.18 It
has been asserted that Descartes included music in this scheme of things;19
but as far as I can see, he does not mention it in this treatise. However, a very
similar concept of emotional and physical responses underlies Descartes
earlier essay, Compendium Musicae (1618);20 and this is presumably the cause
of Matthesons attribution of these ideas to him. Mattheson warmly recommends Descartes treatise to all would-be Capellmeister;21 and in his own
remarks applies in detail the analogy between musical rhythm and physiological rhythm. In Matthesons opinion, each measure or bar of a piece of
music consists of a strong and weak beat only:
Les Passions de lme, Amsterdam/Paris 1649; = uvres Philosophiques de Descartes, ed.

F. Alqui, Paris 1973, vol.III, 941ff.
18 See e.g. articles 9ff., 51ff., 96ff.; respectively ed.cit. 958ff., 997ff., 1027ff.
19 E.g. Walter Serauky, in his article Affektenlehre for the first edition of Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. F. Blume, Kassel/Basel: Brenreiter, 1949ff., vol.I, cols.
113ff. Serauky cites Mattheson as his authority; and Mattheson (Capellmeister I,3, 15)
does clearly imply that Descartes included music as part of this scheme of emotional
stimuli and responses.
20 Transl. by W. Robert as Compendium of Music, publ. Indiana: American Institute of
Musicology, 1961, qv, esp.14ff.
21 Vollkommener Capellmeister, I,3, 51, ed.cit. 15.
17
228
Chapter Six
diese nehmen ihren Ursprung oder ihren Grund aus den Pulsadern, deren Auf- und
Niederschlge bey den Arzeney-Verstndigen Systole und Diastole genennet werden.22
[These have their origin or their cause in the arteries, whose strong and weak pulses are
called Systole and Diastole by medical experts].
But he allows that these two units per measure need not be equal, and thus
derives not only duple time and its compounds, but also triple time and its
compounds, from physiological models.23 Any idea of mathematical regularity is thus overlaid by an order both more flexible and more dynamic,
because of its association with living and moving human beings. Mattheson
cannot say precisely how this correspondence works; but sustained by the
testimony of one Jean Rousseau, franzsischer Snger und Violdigambist,
he is convinced that the Bewegung of a piece of music, by which he means
the overall dynamics of it, represent the dynamics of physical and emotional
life.24 Furthermore, he regards melodic progression up or down the scale as
part of this movement again by analogy with diastole and systole, this
time envisaged as expansion and contraction rather than strong and weak
pulses. Descartes had suggested that most emotions are accompanied either
by expansion or contraction of the heart-chambers; Mattheson thinks this
should guide the composers choice of intervals in a melodic progression:
Da z.E. die Freude durch Ausbreitung unsrer Lebens-Geister empfunden wird, so folget
vernnfftiger und natrlicher Weise, da ich diesen Affect am besten durch weite und
erweiterte Intervalle ausdrcken knne [] Wei man hergegen, da die Traurigkeit
eine Zusammenziehung solcher subtilen Theile unsers Leibes ist, so stehet leicht zu
ermessen, da sich zu dieser Leidenschafft die engen und engesten Klang-Stuffen am
fglichsten schicken.25
[Since for example joy is felt as expansion of our spirits, it follows rationally and naturally
that I could best express this emotion by wide and augmented intervals; if on the other
hand we know that sadness is a contraction of such sensitive parts of our body, we may easily
deduce that small and diminished musical intervals are most apt for this emotion]
Capellmeister, II,7, 9ff.

He suggests arsis and thesis as an alternative model; cf. Capellmeister II,7, 10ff.,
esp.13.
24 [A French singer and cellist (cf. NHDM, 914f. on Viol da gamba)]; ibid., 7, 18ff.,
esp.20. This is not Jean Jacques, but the author of a Mthode claire, certaine et facile pour
apprendre chanter la Musique, Paris 1678ff. Cf. K.-H. Pauls, Jean Rousseau, MGG
ed.cit., vol.11, cols.1004ff.
25 Capellmeister I,3, 56ff.
22
23
229
In this view, pitch progression is part of rhythmic progression, and both run
in parallel with physical and emotional progression because they have the
same natural model, diastole and systole.
Mattheson also attempts to draw close analogies between rhythmic progression in music and that of dance and poetry. For instance, his chapter on
Gattungen und Abzeichen der Melodien [genres and characteristics of melodies] is written partly on dance rhythms and dance tunes, because a particular
rhythm suggests a given feeling, which can equally well be expressed in a corresponding melodic progression or a corresponding physical movement.26
Here, Matthesons love of classification gets the better ofhim. He remarks of
the gavotte, for instance, that ihr Affect ist wircklich eine rechte jauchzende
Freude, that its rhythm is even, its typical movement das hpffende Wesen
[] keineswegs das lauffende, and that it is usually better played on keyboard
instruments than on the violin.27 The boure, on the other hand, is said to have
a melody die mehr fliessendes, glattes, gleitendes [] hat, als die Gavotte, and
a tendency to Zufriedenheit, und einem geflligen Wesen; so that it is suitable
for gliding, sliding, movements, and easily danced by short people [!].28 One
ofhis chapters on the duration aspect of rhythm treats the rhythmic grouping
of notes in the same way as metrical feet in poetry, and is accordingly entitled
Von den Klang-Fssen [on metrical soundfeet]; he suggests that poets, like
composers, should take their rhythms from physiological models, in this case
arsis and thesis (raising and lowering of the foot in dance).29
Rhythm, metre and pitch variation

However, such physiologically based concepts of rhythm did not displace
ideas of regular measure and regular beat. Mattheson himself defined rhythm
as Abmessung und ordentliche Einrichtung der Zeit und Bewegung in der
26 Capellmeister II,13, esp. 80ff.
27 [its emotion is a truly jubilant joy, in essence hopping movements, not running];
Ibid., 87ff.
28 [Which is more flowing, smooth and sliding than the gavotte contentment, and an
obliging nature]; ibid., 90ff., p.225f.
29 Capellmeister II, chaps. 6 and 7, esp.7 10ff.
230
Chapter Six
melodischen Wissenschafft;30 and Batteux equated rhythm with metre, as a

means whereby the composer orders sounds pour entrer dans ldifice rgulier du chant musicale.31 Rousseau has both mathematical/symmetrical concepts and physiological models. In his Dictionnaire de musique (1767), under
Rhythme, he considers mainly variations of duration, pitch and timbre, since
he thinks of rhythm in terms ofla Mesure et la Cadence, derived from various
verse-forms. But even though he omits accentual rhythm almost entirely (possibly because French is an unstressed language), he concedes that some passions
have a rhythmic and melodic character absolu et indpendant de la Langue;
and these he links with particular physical movement and fluctuations of pitch
and sharper or milder timbre, albeit much more vaguely than Mattheson:
La tristesse, qui marche par Tems gaux et lents, de mme que par Tons rmissent et
bas; la joie par Tems sautillans et vites, de mme que par Tons aigus et intenses: do
je prsume quon pourroit observer dans toutes les autres passions un caractre propre,
mais plus difficile saisir.32
[Sadness, which moves in slow and even time, as well as low and weary tones; and joy,
which moves in rapid and leaping time, and in high-pitched and sharp tones: from
which I deduce that a particular character could be discerned in all the other passions,
but more difficult to define].
Herder and rhythmic sequence in life and art

Among writers closest to Goethe, rhythm is perceived both in association with
physiological models and in association with measured regularity, though
not necessarily at the same time. In Herders early work, for example, his
concept of rhythm is almost entirely determined by physical and emotional
movement, though he does not use models such as diastole and systole. In
his Ossian essay, he envisages mainly accentual rhythm, the fhlbarer Takt
des Ohrs in Scandinavian alliterative verse:
30 [Measurement and orderly arrangement oftime and movement in the melodic science];
Capellmeister II,7, 2.
31 [In order to enter the regular edifice of musical song]; Les beaux arts reduits un mme
principe, Paris 1746, 279.
32 Rhythme, Dictionnaire de musique, ed.cit. 10236.
231
hnliche Anfangssylben mitten in den Versen symmetrisch aufgezhlt, gleichsam

Losungen zum Schlage des Takts, Anschlge zum Tritt, zum Gange des Kriegsheers.
hnliche Anfangsbuchstaben zum Ansto, zum Schallen des Bardengesanges in die
Schilde! [] wahrhaftig eine Rhythmik des Verses [] und alles waren Schlle, Laute
eines lebenden Gesanges, Wecker des Takts und der Erinnerung, alles klopfte, und stie
und schallte zusammen!33
[Similar initial syllables symmetrically counted out in the middle ofthe lines, like signals
for the beat ofthe rhythm, leading beats for the stride and the march ofthe warrior army.
Similar initial letters for the clash, the ring ofthe bardic songs among the shields! truly
a rhythm of each line and all these were resonant sounds of a living chant, rousers of
rhythm and memory, all of it struck and clashed and rang together].
Durational rhythm, which he termed Zeitfolge, he regarded as an essential

characteristic of music, which worked nicht blo in, sondern durch, die
Zeitfolge [not just in, but by means of, sequence in time].34 Like Matthesons
idea ofBewegung, Herders Zeitfolge includes not only the individual bar
or measure, but also what we would now call phrasing, and eventually the
pattern of larger contrasts which gradually builds up the whole piece. He
regards poetry as similarly structured: Folge der Gedanken, der Bilder, der
Worte, der Tne ist das Wesen ihres Ausdrucks; hierinn ist sie der Musik
hnlich [Sequence of ideas, of images, of words, of sounds, is the essence of
poetrys expression; in this it is similar to music].35 For him, both arts present
a rhythmic sequence of contrasts analogous to the dynamic continuity of
psychic life:
Indem sie [poetry] durch die Schnelligkeit, durch das Gehen und Kommen ihrer
Vorstellungen, auf die Seele wirket, und in der Abwechselung theils, theils in dem Ganzen,
das sie durch die Zeitfolge erbauet, energisch wirket [] dies macht sie zu einer Musik
der Seele, wie sie die Griechen nannten.36
[As poetry influences the soul by its tempo, by the advancing and receding of its concepts, and energises partly in its varied succession, partly in the whole which it builds up
through its sequence in time that is what makes it a music of the soul, as the Greeks
called it].
Briefwechsel ber Ossian und die Lieder alter Vlker, Von deutscher Art und Kunst,
Suphan V, 1656.
34 Erstes Wldchen, Kritische Wlder, Suphan III, 137. Herder is partly arguing against
Lessings classification of the arts in Laokoon: cf. Nivelle, 110ff.
35 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 166. Briefwechsel ber Ossian und die Lieder alter Vlker,
Von deutscher Art und Kunst, Suphan V, 1656.
36 Erstes Wldchen, Suphan III, 138.
33
232
Chapter Six
In addition, like Mattheson, he includes what he calls Modulation, the rise

and fall of tonal pitch, in his concept of rhythmic progression; and even
includes patterned changes oftimbre as well. He acknowledges Burke as the
source for this idea, although it also tallies closely with Cartesian concepts of
physiology under the impact of emotion. Herder believes that musical sounds
either expand or contract the listeners nerves, in the same way as physiological reactions which accompany the emotions:
Die Nerve wird homogen angestrengt, und die Fibern auf einmal mehr gespannet; oder
sie wird erschlaffet, und die Fibern flieen allmhlich, wie in eine sanfte Auflsung ber.
Jenes ist dem Gefhl gleichartig, was wir in der Seele Gefhl des Erhabenen nennen; das
letzte ist Gefhl des Schnen, Wollust. Sehet daraus entspringt die Haupteintheilung der
Musik in harte und weiche Schlle, Tne und Tonarten und dies zeigt die Analogie
des ganzen allgemeinen Gefhls in Krper und Seele, so wie sich in ihm alle Neigungen
und Leidenschaften offenbaren.37
[The nerve is tensed homogeneously, and its fibres suddenly tightened; or it is slackened,
and the fibres gradually lapse into a kind of gentle dissolution. The first is similar to the
feeling of the soul which we call a sense of the sublime, the second is a sense of beauty,
delight. And that is the source ofthe main division of music into hard and soft sounds,
notes and keys; and it shows the analogy of all human feeling with body and soul, and
all the affections and passions manifest within it].
Since Herder envisages music as deriving from the rise and fall ofthe voice in
the expression of feeling, poetry, song and dance become closely analogous
to each other as rhythmic sequences based on the parallel rhythms offeeling
and moving:
Jede Leidenschaft hat [Zeit und Modulation der Bewegung] [] die traurige steigt
langsam herunter; die freudige schnell hinauf: die jauchzende wirbelt und springt: die
unruhige bebt, schwankt und taumelt. Daher der Rhythmus der Sprache, von da aus der
Musik, von da aus der Tanzkunst.38
[Each passion has a tempo and modulation of movement sad feelings move slowly
downwards, happy feelings move rapidly upwards: a jubilant emotion twirls and leaps:
an agitated feeling trembles, sways and staggers. From these is derived the rhythm of
language, thence the rhythm of music, and thence the rhythm of dance].
37
38
Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 103.

Ibid., 114ff., 120f.
233
Hence Herders praise for the French dancer and choreographer J.G. Noverre
(17271810), who had tried to re-create an expressive and rhythmic Tanzkunst
der Leidenschaften [dance as art of the passions] in the Greek spirit, as
opposed to formal sequences of prescribed steps.39
In later work, we find Herder reiterating the idea that music follows
the ewige unauflsbare Gesetze of feeling in its rhythmic dynamics: denn
eben das krzer und lnger, strker und schwcher, hher und tiefer, mehr
und minder ist seine Bedeutung, sein Eindruck.40 [The eternal indissoluble
laws [of feeling] for in just such shorter and longer, stronger and weaker,
higher and lower, greater and lesser, lies its significance, its impact]. But in his
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (178491), he gives the
idea a different twist. If so far art had the dynamics ofliving, he now presents
living as an art, offering a more stylised view of the universal rhythmic patterns discerned in life:
Blhen nicht unsre schnsten Seelenkrfte ab, wie sie aufblhten? Ja wechseln nicht
mit Jahren und Zustnden sie selbst untereinander und lsen [] in einem kreisenden
Reigentanz einander ab? [] Unsre Sinne und Krfte haben ein Maas: die Horen unsrer
Tage und Lebensalter geben einander nur wechselnd die Hnde, damit die Ankommende
die Verschwundne ablse [] Deine einzige Kunst, O Mensch, hienieden ist also Maas
[]41
[Do not our best powers of mind blossom and fade, do they not come and go with
years and circumstances and succeed one another in a dancing sequence? Our senses
and powers have rhythmic measure: the Hours of our days and stages oflife touch hands
only as they succeed each other, as one advances and the other retreats. Your only art
here below, O mortal man, is measure].
Herder, Schiller and Maas

Maas [Ma] seems to me to have become more problematic now than is often
realised. The word is usually translated as restraint, balance when Herders
Ibid., 122. Noverres Lettres sur les arts imitateurs en gnral et sur la danse en particulier
(Lyon 1760) had been translated by Lessing in 1769.
40 Kalligone (1800), Suphan XXII, 187.
41 Ideen, Suphan XIII, 339f.
39
234
Chapter Six
concept is discussed, and even sometimes commuted to moderation.42 This

seems both uncharacteristically worthy and worryingly vague. If all Herder
wanted was restraint, he could have reverted to older models ofharmony as
symmetry; and neither he nor Schiller showed much sign ofbecoming merely
moderate in their later years. In any case, the context makes clear that Herder
is not talking about the brgerlich virtue ofkeeping to the middle ofthe road,
but about the kind of rhythmic pattern which makes for sustainable continuity oflife. It seems to me important that he was exchanging ideas at this time
with Schiller, when the latter was revising Der Tanz after writing Die Macht
des Gesanges.43 Both writers are concerned with a corrective to what they
perceive as the raw power of music over body and emotions (which, as we
saw in Chapter Two, Herder regarded with awe and Schiller with something
like panic). Both writers are pleading for sustainable continuity, i.e. a sequence
of rhythmic contrasts. In Herders case, this means a rhythm of life with less
emphasis on pulse and throb offeeling and more on durational rhythm, the
sequence of contrasts; but the pulse of life cannot be excluded altogether.
His Maas does indeed involve the avoidance of unsustainable extremes of
feeling and reaction; but it also involves channelled energy and movement,
dynamic progression. Moderation, restraint, even balance, tend to obscure
this by suggesting stasis; even measure (which I used because of its association with Herders figure ofReigentanz, a round dance) might sound unduly
mathematical out of context; and rhythm in current popular usage is most
likely to designate only beat, even rock beat. Whatever solution is adopted,44
it should be made clear that Herder is advocating a measure intended to
create progression both orderly and animated; i.e. which teilt die flieend
immer gleiche Reihe /Belebend ab, da sie sich rhythmisch regt (Faust I,
146f.). Only thus can the individual human life become, even potentially, a
harmonious unit within a harmonious cosmos.
42 See e.g. Adler/Koepkes Introduction to their Companion [] Herder volume, 7; and
Adlers essay in that volume on Herders concept of Humanitt, 112.
43 See e.g. FA Schiller, vol.1, 846f.; esp. notes on 2nd version of Der Tanz; citing Herders
letter to Schiller, 5 August 1795, and Schillers to Herder, 3 October 1795.
44 Ulrich Gaier uses measure in the context ofthe Umri, Ma und Gestalt (tr. as outline, measure and form) which Herder posits that the mind gives to objects around it
and thus constantly creates images of things; Myth, Mythology, New Mythology, in
CompanionHerder, 16588, esp.171.
235
Schillers concept of rhythm initially seems to emphasise the symmetrical

and regular, and at times he equates rhythm with metre.45 In his earlier essay
work he does not use the term Rhythmus, but only Ma, and then in the
sense of criterion, yardstick.46 Nor did Schiller initially work with the physiological models of rhythm. But he did consider that musical sequence should
reflect the patterns of movement ofhuman feeling, and he did recognise that
this was a metaphorical parallel:
Nun besteht aber der ganze Effekt der Musik [] darin, die innern Bewegungen des
Gemts durch analogische uere zu begleiten und zu versinnlichen [] Dringt nun der
Tonsetzer [] in das Geheimnis jener Gesetze ein, welche ber die innern Bewegungen
des menschlichen Herzens walten, und studiert er die Analogie, welche zwischen diesen
Gemtsbewegungen und gewissen uern Erscheinungen stattfindet, so wird er aus
einem Bildner gemeiner Natur zum wahrhaften Seelenmaler.47
[Now the entire impact of music depends on accompanying and manifesting the inner
movements ofthe spirit by analogical outward movementsAnd ifthe composer penetrates to the heart of those laws which govern the inmost movements of the human
heart, and if he studies the analogy which exists between these inner movements and
certain outward phenomena, he will be transformed from a depicter of common nature
to a true portrayer of the soul].
However, in many cases he seems to have stressed whichever aspect of rhythm

(orderly measure or lively pulse) he thought would correct a perceived imbalance. Thus in Die Knstler (1789), where he argues against disregard ofform
and over-attention to naturalism, his emphasis is on order: drama and song
45 C. Couturier-Heinrich considers Schillers concept of rhythm almost exclusively as

duration and metre, and almost exclusively in connection with A.W. Schlegels ideas on
metrics. This ignores the multiple senses ofMa, the aspects of rhythm as beat (esp. in
Die Braut von Messina), and most of the broader idea of rhythm as overall sequence.
It is a useful compendium of the letters in which Schiller discussed the idea at various
times with various people, but does not consider his application of the concept, and
leaves the reader with an impression that Schiller envisaged poetry purely as metrics. See
C.C.-H., Schillers Beitrag zur deutschen Rhythmus-diskussion um 1800, Euphorion
99 (Schiller-Heft), 2005, 189211.
46 Cf. NA, vols 20 and 21,and index.
47 ber Matthissons Gedichte (1794), NA 22, 272. The reference is to Friedrich von
Matthisson a poet (17611831), not to Johann Mattheson, author ofthe Vollkommener
Capellmeister.
236
Chapter Six
are associated with Ordnung (228), and rhythm is envisaged not merely as
Maas, but as Gleichmaas (11,103,161, 289), Ebenmaas (238), Symmetrie
(287)48 [equal measure regular measure symmetry]. But in the preface
to Die Braut von Messina (1803), where he defended use of the Chorus in
tragedy as unnaturalistic but not therefore remote, he describes the chorus as
sinnlich mchtige Masse [] von der ganzen sinnlichen Macht des Rhythmus
und der Musik in Tnen und Bewegungen begleitet.49 [A sensuously powerful mass, [] accompanied by the full sensuous force of rhythm and music
in sound and movement]. Where rhythm features both as orderly measure
and as lively beat, it includes both smaller units (step, sound, accent) and the
overall sequence ofthe whole, what Herder called Folge der Gedanken, der
Bilder, der Worte, das Gehen und Kommen ihrer [poetrys] Vorstellungen
[sequence of ideas, images and words the advancing and receding of its
concepts]. It is this rhythmic totality Eurhythmie, both orderly and lively,
which Schiller so admires in the poet Friedrich von Matthissons work; and
his comments make clear that he envisages rhythm as much more than metrical regularity:
Nicht weniger versteht sich Hr. M. auf jene musikalischen Effekte, die durch eine
glckliche Wahl harmonierender Bilder und durch eine kunstreiche Eurhythmie in
Anordnung derselben zu bewirken sind [] Der metrische Wohllaut untersttzt und
erhht zwar allerdings diese Wirkung, aber er macht sie nicht allein aus. Es ist die
glckliche Zusammenstellung der Bilder, die liebliche Stetigkeit in ihrer Sukzession;
es ist die Modulation und die schne Haltung des Ganzen, wodurch es Ausdruck einer
bestimmten Empfindungsweise, also Seelengemlde wird.50
[Mr. M. is equally the master ofthose musical effects which may be achieved by a happy
choice ofharmonising images and by an artistic rhythmic coordination in their arrangement. Metrical harmony may indeed support and enhance such an effect, but it does
not achieve it alone. It is the happy composition of images, the graceful consistency in
their succession, the modulation and the beautiful attitude of the whole, which makes
it the expression of a particular mode of feeling, and thus a portrait of the soul].
48 NA 1, 201ff.
49 ber den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragdie, NA 10, 13.
50 ber Matthissons Gedichte, NA 22, 276f.
237
In Der Tanz,51 Schiller depicts rhythm as ordering and animating individual

emotional life, the life and movement of a whole group, and finally a whole
harmonious cosmos; here, as we have seen, he is very close to Herder.52 The
individual dancer moves to the rhythm of arsis and thesis: Hpft der gelehrige Fu auf des Takts melodischer Woge (7), [the willing foot skips to
the beats melodious swell] following the modulations of his own melodic
line and sequence of steps; Takt in Schillers usage seems to mean primarily
beat, accentual rhythm, which fits the arsis/thesis model being used here.
But Schiller presents a whole dancing group and several melodies, together
making harmony (Wohllaut):
Des Wohllauts mchtige Gottheit,
Die zum geselligen Tanz ordnet den
tobenden Sprung,
Die, der Nemesis gleich, an des Rhythmus
goldenem Zgel
Lenkt die brausende Lust [] (236)
[Harmonys mighty divinity,

Which tames wild leaping into a social dance,
Which like Nemesis governs unruly pleasure
With rhythms bridle of gold]
Here Schiller uses Rhythmus in a role which emphasises the restraint of regular measure, metre. But within the final harmonious universe, die Harmonieen
des Weltalls, this order is balanced by der begeisternde Takt, den alle Wesen
dir schlagen [the animating beat which throbs in all beings]; and this living
beat is balanced by the measure (both beat and duration) to be observed by
all human beings, das Ma (27ff.). Like Herder, Schiller uses Ma not as
a reductive mean but as a model of a life-sustaining continuity of rhythmic
contrasts, as opposed to the unsustainable single movement ofgrenzenloser
Ausbreitung or tobender Sprung.53
It is clear from these examples that the concept of rhythm current in
Goethes time was broad including not only beat and duration, but often
51
52
53
Reference here is to the second version, dated by NA 2 II B as 1800 (191); some earlier
anthologies set the revised version in 1795.
See FA Schiller, 846f., on his adaptation ofHerders presentation ofNemesis as prevention and discipline of extremes, rather than simply an avenging goddess.
A related idea, but developed for different purposes, is Schillers notion ofthe Wellen
linie or Schlangenlinie as a model for beauty both static and dynamic: see Sabine
Mainberger, Einfach (und) verwickelt. Zu Schillers Liniensthetik , DVJS 79 (2005),
196252.
238
Chapter Six
timbre, pitch and the overarching sequence of parts of a work. It also had
multiple functions. As a structural concept, rhythm was thought to set up and
maintain a living, moving, continuing order in time, at every level from the
cosmic to the individual. In art, especially music, poetry and dance, rhythm
served as a means to create a semblance of such animated sequence. In general, it seems to have served as a widespread analogy for animated order and
continuity, whether for Matthesons middle-class readership or for Schillers
more intellectual patrons.
Goethe: The rhythm of life and the dance of ideas

Some of Goethes most idiosyncratic concepts and usage are centred on
rhythm, yet his metaphorical references cover much the same wide range as
those ofhis contemporaries. He seems to have found in rhythm the sensuous
immediacy, animated order and universal applicability he saw as lacking in
mathematical concepts and techniques, and (quite apart from his extraordinary versatility in the rhythm and metre of poetic language) to have deployed
the idea constantly, although he rarely used the term Rhythmik as such. He
did read Matthesons Capellmeister, but only much later;54 they both worked
with a notion of diastole and systole already well-established, though they drew
on different sources for it. Zimmermann suggests that metaphors drawn from
physiological rhythms, especially diastole and systole, pulse and breathing,
had been circulating as models for order in the world and the individual since
the Renaissance at least, in Hermetic and other pre-scientific writings.55 He
shows that Goethe met them through the Frankfurt doctor J.F. Metz, who
54 Goethe initially confused Mattheson with another writer. He found Mattheson oldfashioned, but not irrelevant, and pitied him for the limited readership he was constrained
to deal with; cf. letters to Zelter, 4 January 1819 and 29 May 1819, AA 21, 318 & 333.
55 The original Hermetic writings (c.3 AD) were attributed to a Hermes Trismegistos, an
Egyptian of uncertain identity, and preserved as Corpus Hermeticum in a French edition
of 1945. Ideas from them became much entangled with later doctrines and philosophies;
but though officially discredited the Hermetic tradition persisted in alchemy, medicine
and the writings of mystics. (Zimmermann I, 98ff. and passim).
239
cured him after his Leipzig crisis with Hermetic medicaments; and that they
were well known in his family circle and also to Herder.56
Such physiological models of rhythm were deployed in Goethes work
and thought from about 1770 (i.e. about the time when he first met Herder
in Strassburg). In the fragmentary epistolary novel Arianne an Wetty, the
dynamics of life in general and love-life in particular are envisaged through
breathing:
Es ist mit der Liebe wie mit dem Leben, wie mit dem Athemholen. Freylich ziehe ich
die Lufft in mich; willst du das auch Eigenntz nennen? Aber ich hauche sie wieder
aus, und sage mir, wenn du in der Frhlinssonne sitzest, und fr Wonne dein Busen
strcker athmet, ist das Hauchen nicht eine grere Wonne als das Athemholen, den
das ist Mhe, iens ist Rhe; und wenn uns die Entzckung manchmal aus voller Brust
die Frlingslufft einziehen macht, so ist es doch nur um sie von ganzen Herzen wieder
ausgeben zu drfen.57
[Love is like life and like breathing. Of course I draw air into myself; can you call that
selfishness? But I breathe it out again; and admit, when you sit in the spring sunshine
and your breathing comes heavier with delight, that breathing out is greater pleasure
than breathing in, the one is trouble, the other ease. And when delight sometimes makes
us fill our lungs to bursting with the spring air, it is only so we can breathe it out again
with all our hearts].
Late in life, he uses the same analogy to underpin his studies of meteorology:
Ich denke mir die Erde mit ihrem Dunstkreise gleichnisweise als ein groes lebendiges
Wesen, das im ewigen Ein- und Ausatmen begriffen ist. Atmet die Erde ein, so zieht sie
den Dunstkreis an sich, so da er in die Nhe ihrer Oberflche herankommt und sich
verdichtet bis zu Wolken und Regen. Diesen Zustand nenne ich die Wasserbejahung:
dauerte er ber alle Ordnung fort, so wrde er die Erde ersufen. Dies aber gibt sie nicht
zu; sie atmet wieder aus und entlt die Wasserdnste nach oben, wo sie sich in den
ganzen Raum der hohen Atmosphre ausbreiten und sich [] verdnnen []. Diesen
Zustand nenne ich die Wasserverneinung.58
[I imagine the earth and its atmosphere by analogy with a great living creature in the
process of breathing in and out. When the earth breathes in, it draws the atmosphere
towards it so that the mist comes closer to the earths surface and condenses into clouds
56
57
58
Zimmermann I, 47ff., 172ff., 186ff., 191ff., 224ff., and passim; also vol.II, esp. sections
on Oetinger (353ff.) and Herder (II, 397404).
DjG, vol.II, 23ff. See also notes, 287; and AA 4, 263 and notes 1060ff.; Zimmermann I,
224.
Eckermann, Erster Teil, 11 April 1817, AA 24, 242f.
240
Chapter Six
and rain. This I call water affirmative; if it continued uncontrolled, it would drown the
earth. But the earth does not allow this; it breathes out again and releases the watery
mists upwards, where they fill the space of the upper atmosphere and thin out. This
I call water negative.]
and to describe the pattern which he sees looking back on his own life and
thought:
hatte ich doch in meinem ganzen Leben, dichtend und beobachtend, synthetisch und
dann wieder analytisch verfahren; die Systole und Diastole des menschlichen Geistes
war mir, wie ein zweites Atemholen, niemals getrennt, immer pulsierend.59
[After all I had throughout my life proceeded by writing and observing, synthesising and
then analysing; the systole and diastole ofthe human mind were for me never separated,
but always [worked together] like a pulse, another form of breathing].
Science, he considered, proceeds by a similar Wechselbewegung von Idee zu

Erfahrung [alternation between idea and experience]. In the Farbenlehre, he
uses these analogies to describe the eyes tendency to organise what it sees in
terms of contrasts, regardless ofobjective colours, linking this directly to the
rhythmic patterns which he considers die ewige Formel des Lebens:
So setzt das Einatmen schon das Ausatmen voraus und umgekehrt; so jede Systole ihre
Diastole. Es ist die ewige Formel des Lebens, die sich hier uert.60
[Breathing in presupposes breathing out, and vice versa; every systole presumes its diastole. It is the eternal formula of life which we see manifested here].
In these examples, he presents rhythm as a lively continuity maintaining existence because of what Scruton calls virtual causality: each unit of rhythm
engenders the next. This is also evident in his comments in the Tonlehre, on
musical rhythm and its close connection with physical movement:
Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie, AA 16, p.874. Cf. also comments to the same effect
in Tag- und Jahreshefte 1820, AA 11, p.924. This essay deals with his reaction to Kant,
and to the Romantic philosophers and others who taught for a time in Jena; Goethe
gratefully acknowledges the clarity he gained from them at this time.
60 Farbenlehre, Didaktischer Teil, AA16, 35.
59
241
Der ganze Krper wird angeregt zum Schritt (Marsch), zum Sprung (Tanz und
Gebrdung).
Alle organischen Bewegungen manifestieren sich durch Diastolen und Systolen.
Ein anders ist den Fu aufheben, ein anders ihn niedersetzen.
Hier erscheint Gewicht und Gegengewicht der Rhythmik.
Arsis, Aufschlag.
Thesis, Niederschlag.
Taktarten: Gleiche. Ungleiche.61
[The entire body is stimulated to step (march), to jump (dance and gesture).
All organic movements are manifested in systoles and diastoles.
It is one thing to raise a foot, another to set it down.
This shows the weight and counterweight of rhythm.
Arsis, upbeat.
Thesis, downbeat.
Types of rhythm: even and uneven].
Like Mattheson and Herder, he also includes pitch modulation in the concept of rhythm:
Der Dur-Ton entspringt durch Steigen, durch eine Beschleunigung nach oben, durch
eine Erweiterung aller Intervalle hinaufwrts. Der Moll-Ton entspringt durchs Fallen,
Beschleunigung hinabwrts, Erweiterung der Intervalle nach unten.62
[The major mode originates in rising, in acceleration upwards, in the expansion of all
intervals upwards. The minor mode originates in falling, in acceleration downwards,
in expansion of the intervals downwards].
It is now easier to understand Goethes obtuse insistence on viewing major and

minor modes as a rhythmic contrast: he had lived with this metaphor for too
long to concede Zelters factual explanation that the minor third was simply
derived by diminishing the major third. For in his view, major and minor form
a rhythmic pair of contrasts crucial to maintaining the animated continuity
ofthe music, and thence its link with life and dance: Ursprung der Arsis und
Thesis in der ganzen Bewegung auf diesem Wege, also auch der krperlichen
61 AA 16,.908.
62 Loc.cit., 910.
242
Chapter Six
Mitwirkung und der Rhythmik [Origin of arsis and thesis in all movement
by this means, and thus of physical collaboration and rhythm].63
In other comments on art, rhythm is envisaged in Herders sense oflarger
units, das Gehen und Kommen of contrasting sections or features, building
up a coordinated whole. Tischbeins series of painted Idyllen recalled:
Unschtzbaren Zeiten, wo die frohe Hora weichend uns der frheren bergibt, und
das Leben, einem Tanzreihen gleich, sich auf das anmutigste wiederholend dahinschwebt [] Alles, was uns bewegsam beglckte, Musik, Tanz, und was sonst noch aus
mannigfaltigen, lebendig-beweglichen Elementen sich entwickelt, im Kontraste sich
trennt, harmonisch wieder zusammenfliet, mag uns wohl beim Anblick dieses Bildes
in Erinnerung treten.64
[Precious times when one happy Hour hands us on to a yet happier one, and life like
a ring dance flies past repeating itself in most graceful measures Everything which
once moved us joyfully comes back to mind as we regard this picture: music, dance,
and everything else which grows from rich and lively elements, divides into contrasts,
flows together again in harmony.]
A similar sustained analogy with a dance of ideas underpins his appreciation

of the structure of Calderns drama Die Tchter der Luft:
Die Haupthandlung geht ihren groen poetischen Gang, die Zwischenszenen,
welche menuettartig in zierlichen Figuren sich bewegen, sind rhetorisch, dialektisch,
sophistisch.65
[The main action proceeds on its great poetic course, the intermediate scenes, which
move in dainty figures like minuets, are rhetorical, dialectic, sophistic.]
And Goethe used the same analogy to sustain his own (rare) attempt at musical composition:
Tonlehre, AA 16, 909f. See also draft letters to Zelter, 22 June 1808 (incl. Beilage) (FA
6 (33), 32530), and to Chr.H. Schlosser, 5 May 1815, incl. Beilage (FA 7 (34), 43444,
with various dates); also Canisius, 16786, esp.17075, and 188205. As Goethe explains
in the Tonlehre, the chord of C major from middle C upwards becomes, if the same
intervals are retained, the chord ofF minor downwards from middle C; see AA 16, 909,
and Andreas Speiser, editors notes, 984.
64 No. XIV, AA 13, 903f.
65 In Kunst und Alterthum III (1822), AA 14, 845. Cf. S.L. Hardy, Goethe, Caldern und
die romantische Theorie des Dramas, Heidelberg: Winter, 1965.
63
243
Zu dem In te Domine speravi htte ich noch ein langes Mrchen zu erzhlen, wie ich mir
[] diese Worte in meiner bhmischen Einsamkeit rhythmisch klanglos, aber doch vierpersnlich, um nicht vierstimmig zu sagen, komponiert und keinen angelegentlichern Wunsch
gehabt, als diese schnen Worte durch dich musikalisch kommentiert zu hren.66
[I could tell you a long tale about the In te Domine speravi I set these words in my
Bohemian exile, in rhythm without music, for four people if not for four voices. It is my
most urgent wish to hear your musical commentary on these beautiful words].
More tryingly for his contemporaries, Goethe tended in later life to

impose his rhythmic model rigorously on others when he saw fit, with mixed
results. In his Regeln fr Schauspieler, it served partly as an aid to speaking verse,
and partly to explain how an actor should make his performance harmonious, i.e. convincingly lively but also showing the order and pattern in human
behaviour.67 Eduard Genast, a young actor with the Weimar troupe, recorded
Goethes visits to rehearsals to determine the pace at which lines were spoken
and to coordinate the Gehen und Stehen of the actors.68 Eduards father
Anton recalled that at rehearsals for Calderns Der standhafte Prinz, Goethe
standardised the pauses signified by each punctuation mark, so all actors
kept to the same rhythm in their declamation. The elder Genast admired the
result: welcher Reiz, welch poetischer Schwung trat endlich in der Rhetorik
hervor! Musik war sie zu nennen;69 although the endlich does suggest that
it was hard work at times. However, the technique paid offfor difficult verse
such as Schillers Die Braut von Messina: Pius Alexander Wolff, like Genast a
stalwart ofthe Weimar troupe, commented that Goethes production methods were ganz die eines Kapellmeisters (provoking an urban myth among
later Germanists that Goethe had used a baton to conduct rehearsals).70 In
66 Letter to Zelter, 23 January 1814, FA 7 (34), 318.
67 See e.g. 35f. AA 14, 81. Cf. Laertes in the Lehrjahre (1795/6), who prefers to act in
opera rather than straight drama, since die Musik die Bewegungen des Krpers leitet,
ihnen Leben gibt, und ihnen zugleich das Ma vorschreibt (LJ II,11, AA 7, 140).
68 E. Genast, Aus dem Tagebuch eines alten Schauspielers, Leipzig 1862, 78, 87. The book
also includes some memoirs of his father, Anton.
69 [What charm and poetic tempo finally emerged in the rhetoric! It was sheer music];
Anton Genast, December 1810, in Goethes Gesprche, AA 22, 614.
70 H.G. Bhme (ed.), Die Weilburger Goethe-Funde Bltter aus dem Nachla Pius
Alexander Wolffs, Emsdetten 1950, pp.81ff., esp.82. See also esp. L. Sharpe, A National
Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland and the German Stage, 2059, 260f. The urban myth was still
being perpetuated in 1943, in Sechs Studienabende der Ortsgruppe Leipzig der Goethe
244
Chapter Six
such instances, there was at least a cogent practical reason for this stringent
method. In others, however, rhythmic order based on patterned contrasts
seems to have become an obsession. When the unfortunate Eduard Genast
(who like most actors in Weimar doubled as singer) produced an inadequately
nuanced performance of Jgers Abendlied, he was sharply put right about
the sequence of contrasting stanzas, and particularly about the rhythm: Da
ramm! Da ramm! Da ramm.71
Rhythm as medium, theme and sequence for

depiction of a way of living
As one might expect from all this, Goethes deployment of metaphor from the
domain of rhythm in his fictional work is widespread and complex. For present
purposes, it presents particular difficulties, because such metaphor is almost
always closely enmeshed with rhythm and metre used as a formal resource
(especially in poetic texts), as well as rhythm in Herders and Schillers sense
of overall relation between contrasting parts of the whole. In short, rhythm
functions as an extremely powerful conceptual metaphor; which influences
the whole work: the form, structure and choice of media/um (whether song/
dance/mimetic episodes in conjunction with language, or language alone); the
71
gesellschaft, in a paper by E. Cra; but finally dismissed as albern by W. Flemming,

Goethe und das Theater seiner Zeit, Stuttgart 1968, 156.
Eduard Genast, in Goethes Gesprche. January 1815, AA 22, 783. Cf. also Goethes request
to the composer Tomaschek to sing poems of Goethes which T. had set to music, on
the grounds that a composer can best bring a song to life because he understands the
accentual rhythm: die jedesmalige, an gehriger Stelle angebrachte Betonung (W.J.
Tomaschek, in Goethes Gesprche, 6 August 1822, AA 23, 220). The old compilation
by Wilhelm Bode, Goethes Schauspieler und Musiker. Erinnerungen von Eberwein und
Lobe. Mit Ergnzungen von Dr. Wilhelm Bode, Berlin 1912, gives a comprehensive survey
ofthose who worked with Goethe, sometimes thanklessly. Amalie Wolff (wife ofP.A.)
struggling with a performance of Goethes Proserpina, complained that Goethe gave
deliberately vague instructions in order to force actors to follow his thought for themselves which she thought might only be done at the cost of andauerndes Studium bei
Tag und Nacht [studying all day and all night] (ibid., 96).
245
deployment of rhythm metaphor within its language; and sometimes also the
thematisation of rhythm in its language. Where, for instance, Goethe wishes
to set up an image of a particular pattern ofliving, rhythm as a formal resource
functions as the basis on which, in language, music, speech and dance, or in
any combination ofthem, a dynamic sequence can be structured which suggests analogous ways of moving, thinking and feeling. This can be done not
only within each component of a work, but by structuring the whole work as
a series of contrasts (Cone), or Folge (Herder). Much ofFaust functions in
this way. In other work, metaphorical reference linking rhythm and life may
be confined within language, but extended into descriptions ofmulti-media
scenarios (as e.g. in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and the Wanderjahre). In yet
other instances (e.g. the poem Der Musensohn) rhythm is thematised in the
text and underpinned by a striking metrical and rhythmic pattern.
Fortunately, though difficult to conceptualise, this multiple concept
of rhythm does not usually produce inaccessible work. Concerto dramatico
(1773), for example, was a joke for Herder and the Darmstadt circle; each episode has a heading suggesting a musical form, style and rhythm, even a time
signature (e.g. Choral, Capriccio con Variationi, Allegro con spirito).72 The
texts evoke a suitable rhythm, movements, feelings and occasional thoughts,
mostly irreverent; and also figures whose character would fit such movements, such as the
Fille
Gentille
Bien soigne par Mama
of the Air, or the mixed company (in every sense) dancing the Bacchanal
of the Presto fugato, where the text appropriately disintegrates into syllables
imitating the musical rhythm and the dancers movements:
Mit! Mit!
Gesprungen! Gesungen!
Alten und Jungen!
Mit! Duru! Mit!,
72 AA 4, 15560.; see also Beutlers commentary, 1022ff.
246
Chapter Six
and ending with the immortal lines: Dam dim di di du/ Huhu! Huhu!. For
the Musensohn (1774), rhythm is the basis ofhis animated movement as well
as for his song and for the others he sets dancing; he has both Takt (beat)
and Ma (measure), vitality, order and tempo combined in a progression
which epitomises his life as poet:
So gehts von Ort zu Ort!
Und nach dem Takte reget,
Und nach dem Ma beweget
Sich alles an mir fort.73
[Goes so from place to place,

And everything within me
Moves onwards to this measure
And throbs to this same beat]
This kind of thematised allusion to figures, movements and sounds in a text

which also matches the rhythmic patterns of its subject can be found at intervals throughout Goethes work. In Pandora (18078), for instance, the smiths
song is introduced as taktbewegt/ Ein krftger Hmmerchortanz, laut erschallend, rasch [moving in rhythm, a vigorous hammer dance chorus promptly
rings out]; the song itself has two strong beats to the measure, matching the
rise and fall of hammers on the anvil. The song of the herdsmen then keeps
the same metre, but varies the number of unstressed syllables per line, so
that a different rhythm emerges in support of different attitudes expressed
in the text.74 Not all such poems are regular Wanderers Sturmlied follows
an arsis/thesis pattern interspersed with meandering and pauses, to take in
the view and bring to mind a whole range of associations, followed by the
wanderers reactions.75
Conversely, a particular way of proceeding through life can suggest an
analogous movement, song or dance. We have seen in the Wahlverwandtschaften
how Charlotte and the Hauptmann play better duets because they have both
order and feeling in their lives; their joint enterprises are also said to show a
rhythmic coordination analogous to dance: Es ist mit den Geschften wie
73 AA 1, 22.
74 AA 6, 412, 414f.
75 Amongst many other things, it shows an interaction between world, observer and
thought such as Goethe later discerned in scientific observation. Cf. Zimmermann,
both vols, passim.; and E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, Wanderers Sturmlied. A
Study in Poetic Vagrancy, in Goethe, Poet and Thinker, 35ff., esp.43 on the alternation
and interaction between physical and symbolic levels.
247
mit dem Tanze; Personen, die gleichen Schritt halten, mssen sich unentbehrlich werden.76 [Practical affairs are like dancing: those who keep in step
together inevitably become essential to each other]. Similarly, rhythm is the
basis on which the Wandergesellschaft coordinate their music-making, their
operations, and their cohesion as a society. When the gigantic Christoph is
reproached with dragging back the tempo to his own slower pace, he replies
that this is the rhythm of his walking, which must be maintained if he is to
play his allotted part:
Aus meinem Schritt wollt ihr mich bringen, der gemigt und sicher sein mu, wenn
ich mit meiner Brde bergaufbergab schreite und doch zuletzt zur bestimmten Stunde
eintreffen und euch befriedigen soll.77
[Youre trying to put me off my stride, but it has to be measured and sure ifIm to march
over hill and dale and still arrive at the appointed time to your satisfaction].
Arsis and thesis have become both a rhythm and a way of life. And though
Wilhelm cannot take part in the singende Bewegung through which the
society members manifest their view oflife, it is from his rhythmic model that
the company first create the song which they develop with Lenardo during
the following days:78
Mir ist zwar von der Natur, versetzte Wilhelm, eine glckliche Stimme versagt, aber
innerlich scheint mir oft ein geheimer Genius etwas Rhythmisches vorzuflstern, so
da ich mich beim Wandern jedesmal im Takt bewege und zugleich leise Tne zu vernehmen glaube, wodurch denn irgendein Lied begleitet wird, das sich mir auf eine oder
die andere Weise gefllig vergegenwrtigt.
Erinnert ihr euch eines solchen, so schreibt es uns auf, sagten jene []
Nach kurzem Bedenken ertnte sogleich ein freudiger, dem Wanderschritt angemessener Zweigesang, der, bei Wiederholung und Verschrnkung immer fortschreitend,
den Hrenden mit hinri; er war im Zweifel, ob dies seine eigen Melodie, sein frheres Thema, oder ob sie jetzt erst so angepat sei da keine andere Bewegung denkbar
wre.79
76
77
78
79
WV I,8, AA 9, 68f., and I,6, AA 9, 59.

Wanderjahre III, 1, AA 8, 337.
Cf. Chapter Two above.
WJ III,1, AA 8, 336.
248
Chapter Six
[I cannot say, replied Wilhelm, that Nature has given me a good voice; but in my mind
some secret spirit often seems to whisper a rhythm, so that as I walk I always move to
this beat and at the same time think I hear faint sounds, which then accompany whatever song comes to mind for one reason or another.
If you can remember one of them, write it down for us, they answered
After thinking for a while, two of them raised a cheerful song in the rhythm of their
walking, which enchanted the listener as the melodies repeated and entwined; he could
not tell whether this was his own tune, the theme he had just sung, or whether it had
been so well adapted that no other rhythm and tune seemed possible].
This last episode, however, shows some ofthe problems with Goethes deployment of rhythm metaphor in narrative prose. At times, such metaphor can
bring an episode into instant multi-media life in the readers imagination,
evoking beat, measure, gesture, movement, vocal and tonal sound, any or
all of these (as in descriptions of Mignons songs, for instance). But it can
also reveal that Goethe understood musical sound much more fully than he
understood musical structure, most particularly when he maps musical repetition on to language and action. Although repetition is a structural feature
in music and poetry, evoking the sense of cumulatively added value to which
Barenboim draws attention, the description of repetition in a narrative text
does not necessarily work well.80 Unless readers are able to connect it with
canon or a similar form (which may be implied by Verschrnkung), it is
more likely to suggest tedious reiteration (especially since the performance
is repeated several times), and thus moves the scene close to parody. This is
unfortunate, because Wilhelm has by now advanced well beyond the selfpreoccupied sensitive soul who vibrated to every twang of the Harpers
instrument. He is almost ready to take his place in the group, to become part
of a coordinated whole (albeit a provisional and imperfect one). As a network
of metaphorical references and associations, the episode hangs together. But
the irony which leavens other heavily symbolic sections (e.g. the episodes
with Makarie) is missing here. As a depiction of an individual learning to
join a group, or even as a depiction of the dynamics of a group, the narrative
is thin; there are times when the Society appears to burst into marching and
song as a default response to every crisis.
80 Cf. the repetition of both description and text of the boys song at the end of Novelle.
249
Herders schne Folge as structural principle

in Wanderjahre and Faust
The Jungdeutschland critic Theodor Mundt complained bitterly (though understandably) that the Wanderjahre had inadequate plot and characters to sustain
its symbolism.81 This has long since been countered by critical perception that
the novel has instead a rhythmic sequence of contrasting figures, scenarios and
issues, which cumulatively build up into a complex statement on life and ways
of going about it.82 This perception has not as far as I know been connected
in critical studies with Herders idea of rhythm as schne Folge, or with the
dance of ideas, the Gehen und Kommen ihrer Vorstellungen. But when we
do make the connection, it re-focusses our view of the Wanderjahre as a late
work. For it is not this idea of structure, but Goethes way of implementing it,
which is different. Like Herder in the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (see above), he has played down the element of beat and physical immediacy in favour ofthe element of measure (Herders Ma); and the
sense of long perspective, overall sequence is consequently stronger. It is this
shift of emphasis which marks the Wanderjahre as a work of old age; and not
merely of old age, but arguably for old age. Like the Saal der Vergangenheit, this
sequence of scenarios has a cumulative totality which is said to be healthier
for the old to contemplate than for the young still en route. The interpolated
songs and musical episodes then appear less as nodal points oflyrical intensity
(which they often are in the Lehrjahre) than as contrasts oftimbre and metre,
81
82
Rezension ber die Wanderjahre (1830), in Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker, Teil I, ed.
Karl Robert Mandelkow, Mnchen: Beck, 1975, 452ff., esp.456ff.
Hans Reiss, Goethes Novels, London: Macmillan, 1969, considers that analogy is the
structural principle of the novel, which is built up in Parallelgeschichten (233); Eric
Blackall, Goethe and the Novel, Cornell U.P. 1976, points out that Goethe admired
Diderots Neveu de Rameau for its technique of welding many disparate elements together
(89), and suggests that both WJ and the Lehrjahre are constructed through oppositions, making a dialectical pattern ofthemes and counterthemes (116, 125, 236). Martin
Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, Princeton University Press,
1978, points out that in the Bildungsroman as a genre the linearity of plot gives way to
symbolically patterned recurrences (30), and that in the LJ characters fade and reappear
as part of this structural pattern, rather than as quasi-realistic figures in a plot (59).
250
Chapter Six
which enliven and sustain the progression of the narrative. Rhythm here is a
structural principle, as well as a conceptual metaphor.
In Faust, rhythm again serves as central conceptual metaphor. It is manifested as a structural principle, formal resource and verbal, visual or musical
metaphor; and again repetition and metre are included in the domain of
rhythm on which Goethe draws. It is beyond the scope of this study to deal
with all these aspects, and fortunately unnecessary to do so. Rhythm as structural principle, and rhythm and metre as important formal resources closely
integrated with the material, have long since been recognised and appreciated.
Two very early studies draw attention to the integral importance of rhythm
in the form of Faust II, from almost opposite angles.83 The first, by Helene
Herrmann, shows how the work builds up a sequence of different tonal qualities through language and metre, music and song, some of which recur. Groups
of figures representing different worlds, the repeats and variations of figures
from Part I, those who appear newly in Part II, are also shown to build up a
similar sequence. She suggests that this lyrische Gesetzlichkeit [lyrical convention] (i.e. contrasts of reflection and stasis with rapid action and development) is as important as dramatic form in the structure of the whole work;
and that the cumulative effect of these contrasts and recurrences of figures,
language, verse-forms and media is to depict human life both vividly and in
a diachronic perspective: die mitschwingende Gegenwart all dieser schon
einmal wirklich gewesenen Erlebnismglichkeiten [the accompanying presence of all these possible experiences which were once real] (110). The second
study, by Margarethe Bressem, Der metrische Aufbau des Faust II und seine
innere Notwendigkeit, is a detailed exploration ofthe metrics and verse-forms
ofFaust II. She too points to the Kontrastwirkungen which set figures, tone
83
Helene Herrmann,Faust der Tragdie Zweiter Teil: Studien zur inneren Form des Werkes,
Zeitschrift fr sthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft XII, 191617, 86137, 16178,
31651. She does not use Herders model of rhythm das Gehen und Kommen of ideas
in overall structure; but tries, frequently with the aid of musical analogy and figurative language, to find critical language to characterise this kind of form. [See Helene
Herrmann on wikipedia; she was one ofthe earliest women doctoral graduates in Berlin,
and died in Auschwitz]. Bressem, Germanische Studien 105 (Berlin: Ebering, 1931, repr.
Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1967) is able to list a large number of academic studies on metrics from the previous 3040 years (though not including Herrmann). She lists and
examines the verse-forms and metres and their variants (52151), and also shows how
Goethe varies the rhythm of language within these metres to fit the movements and
tone of particular scenes (e.g. Lustgarten and Finstere Galerie, 1619).
251
and language ofthe scenes in contrast to each other and build up a rhythmic
whole. In the later twentieth century, Paul Requadt (1972) presents the principle of diastole and systole as formative both for Goethes play and for the
progression of Faust and Gretchen through it (60/61); and pays particular
tribute to Anglo-American Germanists of the 1950s and 60s who pursued
these aspects ofGoethes work before him.84 More recently, in the Companion
to Goethes Faust, Parts I and II (2001), attention is again drawn to the sequence
of contrasts built up by the metric variety ofFaust (Robertson, Luke) and to
the way in which recurrent features build up both a vivid immediacy and a
critical, diachronic perspective (Schler, Stephenson).85 In the Cambridge
Companion to Goethe (2002), Jane K. Brown speaks of the dialectic built
up by Goethes presentation of contrasting cultures, as well as the throbbing
pulse of human life which marks the time-scale of the play.86 As structural
principle and formal resource in Faust, rhythm has been very well explored.
In addition, Brown points out an oddity of Goethes presentation of
figures and movements: the fact that the text describes all the stage action
as it occurs (90). She deduces from this that Goethe wrote Faust as an epic
rather than a drama intended for performance. But as we have seen, e.g. in
Musensohn and Pandora, this is characteristic of other work too, both early
and late. There is also the consideration that description was a well-established feature ofClassical tragedy, where violent action was suggested offstage
and the violence transferred to the language.87 The problems which arise
84 Requadt, Goethes Faust I, Mnchen: Fink, 1972 (14ff., 248f.). See esp. Barker Fairley,
Goethes Faust: Six Essays, Oxford: Clarendon, 1953, and essays by L.A. Willoughby,
Goethes Faust. A Morphological Approach, and Unity and Continuity in Goethe,
collected in Goethe: Poet and Thinker, E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, London:
Arnold, 1963, e.g. 104, 221. Stuart Atkins, Goethes Faust: A Literary Analysis, Harvard
U.P., 1958, pays close attention to verse-forms and metres, and to recurrent elements;
but usually considers interrelated scenes in terms ofthe worlds mirrored, the mirrored
images, and the holder of the mirror (13), not in terms of rhythm.
85 Paul Bishop (ed.), Camden House 2001; see esp. Ritchie Robertson, Literary Techniques
and Aesthetic Texture in Faust, 125; Franziska Schler, Progress and Restorative
Utoipia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 16990; R.H. Stephenson, The
Diachronic Solidity of Goethes Faust, 24367.
86 Lesley Sharpe (ed.), Cambridge U.P., 2002: Brown, Faust, 84100, esp.869.
87 Cf. e.g. the tragedies ofCorneille and Racine, as well as those by Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides. Elsewhere, Goethe draws dramatic advantage from setting up similar conventions, then introducing an action which breaks them (cf. esp. Torquato Tasso, Iphigenie
auf Tauris).
252
Chapter Six
with performance of Faust, considerable though they are,88 seem rather to

stem from Goethes adoption of Herders concept of musikalische Poesie,
i.e. language suggesting multi-media depiction coordinated by rhythm, and
rhythmic sequence as a structural principle. Though more numerous because
of the length of the work, these problems are not so different in kind from
those presented by (for example) the ending of Egmont, the dramatic stasis
of Tasso, or the thinness of narrative action which Mundt complained of in
the Wanderjahre: these are all texts which evoke multi-media presentation
in contexts where it might interfere with conventional dramatic or narrative
communication and structure.
Rhythm and repetition as metaphors for ways of living: Faust

All of which leaves us with rhythm as metaphor: conceptual metaphor within
the language, that is, which may also be realised concurrently in music and
mime/dance. In the studies cited above, rhythm (including metre and repetition) has been recognised as including visual metaphor in what Goethe called
krperliche Mitwirkung (Tonlehre): gait, gesture, movement and dance;
and it is also sometimes thematised in this connection in the language. As
Requadt and others have noted, it was Goethes habit to represent a characters inner nature in his/her outer movements;89 and this type of metaphor is
endemic in Faust. Many figures reveal themselves in their ways and rhythms
ofgoing, often also generating a corresponding song and/or dance. Some of
this, whether realistic or more abstractly symbolic, seems to function simply
as theatrical spectacle or local colour, e.g. the song of the Soldiers as they
ziehen davon (884ff.), the Walpurgisnacht, or the Mummenschanz, where first
88 See comments by Paul Bishop in his Introduction to the Companion (2001), xxiiff. and
xxxvff.,; also esp. the contribution by R.D. Macdonald (2839) on Faust: the Play in
Production. An earlier and still instructive account can be found in Jocelyn Powells
articles, The Incarnation of Imagery in Faust Part I, PEGS NS XL (196970), 95ff.,
and Reflections on Staging Faust Part II, PEGS NS XLVIII (197778), 52ff.
89 Op.cit. 283; cf. esp. his comments on Fausts irren, 45ff., 282ff.
253
conventional gallantry (5088ff., SD 5199ff.), then a cruder eroticism cultivated

by Mephisto (55178ff., 5345ff., 5815ff., 5767ff.) shows the Courts nature in
the songs, dances and movements of its play. But usually such episodes are
closely connected with the crucial issue ofthe work, the conflicting judgments
of Man by Mephisto and the Lord. If irren characterises Fausts progress
through life, the witches and warlocks of the Walpurgisnacht Zaubergesang
have their own ways of going to the Devil:
Hexenmeister. Halbes Chor.
Wir schleichen wie die Schneck im Haus,
Die Weiber alle sind voraus.
Denn geht es zu des Bsen Haus,
Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.
Andre Hlfte.
Wir nehmen das nicht so genau.
Mit tausend Schritten machts die Frau;
Doch, wie sie sich auch eilen kann,
Mit einem Sprunge machts der Mann.
(3978ff.).
(Warlocks: Half-chorus]
[ Just like the snail beneath its shell
We creep along while women lead
For when were all en route to Hell
Women are always well ahead.
[Other half ]
We dont particularly care.
Women take tiny steps, and while
They scurry forwards at a run
With one big bound the men are there].
Paris and Helena represent the Greek ideal of beauty conjured up by the
European mind (and Mephisto); and the perfection oftheir rhythmic movements is said to engender music:
So wie sie wandeln, machen sie Musik.
Aus luftgen Tnen quillt ein Weinichtwie,
Indem sie ziehn, wird alles Melodie []
Das Dunstige senkt sich; aus dem leichten
Flor
Ein schner Jngling tritt im Takt hervor.
(644450).
In all their movements they are making music.

From airy tones it springs, I know not how
And as they walk, all becomes melody
The veil of mist falls, and with rhythmic pace
A handsome youth comes forward
Here the potential problem ofaction described in the text becomes an asset:
these are mute figures of a vision, but the ironic discrepancy between the
courtiers banal commentary and the awe expressed by the Astrologer and
Faust shows (amongst other things) that Mephisto has miscalculated both
the value of beauty and Fausts response to it.
The conceptual metaphor of rhythm as basis ofboth life and art underpins an entire episode around the figure of Euphorion. Son of Faust and
254
Chapter Six
Helena and literally the embodiment of poetry (9863), his nature and function are conveyed almost entirely through musikalische Poesie, text with all
the attendant arts of gesture, music, dance and song:
Und so regt er sich gebrdend, sich als Knabe schon verkndend
Knftigen Meister alles Schnen, dem die ewigen Melodien
Durch die Glieder sich bewegen. (9620ff.)
[And again he moves and gestures, but a child yet showing promise
As a future lord of all things beautiful, in whom eternal
Melodies move through his limbs]
When he actually appears, his metre and the rhythms ofhis movements briefly
match those of his parents:
Seht ihr mich im Takte springen,
Hpft euch elterlich das Herz
[When you see me leap in rhythm

You throb with parental pride](9697f.).
And as he moves away to lead the Chorus, he is at first orderly under their
eye:
Ist nun die Melodie,
Ist die Bewegung recht? (9747f.)
[Well, is the melody

Are all the movements right?]
but soon moves into wilder Dionysian dances. Bressem shows how precisely
the metres of the scene match the increasing irregularity of his behaviour
and movements; and how after he has vanished the watching Chorus still
sing partly in his leaping rhythms, although they have ceased to move with
him.90 Herrmann too points out the reichste Flle des Ausdrucks fr alles, was
Bewegung heit [rich abundance of expression for every kind of movement]
as the Chorus disperse to the natural elements, and the scene comes to its
Bacchanal finale.91 Less tightly knit, but similarly structured, are the sung celebrations ofthe Meeresfest with its groups in kreisenden Schwunges Bewegung
and its Chorus der smtlichen Kreise (8427, 8443) as Homunculus enters
90 Op.cit., 38f.
91 Op.cit., 348.
255
the evolutionary process of natural life in water.92 However, it is important

to note that Faust II does not end with an all-singing, all-dancing finale. The
youngest of the angels are said to sing heilige Gefhle (11929), the first
utterances beyond the highest peaks on earth; but the following groups are
moving towards stages of ethereal regions which finally reach beyond media,
sound and vision altogether; the last we hear of them is the Chorus Mysticus
a title which Goethe amended from Chorus in Excelsis, thus removing
the implication of ultimate grand finale.93 As in the Saal der Vergangenheit,
we are not given a depiction of what is beyond, but instead, literally and
figuratively, an indication of the way things are going. And as in Wilhelm
Meister, the final scene involves the incorporation ofthese various rhythmic
progressions into a much modified version of harmony, which will need to
be considered again later.
This persistent deployment of gestural and physical metaphor of rhythm
is matched by its extensive use in the language of Faust; again rhythm functions as underlying conceptual metaphor, manifest sometimes as theme in
the language, sometimes as a feature of the language, and sometimes with
the addition of music (real or evoked). This being a highly self-reflective
work, rhythm is introduced very early as the basis on which the artist sets up
an animated pattern analogous to that ofliving things. It is also presented as
the basis on which human life can be perceived as an animated and orderly
continuity, and potentially an element in the coordinated whole of the harmonious cosmos. The negative counterpart to this in Faust is repetition; where
repetition is perceived not as value-added accumulation, recurrence, but as
endless and pointless reiteration and re-enaction.
These relations are first presented in the second and third prologues,
beginning with the Vorspiel auf dem Theater:
92 Cf. especially Paul Friedlnder, Rhythmen und Landschaften im Zweiten Teil des Faust,
Weimar: H. Bhlau Nachf. 1953, 82, on the connotations of circular movement in
Goethes work. See also in general Katharina Mommsen, Natur- und Fabelreich in Faust
II, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968. The latter offers tremendous detail and is best used as a
reference work.
93 See the photograph of Goethes manuscript, in B. Gajek and F. Gtting (eds), Goethes
Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildern, Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1966, plate 517 (364); and
title page of Part Four below.
256
Wenn die Natur des Fadens ewge Lnge,
Gleichgltig drehend, auf die Spindel
zwingt
Wenn aller Wesen unharmonsche Menge
Verdrielich durcheinander klingt,
Wer teilt die flieend immer gleiche Reihe
Belebend ab, da sie sich rhythmisch regt?
Wer ruft das Einzelne zur allgemeinen
Weihe,
Wo es in herrlichen Akkorden schlgt?
(142ff.).
Chapter Six
[When Nature draws the long unending
thread
Upon her turning spindle with indifference,
When all the disharmonious crew of creatures
Raises its great confused cacophony,
Who allocates this long monotonous flow
Its beating measure, brings it thus to life?
Who summons forth each isolated thing
To where it sounds in great communal chords?]
Here it is said to be Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbart (157) [the

power ofhuman beings, manifest in the poet], which introduces rhythmic and
metric contrasts into the unrhythmic succession and the unrelated coexistence
ofliving things thus making life both animated and orderly. The result is a
poetic representation ofthe harmonious cosmos. What was a disharmonious
crew of all creatures becomes a harmony with both the pulse and the sequence
of living, in which each individual plays its part in the whole.94
From the Prolog im Himmel onwards, these opposing views of human
life are represented in metaphors of rhythm and recurrence on the one hand,
versus monotonous, pointless repetition on the other, and they are championed by the Lord and Mephisto respectively. The underlying conceptual
metaphor may appear in the text with or without reinforcement in other
media. The archangels Gabriel and Michael describe the sequence of rhythmic
contrasts which constitute the life of the Lords Creation: Paradieseshelle
and Nacht (253f.), the surge and regression of the sea (255f.), raging storms
and das sanfte Wandeln deines Tags (266), the alternation of rock and sea as
the earth ceaselessly turns (257f.). And Faust himself is sustained by a similar
pattern of contrasts:
94 The Poets musical imagery is discussed in detail by Requadt (36f.) and by W. Ro,
Vorspiel auf dem Theater und Prolog im Himmel: Eine Anleitung zum genauen Lesen,
Wirkendes Wort 12 (1962), 237ff. But both consider rhythm as connected with harmonious relations between one and many. This brings out the orderly aspects of rhythm,
but omits beat and movement; they tend to explain the animated aspects of rhythm
as Spannungen, tensions within harmony, which creates difficulties when describing a
rhythmic continuity.
257
Vom Himmel fordert er die schnsten

Sterne,
Und von der Erde jede hchste Lust,
He claims from Heaven its most illustrious

stars,
And from the Earth its most intensive
pleasures,
Und alle Nh und alle Ferne
Of all thats near and all thats far away
Befriedigt nicht die tiefbewegte Brust. Nothing can sate the turmoil of his nature.
(304ff.).
All these movements are repeated nach alter Weise, they continue wie am
ersten Tag (243, 250, 270). But they do not merely follow each other: each
engenders the next, thus creating and sustaining the continuity ofthe worlds
life and of Fausts.
It is this rhythm, and its vital connection with continuity oflife and with
a harmonious cosmos, which Mephisto negates, contradicting both the Lords
and the Poets view oflife. For him, the course ofthe world and ofhuman life
is based not on rhythm, with its connotations of constructive and animated
pattern, but on mere repetition.95 Again, this powerful counter-metaphor
to the rhythm of the Lords universe may sometimes be reinforced in other
media. For Mephisto creation is merely so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag
(282) [as strange as it was on the first day]; Mans progression is agitated hopping rather than rhythmic movement, and the result is not cosmic harmony
but the same old song, a tedious repeated monotony:
Er scheint mir []
Wie eine der langbeinigen Zikaden,
Der immer fliegt und fliegend springt
Und gleich im Gras ihr altes Liedchen
singt
[To me he seems
More like one ofthose long-legged cricket things,
Who always leaps and jumps and flies and ends
Back in the grass with its old song as usual].
(287ff.)
When Faust is disillusioned and temporarily sees life as pointless monotony, the metaphor of dreary tune recurs with the vision of a disharmonious
world:
95
Ro brings this opposition out more strongly than most cf. op.cit., 241.
258
Chapter Six
Was kann die Welt mir wohl gewhren?

Entbehren sollst du! Sollst entbehren!
Das ist der ewige Gesang,
Der jedem an die Ohren klingt,
Den, unser ganzes Leben lang
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt. (1548ff.)
What has the world in store for me?

Privation, deprivation! Loss!
That is the never ending song
That rings in every mortals ears
That every day in every way
Each hour croaks hoarsely all life long.
Requadt points out that Gretchens song Meine Ruh ist hin is another such
episode, with the repetitive refrain, the spinning wheels ceaseless turning,
and her inability to appreciate life in Fausts absence: die ganze Welt/Ist mir
vergllt (3380f.). The metaphor recurs in the schlechte Litanei [wretched
litany] ofSorge (Care), when she assails the aged Faust denuded ofhis magic,
and tries to blot out perception ofthe normal lively rhythms ofthe universe
in a diatribe where rhythm conforms completely to metre:
Wen ich einmal mir besitze
Dem ist alle Welt nichts ntze;
Ewiges Dstre steigt herunter,
Sonne geht nicht auf noch unter
Whom I have once taken over

Nothing in the whole world pleases,
Everlasting gloom enfolds them,
Suns light neither sets nor rises.
(11453ff.)
Appropriately, such life-negating dreary music and movement are usually

superintended by Mephisto himself. His initial idea ofMan as Zikade, pointlessly busy insect, recurs in songs where Mephisto likens Man to other creatures which jump about and are destructive in a small way (the Rattenlied and
Flohlied ofAuerbachs Keller), and also in the Chor der Insekten who dance and
sing to welcome him back to the Hochgewlbtes Enges Gothisches Zimmer, and
are despatched to nibble away at the mouldering apparatus from which Faust
had once hoped to learn so much (6592ff.). Where Mephisto does present the
world as rhythmic and animated, he is creating a deliberate deception via an
illusion of sensuous movement as for instance in the Zauberspiel of the
Geister auf dem Gange (1446ff.), or the spectacle ofParis and Helena, where
he bids the Astrologer simulate the rhythms of the harmonious cosmos:
Du kennst den Takt, in dem die Sterne gehen,
Und wirst mein Flstern meisterlich verstehen. (6401f.).
[You know the rhythm in which the stars all move,
And masterly will understand my prompting.]
259
The violence of war, slaughter and plunder is noted as endlessly repeated

from pre-historic times to the present and beyond. Erichtho laments: Wie
oft schon wiederholt sichs! wird sich immerfort/Ins Ewige wiederholen!
(7012f.). And when Faust has displaced Philemon and Baucis as part of his
modern land reclamation engineering scheme, Mephisto points out that this
is just a repetition: violent displacement is as old as the Bible:
Auch hier geschieht, was lngst geschah,
Denn Naboths Weinberg war schon da.
(Regum I, 21) (11286f.).
[This reruns an old tale too,

Naboths Vineyard isnt new]
(First Book of Kings, 21)
His assertions of lifes repetitive futility reach a climax at the end of Fausts
life. Mephisto denies the value of all human activity in face of the sameness
of death, and negates the rhythm oflife as vollkommnes Einerlei [complete
sameness]:
Wie mans fr unsre Vter tat,
Vertieft ein lngliches Quadrat []
Vorbei und reines Nicht, vollkommnes Einerlei!
Was soll uns denn das ewge Schaffen! []
Es ist so gut, als wr es nicht gewesen,
Und treibt sich doch im Kreis, als wenn es wre,
Ich liebte mir dafr das Ewig-Leere.
As for our ancestors was done,

Dig an elongated one
All gone, pure nothing, one just like
the other!
What good is this perpetual
creation?
It might as well have never been at all,
And yet it circulates as though it lived
Myself Id much prefer perpetual void.
(11527ff., 11597ff.)
His nihilism is reinforced by the Lemuren (11511ff., and Grablegung, 11604ff.).

Their appearance as half-decayed bodies and minds96 is a visual memento mori
which contradicts Fausts assertions of immortality; their doggerel rhythms
and neckische Gebrden (SD11531) as they dig his grave contradict Fausts
vision ofland being reclaimed from the sea for future generations; their repetition of the gravediggers songs from Hamlet97 strengthens the idea of the
96 Trunz, 617, points out the connection with Goethes essay Der Tnzerin Grab, on a
grave then newly discovered at Cumae; cf. AA 13, 627ff.
97 Trunz, ed.cit., 617, 620.
260
Chapter Six
endless recurrence of death and burial, and assert deaths negation ofthe songs
and movements which typify life and youth (11531ff.). Such scenes tie in with
more conventionally dramatic episodes in Part I, where Mephisto plays the
deflating logical realist in face ofFausts love and striving. Because Gretchen
ist die erste nicht, he denies her life and love have value, and repeats Ophelias
bawdy song from Hamlet (368297) as a vicious parody of a lovers serenade.
Here, as Faust dies like any other creature, Mephisto denies that any form of
life has value: es ist so gut, als wr es nicht gewesen.
At intervals, however, this negation is challenged by powerful reassertion both of the rhythm of life and of the value of its life-sustaining recurrence; again, as a conceptual metaphor thematised in the text, and manifest
in its form.98 At the beginning of Part II, the Elves of Anmutige Gegend sing
of the rhythms of life on the earth, of the recurring sequence of contrasts
which maintains the animation and continuity of the natural world. Led by
Ariel, spirit ofthe air, the nature spirits enlist the elements in order to restore
Fausts capacity for living (4628ff.); and the four watches ofthe night follow
in sequence (4634ff.) (rest, slumber, anticipation and awakening). This order
runs its course within the larger-scale rhythmic movement ofthe other planets,
perceived at the time of deepest rest when movement on earth is stilled:
Schliet sich heilig Stern an Stern, [In sacred order star is ranged with star,
Groe Lichter, kleine Funken
Great lights and tiny sparks both near and far
Twinkle and shine]. (4642ff.)
Glitzern nah und glnzen fern
Repetition carries no negative connotations here; it is the Bestndigkeit, the

constancy ofthis nightly pattern which ensures that night becomes Paradieses
helle, that seed and blossom become fruit, that the sun daily reappears on its
vorgeschriebene Reise (as opposed to its stasis in Sorges Litanei):
Des Lebens Pulse schlagen frisch lebendig [] The pulse of life beats with fresh animation
[]
Du, Erde, warst auch diese Nacht bestndig
This night the earth proved constant once
again
98 Some older studies bring out the importance ofrhythms oflife both for Fausts restoration and for the reassertion of the Lords harmonious cosmos; cf. Paul Friedlnder,
op.cit., 17f., Trunz, ed.cit., 533; and Kurt May, Faust II. Teil in der Sprachform gedeutet,
2nd edn, Mnchen: Hanser, 1962, repr. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1972, 9.
261
Und atmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fen,
And breathes refreshed once more beneath

my feet,
Beginnest schon, mit Lust mich zu umgeben, Already it has filled me with new zeal
Zum hchsten Dasein immerfort zu streben. To strive towards the loftiest existence.
(467983).
The diastole and systole ofbreathing and heartbeat are renewed in the earth
as in Faust. And symptom and part of this process of healing is a natural
music, the song ofthe Elves to Aeolian harps, instruments played by the wind;
no monotone, but a richly varied pattern as the Elves sing and move einzeln,
zu zweien und vielen, abwechselnd und gesammelt (SD4634). And here the
accumulated benefits ofthis rhythm, the value added, is realised in the figure
of the waking Faust, the unusual metres in which he speaks, and the bright
visual symbols of sun and rainbow.
The Meeresfest also offers a counter-assertion to Mephisto, this time
via Greek rather than Renaissance mythological figures: the apotheosis of
the origins of life sparked by Eros and maintained by water. The conceptual
metaphor of rhythm oflife is again thematised in the text, and reinforced in
additional media. Just as for Faust des Lebens Pulse schlagen frisch lebendig
after his restoration by the nature spirits, so Homunculus enters upon organic
life von Pulsen der Liebe gerhrt (8468) [moved by the pulses oflove]. And
as Faust continues zum hchsten Dasein, so Homunculus is to move through
the evolutionary scale with both order and animation:
Da regst du dich nach ewigen Normen
Durch tausend, abertausend Formen.
[There you will move by ancient norms

Through many many thousand forms].
(8324f.).
Repetition here carries no connotations of monotony or futility: the annual

recurrence ofthis festival sustains the love between Nereus and Galatea (the
water and the forms which it begets), and thus the constant circulation of water
from the ocean (to air and earth and back to the sea) which sustains life on
earth (8426ff., 8438ff.). The sequence offigures and events99 channels the urge
to constant change (Cabiri, and especially Proteus, as deity oftransformation),
and also provides the context for the new mystery (8464) of Homunculus
inception. This last emerges as realisation of the value added: the climactic
99 Cf. 8034ff., 8135ff., 8283ff., 8359ff.
262
Chapter Six
moment as Homunculus breaks his glass on Galateas shell, the blaze oflight
reflected on the waves as he dissolves himself into the sea. The life-sustaining
natural cycle is presented in figures of all shapes and sizes, speaking, singing,
and dancing in and on the water synchronised swimming avant la lettre.
The scene becomes increasingly operatic, as the groups come and go, succeed
each other and recur, building up to the final celebratory Tutti. And as with
other scenes of finale, some irony is evident: this solemn moment has elements of farce in its action (e.g. the Doriden and their sailors), and doggerel
in its language: the last eight lines repeat the formula Heil dem (8489ff.),
and in performance would be lost in choric sound. But the essentials are
clearly articulated by the Neptunist philosopher Thales and the full chorus
of naturemyths in their paean to water:
Du bists, der das frischeste Leben erhlt.
ECHO, Chorus der smtlichen Kreise
Du bists, dem das frischeste Leben entquellt.
(8443ff.).
[You who sustain the freshest life.

Echo, Chorus of all groups.
You who pour forth the freshest life]
Unlike Bergschluchten, this scene does not deal with intangible things. It is
a noisy and animated pageant of singing, moving forms which illustrates
Mephistos complaint that teeming creation circulates as though it did exist
(11602), and provides the fullest counter-assertion to his perpetual void.
In striking contrast to mathematical relations, rhythm in Goethes thinking is central and omnipresent. Functioning as a fundamental conceptual
metaphor, it embodies an organisational principle which sustains the continuity of all life and all art. As a formal resource, it underpins the artists
representation of life in art; and it may serve as theme or metaphor or both
in the text. Specifically musical rhythm is thus not a decorative addition, nor
an incidental of theatrical production, but one of the manifestations of an
underlying structure, and one of the means to coordinate episodes where
rhythmic movement and rhythmic language of various kinds are combined
in multi-media episodes. Since Goethe discovered rhythm so early and found
it affirmed within Herders ideal of musikalische Poesie, it is understandable
that he tended to bring rhythmically based dance, gesture and music into his
poetic work whether or not the genre in question traditionally required them.
When this happens, it is often metaphor from the domain of rhythm, as well
as rhythmic language and structure, which helps to hold the work together.
In Faust, because of the extraordinary range of the subject-matter, and the
263
corresponding diversity of verse-forms, metres, and metaphors, it seems indispensable as a poetischen Reif [poetic hoop] which links the whole.100 And
because of its connection with recurrence, it gives Goethe the means to depict
the recurrence in time: recurrence of the same thing, or the same thought,
albeit in different forms and formulations which is indispensable in a work
in which diachronic perspectives are so important.101
By the time Goethe completed Faust, the ideas of diastole and systole
were not widely current as they once had been. When Goethe sealed the
manuscript of diese sehr ernsten Scherze until after his death, he did so
because political circumstances, philosophical and cultural attitudes, felt
alien to it and to him: Verwirrende Lehre zu verwirrtem Handel waltet ber
die Welt [] Der Tag [] ist wirklich so absurd und konfus.102 Many trends
in Romantic thought and literature overlapped with his own concerns, yet
diverged radically in ethos and method.103 Nevertheless, Goethes concept
and techniques of rhythm had served him well in his aims with Faust; the
lively pulse of rhythm and metre, evoked in metaphor, realised in verse, song
and dance, still lent a vivid immediacy which helped to bring the text offthe
page: doch [] ist alles sinnlich und wird, auf dem Theater gedacht, jedem
gut in die Augen fallen.104
100 Schiller to Goethe, 26 June 1797 [AA 20, 365], cit. A. Dieck (ed.), Goethe ber den Faust,
Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2nd ed. 1963, 8.
101 E.M. Wilkinson, Goethes Faust: Tragedy in the Diachronic Mode, PEGS NS XLII
(19712), 147.
102 Letter to W.v. Humboldt, 17 March 1832, AA 21, 1043. Cf. letter to Sulpiz Boissere, 24
November 1831, AA 21, 10223.
103 See esp. the contributions to L. Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Goethe,
Cambridge University Press, 2002, which deal with Goethes relations with current
thought in his later life: notably Nisbet, 21931, esp.228ff., and Hoffmeister, 23255,
esp.23338. Also G. Hoffmeister, Goethe und die europische Romantik, Mnchen:
Francke, 1984, esp.2947; and P. Roubiczek, Some Aspects ofGerman Philosophy in
the Romantic Period, in S.S. Prawer (ed.), The Romantic Period in Germany, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970, 30523. Both Hoffmeister and A. Destro, Goethe, Le
Globe und die europische Romantik, GRM 55 (2005), 8392, point out that Romantic
thought as pursued in other European countries was at times more congenial to him
than the German version, and elicited a different response from him.
104 [But it is all concretely sensuous, and will be instantly clear to everyone when envisaged on the stage]. Conversation with Eckermann, 25 January 1827; AA, 24, 223f.
Part Three
Conceptions of Music and Language

Renewed Metaphorical Potential from Interactive Domains
4. Dame am Spinett [thought to be Lili Schnemann], sketch by Goethe c.1775,

reproduced by permission of the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar.
Earlier chapters ofthis study have looked at some ofthe connotations traditionally attached to music because it was unlike language in ways perceived
as important i.e. language was mapped on to music, and discrepancies or
deficiencies perceived, as well as similarities. It is now time to look again at
these two domains, since we have still to consider music/language metaphors
which carried positive valuations for music. Some of these were based on
perceived similarity, and some were based on conventionally salient features
in both fields.
For once, it is instructive to look forward for orientation, instead ofback
(e.g. to Plato or Aristotle). Metaphor linking language and music is still very
much alive in critical and general discourse of twentieth- and twenty-first
century Western culture, and by some way the most predominant metaphor
involving the domain of music. The idea of cosmic harmony still lingers with
rather faint influence as a clich.1 The association with mathematical ratio
has disappeared into the technical language of acoustics;2 and the association with rhythm has now moved almost completely into the field of dance
and physical movement. So how is language/music metaphor used currently?
Which aspects of it have been perceived as important enough to persist over
the following centuries, and why? What light if any does this throw on eighteenth-century usage?
As we saw in the Introduction to this study, both music philosophy and
musicology still work almost exclusively with this one metaphor. This does
not seem to be because the idea has sound credentials as an aesthetic concept.
Scrutons The Aesthetics of Music (1997) devoted a chapter to the analogy
between language and music, reviewing both the basis on which the analogy is made and some aesthetic theories derived from it. He concluded that
music has neither syntactical nor semantic structure, and is not understood in
the same way as language; and in the complementary following chapters, he
E.g. the pop song Id like to teach the world to sing/In perfect harmony, which began
life as a TV commercial for Coca-Cola in 1971 made famous in recording by the New
Seekers. Wikipedia records its uncertain career to the present, in parodies and re-workings of various kinds.
See e.g. NHDM entry Acoustics, ed.cit. 713. Barenboim mentions it as one of the
traditional metaphorical values attached to music (Guardian 31 August 2001); but
NHDM does not list mathematical aspects separately.
268
Part tHREE
explored what the cognitive activity of understanding music might involve.3

Yet Kathleen Stocks edited essay collection, Philosophers on Music (2007),
shows the idea persisting: ten years later, attention has either shifted to the
ontology of music (as performance, score, act oflistening or reception), or is
still preoccupied with musical meaning in terms ofthe expression of emotion.
Gordon Graham is unusual in urging the reader/listener to consider a kind
of musical significance and musical understanding which does not depend
on language-like features in musical sound.4
As far as I can see, the remarkable persistence ofthe language/music metaphor is attributable to several factors. One emerges in Andy Hamiltons study,
which offers a survey both of several types of music and of aesthetic concepts
of music from the Greeks to the present. Hamilton finds the concept ofutterance essential to convey the nature of musical sound, although he makes clear
that this is an analogy and not an aesthetic concept.5 This is because he wishes
to present what he calls a humanistic conception of music, describing music
as abstract in form but humane in utterance (114); for him, the language-like
elements in music are what links it to the human race and differentiates it
both from acoustics and from views (such as Scrutons) which consider music
without reference to the context (instruments, players) in which it arises.6
Readers may or may not agree with his view; but for present purposes it has
a particular interest, because many eighteenth-century German writers also
thought of music as part of the essentially human activity of utterance. As
we shall see, this applied to instrumental music as well as vocal; and although
Herder, unlike some modern users, realised that the concept restricted music
severely (to language-like aspects such as tonal quality, melody and phrasing),
it was immensely powerful in shaping eighteenth-century ideas of human
utterance in general and of poetic utterance in particular.
3
4
5
6
Scruton, op.cit.; see esp. Language, 171210, and Understanding, 21138.

Kathleen Stock (ed.), op.cit., esp. sections Musical Ontology (Dodd, Morris, Davies),
2192; Musical Expression (Matravers, Boghossian, Ridley), 93146; Musical Meaning
(Robinson), 14777; Grahams paper is placed in a section headed New Issues,
20925.
See esp. op.cit., 114f., 165f.
Loc. cit., and also his extended arguments 96118.
269
A different kind of reason for the strength and persistence ofthe music/
language metaphor emerges from the survey of twentieth-century music by
Alex Ross. He appears to question the metaphor, but then to reinstate it:
In the classical field it has long been fashionable to fence music off from society, to
declare it a self-sufficient language. In the hyper-political twentieth century, this barrier crumbles [] Nevertheless, articulating the connection between music and the
outer world remains devilishly difficult. Musical meaning is vague, mutable, and []
deeply personal [] Many works are struck from the historical record on the grounds
that they have nothing new to say [] Two distinct repertoires have formed, one intellectual and one popular. Here they are merged: no language is considered intrinsically
more modern than any other.7
He is in fact challenging a once dominant sociology of music,8 but not the

conceptual metaphor of music as a language, which remains unacknowledged
and unexamined, as e.g. in his assertion that musical meaning is vague. This
undifferentiated critical language remains a hindrance to Rosss aim of making
us hear twentieth-century music differently from its predecessors. His descriptive accounts of the music and its composers are lively and evocative; but it
does not help our new hearing of (for example) Benjamin Britten to have
them laced with unacknowledged metaphor perpetuating old ways ofhearing:
Britten describes the potion of sleep by way of sweet chords [] as the thirds
of the melody sink back down, their meaning changes [my italics].9
However, there is a powerful sociological factor which works in favour
ofthe idea of musical meaning and thence in favour ofthe music/language
metaphor, whether or not critical awareness of metaphor is evident. As P.J.
Martin points out in Sounds and Society, music can have meaning attached
to it in the same way as words if it is consistently heard in a social and cultural
context which establishes the connection.10 Members of a given cultural community may acquire a shared understanding which associates particular meanings
with the music presented at particular occasions: a formal concert, or a disco,
7
8
9
10
The Rest is Noise. Listening to the Twentieth Century, London: Fourth Estate, 2008,
xiii.
A useful and thorough introduction to this field is still P.J. Martins Sounds and Society:
Themes in the Sociology of Music, Manchester University Press, 1995.
Ross op.cit., 434. Apart from the title WR, italics are mine.
Op.cit., especially his second chapter, 25ff.
270
Part tHREE
or a rain dance.11 In the UK, Elgars Nimrod from the Enigma Variations is
associated with solemn public mourning, because it is played at the Cenotaph
every Remembrance Day. Such associated meanings are of course not literal,
but metaphorical in nature. Here a tenacious problem still seems to lie. Some
studies of music and society have been careful to raise awareness of ways of
assigning metaphorical meaning to music.12 Justin London does so in his
examination of what he calls third party uses of music: the appropriation
of a piece of music for a particular end not necessarily envisaged by the composer: e.g. a lullaby, a valentine message [he might have added the obvious
example of appropriation for various forms of advertising]. He is able to
show that musical meaning thus established can create a social bond across
[] distances of time and space. But his efforts to establish such meaning
and bonds as intrinsic to the art of music are unconvincing: his main examples include texts which are the primary carriers of meaning, and the more
he tries to pursue the model of authorial intention, the more apparent it
becomes that music does not work like a language.13 In most cases, failure to
acknowledge the implicit metaphor produces evocative language in which
music is said to mean something as though it were an established item of
vocabulary with obvious significance. Helen Schlegel, and Deryck Cookes
study The Language of Music, show this in different ways, and also demonstrate how much emotional force can be invested in this metaphor.14 Music
can for example be perceived as the communal voice and binding force of
a whole group, as for instance in a national or party anthem. But where the
potential social and cultural bond is combined with conceptual vagueness
and strong emotional weighting, the end product can become seriously per-
11
12
13
14
Ibid., 53.
Both Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Music: Britain 18761953, Manchester University
Press, 2001, and Bennett Zon, Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British
Musicology, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, have carefully drawn attention to the metaphorical processes at work in their areas, though one is concerned with ideology in
society and the other with music criticism and historiography.
London, Third-party Uses ofMusic and Musical Pragmatics, JAAC 66 (2008), 25364,
esp.262f.
In Forsters Howards End (see Introduction above), and in Cookes much re-printed
study, Oxford University Press, 1959.
271
nicious: extremely dubious ideological meanings can be attached to pieces

of music which intrinsically carry no trace of them.15
Why should modern Western European culture be so deeply attached
to the idea of music as a language, and especially as the language of feeling?
As Carl Dahlhaus points out in his introduction to a survey of nineteenthcentury views, music as language offeeling became a commonplace of musical aesthetics among middle-class audiences who made up the majority of
the concert-going public at the time.16 The idea has extremely tough roots
at a popular level, and it has been with us for a very long time. In addition,
recent musicology and music criticism have often reinforced it by using the
label Sensibility loosely for the whole period 17701848, and treating the
later eighteenth century as in essence Pre-Romantic.17 So despite serious
efforts to point out its inadequacy as an approach to music,18 the idea hangs
on at a middle-brow cultural level. British poet and journalist James Fenton
15
16
17
18
Nora M. Alter and Lutz Koepnick have embarked on their exploration ofSound Matters.
Essays on the Acoustics ofModern German Culture, NY/Oxford: Berghahn, 2004, almost
entirely without awareness of metaphorical relations; they and their contributors thus
tend to show that harmonic music and national(istic) identity were equated by a number
of writers, but from the introduction onwards they lose sight ofthe analogies involved,
and present their findings as sociological and media studies. Pernicious flaws are thus
attributed to music (67) rather than to the cultural ideology which attaches unacceptable associations to it.
C. Dahlhaus, Language and Musical Language, in G. Chapple, F. Hall, H. Schulte
(eds), The Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century,
University Press of America 1992, 27 (dual language).
E.g. Margaret Mahoney Stoljar, Poetry and Song in late eighteenth-century Germany:
a study in the musical Sturm und Drang, Croom Helm 1985; it also underlies many
of the judgments of M.S. Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth
Century [], Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cp. NHDM, 81011 on the loose term
Sensibility.
Not least because of its inability to deal with non-melodic music. Malcolm Budd, Music
and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories, London/NY: Routledge, 1985, repr. 1992,
reviews arguments both for and against the analogy. Dahlhaus points to some ofthem
briefly; debates on the issue appear fairly frequently in the British Journal of Aesthetics
and the Journal ofArt and Aesthetic Criticism. Counter arguments with particular reference to Goethe are offered in Arnd Bohm, Goethe and the Romantics, in D.F. Mahoney
(ed.), The Literature ofGerman Romanticism, Rochester/Woodbridge: Camden House,
2004, 3560.
272
Part tHREE
concedes that conductors are probably not expressing their feelings when
they gesticulate on the podium, but he insists that we expect a solo soprano
to give of herself ; and we still seems to mean the concert-going, middle
class, audience, or at least the section of it which likes sacrificial sopranos.19
This may enhance the enjoyment of some audience members, but it cannot
be said to further musical understanding.
There have been counter-trends. Another strand of nineteenth-century
thought, centred on Eduard Hanslick, tried to unhook the association of music
with feeling by pursuing the conceptual metaphor of music as Klangrede
or Tonsprache i.e. a language that expresses specifically musical ideas.20
This has received renewed support in recent years;21 but strengthens, rather
than deconstructs, the idea of music as a language. The tenaciousness ofthis
metaphorical link, especially where the metaphor is not recognised, is now
sometimes perceived as a problem; and efforts of various kinds have been
made to break it. Some do this for musicological reasons e.g. R.S. Hattens
attempt to work with the concept ofmusical gesture, and with intermodality rather than metaphor.22 Others have done so out of wider concern for
similar problems with modern media generally e.g. Wim Wenderss efforts
to counter identification of sound track with visual images in film as real, by
dislocating language, score, filmic images and silence in his Lisbon Story.23
Overall, this metaphor now seems to offer various forms of emotional value
within musical culture, but little cognitive potential. It remains to be seen
what eighteenth-century cultural life made ofthis metaphor; we have already
seen that music could and did become entangled in ideological dispute and
cultural politics, especially where Rousseau was involved.
But although mapping language on to music seems to offer very little
fresh cognitive advantage in the present day, the metaphor has produced
19 The Guardian, 16 September 2006.
20 C. Dahlhaus, op.cit., 5ff., and Budd, op.cit. 20ff.
21 E.g. Nick Zangwill, Against Emotion: Hanslick was Right about Music, BJA 44 (2004),
2943.
22 Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, Indiana U.P. 2004, 101 and passim.
23 See U. Schnherr, Als die Bilder hren lernten: Musik, Ton, Avantgardesthetik und
Geschlechterkonfiguration in Wim Wenders Lisbon Story, Monatshefte 96 (2004),
23451.
273
much more promising results when applied in reverse that is, when music
becomes the source domain and language the target domain, and music is
mapped on to language. The attempt to make language music-like is of course
not new in literature. But the thinking behind the metaphor when applied
this way round is much less restrictive both in its concept of music and in its
concept of language, so that the cognitive potential of their interaction is
much greater. For example, not only voice and melody, but rhythm, timbre
and tempo and various musical forms are now aspects of musics domain
accessible for metaphorical reference; not only emotive speech, but written
language as well as spoken, a wider range of literary language, genres and
forms, now potentially fall within the field of metaphorical operations. The
persistence of this conceptual metaphor may in part be due to its capacity
to work in both directions, and thus carry an unusually wide range of connotations and readings.
As long ago as 1964, Horst Petri suggested that much ofthe interaction
between music and language works consisted ofForm- und Strukturparallelen
[] Austausch von Groformen, once twentieth-century media awareness had
presented both language and music as Kommunikationssysteme.24 As well as
radical experiments by composers (Stockhausen, Luciano Berio) approaching
music and language as interchangeable sound material (82ff.), he considers
familiar musical forms (variation, counterpoint, sonata, fugue, leitmotiv, open
and graphic form, etc) and their adaptation by twentieth-century writers (e.g.
Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Paul Celan, and in particular the novelist and
musician Hans Henny Jahnn). In each case he also shows how their transposition ofthese forms affected in particular the syntax, and to some extent
the language, of their work, even where the text was not simply being used
as acoustic element (as e.g. in some Dada writing, or scat singing in jazz).
Most ofthe literary writing he reviews was highly innovative in its time, not
least because it was written to match its musical formal counterpart as closely
as possible. Yet some of it (notably Ulysses, or Celans poem Todesfuge) has
become mainstream writing even though it cannot be read in full without
24 [Formal and structural parallels,[] the exchange of larger formal units]; Petri,
Literatur und Musik: Form- und Strukturparallelen, Gttingen: Sachse & Pohl, 1964,
7f., 1122.
274
Part tHREE
awareness of elements from both language and music (e,g. recurrent motifs
and key words, rhythm, fugue).25
However, as Max Black pointed out, a metaphorical pronouncement
does not have to be scientifically true to be effective; and as Rosss study
shows, there is not a direct correlation between the accuracy of a writers
aesthetic concepts of music and his/her effective deployment of the conceptual metaphor of music as a language. If we consider twentieth-century
writers who looked to music for innovative ideas, we find highly diverse relations between the writing, the aspects of music selected for the purposes of
mapping music on to language, and the concept of music embedded in the
conceptual metaphor. Samuel Beckett, for instance, seems to have thematised
music extensively, and also to have brought into language structural elements
of music such as timbre contrasts, rhythm and in particular silence what
M. Bryden terms sounds and their withdrawal.26 As Barenboim points out,
sound is not independent it does not exist by itself [] the first note is not
the beginning it comes out of the silence which precedes it.27 The same is
also true of spoken words: in a given context of words, silences can be very
communicative. Whether or not we enjoy Becketts writing, he seems to be
working in a sophisticated way with a development ofthe music/language conceptual metaphor: sound and silence are mapped onto/brought into speech
and music to make a continuum of communication. This will be something
to watch for in eighteenth-century writing. We have seen the power of their
ideal of communication through vocal sound; and, if only from Sturm und
Drang dramatic dialogue and discussions ofthe nature oflanguage, we know
that silence and the unspoken/unspeakable were part of their preoccupation with language.28 A different picture is presented by Brad Bucknell, in
his survey of Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics. Pater, Pound, Joyce
and Stein.29 He shows that these writers produced very different and highly
25 Petri, esp. pp.3543, 52ff. Celans poem is entitled Death Fugue.

26 Mary Bryden (ed.), Samuel Beckett and Music, Oxford: Clarendon, 1998, esp. Introduction,
15.
27 Everything is connected, 7f.
28 See e.g. J.H. Stam, Inquiries into the Origin ofLanguage: the Fate of a Question, NY: Harper
& Row, 1976, passim under Silence; also DjG passim under Unaussprechliches.
29 Cambridge UP., 2001.
275
innovative writing, yet drew rather uncritically on the old metaphor of music
as a kind of super-language, especially of feeling:
Music for many writers refers obliquely to an art which transcends referential []
meaning, and which has the power of some kind of excessive, yet essential element to
which the literary may point, but which it can never fully encompass []
A strange recuperation of a romantic belief in the expressive potential of music []
[in an] attempt to claim music as a model for inwardness.
He adds that, after Mallarm, this aesthetic concept has become oldfashioned:
Writers can no longer view music as the trope of a secure inwardness [] it can no longer
be viewed as the art of transcendence [] Music [] offers language no way out of its
own sense of inadequacy.30
Michal Ben-Horin considers a more recent treatment ofthis new writing and
old metaphor combination, in his survey of Ingeborg Bachmanns Malina
(1971) and Monika Marons Pawels Briefe (1999).31 But he gives a reductive and
imprecise account of Bachmanns techniques; she is doing rather more than
transposing music images into literature, and such transposition has not for
some time challenged narrative paradigms and cultural traditions (248). Part
ofthe heroines pathos is that she clings to the idea of super-communication
through music and thence recovery oflanguage. But she is confronted by the
fact that this is not working: her tragedy is precisely that a sequence of sounds
and silences does not make a narrative, and that music, as Bucknell put it,
offers language no way out of its [] sense of inadequacy.32
It seems that the idea of music as a language has continued to be both
tenacious and controversial, and has functioned in widely different ways in
modern writing.33 It will be interesting to see how eighteenth-century writ30 Bucknell, op.cit., 1, 2f., 36.
31 Memory Metonymies: Music and Photography in Ingeborg Bachmann and Monika
Maron, GLL LIX (2006), 23348.
32 Ben-Horins discussion does in fact imply as much: see esp. his section III, 240ff.
33 Thomas Manns Dr. Faustus is omitted here; it seems to me that music, music theory
and the sociology of music in early twentieth-century German culture are thematised
in great detail, but that the metaphor of music as language of human feeling is an
276
Part tHREE
ers deal with it, especially where the negative connotations of venturing into
realms outside human speech are not an impediment. Chapter Seven will
deal with music and language envisaged as similar, even interchangeable,
partners in communication. Chapter Eight will deal with instances where
they are seen as different but complementary means of communication,
sometimes alongside silence, half-articulated sounds, and other sub-verbal
forms. In both chapters, we shall find music mapped on to language as well
as language mapped on to music; and yet again Goethe will be a special case
because he explores and exploits these conceptual metaphors, and elements
of music, more extensively than other writers.
internalised part ofZeitbloms beliefs rather than an important aspect ofthe novel. The
central metaphor oftaking back Beethovens Ninth Symphony is however crucial, and
often misunderstood, according to Zsuzsa Selyem, Der Roman, in dem die Neunte
Symphonie zurckgenommen worden sei. ber die Funktion der Rcknahme in den
Romanen Liquidation von Imre Kertesz bzw. Dr. Faustus von Thomas Mann, Weimarer
Beitrge 52 (2006), 6381.
Chapter Seven
Enhanced Communication i):

Music and Language as Similar
This chapter is concerned with eighteenth-century ideas of music and language

as similar similar to each other, that is, as media of communication. There
were also, it should be noted, eighteenth-century commentators who held
that music had nothing whatever to do with communication. Lorenz Mizler,
for instance, suggested that music was a self-contained form based entirely
on mathematical proportion, and superior to language because language had
to take account of local convention and empirical experience.1 And Hiller,
despite his susceptibility to music and his support for Rousseaus views, threw
doubt on the analogy between music and expressive utterance on the grounds
that musics pattern of sounds was just that, a pattern of sounds:
Die Melodie des Solo oder Concerts [] ist nicht so wohl ein nachgeahmter Gesang
der Leidenschaften und des Herzens, als vielmehr eine nach der Beschaffenheit der
Instrumente [] eingerichtete knstliche Verbindung der Tne, von deren Richtigkeit
man mehr die Kunst als die Natur mu urtheilen lassen.2
[The melody of a solo or concerto is much less an imitated song of passions and the
heart than it is an artistically organised sequence of tones, and Art rather than Nature
must be the judge of its rightness.]
Nonetheless, the idea became widespread from the middle ofthe eighteenth
century onward, and thus readily available for deployment in various kinds
of writing. Although it overlaps to some extent with the idea of music as
the voice of feeling, and to some extent with Schillers idea of the analogy
1
2
See J. Birke, Christian Wolffs Metaphysik und die zeitgenssische Literatur- und
Musiktheorie, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966, 76.
Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, Historisch-kritische Beytrge, ed. F.W.
Marpurg, Berlin 1755, I,6, 536f.
278
Chapter Seven
between music and feeling advanced in ber Matthisons Gedichte, where by

rhythm and sound the composer creates musical patterns analogous to the
movements of human feeling,3 it is not identical. The analogy between
music and language as forms of communication is based on the similarity
between melody (especially solo melody) and the tonal fluctuations of the
human voice; the ideas of rhythm and/or movement are not always strong
here. Rather, the sound ofthe utterance is enhanced to mark enhanced importance of the message communicated; and this can be a particular view or
insight as well as a feeling.
The idea arose from several sources, some already familiar. As we have
seen, from Plato and Aristotle onwards the dividing-line between language
and music was sometimes weaker than the dividing-line between rational and
other kinds oflanguage; with the result that music and poetic language were
envisaged as close and similar, especially where complex instrumental virtuosity was discounted in favour of a simpler setting so that the message ofthe
words would not be lost. In eighteenth-century ideas of music as the voice of
feeling, music and language were habitually harnessed together as utterance
in song: la Musique doit donc ncessairement chanter pour toucher, pour
plaire, pour soutenir lintrt et lattention, as Rousseau put it.4
Rousseau: Music, rhetoric and human utterance

Recent French studies have shown that the fusion of music and language in
Rousseaus thought goes well beyond intensified lyricism.5 Kintzler, Fisette
and Perrin show that Rousseau treated music, language, and other artistic
3
4
5
NA 22, 272.
Unit de mlodie, Dictionnaire de musique, ed.cit. 1144.
Essays collected by Claude Dauphin (ed.), Musique et langage chez Rousseau, Oxford
(SVEC 2004: 08), Voltaire Foundation 2004. Contributions by Catherine Kintzler,
Musique, voix, intriorit et subjectivit: Rousseau et les paradoxes de lespace, 319; Jean
Fisette, La gense du sens chez Rousseau, 3947, esp.43; and Jean-Franois Perrin, La
musique dans les lettres selon Rousseau: une coute du sensible, 209, are particularly
useful in this context, and others are cited below.
279
media as complementary sign-systems; and in the case of music and language,

as crucial communication links between the inwardness ofthe individual and
the other, i.e. the feelings and views ofthose around him (with the articulating mouth as gateway and meeting point). This brings the unique individual
into contact with all the conventions ofhis culture, society and institutions.
These analyses support Lowinskys case for the power of ideology in shaping attitudes to music: Rousseaus idea of the common origins of music and
language has less to do with aesthetics than with his desire for a different
type of social and cultural bond between individual and society: les vers, les
chants, la parole ont une origine commune [] Les prmiers discours furent
les prmires chansons.6 The two-way conceptual metaphor of music as language and language as music is here designed to impose a set of cognitive
preferences for more emotion-friendly relations between the individual and
society; hence the close involvement, also pointed out in Dauphins volume,
of music in rhetoric, persuasion, and polemic.7 Several essays also point to
Rousseaus radical expansion ofthe range and variety of means of communication: language is complemented not only by music, but by silence of various
kinds, and by sub-verbal indicators such as sighs and cries, whether or not
gesture, facial expression and body movements are added.8 Such complementing oflanguage is treated in the next chapter; but it is nonetheless of interest
here because these speech elements, insignificant in rational or conventional
discourse, became accepted parts ofthe concept of spoken/sung communication between the feeling individual and his/her listeners.
7
8
[Poetry, song and language have a common origin [] The first speeches were the first
songs.]; Essai sur les origines des langues, 12, ed.cit. 410f. As other essays in Dauphins
volume point out, Rousseaus attitudes on music have some fundamental internal contradictions when viewed as aesthetic theories: see e.g. Martin Stern, La problme de la
conversion dans la pense musicale de Rousseau, 3947, and Catherine J. Cole, From
silence to society, 11221.
See essay by Mira Morgenstern, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: music, language and politics,
6274, and the essays in the later section De la culture et du politique, 155200.
See esp. essays by Perrin, Cole and Kintzler, cit. above.
280
Chapter Seven
Herder and the timbre of musical sound: Melodie des Herzens

Herders ideological motivation seems to be mainly concerned with literary culture and with poetic ways and means. As Gerhard Sauder has recently
shown, Herder includes breathing, speaking, singing and even punctuation
in a concept of sonorous poetic utterance which covers both feeling and
Anschauung, attitude.9 But he is similar to Rousseau in his praise of cultures
whose language was closer to music and thence to feeling: singende Vlker
von der Art sind natrlich den Elementen des Musikalischen Gefhls nher als
andre, die nur schallende Krper von Sylben und Lauten reden, taking as his
ideal the Sprachgesang ofthe ancient Greeks and the halbsingende Sprache
der Italiener.10 His prize essay on the subject presented both language and
music as originating in the sing-song intonation of primitive communication,
Gesang; suggesting that aus diesem Gesange, nachher veredelt und verfeinert,
die lteste Poesie und Musik entstanden [ist].11 It was to this older level of
language that he urged German poets to return in order to restore poetrys
ancient emotional vigour, as Rede, [] Musik der Seele [], Melodie des
Herzens.12 The ideas of melodic vocal music, and singing poetic language,
are brought together in the idea of voice of feeling, whose utterance is also
shaped by its cultural context.
However, Herder seems more aware than Rousseau of these ideas as
metaphor. For example, he points out that the idea of song is a metaphor
developed at the expense of music, especially instrumental music:
9
10
11
12
Herders Poetic Works, His Translations and His Views on Poetry, in: Hans Adler &
Wulf Koepke (eds), A Companion Herder, 30517, esp.310ff.
[Singing peoples ofthis kind are by nature closer to the elements of musical feeling than
those whose speech is only sonorous bundles of syllables and noises [] the speaking
song ofthe Greeks, [] the half singing language ofthe Italians]; Viertes Wldchen, 7,
Suphan IV, 106f.
[From this singsong, later refined and developed, arose the most ancient poetry and
music]; Abhandlung ber den Ursprung der Sprache (1772), Suphan V, 58f. Herder, well
read as always, points out that writers across Europe had debated this topic and reached
similar conclusions.
[Speech music ofthe soul melody ofthe heart]; Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 166;
Ossian und die Lieder alter Vlker, Suphan V, 206.
281
So ist also ein feinerer Gesang wohlklingenderer Tne und Tonfolgen geworden; in
welchem aber noch immer Gedanke, Empfindung [] das Wesen, und Ton als Ton,
Tonfolge als Tonfolge [] untergeordnetes Nebenaugenmerk ist. Der Gesang ist noch
immer Sprache [] Aus der Sprache ging sie [die Musik] also aus [] Die Musik der
Alten war [] Vokalmusik im hchsten, edelsten Verstande; die Instrumentalmusik
ward spter, nur nach und nach, erfunden.13
[So it was that a more refined song of more pleasing tones and melodies came into being;
in which, however, concepts and feelings were the essence, and tone as tone, melody
as melody [] were very much a subordinate interest. Song is still language [] Music,
then, emerged from language [] The music ofthe Ancients was [] vocal music in the
highest and best sense; instrumental music was only discovered later, and gradually].
Not all versions ofthis concept presented primitive language as the primary
mover and source domain: sometimes when aspects of music were mapped
on to language they came into the frame in their own right. Herders mentor,
J.G. Hamann, finds the lyre too tame for his Muse;14 but he wishes poetry to
return to Gesang rather than Deklamation, and envisages poetry as developing from musical tone, rhythm and metre of language currently in use:
Es giebt [] Striche [in Curland und Liefland], wo man das lettische oder undeutsche
Volk bey aller ihrer Arbeit singen hrt, aber nichts als eine Kadenz von wenig Tnen,
die mit einem Metro viel hnlichkeit hat. Sollte ein Dichter unter ihnen aufstehen: so
wre es ganz natrlich, da alle seine Verse nach diesem eingefhrten Mastab ihrer
Stimmen zugeschnitten sein wrden.15
13
14
15
VW 8, ed.cit. 116ff.
Aesthetica in Nuce, in J. Nadler (ed.), Smtliche Werke, Wien: Herder Verlag, 1950, vol.
II, 197. On Hamann and language generally, see James C. OFlaherty, The Quarrel of
Reason with Itself [], Camden House 1988, 85105.
Ibid., 215f. I have been unable to find comment on what Hamann meant by Metro [i.e.
dative ofMetrum]. In context he is speaking ofthe monotonous free verse metres used
by Homer and ancient Hebrew poetry and imitated (he assumes) by Klopstock, which
were sometimes mistaken for rhythmic prose (Hamanns notes 60 and 61 (ibid.)). But it
makes no syntactic sense to say that workers singing in the fields were singing a metre.
Since he also mentions adaptations of old church hymns as examples of such metres,
it is possible that he had in mind the unaccompanied metrical psalms which featured
in worship (in Germany and UK particularly) before congregational hymns became
predominant. See e.g. article Metrical Psalms in J.G. Davies (ed.), A New Dictionary
of Liturgy and Worship, London: SCM, 1986, 374; and Hans J. Hillerbrand (ed.), The
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, vol.3,
282
Chapter Seven
[There are [] parts of Kurland and Livonia, where the Letts or non-German people
can be heard singing everywhere as they work, but only a cadence of a few notes, very
much like a metrical psalm (Metrum). If a poet were to rise among them, it would be
quite natural for all his verse to be tailored to this adopted standard of their voices].
Herder himself often shows awareness of vocal sound as sound, and in such
cases tends to focus on timbre and bring musical sound into the frame too
(unlike his historical surveys, where instrumental sound is a separate development). He would have found analogies between vocal and instrumental sound
common in the French and Italian anatomical treatises concerned with the
mechanics of vocal apparatus: e.g. through the work of Charles de Brosses
(170977), who drew on flute and monochord as analogies in his Trait de
la formation mchanique des langues (1765).16 Such concepts presented music
and poetic language as adjacent domains rather than distinct arts: and in an
early letter, Herder declares a fondness for the watershed between music
and poetry:
16
article Music, 105f. In the UK, metrical paraphrases of psalms or Scripture were usually loosely rhymed, and especially used in areas ofScotland where musical instruments
were unavailable or banned. Musically unremarkable and tending to doggerel, they were
nonetheless easily memorable. The hymn Amazing Grace is probably the nearest familiar
example to this style ofa cadence of a few notes, repeated many times. Ian Bradley has
the tune based on an American folk-melody originally taken there from Scotland, and
returned in the eighteenth century. Since John Newton, a former slave-trader colleague
of Wilberforce, John Wesley and George Whitefield wrote the familiar words to it in
1779, and since it has recently re-demonstrated a striking capacity to take root in popular
culture despite its repetitive rhythmic and melodic motif, Hamann seems to have been
right about the nature of popular poetry-making. See Ian Bradley, The Daily Telegraph
Book of Hymns, rev. ed. London/New York: Continuum, 2005, 3840.
De Brosses was at one time president of the Dijon regional parliament, so is usually
referred to as President de Brosses. He was a knowledgeable amateur on music and
world languages, as well as an enthusiastic traveller. Herder had read many ofthe French
contributions to the debate on origins and organs oflanguage. He only refers explicitly
to De Brosses much later (Adrastea, III,1802), but with admiration as one ofthe figures
of the eighteenth century whom Leibniz would have been pleased to know, because
of his own interest in this field (Suphan XXIII, 478). On De Brosses musical analogies, see Lyndia Roveda, Musique, mtaphores et origine du langage dans le Trait de
la formation mchanique des langues de Charles de Brosses, Neophilologus 90 (2006),
2537, esp.2733. She points out that by 1765 musical analogies would have lost some
heuristic value, since anatomical knowledge had progressed beyond them.
283
Ich halte mich berhaupt mit Vergngen auf dem Reihn [Rain] zwischen Musik und
Poesie auf, weil ich eine glckliche Kantate, gleich nach dem Drama, ber die Ode
sezze und in ihr die Samenkrner der rhrenden und malerischen Dichtkunst, die feinsten Regeln der Deklamation, der Erzlung, [] und Grundszze zur Ausbildung der
Aesthetik finde.17
[I generally do like to linger on the watershed between poetry and music, because I
value a successful cantata next after drama, and above the ode; I find in it the seeds of
all moving and picturesque poetry, the most sophisticated rules of declamation and
narrative [], and the basic principles for the development of an aesthetic.]
His idea of a successful cantata was one in which neither poetry nor music
dominated, but where the relation between text and setting, recitative and
various types of sung section, was finely balanced between message and
emotional response, either side of the watershed.18 In the Viertes Wldchen
he also envisages such ambi-valent sound: the single tone of feeling can
be either an instrumental or a vocal sound, readily caught by the sharpened
hearing of the blind:
Der Blindgebohrne hat ein ungleich tieferes Gefhl fr die ersten Momente des
Wohllauts, als der zerstreute Sehende, den tausend uere Flchenbilder von seinem
innern Sinne des Tongefhls abrufen [] Ewig also in der ungestrten Stille, die wir uns
in einer Sommernacht erschleichen, um den Wohllaut der Laute oder einer Bendaschen
Geige Grundauf [sic] zu fhlen [] Was fhlet der Unzerstreuete nicht in dem mchtigen
Wohllaut eines Tons? In der holdseligen Stimme seines Mdchens, die ihm
Den Himmel fnet, und ins ganze Herz
Ruh und Vergngen singt.19
[A man born blind has a very much greater feeling for the first few moments of a piece
of music than the sighted person, distracted by a thousand other images from his innate
sense of tone Permanently in the kind of undisturbed silence which we occasionally
achieve in a summers night, to feel from the depths of our being the mellifluousness of a
lute or of a Benda violin How much may such an undistracted person feel in the powerful melodiousness of a single note? Or in the lovely voice of his girl, which for him
Opens a heaven, and into his very heart
Sings peace and pleasantness.]
17
18
19
Letter to J.G. Scheffner, 23 September 1766; in K.H. Hahn et al. (eds), J.G. Herder: Briefe
[], Weimar: Bhlau, 1977, vol.I, 64. Cf. also Nufer, Germanische Studien 74, 6.
Briefwechsel ber Ossian und die Lieder alter Vlker, Nachschrift, Suphan V, 206f.
Suphan IV, 106. According to the editors note (489), the quotation is from Ewald von
Kleists Milon und Iris. The violinist Franz Benda was famous for a notable cantabile
style of playing; see H. Wirth, Benda, Familie, in MGG, vol. I, cols. 1621ff., esp.1623f.
NHDM mentions Benda as a member of the First Berlin School (90).
284
Chapter Seven
Similarly, Herder regretted his inability to play the s-winselnde, klagende

Laute, as he would have been better able to express his love for Karoline
Flachsland.20 In both these comments, the melodious solo instrument is
equated with the solo singing voice as communicator of feeling; the distinction between vocal and instrumental has become unimportant.
Music and language equated in melody, as expression

of (middle-class) feeling
A crucial condition for this equation of music and language is that both singing voice and instrument must be melodic, with minimal accompaniment,
otherwise the metaphor does not work. As with the idea of music as voice
of feeling, the metaphor presumes a simple style, not vocal or instrumental
virtuosity. Surprisingly, this seems to have been a kind of music also valued
by somewhat earlier writers normally more interested in human reason and
cosmic harmony than human feeling. Leibniz, for instance, observed that:
Unter hundert Melodien kann ich kaum eine oder zwei antreffen, die ich ausdrucksvoll und edel finde, und ich habe oft bemerkt, da das, was die Fachleute am meisten
schtzten, nichts Ergreifendes besa. Das Einfache erzeugt oft mehr Wirkung als die
entlehnten Verzierungen.21
[Even among a hundred melodies I can find barely one or two which I deem expressive
and noble, and I have often observed that things esteemed by the experts are not in fact
moving. Simple things are often more deeply affecting than borrowed ornaments].
The same style is encouraged by Mizler, pillar of the mathematical and

Pythagorean view of music, as part of a general shift of interest towards the
human individual noted by Lowinsky:
20 [The sweetly whining, mournful lute]; letter to Karoline, 20 September 1770; J.G.
Herder: Briefe, ed. Hahn, vol. I, 221.
21 Letter to K. Hanfling, 1709; in E. Bodemann, Der Briefwechsel des G.W. Leibniz in der
Knigl. ffentl. Bibliothek zu Hannover, Hannover 1889, repr. Hildesheim 1966, 86. Cf.
K. Mller, G. Kronert (eds), Leben und Werk von G.W. Leibniz, Frankfurt a.M. 1969,
216.
285
Die Melodie, oder einfache Harmonie, [ist] das Hauptwerk in der gantzen Musik [],
und man [mus] iederzeit eher auf die Melodie bey Verfertigung eines musikalischen
Stckes, als auf die darzu gehrigen harmonischen Stze denken []22
[Melody, or simple harmony, is the chief consideration in the whole of music when
creating a musical piece, one must always pay more attention to the melody than to the
attendant harmonic elements]
Although it is unlikely that Lessing had melody in mind in his Laokoon,

which barely mentions music, the semiotic theories he developed with Moses
Mendelssohn do bring the domains of poetry and music much closer together
conceptually. As Wellbery explains, if, as Mendelssohn had suggested, music
works through natural signs [sounds] in time, and language through artificial
signs in time, Lessings point that metaphor, imagery and onomatopoeia give
poetic language the function and force of natural signs enhances its immediate appeal to intuition and emotion. Mendelssohn even cites the sequence
in time shared by poetry and music as the reason for their uniquely strong
emotional impact:
It is for no other reason than this [temporal order of reception], I believe, that more
powerful affects are aroused through music and poetry than through painting and
sculpture []. The sequence of poetic signs allows for the development of an emotion
in the reader across a temporal experience involving expectation, surprise and discovery
[] for this reason [], where the artist wishes to communicate an affective experience,
the successive order oflinguistic signs will be the more apposite semiotic medium [than
painting].23
However, the tendency to equate music with language as heightened expression was not solely a product of eighteenth-century preoccupation with the
individual, but had run as an undercurrent in much earlier thinking. As we saw
in Chapter Three above, rhetoric had always been concerned with employing
22
23
Neu-Erffnete Musikalische Bibliothek, Leipzig 1729, II,1, 65; cf. Birke, op.cit. 76, and
Lowinsky, 183ff.
Wellbery, op.cit., 96f. and notes; the translation of Mendelssohn is Wellberys. On
these ideas in Lessings Laokoon, see esp.193ff., notably 195, also Wellberys chapters 2
and 3, passim. On the musical semiotics ofthe mid-century,see esp. John Neubauer, The
Emancipation ofMusic from Language, New Haven/London, Yale U.P., 1986, 1347 and
notes. Neubauer gives a full and informative account ofthese mid-century debates; but
his discussion is focussed on the departure from mimesis, or lack of it, and he pays little
attention to metaphor.
286
Chapter Seven
the sound elements ofthe voice (tone, timbre, rhythm, volume and pitch) to
persuade the listener.24 As early as 1606, Joachim Burmeister took a step further, and published a system equating rhetoric and music feature by feature, as
arts of moving the listener.25 Shaftesbury explicitly equates the early statesmen
and public speakers with poet/musician figures such as Orpheus:
Where the Speeches of prime men and Leaders were [] compard together: there woud
naturally be observd not only a more agreeable Measure of Sound, but a happier and
more easy Rangement of Thoughts, in one Speaker, than in another.
It may easily be perceivd from hence, that the Goddess PERSUASION must have been
in a manner the Mother of Poetry, Rhetorick, Musick, and the other kindred Arts []
ALMOST all the antient Masters ofthis sort were said to have been MUSICIANS []
who by the power of their Voice and Lyre, coud charm the wildest Beasts.26
When Rousseau fuses the ideas of language and music in rhetorical persuasive discourse,27 he is thus connecting with an established metaphor rather
than inventing a new one. Hollander considers that the popularity of this
idea had a considerable effect on recitative in combined genres;28 and it
is not uncommon to find a similar rapprochement of language and music
among musicians, though not of quite the same sort. Musicians may begin
by mapping language on to music; but often move towards mapping one
kind of music (singing) on to another (instrumental music), and may end
by equating the two genres. Mattheson, for example, suggested in 1739 that
instrumental music should be modelled on the singing voice; and that the
composers aim should be:
24 Cf. esp. P. Dixon, Rhetoric, London: Methuen, 1971, and R. Campe, Affekt und Ausdruck.
Zur Umwandlung der literarischen Rede im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Tbingen: Niemeyer,
1990.
25 Burmeister, Musica Poetica [], Rostock 1606; cf. Hollander, 197f. note 59.
26 Shaftesbury, Advice to an Author [1710], Characteristiicks, ed.cit. vol.I, 237ff.
27 See esp. the essays in Dauphin by Perrin (cit. above) and by Jeff Black, The dupes of
words: the problem and promise oflanguage in Rousseaus Discours sur les sciences et les
arts, 12230. The latter does not deal with music as such, but with the forms of rhetorical deception, acceptable or otherwise, offered by the spoken voice; cf. chapter three
above.
28 Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky, 176ff., 194ff.
287
Alle Neigungen des Herzens, durch bloe ausgesuchte Klnge und deren geschickte
Zusammenfgung, ohne Worte dergestalt auszudrucken wissen, da der Zuhrer daraus,
als ob es eine wirckliche Rede wre, den Trieb, den Sinn, die Meinung und den Nachdruck
[] vllig begreifen und deutlich verstehen mge.29
[To know how to express all the passions ofthe heart without words, simply by choosing
the right sounds and combining them aptly, in such a way that the listener can completely and clearly understand the impetus, the meaning, the attitude and the phrasing,
as though it were actually a speech.]
Although he talks in the same chapter about the difference between Singund Spielmelodien, he frequently uses terms which stress the similarities,
such as redende Klnge and Klang-rede; and he summarises his argument
by suggesting that:
Die Instrumental-Melodie [ist] darin hauptschlich von Singe-Sachen unterschieden,
da jene, ohne Beihlffe der Worte und Stimmen, eben so viel zu sagen trachtet, als
diese mit den Worten thun.30
[Melodies for singing and melodies for playing [] speaking sounds, sound language
[] instrumental melody is principally distinguished from melody for singing by the
fact that the former attempts, without the support of words and voices, to say just as
much as the latter does with words.]
Even C.P.E. Bach, whose musical imagination was relatively adventurous,

thought of the singing voice as model for the instrumental performer:
Einen groen Nutzen und Erleichterung in die ganze Spiel-Art wird derjeniger spren,
welcher zu gleicher Zeit Gelegenheit hat, die Singe-Kunst zu lernen, und gute Snger
fleiig zu hren [] Man lernet dadurch singend dencken, und wird man wohl thun,
da man sich hernach selbst einen Gedancken vorsinget, um den rechten Vortrag desselben zu treffen.31
29 Capellmeister, II, 12, 7f., 31, ed.cit. 204, 208.

30 Ibid., 203ff.; esp. 34ff., 208f.
31 Versuch ber die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen, Berlin 1753, repr. Leipzig 1957:
Einleitung, 20, and Chap. III, Hauptstck 12, 13, 121f.
288
Chapter Seven
[A very great advantage and facility in the whole manner of playing will be felt by anyone
who at the same time has the opportunity to learn the art of singing, and to listen assiduously to good singers. One learns to think in terms of singing, and it is good practice to
sing an idea to onesself aloud, in order to get the right manner of delivery.]
It is clear from this last passage that focus has shifted from the original spoken
language, mapped on to music via voice pitch and tone, to entirely musical
elements: the Gedancken and singend dencken which Bach envisages are
musical ideas, not philosophical concepts. By the end ofthis line ofthinking,
language is redundant: music alone will do the talking.
The major receivers, cultivators and perpetuators ofthis metaphor, however, were not philosophers or musicians or writers, but the musical amateurs of the mid-century middle class. Well before Rousseau was familiar
in Germany, the taste for a simple melodic style, reinforced by Rationalist
derivation of music from the pitch fluctuations of the emotion-laden voice,
had produced an enormous number of widely popular Oden mit Melodien,
as they were often called songs with very simple keyboard accompaniment,
meant to be sung and played by music-lovers at home.32 The most famous of
these collections was by K.W. Ramler and Chr. G. Krause, and appeared in
17535 as Oden mit Melodien [Odes with melodies] and again in 17678 as
Lieder der Deutschen [German Songs].33 This was the group which received
Rousseaus ideas of simple melodic song with well-prepared enthusiasm, duly
annotated by Hiller.34 They became enthusiastic practitioners of the music
produced by the minor composers of the First Berlin Liederschule under
32
An important predecessor was J.S. Scholze (170550), under the pseudonym ofSperontes.
His collection Singende Muse an der Pleie consisted mostly ofparodies of well-known
tunes with figured bass, which is not quite simple song; but it was re-issued several
times between 1736 and 1745, and established the vogue for middle-class domestic
music-making. Cf. 1949 ed. of MGG, Sperontes, vol.12, cols. 1034ff.
33 See esp. Max Friedlnders Introduction to Das deutsche Lied im 18.Jahrhundert,
Stuttgart/Berlin 1902, repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1962, vol.I,1, 115f.; and NHDM, under
Empfindsam style 284 and Berlin School, 90.
34 Marpurgs Historisch-kritische Beytrge I (Berlin 1755) included both Rousseaus Lettre sur
la musique franoise and Hillers essay commenting on Batteux. Hiller also commented
on and selectively translated Rousseau in his periodicals (e.g. Wchentliche Nachrichten
Jg. III, Leipzig 1768/9, 24 October 1768).
289
Frederick the Great, himself an amateur composer and musician.35 These

were usually settings ofRococo or Empfindsamkeit poets such as Hagedorn,
Gleim and Gellert, specifically for the use of musical amateurs. Even when the
Empfindsamkeit mistrust of music36 had abated somewhat, so that the Second
Berlin Liederschule (including Goethes collaborators J.F. Reichardt and C.F.
Zelter)37 could produce more adventurous settings, the idea of simple melodic
tone as vehicle of individual expression remained the predominant model of
music. It does not always seem to have mattered whether this sound was produced by a singer or a player. Mattheson suggested that the instrument alone
would serve to express feeling, Ramler suggested that the accompaniment
was superfluous; this self-expressive human song was to be universal, and
Ramler hoped to see it as widespread in Germany as it was in France, a genre
cultivated by all social classes.38 Music ofthis sort thus became an important
means by which the German middle classes could assert their claims to sensitivity and culture; and they accordingly became an enthusiastic audience for
the Rousseauesque Singspiele, Italian operetta, and other genres of musical
theatre which became popular from the mid-century onwards.39 The cumulative effect of these developments was a powerful and widespread popular
image of music as language offeeling and language ofthe self , particularly
from the late 1750s onwards.
35
36
37
38
39
NHDM, 90; M. Friedlnder, op.cit., vol.I.1 passim.

Cf. Chapters Three and Four above.
See e.g. Walwei-Wiegelmann, plates and biographies 23 (Reichardt) and 25 (Zelter),
128ff.
In the Vorbericht to the Oden mit Melodien; cf. M. Friedlnder, op.cit. 116.
See e.g. L.L. Albertsen, Goethes Lieder und andere Lieder, in K.-O. Conrady, Deutsche
Literatur zur Zeit der Klassik, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977, 172ff ; Lowinsky, 164ff., 199ff.
Also NHDM, Singspiel, 750f., which makes clear that its social appeal was deliberately
broad, and that Hiller was a notable contributor to the genre.
290
Chapter Seven
Klopstock and Rousseau:

Song as sonorous special utterance in literature
As Lowinsky points out, this idea produced more interesting results in literature than in music, where melody alone offers limited scope.40 The whole
concept seems to have fired the popular imagination, and to have inspired
powerful innovations in verbal technique wherever writers were concerned
with moving expression, especially of feeling.41 Distinctions between music
and language frequently became unimportant both media were subsumed
into an ideal of song, of sonorous special utterance. In an attempt to bring
the written word to resonant life, writers explored a wider range of rhythms,
metres and verse-forms, sonority and pitch. F.G. Klopstocks Bardic poetry
is a good example of this tendency. As Abert remarks,
Schon der Titel Gesnge, den Klopstock seinen Dichtungen gab, verriet, da er im
Dichter nicht blo den Sprecher und Deklamator erblickte, sondern den Snger, der
Singen und Sagen in sich vereinigt.42
[Even the title which Klopstock chose for his poetry, songs, betrays the fact that he saw
in the poet not only the speaker and declaimer, but the singer, who unites in himself
both singing and saying.]
Recent critical studies have tended to view Klopstock as rhythmic and declamatory i.e. rhetorical rather than melodious, despite Herders tribute
that Klopstock had made the whole German language melodisch.43 This
revision seems well justified. Though music is often thematised in his main
40 Op.cit., 201ff., and note 76, esp. his comments on the limited range ofRousseaus musical work.
41 Johannes Birgfeld points out that Klopstocks work was often declaimed aloud, as well
as read privately; and that despite a general trend away from group reading, public recitals of his work became popular: Klopstock: the Art of Declamation and the Reading
Revolution [], Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies ( formerly British Journal for
Eighteenth-century Studies), 31 (2008), 10117, esp.101ff., 109ff.
42 Wort und Ton in der Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts, Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft V (1923),
58.
43 See Katrin Kohl, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000, who cites Herders
comment in Adrastea, Suphan XXIV, 220ff.; see Kohl, ix, 10ff., 54ff., 60ff.
291
work, Der Messias (1748ff.), and in Klopstocks self-presentation,44 his verse

does not flow easily. The rhythm is slow and stately and the vocabulary lofty;
it is verse about sound and music, rather than sonorous and musical verse:
Die Lieder der gttlichen Harfenspieler
Schallen mit Macht, wie beseelend, darein. Die vereinbarte Tnen
Fhrt vorm unsterblichen Hrer manch hohes Loblied vorber.
Wie sich sein freudiger Blick an seinen Werken ergetzet,
Also vergngte sein Ohr itzt dies hohe Getne.45
[The songs of the heavenly harpists
Ring out with power, as though breathing life. This united sounding
Brings many high songs of praise before the Almighty. And een
As his gaze well-pleased delights in all His Creation,
So also his ear rejoices in this high sounding.]
Nonetheless, it is evident that the conceptual metaphor oflanguage and music

fused in enhanced utterance, vereinbarte Tnen, has influenced his language
profoundly. Though he works with the hexameters standard at the time for
serious poetry, he has done his best to modify the linguistic syntax to flow
on from one line to the next, and has tried to find words to evoke both the
angels harps and their song in praise of Creation: hohes Loblied, hohe[s]
Getne. The end result is symmetrical matching of contrasts, rhetorical rather
than musical; but the underlying metaphor is still that of special, sonorous
utterance. And here utterance is made special not for the sake of emotion
(though awe is implied in the repeated hoch, hohe), but to fit the sublime
subject: God contemplates His created universe and the heavenly host sing
in praise of the world and its Creator.
However, the classic example of this conceptual metaphor operating
in literature can be found in Rousseaus La Nouvelle Hloise, By the time it
appeared in 1762, the readership were so inured to the idea that even this
44 See esp. K. Hilliard, Der Stellenwert der Musik bei Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, in
Peter Wollny (ed.), Jahrbuch der Stndigen Konferenz Mitteldeutscher Barockmusik
2003: Klopstock und die Musik, Beeskow: Ortus Musikverlag, 2005, 638; and Hilliard,
Philosophy, Letters and the Fine Arts in Klopstocks Thought, London: UL Institute of
Germanic Studies, 1987, 13346.
45 Der Messias (1748), Erster Gesang, ed. F. Muncker, in B. Seuffert, Deutsche Litteratur
denkmale, Heilbronn 1883, vol XI, 11.
292
Chapter Seven
piece of cultural polemic could carry instant emotional appeal. The hero St
Preux, a man offeeling but unaware of musics melodic power since he speaks
the unmelodious French language, tells Julie how he is taken in hand by the
Italian music master:
Lharmonie, me disait-il, nest quun accessoire loign dans la musique imitative; []
cest de la seule mlodie que sort cette puissance invincible des accens passionns []
[Harmony, he informed me, is merely a remote accessory in imitative music melody
alone can bring forth that invincible power of impassioned accents].
From this explanation of music, the Italian progresses to metaphorical expressions which blend music and language as utterance: une mlodie qui ne parle
point chante toujours mal [] la seule harmonie na jamais rien su dire au
coeur.46 St Preux is all the better able to concentrate on the sounds of Italian
song rather than the sense because he does not understand the language well.
Nor, as a musical amateur, does he understand musical structure: he merely
follows the analogy between melodic line and singing voice. He can thus
proceed to a state where he equates parler au coeur with melodic sound,
discarding the sense ofthe words altogether: he speaks ofparler loreille et
au coeur dans un langage sans articuler les mots. He ends by losing all sense
of what he is hearing, because he is entirely absorbed in his own emotional
reactions, and hopes that Julie will capitulate to feeling likewise:
Je perdais chaque instant lide de musique, de chant, dimitation; je croyais entendre
la voix de la douleur, de lemportement, du dsespoir [] et dans les agitations que jtais
forc dprouver, javais peine rester en place.
[Moment by moment I lost all sense of music, singing, imitation; instead, I heard the
voice of grief, of outrage, of despair and in the agitation I was forced to feel I was
barely able to keep my seat.]
The whole episode is a literary tour de force, with a musicians insights into
the process by which the distinction between music and language is eroded
when these media are imagined as communicators offeeling.47 For the appeal
46 [A melody which does not speak is always a poor singer; harmony alone never had much
to say to the heart]; ibid., 472ff. Part I, Letter 48; Oeuvres Compltes, Nouvelle dition
Paris 1788, vol.I, 469f.
47 [To speak to the heart to speak to the ear and to the heart in a language without
articulating words]. It is interesting to compare this letter with that from St Preux to
293
of this idea of music is to the imagination; and to an amateurs imagination

at that. Better knowledge of musical techniques, and better command of
Italian, would deflate the emotional response and disable the metaphor. But
amateurs such as St Preux, and the German middle classes steeped in Oden
mit Melodien, were all too willing to ignore the technicalities of music and
Italian in favour of imagining music as superlative utterance offeeling. Many
professional writers were in this group of music-loving amateurs. Herder
bewailed his lack of musical skill not only because it prevented him from
playing adequately and expressing his love for Karoline, but because it spoiled
his desired image as man of feeling:
Da ich bei der empfindlichsten Seele die ungeschicktesten, grbsten Hnde zum Klavier
habe [] Die Musik ist fr empfindliche Herzen und feine Seelen ein so unentbehrliches
Vergngen [] da ein Saitenspiel, mit einem Liede beseelt, gewi in die Oekonomie
eines glcklichen Lebens, als tgliches Hausgerth gehret.48
[That I have the most sensitive soul and with it the most coarse and clumsy hands for
the piano Music is such an indispensable pleasure for sensitive souls and refined
heartsthat a stringed instrument, animated by song, does indeed belong in the economy
of a happy life, as an everyday household implement.]
Goethe and amateur music-making

Amateur music-making was an established part ofthe Frankfurt ofGoethes
childhood:
Die Music-Liebhaberey ist auch allhier sehr gro: diese edle Belustigung ist, seitdem der
berhmte Herr Telemann hier gewesen, in groe Aufnahme gekommen. Es sind wenig
angesehene Familien, da nicht die Jugend auf einem oder dem andern Instrument oder im
Singen unterrichtet wird; die Concerten sind deswegen [] sehr gewhnlich, und lassen
sich dabey [] fremde und berhmte Virtuosen hren, wenn sie hier durchreisen.49
Mme. DOrbe (Part II, letter 23, ed.cit. vol.2, 325ff.). He is not trying to seduce her, but
to impress her with his wit, so the discussion is factual, fluent and malicious.
48 Letter to Karoline, 20th September 1770, ed.cit. vol.I, 221.
49 Johann Bernhardt Mller, Beschreibung des gegenwrtigen Zustandes von Franckfurt
am Mayn, Frankfurt 1747 [208f.], cit. M. Friedlnder, Goethe und die Musik, 279f.
294
Chapter Seven
[Amateur music-making is also widespread here: this noble pastime has become extremely
popular since the famous Mr. Telemann was here. There are very few families of repute
in which the children do not receive instruction in the playing of some instrument or
in singing; for this reason concerts are extremely frequent, and famous virtuosos from
elsewhere make guest appearances when they pass through.]
As he recounts in Dichtung und Wahrheit, he learned to play the piano; his

family all sang (sometimes Italian airs) or played instruments, with varying
degrees of success and enthusiasm; during the French occupation, French
companies performed Rousseaus Le Devin du Village and similar operettas,
and brought what he later called ein heiteres, singbares Wesen to the stage.50
He declaimed Klopstock, Biblical passages and French plays with and to his
sister, whether or not he understood the text; and in general seems to have
had a fondness for the aspects oflanguage which are analogous to music, and a
first acquaintance with music which encouraged the analogy with language.51
He also, as Mllers Beschreibung [] conveys, encountered such music as
embedded in middle-class social life and status: Walwei-Wiegelmann shows
the imposing piano his father bought, an upright grand Hammerklavier known
as Pyramidenklavier, or less formally Giraffe, large and bold in design.52 Leipzig
provided greater variety, and more professional performances, but essentially
similar music: Lieder for social music-making (still Ramler/Krause, even some
Sperontes), though with a little more vigour in songs and Singspiele by Hiller.53
J.F. Rochlitz, praising Hiller in a later study (1824), suggested that he limited
his style to Lieder und Liedermiges even more than the genre demanded,
because the troupe had no adequate soloist.54 This does not quite tally with
the impression made on Goethe by the singer and actress Corona Schrter,
whom he later persuaded to come to Weimar as singer to the Court (1776).55
But it seems clear enough that this Rousseauesque ideal engendered rather
feeble and oversimplified, if agreeable music, alongside mannered Anacreontic
Georg Philipp Telemanns appearance must have been a visit; from 1721 to his death in
1767 he was based at Hamburg.
50 [A cheerful, singable atmosphere]; Dichtung und Wahrheit, I, III, IV, AA 10, 20, 103f.,
130f., 134f.; Italienische Reise, Nov. 1787, AA 11, 481.
51 See esp. DuW II & III, AA 10, 91ff., 102f.
52 Op.cit., plate and notes 1, 128ff.
53 See e.g. M. Friedlnder, Goethe und die Musik, 283ff.; & DuW VIII, AA 10, 359f.
54 Fr Freunde der Tonkunst, I, Leipzig 1824, 11, 19f.
55 Cf. Walwei-Wiegelmann, plate and biography 13, 128ff.
295
and pastoral poetry of similar pleasant slightness, including Goethes own.56

More interesting for present purposes is the passage he copied almost verbatim
from one of Hillers periodicals; which suggests that he thinks musical setting is quite literally derived from the rhythm, pitch and phrasing of emotive
speech, albeit with an unidentified extra, das eigenthmliche seiner Kunst
[the elements peculiar to his art]:
Ein Componist, dem ein Text zu bearbeiten vorgelegt wird, hat besonders auffolgende
4 Stcke zu sehen: 1. Auf den grammatickalischen Accent, oder auf die Lnge und Krze
der Sylben um prosodisch richtig zu declamieren: 2. Auf die logikalischen Abtheilungen
der Rede, um mit Verstande zu deklamiren: 3. auf den oratorischen Accent um der vorhabenden Empfindung gem zu deklamiren: 4. Auf das eigenthmliche seiner Kunst,
um nicht blos Decklamateur sondern Musickus zugleich zu seyn. Musickal. Nachrichten
und Anmerck. Leipz. 1770, 4. St.57
[A composer given the task of setting a text must observe the following four points: 1)
the grammatical accent, or the long and short syllables, in order to declaim with accurate
prosody; 2) the logical divisions ofthe speech, in order to declaim meaningfully; 3) the
spoken emphases, in order to declaim in accordance with the predominant emotion; 4)
the elements peculiar to his art, in order to be both a declaimer and also a musician.].
Goethe: Simple song and sophisticated writing

Neither Strassburg nor Wetzlar nor Weimar changed much in the musical
culture around Goethe, except that he now played the cello in social musicmaking.58 What did change drastically in Strassburg under Herders tutelage
was his understanding of poetry and how to write it:
56
57
58
These included the Lieder written for Friederike Oeser, and the Singspiel Die Laune des
Verliebten; cf. DuW VIII, AA 357f., 360; M. Friedlnder, GudM, 284f.
Ephemerides, [AA 4, 962]; cf. Friedlnder, 293, Der junge Goethe ed. Fischer-Lamberg,
I, 428. The quotation is from Hillers Musikalische Nachrichten und Anmerkungen (the
continuation of Wchentliche Nachrichten und Anmerkungen, die Musik betreffend),
Leipzig 1770, [St. 4, 22 January, 25].
See e.g. Goethes letter to Salzmann, 3 February 1772, AA 18, 172.
296
Chapter Seven
Ich habe noch aus Elsa zwlf Lieder mitgebracht, die ich auf meinen Streifereien aus
denen Kehlen der ltsten Mttergens aufgehascht habe. Ein Glck! Denn ihre Enkel
singen alle: ich liebte nur Ismenen [] meine Schwester soll Ihnen die Melodien, die
wir haben (sind NB. die alten Melodien, wie sie Gott erschaffen hat), sie soll sie Ihnen
abschreiben.59
[And Ive brought a dozen songs back with me from Alsace, which I took directly from
the old biddies I met on my wanderings. And a good thing too; for their grandchildren
sing nothing but I loved only Ismene, and she loved only me. My sister shall write down
the tunes for you, we have them (NB theyre the old tunes just as God made them), she
will copy them out for you.]
Dreingreiffen, packen ist das Wesen jeder Meisterschaft [] Es ist alles so Blick bei
Euch, sagtet Ihr mir oft. Jetzt versteh ichs, tue die Augen zu und tappe. Es mu gehn
oder brechen. Seht, was ist das fr ein Musikus, der auf sein Instrument sieht! (Ich kann
schreiben, aber keine Federn schneiden [] das Violoncell spielen, aber nicht stimmen
pp.) [] Seit vierzehn Tagen les ich eure Fragmente, zum erstenmal; [] ist nichts wie
eine Gttererscheinung ber mich herabgestiegen, hat mein Herz und Sinn mit warmer
heiliger Gegenwart durch und durch belebt, als das wie Gedanck und Empfindung den
Ausdruck bildet.60
[Get stuck in, get a grip, thats the essence of mastering anything You often used to
tell me that I was always just looking on. Now I understand what you mean, so I shut
my eyes and feel my way forward. Its make or break; what use is a musician who just
contemplates his instrument. (I can write, but I cant trim a quill, can play the cello but
I cant tune it etc. etc.) For the last fortnight Ive been reading your Fragments for the
first time; nothing hit me quite so much like a divine apparition and filled my head and
heart with such a warm fullness of sacred presence as that section about thought and
feeling shaping the expression.]
Letter to Herder, Frankfurt, Sept. 1771, AA 18, 162. Goethe is struck by the contrast
between real folksongs, to old tunes which everyone knew (tunes as God wrote them!),
and the poses ofLeipzig-style pastoral poetry such as Ich liebte nur Ismenen. This was
a popular hit song: see DjG, II, 322.
60 Letter to Herder from Wetzlar (where Goethe had gone for further legal training in the
Imperial Chancery), 10 July 1772, AA 18, 173ff. The unclear grammar ofthe last line cited
here is cleared up by Herders original formula: da Gedanke und Wort, Empfindung
und Ausdruck sich zu einander verhalten, wie [] Seele zum Krper. [that thought
and word, feeling and expression are to each other as the soul is to the body]; Herder,
Fragmente ber die neuere deutsche Literatur, 1767, Dritte Sammlung, 6, Suphan I, 397,
cit. DjG II, 353. See also esp. DuW, II,10, AA 10, 448.
59
297
Getting to grips with the German language and German history (for Gtz
von Berlichingen), collecting folk-songs for Herder, thinking about the craft
of writing, gave him a much sharper perspective on the idea of music and
poetry, on middle class amateur musicians and the expression offeeling, and
on what would now be called the sociology of music, including his own.61
Music is now not only something which can be thematised e.g. by evoking
the popular image of solo player/singer, describing sound effects, or interpolating songs which depict the authentic sound ofthe singers personal voice and
milieu, as well as their feeling. Nor is the text necessarily paramount in song.
Rather, elements of music (sound, rhythm, phrasing, tempo, certain forms)
are brought into language, so that the net result is musicalised language, not
just language about music in Klopstocks manner.62
Some ofthe most durable effects ofHerders ideas and Rousseaus literary practice63 can be found in Goethes narrative work, which greatly extends
the cognitive potential ofthe conceptual metaphor. In Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers, Lotte is doubly true to type, as much in the mould of the Oden
mit Melodien as ofRousseau, a middle class amateur singing her einfache[r]
Gesang with melodic accompaniment, eine Melodie, die sie auf dem Clavier
spielt, [] so simpel und so geistvoll64 [a tune which she plays on the piano,
so simple yet so brilliant]. For Werther, as for St Preux, music and words,
instrument and singer, become one with his own emotions. But Goethe
handles the erotic undercurrents very differently. Werther does not have
61
See previous note; also e.g. letters to Salzmann, 28 November 1771 & 3 February 1772,
AA 18, 168f., 171f.
62 John R. Williams has recently reaffirmed the importance, subtlety and variety of both
oral and aural elements in Goethes poetry, especially the features which language has in
common with music (rhythm, tempo, pitch, volume, etc); so that a symbiosis ofform
and meaning, rhythm and sense becomes a hallmark of Goethes poetic writing. See
J.W., Goethe the Poet, in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Goethe,
Cambridge University Press, 2002, 4265 passim: also Williams section on metres and
verse-forms in his Goethes Faust, London: Allen & Unwin, 1987, 22031.
63 Goethe read La Nouvelle Hloise early; he first quotes from it in Leipzig, though not
with reference to this episode (see DjG I, esp.466, note to 153,41). It seems from the
passages considered below that Goethe was indeed influenced directly by Rousseau,
but made his own use of the ideas and motifs he took over.
64 Book I, 16 July, AA 4, 301, 417. (See Frontispiece illustration above).
298
Chapter Seven
St Preux detachment; he is in the grip of intense repressed longing, and when

it finally comes to the surface he projects his own desire on to Lotte:
Sie nahm ihre Zuflucht zum Claviere und hauchte mit ser leiser Stimme harmonische Laute zu ihrem Spiele. Nie habe ich ihre Lippen so reizend gesehen, es war,
als wenn sie sich lechzend ffneten, jene se Tne in sich zu schlrfen, die aus dem
Instrumente hervorquollen, und nur der heimliche Widerschall aus dem sssen Munde
zurckklnge []65
[She took refuge at the piano and breathed harmonious sounds with her sweet soft voice
to accompany her playing. I had never seen her lips so lovely, as though they opened
with longing to drink in the sweet sounds which flowed from the instrument, and only
the secret echo of these came back from her sweet mouth].
Goethe has drawn on interest in the articulating mouth, the speaker, and the
attraction of spoken language, and also on the idea of song and music as interchangeable, in order to depict Werthers overwhelming urge to kiss Lottes
lips: music and feeling have become one. But the idea ofLotte regurgitating
sounds is rather odd; when the scene is repeated a few days later, she gently
asks him to leave,66 and the reader is alerted to the fact that this is Werthers
version ofLottes playing, not how she actually feels. This is writing based on a
metaphor of simple music and language fused into one as enhanced utterance;
but it is not simple writing. The metaphor is somewhat differently deployed
in Wilhelm Meister in connection with Mignons singing. Both episodes use
the Rousseau motif of half-understood Italian; but the Lehrjahre version is
amplified to include the words (Kennst du das Land), and modified to focus
more sharply on the interrelation of instrument and voice:
Der klagende Ton ihrer Saiten, zu dem sich auch manchmal eine angenehme, obgleich
etwas rauhe Stimme gesellte, machte alle Menschen aufmerksam [] Man konnte nicht
verstehen was sie sang, es waren immer dieselben oder doch sehr hnliche Melodien, die
sie nach ihren Empfindungen, Gedanken, Situationen und Grillen [] zu modifizieren
schien. (Sendung, III,10).
[The mournful tone of her strings, sometimes mingled with a pleasant though rather
guttural singing voice, caught everyones attention [] Nobody could understand what
she was singing, it was the same or very similar tunes, which she seemed to modify
according to her feelings, thoughts, circumstances and whims.]
65 24 November, AA 4, 349.
66 4 December, ed.cit., 353.
299
Wilhelm [] unterschied bald die Tne einer Zither, und die Stimme, welche zu singen
anfing, war Mignons Stimme [] Melodie und Ausdruck gefielen unserm Freunde
besonders, ob er gleich die Worte nicht alle verstehen konnte. Er lie sich die Strophen
[] erklren, [] und bersetzte sie ins Deutsche. Aber die Originalitt der Wendungen
konnte er nur von ferne nachahmen [] Auch konnte der Reiz der Melodie mit nichts
verglichen werden. (Lehrjahre, III,1)67
[Wilhelm soon made out the tones of a zither, and the voice which began to sing was
Mignons The melody and intonation pleased our friend most particularly, though
he could not understand all the words. He asked for the verses to be explained to him
[] and translated them into German. But he could give only a pale imitation of the
original idioms [] and could find no comparison for the charm of the tune.].
In context, the two passages read markedly differently: in the Sendung, the
shock comes from Mignons habit of perching in odd places as she sings, and
from her unusual voice; in the Lehrjahre, the strangeness comes from Mignons
now familiar and characteristic voice communicating through melody and
language combined, yet still with more meaning than she is fully aware of
and more than her hearers can understand. The pose and intention are those
of communication, but only partial communication is taking place. This
discrepancy is even more marked in the interpolated story of the Pilgernde
Trin in the Wanderjahre. The established clich of amateur (this time skilled)
revealing her feelings and cultural background through her playing and singing
throws into very sharp relief the fact that she reveals nothing, and deceives
her hearers (and possibly herself ) with disastrous effect.68 The metaphor is
also deployed in less serious contexts: amongst other things, Felixs education in the Pdagogischer Provinz parodies both the Rousseauesque fondness
for amateur Italian and the pastoral convention so popular in Leipzig and
its Singspiele:
Euer Felix hat sich zum Italienischen bestimmt und da [] melodischer Gesang bei unsern
Anstalten durch alles durchgreift, so solltet ihr ihn, in der Langweile des Hterlebens,
gar manches Lied zierlich und gefhlvoll vortragen hren.69
67 AA 8, 62; AA 7, 155f.
68 WJ I,5, AA 8, 62.
69 WJ II,8, AA 8, 268.
300
Chapter Seven
[Your son Felix has chosen Italian, and since tuneful singing is very much part of all
our arrangements, you will hear him singing many songs daintily and with feeling, in
the tedium of his life as shepherd.].
Felix is otherwise presented as sturdy, lively and intelligent; daintiness belongs

not to his persona or style, but to the pastoral convention being parodied.
In many ofthe examples considered so far, it is hard to say whether music
is being mapped on to language or vice versa. The two domains are brought
close together, and both are drawn on to suggest a certain idea of communication. This communication is more than heightened lyricism as vehicle of
feeling, although such elements are usually included. Not only the feeling, but
the psychological, social and cultural context ofthat feeling can be conveyed
through the type of song and playing. And not only the melodiousness of a
voice or instrument, but the characteristic timbre of a voice and the particular images of the singer/player which it evokes in the hearer, can be part of
the communication. For example, although the songs inserted in Gtz and
Egmont have much the same function as Lottes playing, in that they show a
person oflower class expressing feeling through song, and thus evoke a social
milieu and simple values within it,70 they are not of a piece in their context.
The simple values in Gtz are part nostalgia for a notional heroic past, part
political naivety which proves catastrophic; whereas Klrchen may come from
a simple household but she is far from being a simple mind, and her songs
convey energy and independence, not domestic quietude. Gretchens songs
convey far more than the folk singers local colour; for example, the voice in
which she adapts a prayer to her own feelings (Ach neige) is made characteristic enough in metre and tone to be credible as hers when she returns at
the end of Part II as Una Poenitentium, sonst Gretchen genannt (12069).71
A similar enhancement and Verfremdung of the stereotype can be
found even in Goethes early efforts in mixed dramatic genres, Singspiele,
Schauspiele mit Gesang, etc.72 Musical theatre was a genre with broad social
70 See esp. the first version of Gtz, e.g. Georgs song Es fing ein Knab ein Meiselein
(AA 4, 718), and E. Neumann, Die Lieder in Goethes Gtz, GQ 46 (1973), 334ff.; and
Klrchens songs Die Trommel gerhret and Freudvoll und leidvoll, AA 6, 23f., 63f.
71 Cf. L.A. Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and Thinker, 1079.
72 See esp. B. Holtbernd, Die dramaturhischen Funktionen der Musik in den Schauspielen
Goethes: Alles aufs Bedrfnis der lyrischen Bhne gerechnet, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang,
1992, including the table of specified settings and incidental music, 23759; T. Frantzke,
301
appeal, which offered scope for topical comment as well as for entertainment and a certain amount of experimentation.73 Some of these pieces are
very much in the spirit of Rousseau and Herder. The first version of Erwin
und Elmire (17735), set by Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia,74 issues a challenge rather than a stage-direction at the emotional climax when the lovers
are reunited: Die Musik wage es, die Gefhle dieser Pausen auszudrcken.75
In Claudine von Villa Bella (17746), the singing ofLieder is not only a way
of expressing emotion. In Gonzalos mind it stands for a simpler way of life;
but this is a corruptible ideal, as in Gtz. Crugantino exploits it shamelessly
to seduce Gonzalos daughter, and even points out to the credulous old man
that it can be a pose: Der allerneuste Ton ists wieder, solche Lieder zu singen
und zu machen, before singing the tale of seduction, Es war ein Buhle frech
genung.76 And even Die Laune des Geliebten, the first and slightest of these
pieces (1767), takes the equation of music and language with feeling to an
absurd but logical conclusion: in a fit of jealousy, Eridon wirft die Flte auf
die Erde [] zerreit die Lieder, und zerbeit die Stcke von den Liedern
an unexpected piece of self-parody at the heart of a pastorale.77 Again, it is
hard to say whether music or language is the source domain in these instances.
They all depend not only on the established association of music and song with
feeling, but also on a particular concept of communication; and this concept
draws on the domains of language and music in tandem, rather than taking
Goethes Schauspiele mit Gesang und Singspiele, 17731782, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang,
1998, and Lesley Sharpe, A National Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland and the German Stage,
Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, 314, 13843.
73 Frantzke, op.cit., 224f.
74 She appears to have been a gifted amateur composer and musician. Sharpe mentions her
patronage, but not her participation or musical talents. See e.g. Walwei-Wiegelmann,
plate and biography 11, 128ff., and I.-M. Barth, Literarisches Weimar, Stuttgart: Metzler,
1971, 17f.
75 [Let the music dare to express the feelings of these pauses]; AA 4, 830. In the revised
version (1787), this is filled by a song (i.e.added text) from a secondary character: AA
6, 1012.
76 [O, its the latest thing again to write and sing songs like that [] There was a wooer
bold enough []];AA 4, 858. This topical reference, and the lively prose dialogue in
which it is embedded, were elided in the revised version finally performed 1789 (AA 6,
notes 10837).
77 [Throws his flute to the ground [] tears up the songs [] and gnaws at the torn pieces
of the music]; AA 4, 32f.
302
Chapter Seven
one as source and the other as target. This underlying conceptual awareness
partly accounts for a paradox: even in such light works, actual music and
language are being deployed to represent emotion and comment on it, not
simply to suggest the singers feelings.
This extended cognitive reference beyond mere lyricism can be seen not
only in Goethes singing amateurs, but also in his poets less surprisingly,
since their function and language is traditionally both singen and sagen, and
(among other things) they owe something to Klopstocks bard as well as to
Herders idea of poetry as Musik der Seele, music of the soul.78 There are
many of them, some (e.g. Musensohn) already considered. The idea of music
and language as special communication is drawn on in most instances; since
they have not only feeling to communicate, but thought, and must express
not only themselves, but universal experience. The diversity in Goethes depiction ofthis function comes out strikingly if we compare two poet figures who
struggle both with their vocation and with their listeners: the Harfenspieler
ofthe Lehrjahre, and Tasso. In the Lehrjahre, words and music are presented
as mingled and at times interchangeable; focus is on the medium and on feeling, rather than form:
Es waren herzrhrende, klagende Tne, von einem traurigen, ngstlichen Gesange
begleitet [] eine Art von Phantasie, [] wenige Strophen teils singend teils rezitierend
[] Die wehmtige herzliche Klage drang tief in die Seele des Hrers. Es schien ihm,
als ob der Alte manchmal von Trnen gehindert wrde fortzufahren; dann klangen die
Saiten allein, bis sich wieder die Stimme leise in gebrochenen Lauten darein mischte
[] Wir wrden [] doch die Anmut der seltsamen Unterredung nicht ausdrcken
knnen, die unser Freund mit dem abenteuerlichen Fremden hielt. Auf alles, was der
Jngling zu ihm sagte, antwortete der Alte mit der reinsten bereinstimmung durch
Anklnge, die alle verwandten Empfindungen rege machten und der Einbildungskraft
ein weites Feld erffneten.79
[These were deeply moving, mournful notes, accompanied by a sad and timid song a
kind offantasia, a few stanzas partly sung and partly recited This melancholy heartfelt elegy went to the very soul of the listener. It seemed to him as though the old man
was sometimes prevented by tears from continuing,; at such times the strings sounded
alone, until the voice softly joined in again with its broken sounds We would hardly
find words to describe the charm of the strange dialogue which our friend maintained
78 Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 166; see also Chapter Four above.
79 LJ, II,13, AA 7, 145ff.
303
with the extraordinary stranger. The old man replied to everything Wilhelm said and
matched it exactly in chords which aroused all the related feelings, and opened up a
wide field to the imagination].
Again, we are given the words which the Harper sings.80 But this does not
reveal much about him; especially since he produces only half-articulated
sounds for some ofthe time. Instead, we have Wilhelm the amateur as listener,
confident that he understands, because this is the familiar idea of instrument
and song combined in special utterance of feeling. We are alerted to this by
the Es schien ihm, als ob, and the narrators remark that this music left wide
scope for the imagination. So although teils singend teils rezitierend may be
an accurate description ofthe Harpers delivery, when the strings sound alone
and the voice joins in with fragmented sounds this is not a continuation of
a narrative offeeling, as Wilhelm takes it to be; nor is the resulting exchange
of comments and chords a conversation, as Wilhelm takes it to be. He feels
he has understood; but the result is a confused mass of all the related feelings, and it is hard to say what he has understood, especially since the Harper
is trying to communicate something which remains beyond communication
until the end ofthe novels sequel.81 The contrast with Tasso is stark. There the
image of music and voice comes suddenly, at the end of a formal verse play
in which other aspects of poetic utterance and reception have been explored
notably Tassos relation to those around him both as man and as poet. If
the Harper has not succeeded in articulating in understandable language
what he thinks and feels, Tasso has not succeeded in matching his feelings
and behaviour to his social context, the court. But he achieves clarity on the
special functions of his utterance among the rest of humankind; and these
are expressed not in a rambling fantasia (like the Harper), or in a rant such
as Tasso has vented earlier, but with powerful brevity:
80 Ibid., 146f.
81 I.e. that Mignon is his daughter through an unwittingly incestuous relation with his
sister.
304
Chapter Seven
mir noch ber alles
Sie [die Natur] lie im Schmerz mir
Melodie und Rede
Die tiefste Flle meiner Not zu klagen
Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual
verstummt,
Gab mir ein Gott, zu sagen, wie ich leide.
to me above all else

She gave the gifts of melody and language
The deepest depths of suffering to lament;
And when in human travail no words come,
I have the gift of uttering my pain.82
Tasso is not singing when he voices this insight; it concerns things he has
struggled to understand and formulate, rather than feel. But he identifies
Melodie und Rede as the equal constituents of a special medium which
can articulate what everyone else finds impossible to say, because it is beyond
normal language.
Goethe: Fresh impetus from Italy, song as Wechselrede

The idea of combined melody and language as communication was not of
course confined to expression of the individual. Choruses can be used to
convey the feelings and character of a group, large or small. Goethe knew
choruses from the Singspiele and from the Italian opera buffa, on which he
drew in attempts to give the Singspiele more vigour, depth and shape. He used
choruses in the traditional way, to comment on the dramatic action or reinforce moments of emotional importance especially in the revised versions of
the Singspiele which he prepared in Italy.83 However, when he went to Italy he
heard not only music with stronger tone than he had been used to, but music
with voices and instruments in dialogue, sometimes singly and sometimes in
groups, sometimes in full-scale polyphony.84 The often unaccompanied singing
Torquato Tasso, V,5, AA 6, 313.

Cf. notes on Singspiele above., and editors notes in AA 6, 1243ff.; also Holtbernd, esp.
section IV, passim.
84 See e.g. Paul Winter, Goethe erlebt Kirchenmusik in Italien, Hamburg: Dulk, 1949, and
C. Ricca, berlegungen zu Goethes rmischer Rezeption des geistlichen dialogisierten
Liedes, in H. Jung (ed.), Eine Art Symbolik frs Ohr: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lyrik
82
83
305
which he heard in the Sistine Chapel, in St Peters and elsewhere85 showed

him new possibilities for the use ofthe chorus, especially in alternation with
the solo voice, to demonstrate relations between individual and group. He
first heard such music as part of the St Cecilias Day celebrations in Rome:
Wie man Violin- oder andere Konzerte hat, so fhren sie Konzerte mit Stimmen auf,
da die eine Stimme, der Sopran zum Beispiel, herrschend ist und Solo singt, das Chor
von Zeit zu Zeit einfllt und ihn begleitet [] immer mit dem ganzen Orchester. Es
tut gute Wirkung.86
[ Just as there are concertos for violins or other instruments, they perform concertos
for voices, when one voice say the soprano dominates and sings solo, and the choir
joins in from time to time with an accompaniment, with full orchestra throughout. It
is very effective].
Some ofhis discoveries involved polyphonic coordination of different voices,

and these must be considered later. What concerns us here are his encounters
with utterance and a response of similar sound, a kind of echo, to suggest
the affinity and sympathy of human beings in tune with one another. This
was not in itself new: as we saw, Herder had advocated the power of simple
sound (Ton) to evoke a like response from fellow human creatures.87 But
what Goethe heard in Italy was more like a recitative with vocal elaborations;
he calls it Gesang rather than Lied, and notes both sound and sense, communicated and reciprocated over a distance:
Es ist bekannt, da in Venedig die Gondolier groe Stellen aus Ariost und Tasso auswendig wissen und solche auf ihre eigne Melodie zu singen pflegen [] Die stark deklamierten und gleichsam ausgeschrienen Laute trafen von fern das Ohr und erregten die
Aufmerksamkeit; die bald darauffolgenden Passagen [] schienen wie nachklingende
und Musik, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2002, 15165. Cf. Also R. Fischer, Der Chor
im deutschen Drama von Klopstocks Hermannsschlacht bis Goethes Faust II (Diss.),
Mnchen 1917, esp.71ff. This is obviously an old study; but it shows how the Chorus
was used over a long period, and is a useful reminder that such musical or quasi-musical
episodes were commoner in Goethes time than is sometimes assumed.
85 See his Italienische Reise, esp. Bericht November 1787; 1 March 1788; 7 March 1788
AA 11, 483, 577, 580ff.
86 Italienische Reise I, Rom 22 November 1786, AA 11, 154; cf. also Bericht November
1787, AA 11, 483.
87 ber den Ursprung der Sprache, Suphan V, 17.
306
Chapter Seven
Klagetne auf einen Schrei der Empfindung oder des Schmerzes. Der andere, der aufmerksam horcht, fngt gleich da an, wo der erste aufgehrt hat, und antwortet ihm []
Melodie und Gedicht verbinden zwei fremde Menschen, er wird das Echo des ersten
und strengt sich nun an, gehrt zu werden, wie er den ersten vernahm [] Es klingt
dieser Gesang aus der weiten Ferne unaussprechlich reizend, weil er in dem Gefhl des
Entfernten erst seine Bestimmung erfllt. Er klingt wie eine Klage ohne Trauer.88
[It is well known that in Venice the gondoliers know long passages from Ariosto and
Tasso offby heart, and sing them to their own tunes The strongly articulated, almost
shouted sounds they made carried over a long distance and drew attention; then the
passages which followed soon after sounded like mournful reverberations of a cry of
emotion or of pain. The second singer, listening attentively, picks up exactly where the
other left off, and responds to him
Melody and poem link two strangers, the second becomes the echo of the first
and makes great efforts to be heard in his turn, just as he heard the first This singing
sounds unutterably moving from a distance, because it reaches fulfilment only when
the listener responds. It has the tone of lament, but with no sadness].
This sung communication also struck him in the fishermens wives who sang
from the shore to their husbands out at sea:
Sie haben die Gewohnheit [] sich abends an das Ufer zu setzen und diese Gesnge
anzustimmen, und solange heftig damit fortzufahren, bis sie aus der Ferne das Echo
der Ihrigen vernehmen.
Wie viel schner [] bezeichnet sich hier dieser Gesang als der Ruf eines Einsamen in
die Ferne und Weite, da ihn ein anderer und Gleichgestimmter hre und antworte! Es
ist der Ausdruck einer starken herzlichen Sehnsucht, die doch jeden Augenblick dem
Glck der Befriedigung nahe ist.89
[They are accustomed to seat themselves on the shore of an evening and to strike up
these songs, which they continue forcefully until they hear their loved ones answering
in the distance.
This singing is much pleasanter envisaged as the call of a lonely voice into the far
beyond, seeking a kindred spirit to hear and answer! It is an expression of strong, deep
longing, which may at any moment be fulfilled].
88 Article Volksgesang, Der teutsche Merkur Mrz 1789, AA 14, 410ff. Interestingly, he
comments that the melodies used were similar to Rousseaus. From a distance was
apparently crucial to the effect: he reports that he had some trouble finding a pair of
gondoliers to sing for him, and a point from which he could hear both of them with
pleasure: close to, the harshness and loudness of the singing was unpleasant!
89 Ibid., 412.
307
Though he seems to have found the actual singing harsh and guttural, the
idea stuck firmly in his mind. In the essay Symbolik (1794), he suggested that
the similarity of sound in words (such as mein, dein, sein) was a pointer
to genuine innere Verwandtschaft der Erscheinungen [inner affinity of
phenomena];90 and the motif recurs in his work from then on, adding a further dimension to the image ofthe Poet/Singer. In the West-stlicher Divan,
for instance, such affinity of sound conveys not simple feeling or attitudes,
but intense passion and sophisticated mutual understanding:
Behramgur, sagt man, hat den Reim erfunden,
Er sprach entzckt aus reiner Seele Drang;
Dilaram schnell, die Freundin seiner Stunden,
Erwiderte mit gleichem Wort und Klang []
Hast mir dies Buch geweckt, du hasts gegeben;

Denn was ich froh, aus vollem Herzen sprach,
Das klang zurck aus deinem holden Leben,

Wie Blick dem Blick, so Reim dem Reime nach

[Behramgur, so they say, invented rhyme,

Words welled up joyfully from deep within;
And then Dilaram, always by his side,
Answered in sound and words closely akin
You woke this book within me, yes, you
gave it;
For what I from a full and glad heart spoke,
Sang back to me from your own graceful
being,
Look followed look, and rhyme each rhyme
awoke].91
Here Klang and Wort, sprach and klang, are interchangeable forms of
response. The preceding poem, Kaum, da ich dich wieder habe, embodies a
similar idea: Suleikas new songs are her response to her lovers inspiration.92
In the late poem, olsharfen, the title invokes musical sound and the subtitle
Ein Gesprch verbal communication; alternating stanzas then depict two
attitudes gradually coming together until they respond similarly, despite
separation.93 In Faust, alongside Mephistos denial of meaningful sound
and preference for the singsong nonsense ofthe monkeys, we have the Poets
initial resumption of his theme, although he may not receive the same echo
from his new listeners:
90 AA 16, 855f.
91 Buch Suleika, AA 3, 360f; see also J. Whaley, West-Eastern Divan/West-stlicher Divan,
London: Wolff, 1974, 147, from whom in particular I have taken ideas for rhymes.
92 Ibid., 359f.
93 AA 1, 480f.
308
Chapter Seven
Sie hren nicht die folgenden Gesnge,

Die Seelen, denen ich die ersten sang;
Zerstoben ist das freundliche Gedrnge,
Verklungen, ach! der erste Widerklang.
Mein Lied ertnt der unbekannten
Menge
The souls to whom I sang my early songs,

Will not hear those that I am singing now;
The friendly crowd is scattered far and wide,
Alas! the first strong echo long since faded.
My song rings out now to a crowd of
strangers
(1721).
Faust is finally brought close to Helena and all she represents as together they
construct a rhyming Wechselrede (936782):
H:

F:

H:

F:

H:
F:

H:
Doch wnscht ich Unterricht, warum H:

die Rede
Des Manns mir seltsam klang, seltsam
und freundlich
Ein Ton scheint sich dem andern zu
bequemen,
Und hat ein Wort zum Ohre sich gesellt,
Ein andres kommt, dem ersten liebzukosen.
Gefllt dir schon die Sprechart unsrer F:
Vlker,
O so gewi entzckt auch der Gesang,
Befriedigt Ohr und Sinn im tiefsten
Grunde.
Doch ist am sichersten, wir bens gleich;
Die Wechselrede lockt es, rufts hervor.
So sage denn, wie sprech ich auch so
H:
schn?
Das ist gar leicht, es mu von Herzen F:
gehn.
Und wenn die Brust von Sehnsucht
berfliet,
Man sieht sich um und fragt
wer mitgeniet.
H:
Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwrts, F:
nicht zurck,
Die Gegenwart allein
ist unser Glck.
H.
94 Transl. Luke II, 152.
But tell me why the speech of that good

man
Had something strange about it, strange and
friendly:
Each sound seems to accommodate the
next
And when one word has settled in the ear
Another follows to caress the first.
It is the way our peoples speak; I know
That if this pleases you, our music too
Will satisfy both ear and inmost heart.
But it is best we practise it at once,
Talking by turns, for that calls forth the skill.
Then say, how shall I learn such lovely
speech?
It is not hard: say what your heart will
teach.
And when ones heart is full, one turns to
see
Wholl share the rapture
Share it now with me!
No past recalled, no future time to guess;
Only the present
Is our happiness.94
309
This exchange is a very long way from simple sound and simple feeling,
although it too works with the concept of similar sound and similar sense
blended as special communication. The scene is part of an elaborate masque,
a deception within a deception, anything but innocent; yet it is a profoundly
important encounter for Faust. The heightened verbal sound of the rhyming exchanges conveys this, with song evoked as a further pleasure to come
(9373). Here rhyme conveys not reason, but mutual passion, knowledge and
understanding, emphasised by the commentary of the Chorus (9385ff.).
Goethe: Special utterance in an ambiguous medium

With all these diverse instances in mind, it is easier to consider some scenes
from Goethes dramas which have been suggested for musical treatment, but
which seem rather to be suspended between the two media, so that musical
treatment is potentially problematic. The conceptual metaphor of music and
language as fused in enhanced communication works well as an idea; but in
practice it can be very difficult to tell whether a given passage is to be spoken
or sung. Such ambiguity does not always matter: in Concerto Dramatico,95
for instance, language is used predominantly for its sound-effects, to evoke
certain types of music, song or character, and performers could work in either
song or speech without losing essential elements. Even in a solemn Festspiel
such as Pandora, the problem is not serious. Since the language is so highly
stylised, formally ambiguous passages (such as Elpores monologue to the
audience, with its echoing finale, 348ff.) could be rendered equally well in
sonorously declaimed verse or clearly articulated song.96 But a piece such
as Iphigenies Parzenlied (1726ff.)97 does pose a problem. It is set out as a
Lied, and called a Lied, and there are internal and external references to its
being sung. But as Gnter Mller points out, it marks not only Iphigenies
nadir of despair but also the moment of shock when she realises that she and
95 AA 4, 155ff.
96 AA 6, esp.418ff.
97 AA 6, 198ff.
310
Chapter Seven
Orestes may merely be the next horrific episode in the grim narrative of the
Fates.98 It seems to have more in common with Tassos painful moment of
recognition, soberly spoken; certainly it is crucial that the words are audible
and understood. Formally speaking, it exists on a watershed, as Herder put
it, between speech and song; but a performer would have to choose between
the two, or devise a compromise. Holtbernd approaches the problem from
Goethes contemporary efforts with J.F. Reichardt and the Singspiel, but this
does not help. Reichardt set Iphigenie as a serious Singspiel. But Zelter bluntly
dismissed his operatic opening as surgery on a mature and healthy body, a
patch where there wasnt a hole in the first place; and Reichardts attempts
at a musikalische Sprache fell awkwardly between full opera and the usual
Singspiel spoken dialogue with songs. Holtbernd considers that the Parzenlied
obviously requires musical setting.99 But musical setting could give an unfortunate lyrical tone to Iphigenies moment ofterrible realisation, which might
trivialise it for a modern readership used to musicals even on tragic topics. This
passage embodies a conceptual metaphor of song as special communication;
the reader can imagine it as sung or spoken, the actor could declaim, chant
or sing it according to circumstances. But it should be audible as startlingly
different in kind from its surroundings, as is for example the prose scene of
Trber Tag. Feld in Faust I.
Goethe himself, discussing similar problems in the Singspiel Jery und
Btely, seemed to mind very little whether such either/or passages were
spoken or sung in performance. But he did insist that they should be distinguished from the ordinary level of discursive dialogue, prosaischer Dialog,
on the one hand, and from Gesang properly speaking on the other.100 Melodic
sound and language, envisaged as similar and combined in enhanced utterance, constitute a special medium for special moments, to make sure they are
audibly marked as such. Insofar, they are distinct from the voice of feeling
lyrical outpourings with which they often overlap, for they are not sustainable
for long. They are also distinct from Herders single Ton evoking an answering chime from a listener, in that there is a strong element of consciousness
98 Das Parzenlied in Goethes Iphigenie, PEGS NS 22 (1952/3).
99 Holtbernds review ofthe Iphigenie setting, op.cit. 198202; Zelters comment in letter
to Goethe, 12 July 1804; cit. Holtbernd, 199. She looks at Reichardts score in detail, and
shows that he thought out his approach carefully as a way of strengthening the Singspiel
in line with Goethes ideas.
100 Letter to the composer Philipp Christoph Kayser, 29 December 1779, AA 18, 473; on
Kayser, cf. Walwei-Wiegelmann, plate and biography 10, 128ff.
311
involved; they may occur after a process of reflexion or struggle, as do Tassos

insights, Iphigenies song of the Fates, and Fausts achievement of meeting
Helena face to face. It does not ultimately matter whether they are sung or
spoken (or rendered in intermediate ways such as chant or declamation); as
long as they convey the special quality of a breakthrough into something
important, and different.
Chapter Eight
Enhanced Communication ii):

Music as Contrast and Complement to Language
The idea of music as a contrast and complement to language grew in the eighteenth century from a variety of sources, some of which have been touched
on in Chapter Four above. It never achieved the high profile in cultural politics reached by the concepts of music as language of feeling and music as
simple song perhaps because its manifestations were as diverse as its origins,
and ranged from complex forms of poetic language to exploration of operatic genres. Indeed, at times it appeared as a reaction against the identification of music with language, from a rediscovery that the two media were
different in important ways, but could complement each other to form an
ideal communication.
Music perceived as contrast and complement to language needs to be
distinguished from some Romantic concepts of music as a medium not only
contrasting with language, but superseding and even displacing it. One such
view presents music as the trope of a secure inwardness, as Bucknell puts it
(see introduction to Part III above), i.e. as a medium of thought and feeling
much superior to language. The other perceives music as the art oftranscendence (Bucknell, ibid.) an embodiment of almost pure form, so far beyond
language as to be hardly conceivable as a medium at all. In both these perspectives, music was envisaged as communication par excellence, and this concept gained wide currency throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.1
However, when considered from the point of view of conceptual metaphors
See e.g. Carl Dahlhauss introductory article to G. Chapple, F. Hall, H. Schulte, The
Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century, 1992,
Sprache und Tonsprache, 121; and the Introduction (116) to the anthology oftranslations by P. Le Huray and J. Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and EarlyNineteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
314
Chapter Eight
embedded in them, early Romantic views of music in general emerge as more

diverse than is usually believed, even within the work of the same author
(this is especially the case with E.T.A. Hoffmann). Some metaphors and
their associations follow as continuations from eighteenth-century thought,
in which case they fall within the brief of this study. Others seem to derive
from a markedly different view of human existence and its functions. I have
taken this different view of human existence as the watershed between the
two centuries and as the boundary ofthis study; since such ideological differences mark the cultural shift into the nineteenth century much more sharply
than the changes in musical tonality and structure involved in the complex
(and long) transition from Classical to Romantic.2
Music as needing the help of language

For present purposes, we need to return to a point at which music was very
firmly set in contrast to language. The main rationalist objection to music
concerned its subject and content: music could not convey precise meaning, and was therefore decried as vague. Batteux complained that not only
rational thought, but even the depiction of emotion was unclear in music:
pour quelques expressions marques, il y en a mille autres dont on ne saurait
dire lobjet.3 [For every few distinct impressions, there are many others whose
topic cannot be identified]. Lessing found musics shifting dynamics and lack
of specific reference a particularly irritating source of confusion:
Itzt zerschmelzen wir in Wehmuth, und auf einmal sollen wir rasen. Wie? Warum?
Wider wen? [] Alles das kann die Musik nicht bestimmen; sie lt uns in Ungewiheit
und Verwirrung.4
2
3
4
See esp. NHDM, on Romantic music, p.714, esp. in Germany, 715; on Classical, 172,
esp. on the transitional period and tendencies, 1723.
Les beaux arts, ed.cit. 268.
Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St. 27, ed.cit. 109.
315
[One minute we dissolve in melancholy, and the next were supposed to be raging?
How? Why? Against whom? Music cannot tell us this exactly, it leaves us in uncertainty and confusion].
Even Hiller shared the anxiety that we cannot tell what we are feeling, or
rather that we cannot put a name to it.5 This view remained stubbornly
widespread: Chr. G. Krner, a critic and a close friend ofSchiller, complained
that it was still common in 1795:
Die Musik wrde das Ideal eines Charakters so wenig als irgend einen andern Gegenstand
darstellen knnen, wenn der Vorwurf gegrndet wre, da sie fr sich allein uns nichts
bestimmtes zu denken gebe. Noch jetzt aber ist dies eine herrschende Meinung bei
einem groen Theile des Publikums.6
[Music would be incapable of representing the ideal of a character or any other object
if there were truth in the reproach that it gives us nothing to think about. But that is
still a prevailing opinion among a large section of the public.]
As Krner pointed out, this often meant that music was widely seen as needing
the support of language or dance in combined genres, and was not appreciated in its own right:7
Noch immer halt man die Poesie Schauspiel oder Tanz fr nthig, um jenen Mangel an
Bestimmtheit zu ergnzen, und wo die Musik als selbstndige Kunst auftritt, verkennt
man den Sinn ihrer Produkte, weil er sich nicht in Worte und Gestalten bertragen
lt.8
[Poetry, spectacle or dance are still regarded as necessary to make up for this lack of definite content, and where music appears as an independent art the sense of its creations is
not recognised, because it cannot be conveyed in words and moving figures.]
5
6
7
Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, ed.cit., 523.

Essay ber Charakterdarstellung in der Musik, Die Horen, Tbingen 1795, I,v, 6, 101.
Cf. Morrow, passim, on resistance to the idea of instrumental music. She reviews predominantly middle-class cultural periodicals with an embedded metaphor of music
as language of feeling; and does not seem to notice that actual instrumental music
flourished nonetheless, e.g. in the Mannheim School (NHDM, 467f.). Conversely,
the Romantic period did not instantly remove resistance to instrumental music; Felix
Mendelssohn was still struggling to explain it in 1842 (see note nine below).
Krner, ibid.
316
Chapter Eight
Such a view was apparently tenacious among the music-loving public: Felix
Mendelssohn still had to refute it in 1842, when asked what his Lieder ohne
Worte meant:
Die Leute beklagen sich gewhnlich, die Musik sei so vieldeutig; es sei so zweifelhaft,
was sie sich dabei zu denken htten, und die Worte verstnde doch ein Jeder. Mir geht es
aber gerade umgekehrt. Und nicht blos mit ganzen Reden, auch mit einzelnen Worten,
auch die scheinen mir so vieldeutig, so unbestimmt, so miverstndlich im Vergleich
zu einer rechten Musik [] Das, was mir eine Musik ausspricht, [] sind mir nicht zu
unbestimmte Gedanken, um sie in Worte zu fassen, sondern zu bestimmte.9
[People often complain that music is so ambiguous, they feel uncertain about how they
are meant to respond, while words are plain to everyone. For me its exactly the opposite.
And not just with whole speeches, with individual words as well, they are so ambiguous
and misleading by comparison with a good piece of music The things music expresses
for me are not too vague to be put in words, but too precise]
In short, language was still being mapped on to music; and music judged
accordingly as an attractive but deficient language which needed help from
words and gesture or dance. Mendelssohn tries to counter this view, but does
so by advocating music as a much superior language, which does not clarify
the issue much.
Music as having qualities complementary to language

Other views, however, paid more attention to the nature and operations ofthe
two media, and envisaged them as different but complementary. Iflanguage
had rationality and clarity, music was esteemed for its direct appeal to sense
and feeling. It appeared to have a swiftness of impact impossible for language,
Letter to M.A. Souchay, 15 October 1842, in F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Briefe aus den

Jahren 1830 bis 1847, ed. F. & C. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Leipzig 1870, 482. This argues
strongly against Morrows assumption passim that instrumental music was widely understood once Romantic values were established.
317
where time was needed for the message to be taken in and assessed by the
mind. Batteux spelt this out in Les beaux arts [] (1746):
Les hommes ont trois moyens pour exprimer leurs ides et leurs sentiments: la Parole,
le Ton de la Voix, et le Geste. Jai nomm la Parole la premiere, parce quelle est en possession du premier rang [] Cependant les Tons de la Voix et les Gestes ont sur elle
plusieurs avantages: ils sont dun usage plus naturel: nous y avons recours quand les
mots nous manquent [] La Parole nexprime la passion que par le moyen des ides
auxquelles les sentiments sont lis, et comme par rflexion. Le Ton et le Geste arrivent
au cur directement et sans aucun dtour.10
[Men have three means of expressing their ideas and their feelings: words, tone of voice,
and gesture. I have cited language first because it occupies pride of place Nonetheless,
tones of voice and gestures have several advantages over language: they are more natural in
usage, we have recourse to them when we are lost for words Language can only express
passion by means of ideas to which feelings are attached, and as it were on reflection.
Tones and Gesture go straight to the heart, with no delay of any kind.]
Hiller, as usual, translated and spread Batteuxs ideas in his widely read article
(1755):
Der Verstand beschftigt sich mit Bildern oder Ideen, das Herz mit Empfindungen.
Jedes hat seine besondere Art sich aus zu drcken. Der Verstand hat die Sprache als ein
Hlfsmittel, seine Vorstellungen andern verstndlich zu machen. Das Herz ist einfltiger; ein Ton, ein Seufzer ist ihm genug, eine ganze Leidenschaft aus zu drcken []
Ein Ton also, von dem Gefhl des Herzens erzeugt, ist das Gefhl selbst. Es wird so
gleich dafr erkannt, und gelanget unmittelbar und ohne Umschweif zu dem Herzen,
da hingegen die Rede nur der zurck prallende Widerschein der Empfindung ist, wie
Herr Batteux sie nennet. Sie gelanget spter zu dem Herzen, und nicht eher, als bis sie
der Verstand vorher gewonnen hat.11
[Reason deals with images and ideas, the heart with feelings. Each has its particular means
of expressing itself. Reason has language as a tool to convey its concepts to others. The
heart is simpler; a single sigh, a single tone is enough to express the whole of a passion.
Thus a single tone, arising from the feelings of the heart, is identical with feeling itself.
It is instantly recognisable as such, and reaches the heart directly and with no deviation;
whilst speech is only the rebounding reflection offeeling, as M. Batteux terms it. Speech
reaches the heart later, and not until the intellect has grasped it].
10
11
Batteux, Les beaux arts [], 253ff.

Von der Nachahmung der Natur in der Musik, 520f.
318
Chapter Eight
Hiller identifies musical sound with the physical expression of feeling; and
contrasts it with verbal expression offeeling which works indirectly through
linguistic conventions as well as sounds, so takes longer to bring home its meaning. Even Kant, writing near the end of the century, takes a similar view:
Denn ob sie [die Musik] zwar durch lauter Empfindungen ohne Begriffe spricht, mithin
nicht wie die Poesie etwas zum Nachdenken brig bleiben lt, so bewegt sie doch das
Gemth mannigfaltiger und, obgleich blo vorbergehend, doch inniglicher.12
[For although music communicates through feelings alone, without concepts, and does
not leave behind matter for thought as poetry does, it does move the spirit in more
complex ways, and more intensely, despite the transience of its nature.]
Schiller, however, brings the two domains oflanguage and music into a much
more equal and precisely defined relationship. His method of linking the
two media is in effect a two-way mapping of the kind envisaged by Antonio
Barcelona,13 illuminating each domain by comparison with the other. Both
domains are brought to work interactively within the larger concept means
of communication. He grants that music is vague by comparison with language, in the sense that it suggests movements which are analogous to the
movements of emotional states of mind, and leaves the listener to imagine
any more precise content. But he points out that poetic language also works
not only by content, but by musical elements such as rhythm, sequence and
sound effects:
Wir unterscheiden in jeder Dichtung die Gedankeneinheit von der Empfindungseinheit,
die musikalische Haltung von der logischen, kurz wir verlangen, da jede poetische Komposition neben dem, was ihr Inhalt ausdrckt, zugleich durch ihre Form
Nachahmung und Ausdruck von Empfindungen sei und als Musik auf uns wirke.
[In every piece of poetry we distinguish the conceptual coherence from the emotional,
the musical treatment from the argument, in short we expect that each poetical composition should, in addition to its content, represent and express an emotional response
through its form, and affect us as music does.]
The meaning conveyed by poetic language is thus not finite and complete
in his opinion, but open-ended, like that of music. Everything implied by a
12
13
Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 53, ed.cit. p.326ff., esp.328.

See section on metaphor theory in the Introduction to the present study.
319
poem as a whole cannot be made fully explicit, and different readers will read
the poem differently:
Der Dichter [] kann jenen Empfindungen einen Text unterlegen, er kann jene Symbolik
der Einbildungskraft zugleich durch den Inhalt untersttzen und ihr eine bestimmtere
Richtung geben. Aber er vergesse nicht, da seine Einmischung in dieses Geschft ihre
Grenzen hat [] Der wirkliche und ausdrckliche Gehalt, den der Dichter hineinlegt,
bleibt stets eine endliche, der mgliche Gehalt, den er uns hineinzulegen berlt, ist
eine unendliche Gre.14
[The poet can write a text to underpin these feelings, he can support the symbolism for
the imagination by the content and guide it in a more specific direction. But he must
remember that his influence in this business has its limits The actual and explicit
meaning which the poet embodies in the poem will always be finite, but the possible
meaning which he leaves to us to read in it is an infinite quantity.]
H. Schulte15 has argued that Schiller comes close to the Romantics in such
a desire to engage through music with ideal realms beyond language. But
Schulte adopts a neo-Romantic view (135ff.) of both Schiller and Herder,
which mistakes their advocacy of sound and rhythm in poetry, and of the
sensuous support of music and dance for poetry, for a desire to have language
subsumed into music. Herders comment on Wau-Wau-Arien, and his Olla
potrida compilation of texts suitable for musical setting because they mean
nothing, sharply contradict such an assumption.16 And as Schulte himself
observes, Schillers works and thought tended to involve conflict between
opposing priorities, which required the expression in language of rational
14
15
16
ber Matthissons Gedichte, NA 22, 272ff.

Work and Music: Schillers Reich des Klanges (in Chapple/Hall/Schulte, 13364).
Adrastea, Suphan XXIII, 333ff., esp.337. See also e.g. Adler/Koepke, Companion []
Herder, introduction (8ff.), and contributions by M.Heinz/H. Clairmont, Herders
Epistemology (esp.4953) and U. Gaier, Myth, Mythology, New Mythology, passim.
They emphasise Herders insistence on language as indispensable medium for thought,
and human experience and human faculties as inevitable boundaries for knowledge;
hence also Herders view of the necessity of myth as what Gaier calls Mans best
conjecture on what he cannot know. (ibid., 170). Cf. also the account by G. Arnold,
K.Kloocke and E.A. Menze on Herders Reception and Influence, esp.394f., on Herders
reception (positive and negative) among the Romantics.
320
Chapter Eight
thought as well as form and atmosphere.17 Schiller may have referred to Karl
Moors ranting solo speeches as arias, but they are in prose and do not stand
out formally from the rest of the play.18 On the whole, Herder and Schiller
seem to have dealt with higher realms via language and the intellect, including the concept of the sublime;19 and to have avoided both the transcendental idealism and the longing (Sehnsucht) by which Romantic writers
sought to escape in imagination the limitations of the physical world and of
its language.
A range of Romantic views: Music as superior to language,

music as other-worldly medium
Among Romantic writers, the balance shifts again. Music is regarded as the
superior medium because it is not fettered by the rational sequence ofthought
or by semantic and grammatical convention. In their writing, music is persistently mapped on to language, usually to the detriment of non-poetic language. In his Monolog, for instance, Novalis aligns language with mathematics
and music as pure sign systems, in much the same way as Schiller had done
in his Theosophie des Julius, with the implication that relations between the
17
18
19
On the dualistic nature ofSchillers thought, and his tendency to balance it by theories
of human wholeness, see e.g. Lesley Sharpe in S.D. Martin, Companion [] Schiller,
Concerning Aesthetic Education, esp.14957; C. Zelles Die doppelte sthetik der
Moderne [], Stuttgart etc.1995, esp.147219; and R. Riecke-Niklewski, Die Metaphorik
des Schnen. Eine kritische Lektre der Vershnung in Schillers ber die sthetische
Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1986.
Die Ruber, an early play; cf. Schulte, op.cit., 144ff., 146ff.
See e.g. Ernst Cassirers essay Schiller und Shaftesbury PEGS NS XI (1935), 3759;
M.Hofmann, Die unaufhebbare Ambivalenz historischer Praxis und die Poetik des
Erhabenen in Friedrich Schillers Wallenstein-Trilogie, in Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller
gesellschaft, 43 (1999); and two recent essays, M. Hofmann, Zur Aktualitt einer Poetik
des Erhabenen (Schiller, Hugo, Johnson, Tabori), Weimarer Beitrge 49 (2003), 20209,
and R. Zuckert, Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime, Journal ofAesthetics
and Art Criticism 61(2003), 21732. NB also the reference by Hofmann (Aktualitt, 216,
note 2) to Corina Caduff, Die Gewalt der Musik und das Erhabene, WB 4 (2002),
esp.488.
321
signs reflect relations between phenomena, but without direct connection

to reality:
Wenn man den Leuten nur begreiflich machen knnte, da es mit der Sprache wie mit
den mathematischen Formeln sei [] Sie spielen nur mit sich selbst, drcken nichts
als ihre wunderbare Natur aus, und eben darum [] spiegelt sich in ihnen das seltsame
Verhltnisspiel der Dinge [] So ist es auch mit der Sprache wer ein feines Gefhl
ihrer Applicatur, ihres Takts, ihres musikalischen Geistes hat, und danach seine Zunge
oder seine Hand bewegt, der wird ein Prophet sein.20
[If only one could make people understand that language is like mathematical formulae They interplay only with each other, they express nothing but their own wonderful
nature, and precisely for that reason the strange interplay of relations between things
is reflected in them Language is like that too a man who has a fine touch on its
workings, a sense of its rhythm and its musical spirit, and directs his tongue and hand
accordingly, will be a prophet.]
This presents both language and music as a-sensual, abstract media, whose
beauty lies in their ideal pattern. In Novalis novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
music is presented as a marvellously heightened version of poetic language,
which enables the imagination to reach into realms beyond physical reality.
Heinrichs father, a practical man, is in his dream able to utter wonderful
things: Wie gelst war meine Zunge, und was ich sprach, klang wie Musik.21
[It was as though my tongue was loosened, and what I spoke sounded like
music]. Heinrich himself develops into a poet under the influence of the
minstrel Klingsohr and love for his daughter Mathilde; but this development
is represented as leaving behind the materiality of language and sound and
becoming gradually subsumed into an ideal state of delight where existence
and utterance are one and the same:
Schon nahte sich ein Dichter [], um durch Laute der Muttersprache und durch
Berhrung eines sen zrtlichen Mundes die blden Lippen aufzuschlieen, und den
einfachen Akkord in unendliche Melodien zu entfalten [] Da Eure bloe Rede schon
Gesang ist, und Eure Gestalt eine himmlische Musik verkndigt [] Sie ist der sichtbare Geist des Gesanges, eine wrdige Tochter ihres Vaters. Sie wird mich in Gesang
auflsen.22
20 Monolog (1798), in Schriften, ed. P. Kluckhohn, R. Samuel, Darmstadt 1960, vol.II, 672.
Schillers essay was written in 17823 see Chapter Five above.
21 Ed.cit., vol. I, 202.
22 Ibid., 268, 276f.
322
Chapter Eight
[Even now a poet was approaching, to unlock the dumb lips with the sounds of his
mother tongue and by the touch of a sweet and tender kiss, and to unfold a simple chord
into infinite melodies for even your speech is already song, and your form foretells a
heavenly music She is the visible spirit of song, a worthy daughter of her father. She
will dissolve me into music.]
In this view, physical reality is relegated to prosaic language. Poetic language

and music are the means by which the imagination escapes from reality, rather
than reacts to it. Even poetic language is thought of only as sound, not as a
medium with subject-matter, still less as a system with semantic reference and
grammatical structure.23 Tieck and Wackenroder also see music as a superior
medium beyond the tedious earthly business of communication:
Wenn andre [] ein verzweiflungsvolles Spiel des Witzes spielen [] so ziehe [ich]
mich still in das Land der Musik, [] wo wir alles Gekrchze der Menschen vergessen,
wo kein Wort und Sprachengeschnatter, kein Gewirr von Buchstaben und monstrser
Hieroglyphenschrift uns schwindlich macht.24
[When others play their desperate games of wit, I quietly retreat to the land of music,
where we forget all the squawking people make, and where none of the clattering of
language and speech, none of the jumble of letters and the monstrous hieroglyphs of
writing can confuse us.]
In several respects, earlier connotations ofthe metaphor are drastically changed

here. Music is so forcefully mapped on to language that language is virtually
eliminated; the human singer/speaker and his/her vocalisation of thought
and feeling are eclipsed, and remain only as spirit. The remnants oflanguage in
song, and the physicality of instrument and player, are dissolved into unadulterated musical sound; and the vagueness which was once seen as musics
weakness is now presented as its glory. As E.T.A. Hoffmann put it in his essay
on Beethovens C minor Symphony (Fifth), music meets the spirits need for
einen hheren Ausdruck, als ihn geringe Worte, die nur der befangenen irdischen Luft eigen, gewhren knnen [a higher form of expression than mere
words, confined to the narrow sphere of earth, can offer]:
23 Cf. Dahlhaus, op.cit. 13f.

24 Die Wunder der Tonkunst, Phantasien ber die Kunst II, in W.H. Wackenroder, Werke
und Briefe, ed. L. Schneider, Heidelberg 1967, 204.
323
Sollte, wenn von der Musik als einer selbstndigen Kunst die Rede ist, nicht immer
nur die Instrumental-Musik gemeint sein, welche [] jede Beimischung einer andern
Kunst (der Poesie) verschmhend, das eigentmliche, nur in ihr zu erkennende Wesen
dieser Kunst rein ausspricht? [] Die Musik schliet dem Menschen ein unbekanntes
Reich auf, eine Welt, die nichts gemein hat mit der uern Sinnenwelt, die ihn umgibt,
und in der er alle bestimmten Gefhle zurcklt, um sich einer unaussprechlichen
Sehnsucht hinzugeben.
[When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not always understand by
that instrumental music, which rejects any admixture with another art (poetry), and
expresses in unadulterated form the essence of this art which can be seen in it alone?
Music unlocks an unknown realm for the human race, a world which has nothing in
common with the world of our external senses which surrounds us, a world in which
man leaves all specific feelings behind and yields himself to a nameless longing].
In song, music is allotted the task of making the text less specific, and thence
less restricted:
In dem Gesange, wo die Poesie bestimmte Affekte durch Worte andeutet, wirkt die
magische Kraft der Musik wie das wunderbare Elixir der Weisen So stark ist der
Zauber der Musik, und immer mchtiger werdend, mute er jede Fessel einer andern
Kunst zerreien.25
[In song, where poetry indicates specific feelings by means of words, the magical power
of music works as did the miraculous elixir of the magi The enchantment of music
is so strong, and as it becomes ever stronger it must inevitably break the fetters of any
other art].
The idea of communication (Ausdruck, ausspricht) is still present here; but

these Romantic writers are advancing a very different view ofhuman existence:
as unearthly, spiritual.26 And they identify this view with instrumental music,27
The shorter version ofthe essay is usually entitled Beethovens Instrumental-Musik (1810),
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Werke, ed. G. Ellinger, Leipzig 1912, vol.I, 54, 48f. See also note below
on longer version.
26 F.N. Mennemeier, Der heilige Hauch [] in den Tnen der Musik. Bermerkungen
zur frhromantischen Theorie des Lyrischen, GRM 46 (1996), esp.3540, points to
the spiritualistisch-religise Element which underpins Friedrich Schlegels concept of
man, language and poetry in his Brief ber den Roman (1800), and increases in his later
writings.
27 See esp. Ricarda Schmidt, Wenn mehrere Knste im Spiel sind: Intermedialitt bei E.T.A.
Hoffmann, Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, 2155, esp.22, 55; where Schmidt
25
324
Chapter Eight
much as Rousseau polemicised for melodic vocal music in support of a view of

Man as speaking, singing, feeling individual. In short, this is a piece of cultural
and philosophical ideology, not an aesthetic concept. We should also bear in
mind that Hoffmann successfully used a great many geringe Worte [mere
words] in his fiction and reviews, and not only of a poetic kind. Since he was
also a musician, readers seeking scientific thought on the subject need only read
his essay in its full version to find a highly technical analysis of the C minor
Symphony.28 Even in his popular introductory section, Hoffmann suggests that
Beethoven separates his personal identity (sein Ich) from the music altogether,
so that music ceases to be expression in any sense, and becomes pure organised
sound.29 Here, Hoffmann dispenses altogether with the metaphor of music as
communication: with or without language, he finds it inadequate.
Other Romantic views which connect with eighteenth-century

thought: Music goes where language fears to tread
Alongside this trend towards the infinite ran a strand of Romantic metaphorical thought which continued to map language on to music and music
on to language, bringing the two fields into even closer collaboration than
cites Dahlhauss suggestion that Hoffmanns view of music is eine Metaphysik der
Instrumentalmusik, and points out that this involves an ideological shift in the evaluation of musical signification, not a precursor of twentieth-century aesthetic concepts
of music as self-referential. She shows that this applies to vocal music (opera and sacred
music) as well as instrumental (e.g. 31ff.).
28 J.A. Winn, Unexpected Eloquence [], Yale University Press, 1981, 2703, points out that
Hoffmann was one ofthe first to see how architectonically structured Beethovens music
was, and to show the inadequacy of literary myths of expression of emotion as criteria
in musical criticism but that he nonetheless used such myths himself at times.
29 The technical part of Hoffmanns essay is not always printed; see G. Ellinger (ed.),
E.T.A. Hoffmanns Werke in fnfzehn Teilen, Berlin/Leipzig: Bong, 1912, sections 1314,
Musikalische Schriften I, 4056, where the full review is given under the title Sinfonie
[] par Louis van Beethoven, Leipsic, chez Breitkopf et Hrtel, Oeuvre 67, No.5 des
Symphonies. See esp.43 ff.
325
Schiller had done. In his Verkehrte Welt (1812ff.), Tieck suggested that music
could convey not only feelings, but ideas, in reciprocal collaboration with
language:
Wie? Es wre nicht erlaubt und mglich, in Tnen zu denken und in Worten und
Gedanken zu musiziren? O wie schlecht wre es dann mit uns Knstlern bestellt! Wie
arme Sprache, wie rmere Musik! Denkt Ihr nicht so manche Gedanken so fein und
geistig, da diese sich in Verzweiflung in Musik hineinretten, um nur Ruhe endlich zu
finden?30
[What? Is it not permissible and possible to think in tones and to make music in words?
Ifthat were so, what a plight we artists would be in! How poor would language be, and
how much poorer music! Do you never think thoughts so fine and light that they desperately seek refuge in music in order to find a resting place at last?].
Hoffmann (despite his Beethoven essay) also praised music for its capacity to
fill the gaps between words, and to act as complement to language:
Welcher tausend und abermal tausend Nuancen ist der musikalische Ausdruck fhig!
Und das ist ja eben das wunderbare Geheimnis der Tonkunst, da sie da, wo die arme
Rede versiegt, erst eine unerschpfliche Quelle der Ausdrucksmittel ffnet!31
[What thousands upon thousands of nuances musical expression can convey! That is
just the wonderful secret of music, that wherever poor language dries up, music opens
an inexhaustible source of means of expression.]
Here the continuity with earlier thinking is manifest. Batteux had presented
music as more subtle and more refined than language, yet also more sublime
and wider-ranging; and again Hiller had faithfully transmitted the idea to
German readers:
De mme quil y a de grandes choses, auxquelles les mots ne peuvent atteindre; il y en
a aussi de fines, sur lesquelles ils nont point de prise.
Wie es groe Dinge giebt, die keine Worte erreichen knnen; so giebt es auch feine,
deren sich die Sprache nicht bemchtigen kann.32
30 Ludwig Tieck, Schriften, Berlin 1828, vol.V (Phantasus II), 286f.

31 Der Dichter und der Komponist, in Die Serapionsbrder I,i, Werke, ed.cit., vol. 5,
129.
32 Batteux, Les beaux arts [], 269; Hiller, Von der Nachahmung der Natur [], 524.
326
Chapter Eight
[ Just as there are great things which no words can attain to; so also there are delicate
things which language cannot capture.]
Indeed, Hiller expressly envisages music as taking up the task of expression

where language leaves it:
Wir werden in ihrer [der Poesie] Zeichnung die verlangte Leidenschaft zwar erkennen,
aber sie noch nicht empfinden bis der Ton, erzeuget von der Leidenschaft selbst, ber
die Worte gehrig ausgebreitet wird [] Alsdann sehen wir die Leidenschaft selbst; wir
hren sie nicht blo nennen, sondern wir empfinden sie.33
[We shall recognise the passion we were seeking in poetrys depiction; but we shall not
feel it until musical sound, engendered by that passion itself, is aptly spread over the
words And then we shall see the passion itself; we shall not merely hear it named,
but we shall actually feel it.]
J.J.W. Heinse even incorporated these ideas into a debate on music presented
in his novel Hildegard von Hohenthal (1794):
Die Musik herrscht vorzglich, wo sie ausdrckt, was die Sprache nicht vermag []
[Es] lt sich das innere Gefhl [] das Wallen des Herzens, die hohe Fluth in Adern
und Lebensgeistern durch nichts besser ausdrcken [] Bey Leidenschaften also ist die
Musik an ihrer rechten Stelle; besonders bey heftigen, wo man nicht mehr an Worte
denkt, sondern von den Sachen selbst durchdrungen wird.34
[Music principally predominates where it expresses what language cannot express. The
innermost feelings, the surging of our hearts, the high tide in our veins and our spirits
cannot be expressed as well by any other means Thus music is in its true place with
passions, especially with strong feelings where we are already past words, overwhelmed
with the passion itself.]
It might seem bizarre to expect a readership looking for entertainment in

novels to swallow a debate on music instead. But the point at issue is expression through music of states of mind beyond the power of words; and Heinse
clearly expects his readers to be familiar with the idea of music as complementing language in this role.
33 Hiller, Von der Nachahmung [], 525f.

34 Heinse (17461803) is usually envisaged as a Sturm und Drang writer, because of his
closeness to and development beyond Wieland, and his interest in ideal forms of society.
But he anticipates some Romantic novels in the open eroticism and neo-Greek ideal of
life portrayed in some work: e.g. Ardinghello (1787).
327
The origins of language and music as the origins of

articulated sound: Rousseau, Herder and Schiller
It is worth noting that music was envisaged as a complementary medium
not only post-language, but also pre-language, as a kind of preliminary stage
in the process of articulation. As we have seen, Batteux and Hiller thought
that music could deal with things too delicate and subtle for language, as
well as with things too great; Hoffmann also envisaged Nuancen as well as
infinite scope. This concept was also familiar from some eighteenth-century
thought on language. Rousseau, for instance, suggested that language originated in expression of feeling, rather than of physical needs, and that these
premires voix [first utterances] had become the common ground of both
speech and song: les premiers discours furent les premiers chansons35 [the
first discourses were the first songs]. But he felt that language had progressed
as medium for logical argument at the expense of its emotive power; and that
modern music had also left behind its emotional roots in song: en cultivant
lart de convaincre on perdit celui dmouvoir36 [in cultivating the art of persuasion we lost the art of moving]. Herders ideas on the Lebensaltern einer
Sprache [the ages oflanguage] follow much the same pattern. He associates
music with an ancient period of vivid expression, da man noch nicht sprach,
sondern tnete37 [where men did not yet speak, but sounded]. Music thus
retains its associations with an earlier level of feeling and utterance, more
primitive but more sonorous and vivid than sober modern language; and
Herder encourages poets to go back to song in order to recapture the lost
youth and vigour ofhuman utterance.38 Both authors also strengthen the idea
of musical articulation as pre-linguistic by emphasising the common ground
between musical sounds, sub-verbal exclamations, and the pre-articulation
of infants. Rousseau points out in his Essai [] that:
35
36
37
38
Essai sur lorigine des langues, ed. Gallimard, chap.2., 380, chap.12, 410.
Essai, chap.19, ed.cit., 425.
Fragmente, Suphan I, 151ff. 153.
Fragmente, Suphan I, 153; Ossian und die Lieder alter Vlker, Suphan V, 168ff., 184ff.,
189ff.
328
Chapter Eight
Les simples sons sortent naturellement du gosier [] mais les modifications de la langue
et du palais qui font articuler exigent de lattention, de lexercice [] tous les enfans ont
besoin de les apprendre [] Dans toutes les langues les exclamations les plus vives sont
inarticuls []
[Simple sounds emerge naturally from the throat but the modifications ofthe tongue
and the palate required for articulation demand concentration and practice every
small child has to learn them In every language the most vivid exclamations are
inarticulate.]
In the early stages oflanguage formation, sounds and rhythms would thus be
as prominent as in music: lon chanterait au lieu de parler [] lonomatope sy
feroit sentir continuellement39 [they sang instead of speaking onomatopoeia
was constantly manifest]. Herder uses the same analogy in his Fragmente:
Eine Sprache in ihrer Kindheit bricht wie ein Kind, einsylbichte, rauhe und hohe
Tne hervor. Eine Nation in ihrem ersten wilden Ursprunge starret, wie ein Kind, alle
Gegenstnde an; Schrecken, Furcht und alsdenn Bewunderung sind die Empfindungen
[] und die Sprache dieser Empfindungen sind Tne, und Geberden. Zu den Tnen
sind ihre Werkzeuge noch ungebraucht: folglich sind jene hoch und mchtig an Accenten
[]
Das Kind erhob sich zum Jnglinge [] der Gesang der Sprache flo lieblich von der
Zunge [] und suselte in die Ohren. [] Und dieses jugendliche Sprachalter, war blo
das Poetische: man sang im gemeinen Leben, und der Dichter erhhete nur seine Accente
in einem fr das Ohr gewhlten Rhythmus. Seht! Das ist die Poetische Sprache, der
Poetische Periode [] da es noch keine Schriftsteller gab, so verewigten sie die merkwrdigsten Thaten durch Lieder: durch Gesnge lehrten sie.40
[In its infancy a language produces sounds like an infant, single syllables, hoarse and
high-pitched. In its first savage origins a nation stares, like a child, at all the things
around it, it feels fear, shock, admiration and tones are the language ofthese feelings,
tones and gestures. But the organs with which they produce tones are still unpractised:
so those tones are high pitched and strongly accented
The infant grew into a youth: the song oflanguage flowed sweetly from the tongue
and murmured in the listeners ears And this youthful age ofthe language was simply
the poetic age: men sang in everyday life, and all the poet had to do was enhance his
accents into a rhythm chosen for the ear. See we have the Poetic Language, the Poetic
Age since there were as yet no authors of written works, they immortalised their most
notable deeds in songs: and in song they handed down their teachings].
39 Essai [], chap.4, ed.cit. 382f.

40 Fragmente, Suphan I, 1524.
329
Both seem to envisage a continuum from inarticulate sounds via music and
song to fully articulated speech, as well as a range which continues from ordinary language through supremely eloquent language to song and to musical
sound beyond articulation. If music can thus function as communication
both where language has not yet begun and where language leaves off, the
continuum envisaged is not simply linear. Music was perceived as inhabiting the space either side of language, with unstructured sounds forming the
extreme at both ends of the spectrum.
This helps to clarify Schillers suggestion that music precedes language
in terms of formal sequence as well as sound. We have already seen his view
of poetry as having both logical and musical aspects; and it is clear that by
musical he meant not only sound and rhythm, but the sequence and arrangement of ideas and images, and the dynamic fluctuations ofthe whole through
which emotional response to the subject was conveyed. In a letter to Krner,
he explains that these formal patterns often take shape in his mind before the
conceptual content:
Das Musikalische eines Gedichtes schwebt mir weit fter vor der Seele, wenn ich mich
hinsetze, es zu machen, als der klare Begriff vom Inhalt, ber den ich oft kaum mit mir
einig bin.41
[The musical aspects of a poem are much more likely to be in my mind when I sit down
to write it than a clear idea of the content; usually I am still very much undecided on
that.]
And he confirmed this idea in a slightly later letter to Goethe:

Bei mir ist die Empfindung anfangs ohne bestimmten und klaren Gegenstand; dieser
bildet sich erst spter. Eine gewisse musikalische Gemtsstimmung geht vorher, und
auf diese folgt bei mir erst die poetische Idee.42
[My feeling at the start usually has no clear and specific object; this forms at a later
stage. A certain musical state of mind comes first, and this is followed only later by the
poetic idea.]
41 Letter to Krner, 25 May 1792, NA 26, 142.

42 Letter to Goethe, 18 March 1796, NA 28, 201f.
330
Chapter Eight
Music, by suggesting forms analogous to things as yet too indefinite to be

spoken of, is envisaged as the beginning of a process of articulation and formation which culminates not merely in language but in poetic language, the
fullest verbal articulation. (Unlike Goethe, Schiller tends to view the idea
of disintegration from clear language into musical sound with horror, and
does not use this part of the spectrum much: cf. Laura am Klavier and Die
Macht des Gesanges, and Chapters Three and Four above). This looser idea
of structure, modelled on musical sequence, became an influential model for
poetic form and language during the eighteenth century and beyond; even
though, as Winn points out, it was a literary myth and not a technique of
musical composition.43
The development of a manifold language for writing:

i) Sound, silence and rhetoric
Overall, these concepts offer a markedly wide and fluid range of possibilities
of communication in sound, from the most tentative faint tones through
to fully articulated language and song and music, separately or combined
in varying degrees, with ready transition from one level to another and in
both directions. Some further elements of eighteenth-century thought on
language readily supported such an idea: there was much interest in how
to articulate experience at the edge of or beyond language, the relation of
speech to the (literally) unspeakable. J.G. Hamann reacted against Herders
arguments for the human development of language, in defence of types of
utterance which represented divine/human interaction and religious experience: oracles, poetic inspiration, prophecy, the language of what Shaftesbury
had called enthusiasm, and the extreme form of such utterance, glossolalia,
speaking in tongues.44 As James H. Stam (1976) and more recently Christian
43 J.A. Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence [], Yale University Press, 1981, esp.26170.
44 See esp. James H. Stam, Inquiries into the Origin of Language: the Fate of a Question,
New York: Harper & Row, 1976, esp. chapter 7, Mystifying Responses from the Magus
of the North, 13164; and Christian Sinn, Schreiben Reden Denken. Hamanns
transtextuelles Kulturmodell im Kontext der Kabbalarezeption des 18 Jahrhunderts, in
331
Sinn (2004) have shown in detail, Hamann sought to create textual experience
for the reader as a hermeneutic challenge, quoting Greek and other authors,
using terms from several different languages, cryptic forms of expression, and
organising the sequence of his thoughts in ways which reflected the search
for articulation and the process of gradual discovery and understanding,
rather than the strict order of syntax or the pre-ordered thoughts specified by
traditional rhetoric.45 Silences are part of this range of resources.46 They can
mark the need to think, or a refusal to explain too much to a readership not
prepared or committed. They can mark a point in speech where the speaker
reaches a state of ecstasy or sudden enlightenment; or even denote ironic
comment which the speaker does not wish to spell out, since the reader will
already have grasped the implications. Hamann often uses dashes and exclamation marks to represent such silences in writing, or begins a quotation and
then breaks it off.47 Religious groups such as Pietists (die Stillen im Lande)
sought to extend their understanding and love of God, and their communication with Him, through reading and songs, and also through silence and
secrecy.48 As P.P. Riedl explains, both Herder as theologian and Klopstock as
45
46
47
48
Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert, 28 (2004), 2745. Both are particularly helpful in explaining how Hamanns abstruse language and elaborate intertextuality work.
Cf. esp. P.P. Riedls study of Kleists similar aims and reversal of rhetorical structure in
his essay ber die allmhliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden (1805), Die Macht
des Mndlichen, Euphorion 98 (2004), 12951, esp.1316.
See the introductory section of V. Lange, The Metaphor of Silence. In E.M.
Wilkinson (ed.), Goethe Revisited: A Collection ofEssays, London: Calder, 1984, 13352,
esp.13336.
See esp. Stam, 13945; Sinn, 2730, 326.
See e.g. H. Lehmann, Pietisten im Ringen um die Gott wohlgefllige Ordnung in der
Residenzstadt Potsdam, in G. Vogler (ed.), Wegscheiden der Reformation. Alternatives
Denken vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Weimar: Bhlaus Nachf., 1994, 479512, which
shows the Pietists as a community suffering difficulty and persecution in Prussia; and
F.Corey Roberts, German Pietism and the Genesis ofLiterary Aesthetics: The Discourse
of Erfahrung in the 1700s, DVJS 78 (2004), 20028, which shows the Pietists as a
well-established cultural force with their own establishments in Halle, and considerable influence on mainstream thought on poetic language and aesthetics. Both articles offer helpful bibliographical information. S. Schmid, Gesprch, Geselligkeit und
Einsamkeit um 1800, GRM 56 (2006), 4558, is less helpful than it might be since it
sweeps Rousseau into the late eighteenth century and Romanticism, and does not consider the middle-class (especially female) readership for whom conversation, solitude,
etc., were important forms of social and cultural expression.
332
Chapter Eight
poet were exercised, like many earlier religious commentators, by the paradox
of speaking in earthly language of the unspeakable divine.49 Rosicrucians,
Freemasons and other secret societies sought to keep alive the ancient wisdom
of Hermetic lore; and maintained rituals which involved gradual initiation
and silent respect for higher mysteries.50 We have already seen the respect
accorded to the utterance of poets or other oracle figures when visited by
Apolline or other divine inspiration. On a more mundane and Machiavellian
level, rhetoric brought into its resources for delivery (pronuntiatio) features
such as change of volume, timbre and tempo, eloquent silences, and the possibility of sudden departures and digressions to surprise ones adversaries.
Like music, it made extensive use offeatures on the borders oflanguage, and
some rhetorical terms were also applied in music.51
Music perceived as complementary communication was thus never far
away in reflections on language, its limitations and its potential development.
Sinn points out that Hamann emphasises rhythm and sound as important,
identifying ein taktfestes Ohr und eine tonreiche Kehle [a sound ear for
rhythm and a tuneful voice] as crucial for communicating understanding,
in escaping from syntax and signs which are too remote from the experience they explore, and making vividly immediate in the present the sense of
traditional wisdom. He also shows how Hamann develops from the Jewish
Kabbala a structure for poetry and song which counteracts contemporary
ideas of metrics, substituting instead a sequence of traditional narrative elements intermingled with intertextual references to other works with similar
49 Peter Philipp Riedl, Wer darf ihn nennen? Betrachtungen zum Topos des Unsagbaren
in Goethes Faust, Goethe Jahrbuch 2007, 21527. Faust is thus in sound theological company for unsound purposes when he answers Gretchens Glaubst du an Gott?, although
he can hardly be called Klopstocks half-brother (227) on that account.
50 See esp. Stam, 138ff., and Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, both vols,
passim. Two further complementary studies are helpful here: J. Chailley s classic exploration of esoteric symbolism in The Magic Flute: Masonic Opera, tr. H. Weinstock,
London: Gollancz 1972, esp. sections on Freemasonry (5679) and passim on initiation
rites, including Papagenos enforced silence; and P. Kerry, Modelling the later German
Enlightenment in Die Zauberflte, OGS 34 (2005), 4763. The latter pays little attention to musical metaphor, and is sometimes inaccurate or outdated in interpreting it;
but he deals among other things with the importance of silence and civility in human
life (esp.6f.).
51 Cf. Dixon, Rhetoric, 32; and M. von Poser, Der abschweifende Erzhler, Bad Homburg:
Gehlen, 1969, esp.17ff.; NHDM, Rhetoric, 698f.
333
insights, other languages expressing similar concepts, comments on these ideas;

so that the whole resembles musical polyphony rather than linear narrative.52
As Rousseau pointed out, silence was an intrinsic part of musical structure,
as well as a necessary complement to sound marking the beginning and end
of a note, a phrase, a whole piece.53 Grapa notes that Rousseau also develops
the idea of silence as complement to speech, in the silent companionship
enjoyed by St Preux, Julie and her husband after the departure ofloquacious
house guests:
Runis et dans le silence [] Que de choses se sont dites sans ouvrir la bouche! Que
dardents sentiments se sont communiqus sans la froide entremise de la parole!
[Reunited and in silence How much one can say without opening ones mouth! What
ardent feelings are communicated without the cold intermediary of language!].
The three adults communicate their mutual understanding by gestures and

looks; although this eulogy to companionable silence does not prevent StPreux
from breaking the silence to challenge Julies methods ofbringing up her children, having collected his thoughts beforehand according to best rhetorical
procedure.54 Concepts require language; silence is for subtle and intense
feeling beyond words.
A manifold language: ii) Klopstock

Klopstocks poetry and poetics brought together many of these elements,
musical, linguistic, poetic and rhetorical, as complementary means of communication. As Kevin Hilliard explains, Klopstock followed a long Christian
52
Sinn, op.cit., 3745, esp.44f. Sinn traces both the antecedents and the subsequent
developments in this borrowing of the Kabbala.
53 See Silences, Dictionnaire de musique ed.cit., 1041 where he deals with rests and the
various signs for them (cf. NHDM, Rests, under Note, 548); and also under Rhythme,
Dictionnaire, 1025, where he considers use of silences as part of rhythm in Greek music
and metrics.
54 Julie: ou La Nouvelle Hloise, V,iii, ed. R. Pomeau, Paris: Garnier, 1960, 54347; cf.
Grapa, Lhomme et le dissonant [], Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997, 968.
334
Chapter Eight
tradition in perceiving vocal music as a higher form of pronuntiatio, the oral

delivery aspect of rhetoric. Like Herder, Klopstock envisaged an unequal
partnership in which music was the subservient art; he seems to have treated
music like a form of recitative [i.e. to have mapped language on to music],
and to have disliked genres such as aria in which language was subservient,
and the sensuous power of music was allowed uninhibited reign.55 But he did
more than most to establish in German literary culture the idea of music and
language as different but complementary media. He emphasised rhythm, as
part of his studies of and experiments in metrics, as the common structural
basis for music, gesture and dance in the collaborations he had in mind and
created various mythologies to support.56 Like Hamann (though not at all in
Hamanns style), he broke radically with syntactical convention to prioritise
rhythm and to make emotional experience immediate, even at the expense
of clarity.57 As Katrin Kohl has shown, he adapted the rhetorical concept of
stufenweise steigernde amplificatio [graduated amplification] to encourage
different levels of sonority and rhythm in language according to the different
stages within the poem.58 The importance he attached to such careful gradation
of sonority and rhythm was evident in his many efforts to persuade composers
to collaborate with him, notably in setting parts of his Hermanns Schlacht
and the final canto of his epic Der Messias.59 It also underlies his suggested
distinction in sacred music between Lied as simple song, and Gesang as a
more complex musical setting.60 Admittedly, Klopstocks idea of expanding
poetic language into more sonorous diction and eventually into vocal music
does only envisage development in one direction. Instrumental music has
no part in Klopstocks scheme at all; he envisages music merely as sonorous
ancillary to poetic speech. But like Herder, Klopstock opened a wide field
Kevin Hilliard, Philosophy, Letters and the Fine Arts in Klopstocks Thought, University
of London, 1987, esp.13843.
56 Hilliard, loc.cit., also Klopstock in den Jahren 17641770: metrische Erfindung und
die Wiedergeburt der Dichtung aus dem Geiste des Eislaufs, JbDSG 33 (1989), 14588;
and Der Stellenwert der Musik bei Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, in Peter Wollny (ed.),
Klopstock und die Musik, Beeskow: Ortus Musikverlag, 2005, 618.
57 E.g. in his ode Der Zrchersee; see Hilliard, Stellenwert, 61f.
58 Katrin Kohl, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2000, 20ff., 50ff.,
60ff.
59 See Kohl, 65ff., 165ff.; Hilliard, Stellenwert, 64ff.
60 Hilliard, Stellenwert, 64f.
55
335
into which poetry could venture not only with the idea of music and song,
but with all the resources of sound and rhythm which lay between music and
language, and with similarly graduated kinds of actual music where possible.
He offers a poetic ideal of powerful and finely modulated communication,
combining in varying degrees the resources of music and language for appeal
to both intellect and feeling.
A manifold language:
iii) Music + language + dance = broadband communication
In theory, mixed genres (opera, cantata, oratorio) were also a well-established
solution to the problem of engaging intellect as well as sense and feeling: music
plus poetry was an acknowledged recipe for ideal communication, with the
added option of dance. Leibniz, for example, considered opera
nichts anders [] als ein sehr wohl erfundenes Mittel, das menschliche gemth aufs
aller krfftigste zu bewegen und zu rhren, dieweil darinn die nachdrckliche einflle,
die zierliche worth, die artige reimbildung, die herrliche music, die schhnen gemelde
und knstliche bewegungen zusammen kommen; und sowohl die innerliche als auch die
beyden uerlichen Sinne, so dem gemth vornehmlich dienen vergnget werden.61
[to be regarded as a very happily discovered means of moving and stirring the human
spirit most strongly, for the striking twists of plot, the delicate words, the graceful
rhymes, the splendid music and artful movements all come together, and delight both
the inward sense as well as the two outward senses [ear and eye] by which the spirit is
principally served].
Batteuxs treatise included a chapter on the combined arts with suggestions

for their cooperation;62 Hiller recommended song, with carefully matched
language and music:
Letter to Polycarp Marci, 23 January 1682; G.W. Leibniz, Smtliche Schriften und
Briefe, ed. Preuische Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Darmstadt 1923, I,3, 513; cit.
K. Mller/G. Kronert (eds), Leben und Werk von G.W.v. Leibniz. Eine Chronik, Frankfurt
a.M. 1969, 67.
62 Les beaux arts, 258, 282ff.
61
336
Chapter Eight
Wenn [] von der Musik verlanget wird, verstndlich zu seyn [] so kann sie sich keines
bessern Hlfsmittels bedienen, als der Sprache [] Worte also und Tne, zu einem
Zwecke genau vereinigt, sind der Charakter der Vocalmusik, und hierinnen bertrifft
sie alle Instrumente.63
[Where music is expected to be comprehensible, it can have recourse to no better aid
than language words and tones therefore, matched precisely to this end, are the nature
of vocal music, and in this it excels each and every instrument.]
Lessing, concerned with motivation in staging, thought that music was especially useful in communicating changes of scene and mood, but needed text to
explain them.64 And Herder considered that since music was uerst dunkel
[extremely obscure] and language gar zu deutlich [all too clear], vocal music
would be the ideal form of communication.65
But practice was a different matter. The success ofKlopstocks joint enterprises was mixed, as was the reaction of his potential collaborators, such as
Gluck.66 Collaboration between music and language was not straightforward,
and could result in bathos, as Gottsched pointed out. A musical phrase is not
automatically compatible with the verbal phrase to which it is set:
Sie [die Componisten] bemheten sich auch nunmehro, fast alle Sylben eines solchen
Liedes, durch die Verschiedenheit des Klanges, auszudrcken [] und hielten sich oft
bey einer Zeile lnger auf, als man vorhin bey ganzen Oden gethan hatte.67
[They [the composers] now made great efforts to express almost every syllable of such
a song, by matching each one to a different note so they often lingered longer over a
single line than they had previously taken for entire odes.]
In particular, the incompatibility of verbal and musical conventions in opera

struck him as indefensible distortion of normal speech conventions:
Ich schweige noch der seltsamen Vereinbarung der Musik, mit allen Worten der
Redenden. Sie sprechen nicht mehr, wie es die Natur ihrer Kehle, die Gewohnheit des
Landes, die Art der Gemthsbewegungen [] erfordert: sondern sie dehnen, erheben,
und vertiefen ihre Tne nach den Phantasien eines andern. Sie lachen und weinen,
63
64
65
66
67
Von der Nachahmung der Natur, 524, 528.

Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St. 26/27, ed.cit. 10411.
Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 162, 105.
Kohl, 67f., 165f.
Critische Dichtkunst, II,2,iii, 2, ed.cit. 718.
337
husten und schnupfen nach Noten. Sie schelten und klagen nach dem Tacte; und wenn
sie sich aus Verzweifelung das Leben nehmen, so verschieben sie ihre heldenmige That
so lange, bis sie ihre Triller ausgeschlagen haben.68
[I shall not mention that strange combination of music with all the words ofthe actors.
They no longer speak as the nature oftheir voice, the custom oftheir country, the varying types of passion require; but they extend and raise and lower their tone according
to the phantasies of someone else. They laugh and cry, cough and blow their noses in
musical notes. They accuse and complain in rhythm; and when they take their lives in
despair, they delay this heroic deed for long enough to make sure they have completed
all their trills.]
The very force ofthe metaphor music plus language = ideal communication
seems to have made this conflict of conventions an intractable problem for
some German writers, because it inhibited their development of even basic
collaborational skills. Lessing felt constrained to urge that compatible styles
should be adopted in both constituent media,69 and Wieland made a comic
episode in his novel Die Abderiten (177480) out of Euripides attempts to
explain to the Abderites that their music does not fit his play.70 Even at the
end of the eighteenth century, the problems of combining music and language, plus dance in some cases, were regarded as still unsolved, although
mixed genres flourished well enough at a popular level.71 Herder considered
that opera had still not become the multi-media Gesamtkunstwerk it should
be: ein zusammenhngendes Lyrisches Gebude, in welchem Poesie, Musik,
Action, Decoration Eins sind72 [a coordinated lyrical construction, in which
poetry, music action and dcor are at one]. When Schillers attempts to secure
the sinnlich mchtige Begleitung [sensuously powerful accompaniment] of
music for the choral songs in Die Braut von Messina (1803) failed for lack of
a suitable composer, he defiantly reasserted the primacy ofthe poets creative
imagination:
Critische Dichtkunst, II,2,iv, 10, ed.cit. 740.

Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St. 26/27, loc. cit.
Die Abderiten, III,6, Werke ed. F. Martini/H.W. Seiffert, Mnchen 1966, II, 267ff.
See e.g. Benedikt Holtbernd, Die dramaturgischen Funktionen der Musik in den Schau
spielen Goethes, Frankfurt: Lang, 1992, sections IV and V and passim; and Lesley Sharpe,
A National Repertoire [], esp.2933.
72 Adrastea, Suphan XXIII, 336.
68
69
70
71
338
Chapter Eight
[Man] mu [] sich [] von der wirklichen Bhne auf eine mgliche versetzen [] Was
die Kunst noch nicht hat, das soll sie erwerben [] einem Ideale strebt er [der Dichter]
nach, die ausbende Kunst mag sich nach den Umstnden bequemen.73
[One must perforce transport oneselffrom the actual theatre to a possible theatre Art
should acquire what it does not yet possess the poet aims for an ideal, and the practising arts must accommodate themselves as best they may.]
When Richard Wagner compared the efforts of the German Classical writers with his own attempts at a Gesamtkunstwerk, he blamed the lack of an
adequate theatre: where there is no enacted play appealing directly to ear
and eye, descriptive language takes over the functions of all the performing
media.74 Theatrical resources in Weimar were less than superb, and no doubt
this had its effect.75 But both Goethe and Schiller had extensive experience of
working in theatrical productions; and in fact the Weimar performance ofDie
Braut von Messina was a resounding success without music.76 An important
part ofthe problem seems rather to have been that most eighteenth-century
writers were non-musicians, driven by an idea of ideal utterance combining
all the resources of music and language, in which metaphorical mapping
took place between both domains in both directions. In collaborative practice, however, they mapped language very firmly on to music; they expected
the poets imagination, not the composers, to take precedence, and had an
inadequate grasp of musical structures and resources. The extent to which
this happened can be seen in Schillers scheme for the role of the Chorus in
Die Braut von Messina:
Der Chor verlt den engen Kreis der Handlung, um sich ber Vergangenes und
Knftiges, ber ferne Zeiten und Vlker, ber das Menschliche berhaupt zu verbreiten,
um die groen Resultate des Lebens zu ziehen und die Lehren der Weisheit auszusprechen. Aber er tut dieses mit der vollen Macht der Phantasie, mit einer khnen lyrischen
Freiheit, welche auf den hohen Gipfeln der menschlichen Dinge wie mit Schritten der
74 Oper und Drama, II, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. J. Kapp, Leipzig 1914, vol.11, 110ff.,
esp.128ff., 186. Cf. H.v. Stein, Dichtung und Musik im Werk Richard Wagners, Berlin
1962, 113ff.
75 See I.M. Barth, Literarisches Weimar, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971; L. Sharpe, A National
Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland and the German Stage, Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, 20509,
246f., and esp. illustration, 306.
76 Sharpe, op.cit. 206f.
339
Gtter einhergeht und er tut es, von der ganzen sinnlichen Macht des Rhythmus und
der Musik in Tnen und Bewegungen begleitet.77
[The Chorus steps out ofthe narrow bounds ofthe action, to expatiate upon things past
and things to come, on faraway times and peoples, on humanity in general, to consider
the fruits of experience and to pronounce the tenets of wisdom. But it does so with
the full force of imagination, with a bold lyrical freedom which moves on the highest
heights of human affairs as in the steps of the gods and it does this accompanied by
the full sensuous power of rhythm and music in tone and movement.]
Descriptive language has completely taken over the functions ofthe performing media it all sounds thunderously wonderful, and leaves no space at all for
the musicians imagination. No wonder Zelter declined to collaborate, weil
ich wirklich [] nicht weis, wie sich diese Idee praktisch realisiren lassen wird
[because I truly dont see how this idea can be realised in practice].78
Goethe: Language, sound, silence and sense

As before, we shall find Goethe absorbing all of these possibilities at various
stages, deploying them in various ways, and adding new developments of
his own. He concerned himself all his life with experience at the margins of
language and beyond, and with the capacity of musical sound and structure
to complement language as means of communication; and this conceptual
metaphor seems to have formed a fundamental part ofhis thinking throughout. From the early poem Knstlers Abendlied, where the poet describes his
stuttering expression (Ich zittre nur, ich stottre nur), or the depiction of
Werthers inability to describe Lotte after their first meeting (Ich habe
ich weis nicht),79 through to Goethes late notes on sound phenomena in
Physikalische Wirkungen (c.1810), this preoccupation and its implications recur
time and time again, and are addressed in terms of language/sound/music:

78 Sharpe,206f., and Zelters letter to Schiller, 16 March 1803, NA 40 I, 35.
79 [I tremble, I stammer,] Knstlers Abendlied (1774), AA 1, 389; [I have O I dont
know], Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, I, am 16. Juni, AA 4, 280, 395.
340
Chapter Eight
Die sonoren Wirkungen ist man gentigt, beinahe ganz obenan zu stellen. Wre die
Sprache nicht unstreitig das Hchste, was wir haben, so wrde ich Musik noch hher
als Sprache und als ganz zuoberst setzen. Wenigstens scheint mir, da der Ton noch
viel grerer Mannigfaltigkeit als die Farbe fhig sei [] hat er doch eine unglaubliche
Biegsamkeit und Verhltnismglichkeit, die mir ber alle Begriffe geht und vielleicht
zeitlebens gehen wird.80
[One is obliged to set sound phenomena almost at the very top. If language were not
undoubtedly the highest thing we have, I would put music above language, in the very
topmost place. At least it seems to me that tone is capable of infinitely more variety than
colour after all it possesses a quite incredible adaptability and combinability, which
exceeds all my concepts and will probably do so for the rest of my life.]
In these and many other instances, sound effects and music are brought in to
complement and vary language, and treated as part of a medial continuum
with it. Yet most ofhis works are primarily works oflanguage, highly effective
as such in their different genres; and despite its limitations, Goethe accords
language the highest place amongst the media at mans disposal.
If this seems paradoxical, we should remember that Goethe was introduced at an early stage both to wide-reaching new possibilities of poetic
language, and to the potential role of music and sounds (as well as gesture,
dance, etc) where language appeared inadequate. Meredith Lee points out
that Klopstocks contribution to Goethes development has been substantially
undervalued since Friedrich Schlegels review of Goethes work (1808).81
Lee shows in detail how Goethe experimented with syntactical inversions
and breaks, verse-forms, metres (from hexameters to odes and free verse),
striking imagery, rhetorical sound effects and much more, to increase the
expressive capacity of German and to match Klopstocks controlled deployment of rhetoric and of the language of enthusiasm. Although his views of
the world and of the poets function were significantly different,82 it was in
Klopstock that Goethe first encountered poetry as powerful oral delivery
and voice (Der Messias, Frhlingsfeier) and as animated by rhythmic physical
80 AA 16, 862.
81 Meredith Lee, Displacing Authority: Goethes Poetic Reception ofKlopstock, Heidelberg:
Winter, 1999, 1ff.
82 Lee, passim. See also, as Lee suggests, the classic study by Eric Blackall, The Emergence of
German as a Literary Language, Cambridge University Press, 1959ff., the final section
The Golden Touch on Goethe and his principal debts; and Kohl, op.cit., 1437.
341
movement (especially the odes based on ice-skating).83 Through Herder he

then gained not only a continuation of interest in Rousseau, Klopstock,
Shakespeare and Biblical poetry, and in Hamanns revolutionary handling of
language,84 but also the habitual association of musical genres and sounds as
part ofthe resources of poetic communication.85 Goethes later references in
Dichtung und Wahrheit make clear the impact these models oflanguage had
as types of writing for sound and for the voice, to be spoken or chanted in
varied ways hence the loud declamation ofMessias with his sister, the group
of young men on the ice chanting Klopstocks odes as they skated,86 and his
lasting love of folk song and oral genres such as ballad and epic.87
But Goethe also had strong awareness of areas of experience where language seemed inadequate as a medium, and not merely because Klopstock or
other poets had proved limited in the long run.88 His efforts at Biblical translation, his acquaintance with the Pietists and their relations with Hamann,
and most particularly his interest in religious experience, its nature and its
language, as well as his early absorption in Hermetic lore,89 lent this problem
an intellectual edge over and above the emotional urgency of expressing love
adequately in his Leipzig and Strassburg poems and in Wetzlar. Zimmermann
shows in detail how intensively Goethe occupied himself with the question
of the Whitsunday gift of tongues, with the value (or not) of such lallen as
a means of expression among contemporary believers, with the utterance of
Apolline inspiration and Dionysian drunkenness, and the treatment of such
Gotterflltheit in Pindar and in Hermetic writers.90 This concern engen83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
Lee, esp.12741 and passim; 189215 and passim; and Hilliard, Klopstock in den Jahren
[] passim.
See e.g. Lee, 11ff., 73ff., and passim. Goethe ordered Hamanns works from the publisher
Reich in 1775 (letter of 28 October 1775, DjG V, 264); but had read him well before that
at Herders instigation: cfletter to Herder, Frankfurt Anfang 1772, DjG II, 70f, and esp.
notes, 324f. See also Dichtung und Wahrheit, III, 11, AA 10, 53944.
See esp. the Ossian essay and the Viertes Wldchen; cf. Chapters Six and Seven above.
Dichtung und Wahrheit I,2, AA 10, 913,; III, 12, 572f; on Herder, II,10, 44154, esp.448;
also Kohl, 144.
See esp. Kohl, 1457.
See e.g. Dichtung und Wahrheit, II,7, where Goethe casts a critical eye over the writing
available as models during his Leipzig time (AA 10, 297300).
Dichtung und Wahrheit, III, 12, AA 10, 57ff.; on Hamann, ibid., 56064; on Hermetic
lore, II,8, 384ff.
Zimmermann II, 92118, esp.11518; also Lee, op.cit., 10824.
342
Chapter Eight
ders not only Goethes essay on the subject (Was heit mit Zungen reden?),
but the exploration of several different sources of inspired speech (Muses,
Dionysos, Apollo and Venus) and the experiments with Pindaric and other
kinds oflanguage (broken syntax, varying rhythm, incantatory style) to convey
such an experience in Wanderers Sturmlied.91 Goethes interest in all forms
of enthusiasm and their expression at the limits of language also underpins
his treatment of Gretchen in her madness and Sickingen in his obsession
with Adelheid (Gtz von Berlichingen), as well as the detailed portrait of an
enthusiastic temperament in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.92
In Goethes writing, even at this early stage, such kinds of expression are
not merely a form of psychological local colour. He uses them, along with
whatever coherent language he devises for a particular work, to present particular situations and experience. As Lee points out, Goethe presents states of
Begeisterung with irony; he explores them with sympathy and excitement,
but there is always a clear indication of their context in some reality, or of
the norm against which they are exceptional or extreme.93 And usually this
ironic distance between intense states of mind and the norm is conveyed by
a contrast between coherent language and utterances in some less usual form,
so the reader hears both norm and exception. The country parson agrees
with St Paul that speaking in tongues is a form of showing off ones private
closeness to God; it does not communicate, because the congregation cannot
understand it. But a life of pious duty and ordinary language is a dreary prospect, and needs the inspired if stumbling utterance:
Wirft aber der ewige Geist [] einen Funken seiner Liebe einem Erwhlten zu, der
trete auf, und lalle sein Gefhl. Er tret auf ! Und wir wollen ihn ehren! Geseegnet
seyst du, woher du auch kommst! Der du die Haiden erleuchtest! Der du die Vlker
erwrmst!94
[But if the eternal Spirit throws a spark of his love to a chosen one, let that man step
forth, and stammer in tongues what he feels. Let him step forth! We will honour him!
Blessed art thou, from wheresoever thou comest! Thou who shinest light upon the
heathen! Thou who fillest the nations with warmth!]
Zwo wichtige biblische Fragen [], DjG III, 1224; Zimmermann II, 77115.; also
Zimmermann I, 23645.
92 Zimmermann II, 82ff., 92ff., 167212.
93 Lee, op.cit., 124f.
94 DjG III, 123f.
91
343
The reader is shown the effect of such lallen in changes to the parsons language: its hitherto mildly pedantic flow and correct syntax become fragmented
by excitement, as he shares in the warmth ofthe inspired utterance. Similarly,
the poet ofWanderers Sturmlied, with his divine inspiration, Pindaric rhythms
and excited exclamations is finally driven to take refuge from the storm and
face the reality ofthe Sohn des Wassers und der Erde, i.e. mud.95 Music and
musical reference are part of this multi-media communication. Gretchen in
her madness sings and speaks in fragments: she cannot cope with the fact that
what she knew as song/story has somehow become reality. Faust can only reach
her now by calling out her name (Gretchen! Gretchen!); a dreadful contrast
to his usual rhetorical fluency (Kerker, 4423ff., esp.4460f.). Both Werthers
merits and his tendency to self-absorbed enthusiasm are brought out, partly
by the contrast between his rhetoric and fragmented utterance and the narrators continuous syntactical flow and more sober language, and partly by the
contrast between Werther and other characters. In Lottes case, this presents
throughout a modest, realistic self-expression through simple but apt language
and through music, which takes account of her untuned piano and limited
repertoire. These are set against Werthers increasingly obsessive language, and
his Rousseauist ideology of music as expression of ineffable feeling, reinforced
by citation of Classical myths of musics magical powers.96
As Victor Lange has shown in detail, silence and its capacity to convey
was unaussprechlich ist (Faust I, 3190), is similarly set against standard coherent language, along with glossolalia, fragmentation and hesitation, gesture
and (especially in connection with Mignon and the Pilgernde Trin) music,
as part ofGoethes commitment both to language and to means of overcoming its inadequacies.97 Lange emphasises the importance of what he calls the
creative interdependence of silence and speech (152) in Goethes writing;
and shows that far from being dead or neutral, silence had various possible
95 AA 1, 31317; see also Zimmermann II, 77118 passim.
96 See e.g. letters of 16 July, and 16 June for similar contrasts in dance, AA 4, 285f., 301.
97 V. Lange, The Metaphor of Silence, in E.M. Wilkinson (ed.), Goethe Revisited. A
Collection ofEssays, London: Calder, 1984, 13352, esp.13337. Lange takes silence as an
independent metaphor, in order to show that silence carries several different connotations
all fairly well established by cultural and literary convention. His major point overall is
that silence is not dead in eighteenth-century culture, but one of many means of communication complementing language. Cf. also Riedl in Brown/Lee/Saine, cit. above.
344
Chapter Eight
associations in eighteenth-century culture (as we saw in Rousseaus novel), and

depended on language to provide the context which conveyed its precise significance. Some silences are a refusal to communicate with ones fellow human
beings in the usual medium, for whatever reason (e.g. Iphigenies initial proud
refusal to speak to Thoas (I,3), Ottilies Ent-sagen due to helplessness, the
Divan poets fear of betraying precious wisdom to an audience which does
not appreciate it).98 Other silences are intended to ensure adequate thought
before speech (e.g. the fashion for solitary contemplation of nature lovers
and hermits, or the rituals ofthe Wandergesellschaft and the silence imposed
on the barber).99 They may even be a simple social tactic to avoid utterance
until anger has cooled:
So wie die Pausen eben so gut zum musikalischen Rhythmus gehren als die Noten,
eben so mag es auch in freundschaftlichen Verhltnissen nicht undienlich sein, wenn
man eine Zeitlang sich wechselseitig mitzuteilen unterlt.100
[ Just as silent rests are as much a part of musical rhythm as the notes, so also it is not detrimental to friendly relations if both sides refrain from communication for a while.]
Lange presents Mignons communication through music as a super-language

ofthe wordless; but he does not show that Goethe also conveys an idea ofthe
norm, ofthe real situation against which Mignon is exceptional, and ofthe
language norm against which her silence and singing are measured as extreme.
Mignons story is conveyed to her friends via several different media, including coherent language.101 Her songs have a coherent text, and she explains
herself through this text as well as through her playing and dancing; one of
them (Hei mich nicht reden, hei mich schweigen, V, 16) she even recites
as a poem. Put together, alongside the mixture of silence, mute gestures and
fragmented polyglot language to which Lange draws attention (149), these
media convey rather more about her than either Wilhelm or the narrator
98 Lange, 14450.
99 WJ III, 8; Lange, 13452. Cf. also the silence imposed on Papageno in Die Zauberflte
I,2.
100 Letter to Achim von Arnim after a period of estrangement, 23 February 1814, FA 7
(34),316.
101 The reader, of course, receives them only by descriptive language and the verse of her
songs.
345
seem to take in. But Natalie and the doctor do put her story together by
combining all these sources: aus einzelnen uerungen, aus Liedern und
kindlichen Unbesonnenheiten, die gerade das verraten, was sie verschweigen wollen102 [from isolated comments, in songs and childish unthinking
moments, which give away exactly what they are trying to hide]. This suggests
not only that the fullest possible communication demands a wide range of
media (language, music, silence, incoherent sounds, broken speech, etc., as
well as gesture and movement), but that conscious intention to communicate
or withhold only governs part of the process. There is always far more than
we can communicate through language; yet since we constantly make use of
other forms of expression too, we can easily convey in total far more than we
say and control through language.
Goethe, manifold language: Living sense in living formulation

At several later stages, Goethe considered these techniques in more general
terms. For example, at the end of section five ofthe Farbenlehre, Nachbarliche
Verhltnisse, he added a section on Language and Terminology, considering
the kinds offormulae available for describing phenomena and the researchers
views about them. He deduced that all formulae had their merits and disadvantages; and suggested a mannigfaltige Sprache, a manifold language, which
made use of all of them as and when appropriate to the case in hand:
Knnte man sich [] aller dieser Arten der Vorstellung und des Ausdrucks mit
Naturphnomene berliefern, hielte man sich von Einseitigkeit frei und fate einen
lebendigen Sinn in einen lebendigen Ausdruck, so liee sich manches Erfreuliche
mitteilen.103
102 Lehrjahre VIII,3, AA 7, 561.

103 Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie, Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil,
AA 16, 204.
346
Chapter Eight
[If one could make well-considered use of all these types of presentation and expression,
and convey ones observations on natural phenomena in a manifold language, if one
could keep free of bias and capture vivid meaning in vivid expression, many things of
profit could be communicated.]
In his notes to the poem Ballade, he describes a similar procedure with poetic
language:
Der Snger [] hat seinen prgnanten Gegenstand, seine Figuren, deren Taten und
Bewegung so tief im Sinne, da er nicht wei, wie er ihn ans Tageslicht fordern will. Er
bedient sich daher aller drei Grundarten der Poesie [i.e. lyric, epic and dramatic], um
zunchst auszudrcken, was die Einbildungskraft erregen, den Geist beschftigen soll;
er kann lyrisch, episch, dramatisch beginnen und, nach Belieben die Formen wechselnd,
fortfahren [] Der Refrain, das Wiederkehren ebendesselben Schluklanges, gibt dieser
Dichtart den entschiedenen lyrischen Charakter.104
[The minstrel [] has his striking subject, his figures with their deeds and motions so
deeply in his mind that he hardly knows how to bring them up into the light of day. He
therefore draws upon all three basic types of poetry [lyric, epic and dramatic] in order
to begin to express what can stir the imagination and occupy the mind; he can begin
in lyrical, epic or dramatic mode and continue changing forms at will as he goes along
[] The refrain, the recurrence of the selfsame final sound, is what gives this genre of
poetry its decidedly lyrical character].
In this way, Goethe, like many of his contemporaries, aimed to diversify,

extend and enhance the range and versatility oflanguage. By conceiving music
and other sound phenomena as part of a range of complementary means of
communication through which he could move as occasion required, he could
aim for the fullest and most animated communication attainable, einen lebendigen Sinn in einen lebendigen Ausdruck.
Goethes applications of this conceptual metaphor vary considerably;
although generally in later work he uses music, rather than silences, broken
speech, etc., to complement language. Music is sometimes used to indicate a
state preceding language, in which thoughts and figures are still forming: like
Rousseau, Herder and Schiller, Goethe associated music with pre-creative
104 ber Kunst und Altertum, 1821, AA 2, 613; cf. Also Naturformen der Dichtung, in Noten
und Abhandlungen to the West-stlicher Divan, AA 3, 480f.
347
states.105 For example, the poet ofZueignung, whose earlier efforts are halb
verklungen and who has not yet fully articulated die folgenden Gesnge, is
beginning tentatively to speak again, half-formed sounds which he does not
yet control:
Es schwebet nun in unbestimmten Tnen
Mein lispelnd Lied, der olsharfe gleich
(27f.);
Like the Aeolian harp, my lisping song

Hangs now suspended in uncertain tones.
whereas Homunculus advance to voice and language in his bottle is, thanks
to Mephistos short cuts (6890), brisk and energetic:
Gebt diesem Laute nur Gehr,
Pray listen to this sound, it will
Es wird zur Stimme, wird zur Sprache. Become a voice, become speech.
(68718)
Music can also be used to indicate a situation post-language, where language

has ceased to be adequate. The Muse of the Berlin Theaterprolog (1821) has
plenty to say in words: Viel ist, gar viel mit Worten auszurichten; but needs
music to present the extraordinary:
Ja! was ich sagte, sagt ich offenbar,
Dem Menschensinn gem, wahrhaft und klar;
Nach Wunderbarem aber treibt michs, will es
fassen
Nun folgt mir gern, sonst mt ich euch
verlassen;
SD: Blasende Instrumente hinter der Kulisse []
For what I spoke, I spoke aloud,

Aptly for human minds, truly and clearly;
But now the Wondrous draws me, I
must grasp it.
Follow me with good will, or I must
leave you.
SD: Wind instruments in the wings
After the variety show oftheatrical resources for representing life, she adds:
Nur der Gesamtblick lt den Wert empfinden:106 for communication to be
as full as possible, a mannigfaltige Sprache is needed. The three poems of
Trilogie der Leidenschaft (An Werther, Elegie, Ausshnung) present a series
of situations where language proves inadequate to express pain and loss.
105 Cf. his letters to Frau von Stein, 14 February 1779 and 22 February 1779, on music played
while he was writing early versions of Iphigenie auf Tauris, AA 18, 417f.
106 [Only a whole perspective shows its worth]; Scenes 13, AA 3, 64750.
348
Chapter Eight
First comes Werther, and his refusal to communicate which ends in suicide;
then Tasso and his successful articulation in poetic language. Yet the authorial
poet himself is still frozen, unable to respond to the outside world. Finally,
when poetic language and even attempts at scientific language (Naturgeheimnis
werde nachgestammelt) fail to bring the authorial poet to interact with the
world around him, music restores his willingness to communicate because
the beauty of sound penetrates his senses, and thence his mind and feelings.
Looking back on his early works in this poem, Goethe includes in a context
of mature, flowing verse his early means of depicting emotion beyond words:
interrupted syntax, exclamation marks, unfinished sentences.107 The Novelle
makes even more detailed and finely nuanced use of described music: the boys
flute-playing acts as both prelude and climax to the song, and also bridges the
gaps in communication between the Frst, Honorio, and the owners of the
lion and tiger, as well as the gap in communication between man and beast.
This story involves a considerable range oflevels oflanguage, from the urbane
tone ofthe narrator to the stranger and more passionate speech ofthe gypsies
and Honorios preference for silent derring do.108
As Goethe explained to Eckermann, this gradation of levels of communication was carefully chosen, and music was part of the continuum of
means of expression:
Htte ich [] einige der brigen Figuren am Ende wieder hervortreten lassen, so wre
der Schlu prosaisch geworden [] Aber ein ideeller, ja lyrischer Schlu war ntig
und mute folgen; denn nach der pathetischen Rede des Mannes, die schon poetische
Prosa ist, mute eine Steigerung kommen, ich mute zur lyrischen Poesie, ja zum Liede
selbst bergehen.109
[If I had brought back any of the other figures at the end, the ending would have been
prosaic But an idealised, even lyrical ending was necessary and followed perforce; for
after the eloquence of the mans speech, which is already poetic prose, there had to be
an intensification, I had to bring in lyrical poetry, even song itself ].
However, it is important to note that the movement through a range of media

is not always in one direction: poetry can be of a kind which moves away
from sonority and lyricism towards prose. Goethe found Gleims poetry of
this sort:
107 AA 1, 478ff.
108 AA 9, 450, 456 and passim.
109 Conv. with Eckermann, Erster Teil, 18 January 1827, AA 24, 212f.
349
Seine Poesie [] ist rhythmisch, nicht melodisch, weshalb er sich denn auch meistens
freier Silbenmae bedient: und so gewhren Vers und Reim, Brief und Abhandlung durcheinander verschlungen den Ausdruck eines gemtlichen Menschenverstandes.110
[His poetry is rhythmic rather than melodious, for which reason he mostly uses free
verse forms: in this way verse and rhyme, letter and essay are intermingled with each
other and enable the expression of a mind at ease.]
He termed his own epigrams Gedichte, die sich am weitesten vom Gesang
entfernen.111 Prosaic language is an important element in this spectrum of
expression: it represents a baseline from which more animated or more specialised utterance can rise or fall; and marks a norm against which more
specialised utterance can be recognised.
In narrative and poetic genres, Goethe was thus enabled to produce some
of the most varied and complex writing in eighteenth-century Germany.
Dramatic genres were no exception to this. But considerable problems sometimes arose where he attempted to realise the conceptual metaphor in mixed
genres, and to impose it on his composer collaborators. This is a much recorded
and fairly unprofitable aspect ofhis activity.112 Its main interest is that it shows
the quite extraordinary efforts which Goethe made to develop a detailed
system of nuanced expression for use in practice; despite the fact that he was
not by nature a systematic thinker, and never arrived at a theory of music
which satisfied him.113 The systematic nature of his approach, and his metaphorical combination of music and language as complementary means of
communication, can be clearly seen in the Regeln fr Schauspieler, which he
set out for the Weimar principals.114 He tries to persuade actors to use a finely
110 Tag- und Jahreshefte 1805, AA 11, 782.
111 [Poems which are furthest removed from song]; letter to Reichardt, 8 November 1790,
AA 19, 175.
112 As Holtbernd shows, his efforts to reform the German Singspiel to a comparable level
were eclipsed by imported Italian opera and by Mozart, even with the intelligent and
competent collaboration of J.F. Reichardt. The many books entitled Goethe und die
Musik tend to rake over the facts of his collaborations without finding a coherent
thread; Walwei-Wiegelmann (1985) is the most successful at organised presentation
without ideological bias.
113 See e.g. E.M. Wilkinson, The Poet as Thinker, in Goethe: Poet and Thinker, London:
Arnold, 1962, esp.134ff.; H.B. Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, Univ. ofLondon
1972, 1; and Religion and Philosophy in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed.
L.Sharpe, Cambridge University Press, 2002, esp.229. The Tonlehre remained a sketch.
114 1803/4, publ. 1824; see Sharpe, A National Repertoire [], 150.
350
Chapter Eight
nuanced range of vocal expression in speech, moving from ordinary dialogue

to near-music according to the situation. Rezitation represents a low grade
on this scale, a form of reading aloud:
Unter Rezitation wird ein solcher Vortrag verstanden, wie er ohne leidenschaftliche
Tonerhebung, doch auch nicht ganz ohne Tonvernderung zwischen der kalten ruhigen
und der hchst aufgeregten Sprache in der Mitte liegt.115
[Recitation denotes a kind of oral delivery which lies midway between disengaged and
even language and the most greatly animated speech, without the raised voice of passion
yet not entirely without tonal variation].
For more emotional impact, the actor needed Deklamation:

Die Worte, welche ich ausspreche, mssen mit Energie und dem lebendigsten Ausdruck
hervorgebracht werden, so da ich jede leidenschaftliche Regung als wirklich gegenwrtig
mit zu empfinden scheine. Hier bedient sich der Spieler auf dem Fortepiano [i.e. the
actor!] der Dmpfung und aller Mutationen, welche das Instrument besitzt.116
[The words which I speak must be produced with energy and the most animated expression, so that I seem to feel with every movement of passion as though it were real.
Here the pianist makes use of the pedal and of all the mutations which the instrument
possesses].
And for even greater effect, the actor proceeded to rhythmischer Dialog,
the mode envisaged for verse:
Alle bei der Deklamation gemachten Regeln und Bemerkungen werden auch hier zur
Grundlage vorausgesetzt. Insbesondere ist aber der Charakter des rhythmischen Vortrags,
da der Gegenstand mit noch mehr erhhtem pathetischem Ausdruck deklamiert
wird.117
[All the rules and comments made on declamation are assumed here too as a basis.
However, the particular character of rhythmic dialogue lies in the still further increased
modulation and emphasis with which the piece is declaimed].
The actor as soloist uses the full range of his instrument, as the musician
does:
115 Regeln [], 18, AA 14, 75f.
116 Ibid., 20ff., 76f.
117 Ibid., 31, 80f.
351
Man knnte die Deklamierkunst eine prosaische Tonkunst nennen, wie sie denn berhaupt mit der Musik sehr viel Analoges hat. Nur mu man unterscheiden, da die Musik
[] sich mit mehr Freiheit bewegt, die Deklamierkunst aber im Umfang ihrer Tne
weit beschrnkter und einem fremden Zwecke unterworfen ist. Auf diesen Grundsatz
mu der Deklamierende immer die strengste Rcksicht nehmen. Denn wechselt er die
Tne zu schnell, spricht er entweder zu tief oder zu hoch oder durch zu viele Halbtne,
so kommt er in das Singen; im entgegengesetzten Fall aber gert er in Monotonie, die
selbst in der einfachen Rezitation fehlerhaft ist.118
[The art of declamation could be termed a prosaic music, as so much of it is analogous
to music. But one must be aware that music moves with far fewer restrictions, whilst
declamation is much more limited in its tonal range and serves an extraneous purpose.
The declaimer must keep this distinction very clear in his mind. Ifhe changes tone too
quickly, ifhe speaks at too low or too high a pitch or with too many halftones, he lapses
into singing; or in the opposite case he lapses into monotone, which is a fault even at
the level of recitation].
Goethes aim here is a fine differentiation of oral delivery, a mannigfaltige

Sprache which can convey as aptly as possible the nuances of the work
concerned.
Earlier, Goethe had attempted to impose a similar graded system on composers in his collaborative work. In Jery und Btely with Philipp Christoph
Kayser,119 for example, he asks for similar distinction between different types
of song and dialogue. Some songs were to be:
Lieder, von denen man supponiret, dass der Singende sie irgendwo auswendig gelernt
und sie nun in ein und der andern Situation anbringt. Diese knnen und mssen eigne,
bestimmte und runde Melodien haben, die auffallen und iedermann leicht behlt
[Songs which one can suppose the singer had learnt somewhere by heart and was now
singing again in one situation or another. These may and must have their own clear and
uncomplicated melodies, tunes which catch the attention and which everyone easily
remembers].
Others, with more personal emotional involvement, were to be more like

arias:
118 Ibid., 21, 77.

119 He knew Kayser from Frankfurt; see Walwei-Wiegelmann, 128ff., plate ten.
352
Chapter Eight
Wo die Person die Empfindung des Augenbliks ausdrkt und, ganz in ihr verlohren, aus
dem Grunde des Herzens singt. Diese mssen einfach, wahr, rein, vorgetragen werden,
von der sanftesten biss zur heftigsten Empfindung.
[Where the character is expressing the mood of the moment, is completely absorbed
in it, and sings from the bottom of his heart. These must be sung simply, convincingly,
without affectation, from the gentlest feeling to the most intense].
Similar distinction is to be made between types of dialogue. For more animated moments, he again uses the idea ofder rytmische Dialog [sic], in this
context envisaged as recitative:
Dieser giebt der ganzen Sache die Bewegung, durch diesen kann der Componist die Sache
bald beschleunigen, bald wieder anhalten, ihn bald als Deklamation in zerrissnen Takten
traktiren, bald ihn in einer rollenden Melodie sich geschwind fortbewegen lassen.120
[This sets the tempo for the whole thing, the composer can sometimes speed it up, sometimes slow it down, sometimes treat it as declamation with musical snatches, sometimes
speed it on its way with a rolling melody].
This was to be distinguished clearly from ordinary dramatic speech, prosaischen Dialog:
Denn dieser muss nach meinen Intentionen gesprochen werden, ob Ihnen gleich frei
bleibet nach Gefallen hier und da Akkompagnement einzuweben.
[According to my intentions this should be spoken, though you are certainly at liberty
to weave in an accompaniment if you so wish].
All in all, the whole range oftypes of song and speech was to be drawn on to
produce a varied but well-coordinated whole:
Der Dialog muss wie ein glatter goldner Ring sein, auf dem Arien und Lieder wie
Edelsteine aufsizen [] brigens werden Sie wohl von selbst finden, dass viel Gelegenheit
da ist, manchfaltigen [sic] musikalischen Reichthum anzubringen.121
[The dialogue must be like a smooth golden ring, on which arias and songs are mounted
like jewels. And as I am sure you will find, there are many opportunities to bring in a
wealth of musical adornments].
120 Letter to Kayser, 29 December 1779, AA 18, 472f.

121 Letter to Kayser, 29 December 1779, AA 18, 473.
353
However, Goethe was not usually particular whether a given passage was
sung or spoken:
Ich habe im Rezitativ weder den Reim gesucht noch gemieden [] manchmal aber
kommen gereimte Stellen in demselben vor, besonders wo der Dialog bedeutender
wird, wo er zur Arie bergeht, da denn der Reimklang dem Ohre schmeichelt. Weiter
ist keine Absicht dabey und gedachte Stellen bleiben deswegen immer Rezitativ, der
Componist mag sie nachher trocken [i.e. accompanied by isolated chords] oder begleitet
ausfhren. Eben so zeichnet sich, was nach meiner Absicht melodischer Gesang seyn
sollte, durch den Rhythmus aus, wobey dem Componisten freybleibt bey einigen Arien
zu verweilen und sie vllig auszubilden, andre nur als Cavatinen pp vorbergehen zu
lassen, wie es der Carackter der Worte und der Handlung erfordert. Sollten Sie aber da
wo ich Recitativ habe, eine Arie, und wo ich eine Arie habe, ein Rezitativ schicklicher
finden; so mssten Sie mir es erst schreiben.122
[In the recitative I have neither sought nor avoided the use of rhyme, but sometimes
rhymed sections do appear in it, especially where the dialogue becomes more significant
and moves towards aria, as the rhyming sound flatters the ear. I had no aim beyond this,
and these sections remain as recitative, whether the composer sets them secco or with full
accompaniment. Similarly the passages which I intended to be melodic song are marked
by their rhythm, which leaves the composer free to linger on some and develop them
fully, whilst passing rapidly over others as cavatinas, etc., as the nature ofthe words and
the dramatic action requires. But you must write and tell me first if you think an aria
would be more appropriate where I have recitative, and vice versa.].
This reinforces the idea considered in Chapter Seven above: that there are
passages oftext on the watershed, as Herder called it, between language and
music, which can be realised in either medium (e.g. Iphigenies Parzenlied).
It also helps to explain why Goethe criticism has encountered problems where
it attempted to distinguish categorically between sung and spoken episodes.123
What mattered to Goethe was the right treatment of the item in relation to
passages which preceded and followed it, so that overall the lebendigen Sinn
ofthe work came through in its lebendigen Ausdruck, as the mannigfaltige
Sprache emerged in the course of the work.
122 On Scherz, List und Rache, letter to Kayser 25 April 1785, AA 18, 846f.
123 E.g. W.C.R. Hicks, Was Goethe Musical?, PEGS NS 27 (1957/8), 132; H. Fhnrich,
Goethes Musikanschauung in seiner Faustrtragdie: die Erfllung und Vollendung seiner
Opernreform, Goethe XXV (1963), 253f.; more recently, Ritchie Robertson, Literary
Techniques and Aesthetic Texture, in P. Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust:
Parts I and II, Camden House, 2001, 8ff.
354
Chapter Eight
Goethe explained in his Italienische Reise that his interest in coordinated

and differentiated levels of song and language had arisen from his revision of
Egmont, and from his experience of opera in Italy. Despite its failure to make
headway in operatic genres, this scale offinely differentiated utterance (from
fragmented sounds through prose to music and back again) is highly effective
in his literary drama. Music in Egmont, for instance, offers far more than incidental accompaniment. After Klrchens death, there is a return from music to
prose for the grim reality awaiting Egmont; at the end, the language intensifies
from Egmonts conversation with Ferdinand and his reflection upon it and
thence to his apostrophe of sleep. Instrumental music accompanies first his
invocation of sleep, then his allegorical dream followed by his waking vision
ofthe future, and finally takes over completely in the Siegessymphonie.124 This
last does not erase the action ofthe text: e.g. the ignominious death which he
must face, and the just criticism levelled at him by Oranien and others. But
it offers a different perspective on his death, as well as a theatrical finale, and
also offers a counterpart to the harmonious canon ofthe burgers at the end
of the opening scene of the play.
Goethe made clear that a similar concept of mannigfaltige Sprache
underlay his adaptations of Faust I for partial performance. To Graf Brhl,
he wrote that:
Die Absicht ist, Fausten mit seltner musikalischer Begleitung rezitieren zu lassen,
die Annhrung und Erscheinung des Geistes wird melodramatisch behandelt, das
Schluchor melodisch, woraus ein kleines Stck entsteht, welches etwas ber eine halbe
Stunde dauern mag.125
[My intention is to have Faust recite, with occasional musical accompaniment, the
approach and appearance of the [Earth] Spirit treated as a melodrama, and the final
chorus as continuous song; which makes a little piece lasting roughly half an hour].
And although he approved ofFrst Radziwills music for a similar adaptation,

he protested at the elision ofthese gradations between language and song, and
at the loss ofthe norm of unadorned language, especially in the monologues
where Faust begins to translate the Bible: wodurch das Drama den zwitterhaften
Charakter des Melodramas erhalte, welches weder Schauspiel noch Oper, nicht
124 AA 6, 91, 99ff.
125 Letter of 1 May 1815, AA 21, 66.
355
Fisch, nicht Fleisch sei.126 His responses to settings of poetry were governed by
similar considerations: he praised Tomascheks setting ofKennst du das Land
above those by Beethoven and Spohr, because the type of musical treatment
matched Mignons persona in the context ofthe novel, and the level ofher selfexpression in the poem: Sie haben das Gedicht verstanden [] Mignon kann
ihrem Wesen nach ein Lied, aber keine Arie singen.127 [You have understood
the poem It is in Mignons nature to sing a song, but not an aria].
In all these instances, Goethe is mapping music on to language insofar
as he is taking enormous pains to refine and differentiate the timbre, volume,
rhythm and tempo oflanguage in ways which make it like music, and to supplement dramatic language with music. But he is also mapping language on
to music, insofar as in mixed genres he expects musical structures and forms
to give way to the requirements of verse-form and of language, and expects
composers to work according to the same conceptual metaphor as himself
i.e. music and language as complementary means of communication. This is a
very severe restriction, and it is hardly surprising that very little collaboration
was successful. Traditionally, composers have been blamed for this, not least
by Goethe himself.128 But those who lay some blame at Goethes own door
have a point.129 As Klopstock did with Gluck, he is imposing a conceptual
126 [This gives the drama the ambiguous character of melodrama, which is neither play nor
opera, neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring]; conversation with Frster, Mai/Juli
1821, AA 23, 140f. On Radziwill, cf. Walwei-W., plate 30, 128ff.
127 Conv. with W.J. Tomaschek, 6 August 1822, AA 23, 221.; on Tomaschek, see plate 35
ibid.
128 Goethes letter to Zelter, 19 June 1805, AA 19, 481. Of critical literature, see e.g. M. Fried
lnder, Goethe und die Musik, JGG III (1916), esp.300ff.; F. Blume, Goethe und die
Musik, Kassel: Brenreiter, 1949, 3244 (on song settings), 4562 (on dramatic genres);
H.-J. Moser, Goethe und die Musik, Leipzig: Peters, 1949, 21ff.; W. Tappolet, Begegnungen
mit der Musik in Goethes Leben und Werk, Bern: Benteli, 1975, 68ff ; Canisius, Goethe
und die Musik, Mnchen: Piper, 1998, esp.54ff. Canisius also points to the inevitable
eclipse of minor composers work by Mozart (57f.). L. Byrne, Schuberts Goethe Settings,
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, defends Goethe against accusations of musical illiteracy, but
is naturally not concerned with dramatic genres (324 and 469 notes 16).
129 None of these critics considers musical metaphor; but they attribute the problem to
the degree to which Goethe imposed poetic criteria on music and musicians. See e.g.
Friedlnder, op.cit., 336f.; W.C.R. Hicks, Was Goethe Musical?, PEGS NS 27 (19578),
356
Chapter Eight
metaphor which may well not produce the kind of results in music that he
envisaged for his manifold language.
The perils of manifold language:

Confusion, contradiction and signifying nothing
If manifold language had its rich and varied splendours, Goethe was also
aware that such multiple communication always carries with it the danger of
confusion or formlessness e.g. where the constituent utterances are contradictory rather than complementary and neutralise rather than enhance
each other, or where they are insufficiently differentiated from one another.
Goethe felt that music was especially liable to such bergang ins Formlose,
Zufllige130 because of the endless infinity of sound phenomena; and he
sought to develop formal strategies to prevent this perceived evil. One such
was his insistence that music and much else should be charakteristisch, or in
his earlier years, spezifiziert. Zimmermann points out that this was initially a
concept he found in Hermetic lore, where Spezifikation produced the individual creature or substance, as opposed to the universal or typical.131 Later, the
idea became part ofhis theories of art. The characteristic was a median stage
between the realistic depiction of individual experience and the abstractions
of the universally true. It was not yet as perfect as the symbol, in which universal and individual were perfectly fused; but although it had an individual
stamp it was formed beyond the raw utterance of personal experience,132
and therefore communicable and understandable. Without it, the result was
endless variety but no shape or sequence; as in Romantic writing (alles geht
98ff., 127; L. Ronga, The Meeting of Poetry and Music, tr. E. Gianturco and C. Rosanti,
New York: Merlin, 1956, 120ff.
130 [Lapsing into the formless and haphazard]; Tonlehre, Kunstbehandlung, AA 16, 910.
131 Zimmermann I, 191f.
132 See e.g. ber Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke, AA 13, 180; Der Sammler
und die Seinigen, AA 13, 315, 287; Von deutscher Baukunst, AA 13, 24f. Cf. esp. R.J. Allen,
Johann Daniel Falk and the Theory of Characteristic Art, MLN 86 (1971), 370ff.
357
durchaus ins Form- und Charakterlose),133 Beethovens music (das will alles
umfassen und verliert sich darber immer ins Elementarische),134 and in
Schillers opinion also Haydns Creation, which he rejected as charakterloser
Mischmasch.135 Without a definite character in one unit of communication,
no complementary or contrasting unit could be set against it, and the system
ofmannigfaltige Sprache could not be set up. This idea accords with Goethes
insistence on the importance of polarity,136 the system of complementary
polar opposites which in his view made up the rhythm of life, nature and
art and thus enabled continuity:
Die Heiligkeit der Kirchenmusiken, das Heitere und Neckische der Volksmelodien sind
die beiden Angeln, um die sich die wahre Musik herumdreht [] Die Vermischung
macht irre, die Verschwchung wird fade137
[The sanctity of sacred music and the cheerful jauntiness of folk melodies are the two
poles around which true music turns. A mixture of the two is confusing, and dilution
[of these contrasts] produces inanity.]
Where such complementary contrasts were not set up, Goethe saw the result
as either a chaotic muddle or a half-formed hybrid:
Eine Musik, die den heiligen und profanen Charakter vermischt, ist gottlos, und eine
halbschrige, welche schwache, jammervolle, erbrmliche Empfindungen auszudrcken
Belieben findet, ist abgeschmackt. Denn sie ist nicht ernst genug, um heilig zu sein, und
es fehlt ihr der Hauptcharakter des Entgegengesetzten: die Heiterkeit.138
[A piece of music which combines the sacred and profane character is blasphemous; and
a piece which chooses to express half-hearted, weak, plaintive and wretched feelings is
insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred, and it lacks the characteristic trait of
its opposite, which is animation.]
133 [It all gets increasingly formless and characterless]; letter to Zelter, 30 October 1808,
AA 19, 566.
134 [It tries to encompass the world and thus perpetually loses itself in elemental formlessness]; Sulpiz Boissere, 4 May 1811, AA 22, 628.
135 Zu Gottfried Krners Aufsatz [], NA 22, 295; cf. Allen, op.cit., 363ff.
136 See e.g. his essay Polaritt, Schriften zur Wissenschaftslehre, AA 16, 863ff., and chap.6
above.
137 Maximen und Reflexionen, 488ff., AA 9, 561f.
138 Maximen und Reflexionen, 488ff., AA 9, 561f.
358
Chapter Eight
Accordingly, music often features in his presentation ofhybrid or androgyne

figures, and in his largely negative treatment of dilettantes. Sound effects and
music are brought in as complements to language when he needs to depict an
ambiguous figure such as Mignon. Music is similarly used to present a being suspended between nature and artefact or nature and myth, such as Homunculus
(8029, 8256) or Euphorion ; and entities such as the Geister auf dem Gange in
Faust I (1259ff.) (who seem to be partly Mephistos allies, partly nature spirits
of the Lords universe), the Sirens of the Klassische Walpurgisnacht (who are
part myth, part natural force), and the Lemuren, the geflickte Halbnaturen
who dig Mephistos canals and Fausts grave (11514ff.).139 Dilettantes feature
in such categories because Goethe thought that their art went no further than
self-expression, and therefore had insufficient shape and cogency to communicate anything very well. Hans RudolfVaget points out that Goethe sought
to train dilettantes rather than condemn them out of hand; and as we have
seen, his experience of musical and other amateur activities had shown him the
pros and cons of dilettantism all too clearly.140 So although Lotte, Charlotte
and the Hauptmann come offfairly well as amateur but unpretentious players, Werther and his undisciplined drawing, Wilhelm and his amateur acting,
and the musicians of Die Wahlverwandtschaften all prove destructive as well
as inept. A whole troupe of verfluchte Dilettanten form the orchestra on
the Brocken in Walpurgisnachtstraum (4250398, 4364), and Goethe seized
the opportunity to include in this doubtful troupe parodies of various public
figures who irritated him.141
139 [Cobbled together half-beings]; on the Geister, cf. Requadt, 124; on the Lemuren, cf.
J. Frankenberger, Walpurgis: Zur Kunstgestalt von GoethesFaust, Leipzig: Wiegandt,
1926, 52ff.
140 See Goethes scheme made jointly with Schiller, ber den Dilettantismus (1799), AA 14,
729ff.; also H. Bitzer, Goethe ber den Dilettantismus, Bern: Peter Lang, 1969, esp.7ff.,
24f. H. Rudolf Vaget, Das Bild vom Dilettanten bei Moritz, Schiller und Goethe,
JbFDH 1970, 131, esp.2431, explains both Goethes debt to Karl Philipp Moritz and
his different approach to the problem of dilettantes.
141 See Schne, FA 7/2, 3648, Trunz, 5258, incl. connections with the satirical Xenien
written jointly with Schiller.
359
Music as element
Perhaps the most esoteric by-product ofthis conceptual metaphor is Goethes
idea of music as element. His general concept ofElement is well known, but
complex, and since he used it in many different contexts it has usually been
treated in rather fragmentary or confused fashion.142 It is useful to bear in
mind that element had and has two senses: basic component, especially the
basic components (earth, air, fire, water) of which the world was traditionally thought to be made; and favourable environment, i.e. the environment
natural to a creature or person and necessary to their development or survival. With the exception offire, traditionally inhabited only by the fabulous
salamander and by devils, the natural elements were seen both as material of
which all things were made and as milieu on which all creatures depended
for life, as Mephisto knows:
Der Luft, dem Wasser, wie der Erden
Entwinden tausend Keime sich,
Im Trocknen, Feuchten, Warmen, Kalten!
Htt ich mir nicht die Flamme vorbehalten,
Ich htte nichts Aparts fr mich. (1374ff.)
[From air, from water, and from earth

Thousands of seeds emerge to life
In dry and moist, in warm and cold!
If I had not reserved the fire
Id call no element my own].
Goethe seems to have gathered up these Creation myths from his reading of
Paracelsus and other Hermetics;143 he included metals, especially gold, among
the elements, and used them to depict various possibilities of existence. For
example, Montan and his companion have a special affinity with metals, stones
and the earth, with alles [] was man berhaupt Element nennen knnte
[with everything that could be called element] (WJ III,14). The extended
episodes in Faust II depict Mephistos Flammengaukelspiel of fire, gold and
lust at the Emperors court (5640986); the Wasserfest celebrates the origins
of life in water and the sustenance of life by water (8435ff.), and ends the
142 See esp. I. Dzialas, Auffassung und Darstellung der Elemente bei Goethe, Germanische
Studien 216 (1939), 14163; P. Stcklein, Wege zum spten Goethe, Hamburg: Schrder,
1949 (3rd ed. Darmstadt 1970), 9ff., 163ff ; W. Emrich, Die Symbolik von Faust II, 3rd
rev. edn Frankfurt: Athenum, 1964 (5th ed. Knigstein a.T.: Athenum 1981), 186212,
esp.20412; Canisius, op.cit., 8895.
143 See e.g. Zimmermann vol.I, 203, II, p.333, Trunz, 506.
360
Chapter Eight
Klassische Walpurgisnacht with the apotheosis of all four elements of created

existence: Hochgefeiert seid allhier/Element ihr alle vier! [Celebrated shall
be here/ Elements several and four] (8486f.).
In Goethes thinking, the perception of music as element is particularly
connected with water, occasionally also with air. Most commentators do not
mention that the qualities salient for this part of the metaphor depend on
contrast with other elements, other media. By contrast with the solid earth,
water is fluid and shapeless, yet is the environment in which evolution offorms
can take place, and is also a vital component of all living things. By contrast
with language, music is vague and has no fixed shape; yet music can give form
to utterances both too primitive and too exquisite for words, and the sounds
of which it is composed are the basic components of speech as well as music.
Thus he asks Zelter for music to relieve the dry stasis of life and language:
Bei der grenzenlos reichen Bewegung des Elements, worin du schwebst, knntest du
immer von Zeit zu Zeit ein Blatt vor die Hand nehmen und mir, wie in einem Becher,
einen Trunk Berliner Lebenslust darreichen.144
[Given the measureless richness of the element in which you float, you could always
take up paper from time to time and hand me, as in a cup, a draught of Berlin joie de
vivre].
He praises the fourteenth of Wilhelm Tischbeins Idyllen, depicting two

sylphs poised in mid-flight, in similar terms:
Alles was uns bewegsam beglckte, Musik, Tanz, und was sonst noch aus mannigfaltigen, lebendig-beweglichen Elementen sich entwickelt [] mag uns wohl beim Anblick
dieses Bildes in Erinnerung treten.145
[On contemplation of this picture we may well find coming into our minds memories
of all the things which once delighted us with their animation: music, dance, and all
the other forms which grow from these manifold and lively elements].
Jrg Cotti146 points out the essential salient connection between music and
the elements in Goethes perception. The elements, he suggests, are a mediating halfway stage between orderly form and the formless chaos of das
144 Letter of 19 October 1821, AA 21, 471.
145 Wilhelm Tischbeins Idyllen, AA 13, 904.
146 Dissertation Zrich 1956, publ. Winterthur: Keller, 1957. This dissertation, Die Musik in
Goethes Faust, is often so brutally edited as to be barely intelligible. He acknowledges
361
Elementarische, undifferentiated matter.147 Beethovens music seems to Goethe

so far from structured music that it threatens to disintegrate into fractured
elements of beautiful sound;148 whereas the music of Ausshnung can mediate between the poets frozen silence and the beginnings of language, and as
communication with the world about him is re-established and articulated,
so feeling is restored and his tears begin to flow.149 Moreover, because music
complements language at both ends ofthe spectrum ofmannigfaltige Sprache,
music is said to be dem wahren Element woher alle Dichtungen entspringen
und wohin sie zurckkehren.150 In this view, music is an element within which
both evolution and disintegration of utterance can take place, just as water
is an element in which living forms can be dissolved and reconfigured.151 In
Goethes thinking, both music and the elements are thus a potential threat
to coherent form, as Canisius emphasises.152 But they are also a means of
necessary escape for what Emrich calls in allzustrengen Formen gebannte
Phantasiekrfte.153
This group of connotations attached to music as complement to language
underpins some ofthe most spectacular dramatic scenes in Goethes work
usually in symbolic dramas which attempt to depict the most fundamental
mysteries oflife. When Homunculus wishes to enter the process of evolutionary development in order to become a natural creature, he breaks his glass and
enters the water; the process ofhis development, triggered by erotic love and
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
Emrich as source for the idea, but refines and develops it further; see e.g. 34ff., 76ff.,
93ff.
Cotti, 34; cf. Emrich, 290ff.
Sulpiz Boissere, 4 May 1811, AA 22, 628.
Cf. also the tears which begin to flow as the poet of Zueignung begins to order his
feelings and shape his words (Faust, 29).
[The true element from which all poetry flows and to which it returns]; Goethe characterised Gleims poetry as rhythmisch, nicht melodisch; but was still surprised to see that
Gleims view of poetry as song was purely conventional, and that he had no musician of
any sort honoured in his temple of friendship (Tag- und Jahreshefte 1805, AA 11, 782).
Cf. the similar liberating metamorphosis offered by the element offire, when the Bajadere
rises with her god from the funeral pyre (Der Gott und die Bajadere, AA 1, 160), and when
Epimaleia emerges transformed from the flames as Phileros has from the sea (Pandora,
AA 6, 436, 442); also Ishihara, Makarie und das Weltall, 1998, 20813, on clouds as a
means of mediation and movement between heaven and earth.
Op.cit., 91ff. Cf. also Chapters Two and Three above.
[Powers of the imagination imprisoned in over-restrictive forms]; op.cit., 291.
362
Chapter Eight
flashes ofbright fire, is fostered by water, and the whole final scene presented
through verse of increasingly rhythmic sonority and finally by choral music
(8432ff.). This is not without its comic aspects (arguments, parodies), but the
matters dealt with are central to the whole of life, and also the outcome of
long and bloody battles between Vulcanist and Neptunist figures (7851ff.).
In Pandora, however, there is nothing of this lightness of touch. Phileros is
flung from the clifftop into the sea as an unworthy animal:
dort strzen billig wir hinab
[there it is right that we should cast
Den Tobenden, der, wie das Tier, das Element, This madman,who like animal and element
Zum Grenzenlosen bermtig rennend strzt. Mindlessly rushes headlong to the abyss].
But he emerges from the waves re-formed as divine life-force, wearing the
Dionysian panther-skin, accompanied by Dionysian brass instruments
(Klirret, Becken! Erz, ertne! [] Hrst du jubeln! Erz ertnen?), surrounded by dolphins in a festival ofthe sea. Water, like the erotic force which
Phileros represents, gives life to all creatures but can also destroy them.154 In this
view, music can similarly give life and pulse to language; but also cause it to
disintegrate into the elements of sound, even into meaninglessly fragmented
sound, das Elementarische.155
Music as mediator between language and extremes of experience

In the light ofthese examples, it is easier to see what Goethe envisaged by his
idea of music as mediator between extremes of experience and utterance. In
a letter intended to galvanise Kayser into more active collaboration, Goethe
declared that der Musikus kann alles, das hchste und tiefste kann, darf und
mu er verbinden.156 This was esoteric metaphor as well as flattery, and did not
154 [Clang, ye cymbals! Brass sound loudly! Hear the shouts of joy, the loud brass!]; Pandora,
AA 6, 440f.
155 Boissere, 4 May 1811, AA 22, 628.
156 [The musician can do anything, he can, may and must bring together the highest and
lowest things]; letter of 23 January 1786, AA 18, 905.
363
help.157 Undeterred, Goethe carried through the idea as pedagogic principle,

not only to the Regeln fr Schauspieler but also into the Pdagogischer Provinz
ofthe Wanderjahre. Informed that melodischer Gesang bei unsern Anstalten
durch alles durchgreift (II,1) [melodious song permeates everything we do],
Wilhelm is taken through a kind of prolonged school Open Day, through
methods ofteaching mathematical skills (II,1), language skills, whistle signals,
an orchestral performance, a choral performance, and a disquisition on the
scheme to avoid conflict between poets and composers in mixed genres, as
well as dance, the visual and plastic arts, and theatre (II,8). This tries Wilhelms
patience, and seems a heavily ironic ideal portrayal ofhow to solve problems
which Goethe himself never solved. But, as with the sehr ernsten Scherze
of Faust,158 he is also in very good earnest. For this is a depiction of how the
ideal mannigfaltige Sprache could be acquired, and used to convey einen
lebendigen Sinn in einen lebendigen Ausdruck.159 If we consider how Goethe
envisages music and language as complementary media, through the full
range of language, music, sounds and silence from das Elementarische of
Beethoven through and beyond language to the Ungeheures Getse, music
outside tonality which announces the cosmos in the opening scene of Faust
II, we can see why music is sometimes represented as a kind of medial hub,
linked to language, dance, gesture and all other forms of communication:
Deshalb haben wir denn unter allem Denkbaren die Musik zum Element unserer
Erziehung gewhlt, denn von ihr laufen gleichgebahnte Wege nach allen Seiten.160
[Thus it is that we have chosen music from amongst all things imaginable to be the element of our education; for from music equal paths run in every direction].
157 See e.g. Canisius, 517.

158 [The very serious jokes]; letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt (Goethes last before his
death), 17 March 1832, AA 21, 1043.
159 [Manifold language a living sense in a living form of expression]; Farbenlehre,
Didaktischer Teil, Section 5, Nachbarliche Verhltnisse, Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache
und Terminologie, AA 16, 204.
160 Wanderjahre, II,1, AA 8, 166.
5. The Harmonie, or wind-band, of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, c.1783;

reproduced from The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol.10,
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press Inc. See esp. Chapters Two, Nine
and Ten here, and note in List of Illustrations.
Part Four
The Synthesis of These Conceptions of Music
6. Goethes amendment, in his own hand, to the final page of his Faust manuscript (1831),
reproduced by permission of the Goethe-Museum, Dsseldorf.
The first chapter ofthis study began with a traditional concept ofPythagorean
harmony, in which music served as analogy for a remote cosmic order based
on mathematical proportion. By the end ofthe long eighteenth century, this
conceptual metaphor was still live, and also the basis for a much expanded,
inclusive concept of harmony. Harmony became a concept within which
an almost infinite diversity of phenomena could be contained and coordinated; it also became a system in which Man, instead of being a wondering onlooker, came to take a central place. Equally remarkable is the way in
which the concept of musical harmony expanded and developed in tandem.
Music continued to serve as a metaphor for cosmic connections and cosmic
wholeness; and because of the central place of the human onlooker in the
expanded concept of harmony, the human voice and human language came
to be part of the cosmic polyphony. As a result, the hitherto separate fields
of cosmic harmony and language tended increasingly to be combined into
a broad communal field available for metaphorical reference; and from this
enlarged field an extended range of metaphorical connections could be made
in both directions between music and phenomena. Chapter Nine is concerned
with music as metaphor for the cosmos perceived as a dynamic harmonious
totality, now including the human voice. Chapter Ten deals with a peculiarly
eighteenth-century version of this idea; in which musical harmony became
virtually equated with melody, as a conceptual metaphor for the cosmos
perceived as harmonious continuum, perpetually moving through lesser harmonies towards greater.
Chapter Nine
Music as Harmony ii):

Music as All-Encompassing Dynamic Whole
Even in Greek thought, music and the cosmos seem to have functioned as
interactive domains. Metaphorical mapping seems to take place between music
and cosmos in both directions, though not always equally and continuously.
The idea of universal order is mapped on to music, insofar as cosmic harmony
is reflected in musical harmony as organised within the system of Greek
modes. This strong cosmic association brings considerable added value to
the modal system, in theory at least. It underlies the ethical anxieties voiced
by Plato and Aristotle at the prospect of musicians altering or abandoning the
old modes; and it makes Plato in particular unable to see musical phenomena
simply as musical phenomena. Conversely, in some respects the idea of musical harmony is mapped on to the universe. This seems to have been the case
in early Pythagorean thought, when the ordered movements ofthe stars were
first envisaged as engendering harmonious sounds.1 In later Greek thought,
as summarised in the Plutarchian De musica (1st/2nd centuries AD), music is
proclaimed as the force which actually puts harmonious order not only into
souls and bodies of wine-heated diners, but into the spheres of the cosmos
and into the order of nature at large:
My friends, we have left out the most important point [] that especially displays music
as something ofthe most serious significance: for it was said by the schools ofPythagoras,
Archytas and Plato, as well as by other philosophers of ancient times, that the motion of
that which is, and the movement of the stars, come about and have their constitution
through the influence of music: everything, they say, was constructed by God on the
basis of harmonia [] It is most important, and most characteristic of music, to give
everything its proper measure.2
1
2
See esp. Andrew Barker, Greek Musical Writings, vol.II, 28ff.

Andrew Barker, op.cit. vol. I, 2489 and note 261, also 205.
370
Chapter Nine
Even by this stage, the concept ofharmony had obviously developed beyond
mere symmetry. The extraordinary durability ofthis metaphor (still live now
after more than two millennia) seems to be due at least in part to its potential
for two-way transfer between domains which thus work interactively.
This interaction allows considerable flexibility. Varying aspects of the
two domains can be selected as salient, e.g. to favour a particular cognitive
preference. For instance, where the main focus is on order and symmetry,
cosmic proportions and their mathematical basis can be brought to the fore in
interaction with the musical modes and the mathematically ordered intervals
between notes. Other aspects can be selected as salient where the focus is on
coordinated movement within the cosmic order, as for example in the passage
above where the organising force is not mathematical proportion, but measure. Measure includes ratio, insofar as it is said to govern the way phenomena
are fitted together or constituted, i.e. harmonised within themselves. But it
also has a strong element of rhythm, which governs the characteristic movements both of the stars and of that which is; so that all these diverse orbits
and ways of moving about in the world are coordinated to make an organised whole. In these conceptual metaphors, musical sound can sometimes be
relegated to secondary status, or sometimes given prominence as it is in the
passage above and in the myth ofOrpheus. Said to be the inventor of music,
he like God was credited with formative powers to impose harmonious order
on created things. Nonetheless, persuasive song and miraculous sweetness of
sound were characteristics through which he could arouse, as well as tame and
order, the wildest elements of the cosmos (from wild beasts to human passions to the Maenads who eventually tore him to pieces). Even at this stage,
his ambiguous role was well established in literary reference.3
It seems to be characteristic of eighteenth-century German culture that
such ancient elements in the conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony are
live and available for deployment, alongside more recent modifications. This
is strikingly evident, for example, in Goethes reflections on the saying that
architecture is frozen music, in one of his late Maximen und Reflexionen:
See Barker, vol.I, 36, note 12, 90, 96 and passim; also Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion, 45577.
Harmony ii): Music as All-Encompassing Dynamic Whole
371
Man denke sich den Orpheus, der, als ihm ein groer wster Bauplatz angewiesen war,
sich weislich an dem schlicklichsten Ort niedersetzte und durch die belebenden Tne
seiner Leier den gerumigen Marktplatz um sich her bildete. Die von krftig gebietenden,
freundlich lockenden Tnen schnell ergriffenen, aus ihrer massenhaften Ganzheit gerissenen Felssteine muten, indem sie sich enthusiastisch herbei bewegten, sich kunst- und
handwerksgem gestalten, um sich sodann in rhythmischen Schichten und Wnden
gebhrend hinzuordnen. Und so mag sich Strae zu Straen anfgen! []
Die Tne verhallen, aber die Harmonie bleibt. Die Brger einer solchen Stadt wandlen
und weben zwischen ewigen Melodieen [sic]; der Geist kann nicht sinken, die Ttigkeit
nicht einschlafen, [] und die Brger am gemeinsten Tage fhlen sich in einem ideellen
Zustand: ohne Reflexion, ohne nach dem Ursprung zu fragen, werden sie des hchsten
sittlichen und religisen Genusses teilhaftig.4
[Imagine Orpheus, allocated a large and desolate space to build: he seated himself in a
wisely chosen place, and formed the spacious market place around him by the animating
tones of his lyre. The great blocks of stone, quickly torn from their massive beds by his
masterful and sweetly enchanting tones, were constrained to form and shape themselves
as they moved joyously towards him, ready to fit themselves into their places as rhythmic
strata and walls. And thus each street may align itself to other streets! []
The notes fade away, but the harmony endures. The dwellers in such a city move and have
their being amongst eternal melodies; the spirit cannot sink, activity cannot slacken,
[] and even in their most workaday business they feel themselves in an ideal condition: without thinking, without asking why, they are enabled to participate in a most
elevated state of ethical and religious satisfaction.]
This retains the very old idea that human beings could not hear cosmic harmony, although they were usually envisaged as part of it. But once the age
of Orphic miracles has passed, the order is said to outlast the music: Die
Tne verhallen, aber die Harmonie bleibt. In a further twist, Goethe presents
Orpheus as creating both order and unnatural upheaval and disorder, by the
supernatural powers associated with music at least since the Greeks. The
massivity ofthe blocks of stone, the violence oftheir removal from the rockface, their movement joyously towards him, are overwhelming in human
terms. What makes them harmonious is the power exercised by Orpheus
through music: he brings the stones to life, commands, cajoles them into order.
4
MuR 1133 (Nachlass), AA 9, 641f. Goethe did not invent this idea, though it is widely
attributed to him in internet sources. The saying originated with ein edler Philosoph
(Schelling, in his Philosophie der Kunst of 1809, acc. to the Oxford Dictionary ofQuotations,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979 repr. & rev. 1985, 415). Goethe suggests the phrase
be amended to eine verstummte Tonkunst [music which has fallen silent].
372
Chapter Nine
In Goethes scenario he also orders them in a specific way: the double structure of vertical and horizontal relations, a hierarchy and a sequence, as in
Leibniz theory of pre-established harmony:
Selon moi, il rgne une parfaite continuit dans lOrdre des Successifs, ainsi il en rgne
une pareille dans celui des Simultans.5
[In my opinion, the order of Successive things is governed by a seamless continuity, as
is the order of Simultaneous things].
So here Orpheus orders the stones into strata (i.e. horizontal layers one above
the other) and walls (i.e. continuing vertical lines), and as each street comes
into being it is similarly aligned to other streets to make the totality of the
city. This is done not by mathematical ratio, but by melody and rhythm. The
order of harmonic music, in its horizontal sequence of rhythmic melody
and its vertical presentation of consonant notes at different pitch played
together, is thus mapped on to the city; which is why the later inhabitants
move amongst eternal melodies, i.e. among the different tunes in the
polyphony of their city. This version of cosmic harmony covers a time-span
from pre-history and the age of myth to the modern market-place of ordinary
commerce. It is precisely structured, yet its organisation is no longer apparent,
and has included terrifying upheavals and supernatural powers. It coordinates
and sustains the continuity of individual citizens and their activities: the
spirit cannot sink, activity cannot slacken, and they are said to participate
instinctively in a state of optimal humanity, the enjoyment [Genuss] ofbeing
in harmony with themselves and their society (sittlich) and in harmony with
the cosmos and the gods (religis). Moreover, because this harmony includes
rhythmic continuity, the activities of its citizens cannot wane, and the harmonious animated totality is set to continue into the future.
A similarly comprehensive presentation of cosmic harmony, with detailed
interweaving of old and new, order and disruption, animation and continuity,
can be seen if we look again at Schillers Der Tanz (second version, 1800).
The rhythmic continuity of melody keeps the dancers moving and lends their
movements an appearance of balance and fluidity:
Leibniz, Monadologie, and letter to Varignon, cit Lowinsky, 180; but see Chapter One
notes 27 and 28 above for correction of his reference.
373
Wie sich leise der Kahn schaukelt auf silberner Flut,

Hpft der gelehrige Fu auf des Takts melodischer Woge;
Suselndes Saitengetn hebt den therischen Leib. (68)
[ Just as upon the silvery sea the boat rocks gently,
So the willing foot skips to the beats melodious swell,
And the light music of strings bears up each ethereal body.]
But in most ofthis version of cosmic harmony, Schiller is less concerned with
musical sound than with the interaction between orderly form and vigorous
movement. Der zierliche Bau dieser beweglichen Welt [the fragile structure of
this mobile world] is constantly threatened and yet constantly reasserted:
Ewig zerstrt, es erzeugt sich ewig die drehende Schpfung,
Und ein stilles Gesetz lenkt der Verwandlungen Spiel (17/18).
[This turning Creation is constantly broken, constantly reborn,
The shifting patterns are governed by hidden law(s)].
He soon moves focus from the dance towards the divine powers said to order
earthly movements:
Es ist des Wohllauts mchtige Gottheit,
Die zum geselligen Tanz ordnet den tobenden Sprung,
Die, der Nemesis gleich, an des Rhythmus goldenem
Zgel
Lenkt die brausende Lust und die verwilderte zhmt.
(236)
[It is Harmonys mighty divinity,

Which tames wild leaping into a
social dance
Which like Nemesis governs
unruly pleasure
With rhythms bridle of gold.]
Melody and musicians have disappeared; harmony is now a divine force,

and rhythm the means of ordering the dancers into a regulated sequence.
As the focus of the scene is widened further to take in the whole cosmos,
it emerges that the dance has been a small coordinated harmony within a
greater harmonious whole:
Und dir rauschen umsonst die Harmonieen des Weltalls
Dich ergreift nicht der Strom dieses erhabnen Gesangs?
Nicht der begeisternde Takt, den alle Wesen dir schlagen?
Nicht der wirbelnde Tanz, der durch den ewigen Raum
Leuchtende Sonnen schwingt in khn gewundenen Bahnen?
Das du im Spiele doch ehrst, fliehst du im Handeln, das Maa. (2732)
374
Chapter Nine
[And are you deaf to the harmonies of the cosmos?
Are you not swept away by this celestial song?
Or by the life-giving beat which throbs in all things living?
Or by the whirling dance in which through eternal space
Glowing suns are hurled in boldly arching orbits?
You avoid in your actions the Measure you keep in your play.]
However, the Pythagorean structure ofthe harmonious cosmos is expanded

here to encompass not only diversity and divergence, but the full force of
musics elemental power to evoke and sway the emotions. This latter association belongs to the negative metaphor of disorder and disharmony, and puts
the Pythagorean order under strain. The potentially violent passions of the
dancers are projected on to the celestial bodies, so the music ofthe spheres is
presented both as sublime singing and also (via the additional metaphor of
the raging torrent) as an elemental force. Cosmic order thus has to be maintained by something more than mere symmetry or mathematical proportion;
and Schiller seems to have made rhythm into a composite phenomenon,
with three aspects having complementary functions. Rhythmus appears to
denote durational measure which imposes regular continuity of movement;
Takt denotes the accentual rhythm of strong and weak beat, which evokes
and maintains the throb ofheartbeat and life; whereas Maa, measure, seems
to include both the throb of life and the form and continuity of movement
given by rhythm.
But Schiller has modified more than the Pythagorean model of cosmic
harmony. Although this version has obviously drawn on Leibniz concept
of the cosmos as living, moving diversity, the Leibnizian version of order
(concurrent simultaneity and sequence) is absent. There is more emphasis
here on sequence of movement than on simultaneity or consonance; bodies
hurtle at speed along their different orbits. Music is the explosive force which
both animates this order and threatens to destroy it (in dance and cosmos),
and it is music perceived as Plato feared it and as mid-eighteenth-century
Sensibility feared it. Paradoxically, we can see from this why critical studies
of Schiller tend to omit musical associations when they discuss Schillers
concept of harmony.6 Schillers conceptual metaphors of harmony focus on
6
Steven D. Martinson does discuss Schillers musical allusions in the context of a critique ofMaria Stuart (Companion [] Friedrich Schiller, 214f.), and in an earlier study
375
structure rather than consonance, and in this poem the musical aspects of
cosmic harmony are almost eclipsed by his association of music with terrifying and irresistible emotional force, reinforced by the link through rhythm
with passionate movement and dance. The idea of music as powerful element
is strengthened by an additional metaphor of torrential water. Schiller used
this association more successfully elsewhere;7 but the association with water
sits oddly in this context, almost as a mixed metaphor. Although his final line
asserts the definitive authority of das Maa, rhythmic measure and order,
there are contrarietys within human beings, within the movement of the
planets, and even within rhythm itself which constantly work against it, and
make this image of cosmic order anything but static.
Not all Schillers treatment of cosmic harmony is so titanic in scale. His
Punschlied of 1803 draws on the Greek concept of the four elements (earth,
fire, air, water) whose balanced proportion made up the harmonious world
and harmonious personality;8 and he fits the cosmos neatly into a bowl of
punch:
Harmonious Tensions: The Writings ofFriedrich Schiller, Newark: University ofDelaware

Press, London: Associated University Press, 1996. But since he focuses only on the single
stringed instrument and the taut string, and omits the traditional lore of cosmic harmony
and the role of melody and rhythm within harmony (as in Der Tanz), his conceptual
frame is too small to encompass Schillers reference. Margaret Ivess study is a more
knowledgeable guide: cf. her The Analogue of Harmony, Duquesne 1970, esp.1322.
Paradoxically, her article specifically on Schillers musical allusions is less helpful, since
it works mainly with the concept of music as the language of feeling, and thus leaves
unclear the basis of musics role in the analogy with cosmic harmony (M.C. Ives, Musical
Elements in Schillers Concept of Harmony, PEGS NS 18 (1964), 11116).
See e.g. Laura am Klavier (1782) and Die Macht des Gesanges (1795) (NA 1, 53f. & 225f.
resp.); these poems also introduce impressions of violent elemental force (esp. of water)
and cosmic perspectives which tend to be both highly abstract and at odds with the
human dimensions of player and singers.
NA 2 I, 215f. The commentary in NA 2 II B, 154, points out that Schiller has contrived
the four elements by omitting the fifth (tea!) normally required; and that he is sometimes
thought to be referring not to the Greeks four elements, but to Schellings (carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen).
376
Chapter Nine
Vier Elemente
Innig gesellt,
Bilden das Leben,
Bauen die Welt.
Elements four,
Together well quirled,
Make up our life span,
And build the world.
In this case the elements are lemon, sugar, water and schnapps, and cosmic
harmony is dubiously represented by the singing punch-drinkers. It is a light,
comic song and was apparently a great social success. But the harmonious
putting together of the punch is nonetheless carefully structured: sugar is
said to temper the tartness of lemon as rhythm (Rhythmus) did the violent
passion ofthe dance, schnapps animates the whole as rhythm (Takt) did the
dance movements, and the whole blend of ingredients is held together by water
(Wasser umfnget/ Ruhig das All [Water calmly/ Envelops the world]), as
the dance and the cosmos were held together by measure, Maa. Das Leben
(life) is translated as life span here because the elements of a harmonious
life are accumulated in sequence, as well as enjoyed simultaneously. Unlike
Der Tanz, this poem does present a Leibnizian harmony in miniature, with
sequence as well as simultaneity.
Leibniz and the structure of harmonious wholeness:

Simultaneous and sequential connections
As the examples above suggest, many of the modifications in eighteenthcentury writers deployment ofthe metaphor of cosmic harmony derive from
their reception of Leibniz ideas; his theory of a harmonious cosmic structure operating both simultaneously and in sequence exerts a durable and
all-pervasive influence. Its effect can be seen, for example, in mid-century
aesthetics, in the efforts by Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing to characterise
the arts according to whether they presented their effects simultaneously or
in sequence, with music highly regarded for its ability to combine both. And
even Mendelssohns language, as rendered in Daniel Dahlstroms recent study
and translation, shows the influence not only ofLeibniz, but ofthe long tradition of harmony as a concept widely applicable, not confined to music:
377
For each sense there is a predetermined type of harmony which is perhaps connected
with an ecstasy no less than the harmony of sounds is []
In the last century people have scarcely begun to track down harmony among colors
[sic]. What people in painting knew ofthe harmony of colors rested on mere experiences
[] For this discovery the human race is obliged to you, great Newton [] Yet people
have not been so fortunate as to elevate this harmony of colors to their true level and
make it the mother of as many delights as the harmony of sounds []
The beauties which can be felt in inarticulate sounds [i.e. music] are the sensuous
arrangement, the harmony ofthe individual sounds with the whole, the mutual relation
of the parts to one another, [] and all [] passions of the human soul which tend to
make themselves known by means of sounds. Music is able, furthermore, to represent
the multiple parts ofbeauty either successively or alongside one another. The former is
called melody, the latter harmony.
In the same way, the natural signs that effect [sic] the sense of sight can be represented
either successively or alongside one another; that is to say, they can express beauty either
through movement or through forms. Dance accomplishes this by means of movement.
There is a coherence to the succession of the various positions of the body, the movement of its extremities and gestures, and taken together they constitute a beautiful
whole.9
In their essay on Schillers Briefe ber die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen,10
Wilkinson and Willoughby deal with a work which has little or no reference
to music. But they consistently show, without emphasising Leibniz, how much
Schillers model of the whole man and the development pattern of human
wholeness has in common with Leibniz concepts of cosmic and human harmony. In particular, they stress that he includes asymmetry as well as symmetry,
subordination as well as coordination, hierarchical transformations, continuously open-ended, and that any visual representation of it [Schillers concept
of harmony] must have a vertical axis as well as horizontal extensions.11
9
10
11
Cf. D.E. Wellbery, Lessings Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984), 8497; A. Nivelle, Kunst- und
Dichtungstheorien zwischen Aufklrung und Klassik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960), who
notes that Moses Mendelssohn thought that music unites die Eigenschaften des
Nacheinander und Nebeneinander (62f., 110ff., 173ff.); and Daniel Dahlstrom (ed. &
tr.), Moses Mendelssohn: Philosophical Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997, Letter 11, 48ff., 17988; here specifically 49, 179. See also Chapter Seven above.
The Whole Man in Schillers Theory of Culture and Society: On the Virtue of a
Plurality of Models, in Prawer/Thomas/Forster (eds), Essays in German Language,
Culture and Society (1969), 177210.
Op.cit. 188f., 195, 202ff.
378
Chapter Nine
The living cosmos and its dynamic units:

A chain of being and a non-Darwinian evolution
Also important were the perceived implications ofthis structure for the way
the individual unit could move and develop through the harmonious cosmic
order. The divine order of Creation as Leibniz envisaged it was a flexible,
dynamic totality of myriads of living things, through which the individual
monad might develop and rise from one level of the hierarchy to another;
and do so in a sequence of reincarnations i.e. move upwards and onwards
in a kind of stepped progression (rather than simply ascending vertically).12
Modern readers (alongside Darwin himself ) would naturally tend to subsume this into the modern idea of evolution13 (which is also sometimes envisaged as a ladder and sometimes as a process taking place over time, though
absolutely without connections to harmony). But it may help us to place
the metaphor more accurately in its eighteenth-century context if we focus
on the particular movement involved in this development, the upwards and
onwards.14 Faust uses this surprisingly precise term to designate the human
individuals desire to soar through the cosmos and escape the limitations of
his place in the world:
12
13
14
Monadology, 71, 75, 82, ed.Latta, 58ff., 265; cf. Chapter One above.
Manfred, Osten, Dr. Faust ein Auslaufmodell der Evolution? Goethes Tragdie und
die Lebenswissenschaften, Goethe Jahrbuch 2007, 1616, points out that Darwin considered Goethe as an extreme partisan of similar views (165). This seems to be a rather
drastic example of modernising Goethes thought: though the general trend Goethe
envisaged was indeed analogous, the specific stages he insisted on for its accomplishment were quite different. Most of Ostens article is concerned with Homunculus.
The errant progress (irren) marked by the Lord as characteristic of human life (317)
is equated not only with error but also with an irregular form of progression; and the
holdes Irren (209) allotted to the Theaterdichter is also evident in Fausts course through
the world (see e.g. Requadt, esp. Introduction, section 2, 45ff.) and in Wilhelm Meisters
markedly non-linear progress through what Martin Swales has called the Nacheinander
of plot, of actual living, and the Nebeneinander of coexisting possibilities within human
existence (The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse (1978), 64, 70).

Doch ist es jedem eingeboren,
Da sein Gefhl hinauf und vorwrts dringt,
Wenn ber uns im blauen Raum verloren
Ihr schmetternd Lied die Lerche singt
(10925)
379
[And yet in all of us it is innate

To feel his spirit upwards and forwards rise
When the lark sings its soaring song above us,
Lost in blue space beyond our longing eyes].
In Vor dem Tor, the connection to the harmonious music of the cosmos is
made verbally, embodied in the larks song. In Faust II it underpins a whole scenario, in which Homunculus15 enters the flexible structure ofCreation with
full choral harmony, amid a spectacle of nature myths arranged at different
levels above, on and in the water. This ranges vertically from the Sirens on
the cliff tops, fltend und singend, via Proteus, Nereus and Thales on land,
to the many creatures on and in the sea; and also in sequence as each group
takes over in the pageant from the last, until they all unite in the harmonious
totality of the Chorus All-Alle (8484).16
However, Homunculus development is not automatic or self-generated.
He meets his opposite, the embodiment of natural beauty in Galatea, and it
is his reaction to her which propels him to smash his glass on her shell and
begin his evolution (8464ff.). There are even conflicting opinions as to how
he should proceed (upwards and onwards, but not too far!):
15
16
On his name as both individual and generic, see Ann White, Names and Nomenclature
in Goethes Faust (1980), 131f.
The many figures of this scene have been the subject of close scrutiny in several midtwentieth century studies. Although much attention is given to the processes ofGoethes
creation of them, much helpful information is also provided on their significance and
functions in context. See esp. Karl Kernyi, Das gische Fest (1949), passim; Katharina
Mommsen, Natur- und Fabelreich in Faust II (1968), esp.168224; Wilhelm Emrich,
Die Symbolik von Faust II (third rev.ed. 1964), esp.26973 on the Sirens, and 289301
on the Meeresfest. Paul Friedlnder (Rhythmen und Landschaften im Zweiten Teil des
Faust, 1953) is less helpful here than elsewhere, since he focuses on Anmutige Gegend
and the Helena scenes. See also Trunz, notes and further refs. 5728; Schne (FA 7/2),
56176; Hlscher-Lohmeyer (MA 18.1), 90021. Ofthese editions, Trunz and Lohmeyer
are much more helpful for present purposes. Schne makes minimal comment on
formal aspects ofthe scene, apart from considering Barock precedents for staging such
a spectacle; and though he mentions music, tends to fudge musical and lyrical so that
the music is judged as an adjunct to theatrical production, not otherwise connected to
Goethes text.
380
Chapter Nine
THALES:
Da regst du dich nach ewigen

Normen,
Durch tausend, abertausend
Formen,
Und bis zum Menschen hast
du Zeit []
PROTEUS: Nur strebe nicht nach hheren Orden:
For there according to eternal

norms,
You will evolve through
thousand million forms,
And take your time to reach the
human stage
But best not bother with the
higher reaches:
Denn bist du erst ein Mensch geworden, For once you have developed
human features,
That is the total end of things
Dann ist es vllig aus mit dir.
for you.
(832138).
Moreover, on closer inspection the harmony ofthese figures and their final
chorus is a little uncertain: they frequently contradict each other (Thales/
Anaxagoras, Doriden/Nereus), and the words of their final hymn are suspiciously close to doggerel.
These features reflect an important aspect ofthe Leibnizian universe. As
we saw in Chapter Two above, even from ancient times the harmonious cosmic
framework was envisaged as encompassing the divergent and disharmonious.
But as the eighteenth century progressed, disharmonious entities were seen
as essential, to keep harmony alive and active.17 Leibniz himself had asserted
that harmony could not exist without diversity: ubi nulla est varietas, nulla
est harmonia;18 and Shaftesbury, who often emphasised hierarchy, order and
proportion in harmony, nonetheless insisted that the whole cosmic structure
depended on balanced opposites, contrarietys:
Tis [] from this Order of inferior and superior Things, that we admire the Worlds
beauty, founded thus on Contrarietys: whilst from such various and disagreeing
Principles, a universal Concord is establishd.19
Goethes particular version ofthis principle involved the complementary concepts ofPolaritt and Steigerung [roughly translated, polarity and enhancement]. In Chapter Six, we saw something ofhis concept ofthe harmonisation
of each unit against its opposite, in his insistence on progression by rhythmic
17
18
19
Cf. Chapter Two above.

[Where there is no diversity, there is no harmony]; Textes indites, ed. Grua, vol.I, 12.
The Moralists, A Rhapsody (1709), ed.cit. vol.II, 214.
381
contrasts (usually systole and diastole, arsis and thesis); and in Chapter Eight
something of his use of music as foil to language in marking phenomena as
opposites interacting to make a harmonious progression. In later life (1805),
he evolved the two complementary principles of polarity and Steigerung as
part of his scientific studies, to explain the vast diversity within the natural
universe:
Was in die Erscheinung tritt, mu sich trennen, um nur zu erscheinen. Das Getrennte
sucht sich wieder, und es kann sich wieder finden und vereinigen [,..] indem das Getrennte
sich zuerst steigert und durch die Verbindung der gesteigerten Seiten ein Drittes, Neues,
Hheres, Unerwartetes hervorbringt.20
[All phenomena must differentiate themselves from others, simply in order to exist. Each
separate entity is in turn attracted to its opposite, and can find and unite with it [] in
such a way that the separate entities first enhance their qualities, and their combination
then produces a third phenomenon, something new, higher and unexpected.]
It is this process, rather than a modern concept of evolution, which Goethe

envisaged as eventually producing more specialised leaves, and finally a flower,
from the plant stem.21 In his studies on colour, he observed that a simple
mixture of the opposites yellow and blue will result in green; but if both
yellow and blue are first gesteigert [intensified, enhanced], they will each
shift towards a different shade, and when combined will produce something
different, red.22 Steigerung is often translated as intensification; but this
does not allow for the upward movement, the ascent which Wilkinson and
Willoughby identify as an essential aspect of it.23 (I have tried to indicate this
aspect by translating Steigerung as enhancement, which also falls short of
20 Polaritt (1805), a lecture on scientific matters given in Goethes Wednesday Circle,

for ladies of the Weimar Court; AA 16, 864.
21 See e.g. his notes on Botanik (Fragmente), AA 17, 213.
22 Goethe, Farbenlehre, loc.cit. 745.
23 E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and Thinker (1962); the essays in
this joint volume still offer one of the best informed and detailed considerations of
the term in various contexts. See esp. Wilkinson, The Relation of Form and Meaning
in Egmont and Tasso ein gesteigerter Werther in the Light of Goethes Principle
of Steigerung, op.cit., 5574, 185213 resp.; and Willoughby, Literary Relations in the
Light of Goethes Principle of Wiederholte Spiegelungen and Unity and Continuity
in Goethe, 15366, 21428 resp.
382
Chapter Nine
the full sense). Critical literature does not usually consider these Goethean
concepts in connection with harmony of any sort; but Goethe does make the
connection explicit, especially in his writing on colour: polarity and Steigerung
are said to be das Grundgesetz aller Harmonie der Farben [the fundamental
law of all colour harmony].24 He seems to envisage Steigerung as a progression
very close to Leibnizian conceptions of the monads upwards and onwards
development through the cosmos by harmonisation with its opposite. If
the individual units progression (in Nature or Art) is envisaged as such an
upwards and onwards movement (i.e. not simply vertically up the evolutionary ladder), one problem of dual meaning which Wilkinson identifies
is explained: Steigerung involves not only vertical progress, but also progress
in sequence, as each entity interacts with its opposite, develops and moves
forward into new interactions and combinations.25
Thus envisaged, the cosmos is indeed active: not only harmonious, but
harmonising. The processes of polarity and Steigerung can continue ad infinitum towards harmony, dissolution, and new, more complex harmony. It is
this, rather than a modern evolutionary development, that is envisaged for
Homunculus, upwards and onwards durch tausend, abertausend Formen
(8322). As Zimmermann shows, Hermetic lore also emphasised the continuing totality of created life past, present and future, linked by the Aurea catena:
die Kette umschliet alle Weisheit, alle Natur.26 Despite the doubts suggested in Der Tanz, Schiller, who encountered the ideas ofHermetic lore and
Leibniz model of the universe, as well as Plato and Shaftesbury, at an early
stage,27 does seem to have grasped the crucial importance ofcontrarietys for
the process of ongoing harmony. In his early essay Die Theosophie des Julius,
he observes that Liebe findet nicht statt unter gleichtnenden Seelen, aber
unter harmonischen28 [Love grows between harmonious souls, not between
those who strike the same note]. In his long poem Die Knstler (1788), he
24
25
26
27
28
Farbenlehre, Totalitt und Harmonie, AA 16, 214.

Op.cit., 195f.
Zimmermann I, 29; cf. Chapter One above.
See esp. P.-A. Alt, Schiller: Leben Werk Zeit, Mnchen: Beck, 2000, vol.I, 113ff.,
121, 230f., 260, 549; and esp. E. Cassirer, Schiller und Shaftesbury, PEGS NS XI (1935),
3946 and 52ff.
Philosophische Briefe, NA 20, 121. Cf. also Cassirer, op.cit., 39f., 44f.; Ives, Analogue,
1319.
383
follows the process on a vast scale, through the whole development ofhuman
culture, up to the contemporary present and beyond into the future. The
early Greeks and first artists united reason and a childish sense of beauty to
impose Gleichmaas [symmetry] on the chaos of Nature; and each stage of
civilisation thereafter brought in new contrarietys and made fresh harmonies
building on the old:
Doch hher stets, zu immer hhern Hhen
Schwang sich der schaffende Genie.
Schon sieht man Schpfungen aus
Schpfungen erstehen,
Aus Harmonien Harmonie. (2547)
[Yet higher still, and to yet higher heights

Creative genius soared as men looked on;
From new creations new creations rose;
From harmonies new harmony was born].
The poem ends in the contemporary era, applying the idea to Newtons theory
of colours as harmonised together in white light (47481). But it projects
the final completion ofthe process ofharmonisation into the distant future,
to the culmination of the world itself:
Der Dichtung heilige Magie
dient einem weisen Weltenplane,
Still lenke sie zum Ozeane
der groen Harmonie! (4469)
[The sacred magic power of poetry

Serves an all-wise and universal plan,
May it lead gently to the ocean
Of the great harmony!]
As is evident from the examples above, music maintained its position as

an important conceptual metaphor for such an inclusive and dynamic harmony; not least because its structure was envisaged in terms closely analogous
to Leibnizs concept. When Rameau had sought to prove in his Trait de
lharmonie (1722) that all music derived from harmonics, he was inadvertently
maintaining and renewing the metaphor; particularly since he regarded dissonant intervals as vitally necessary to drive the chord progression forward
to consonant resolution. Consonance here becomes associated with balanced
stasis, dissonance with motion and progression.29 Even Herder, who usually
emphasises sequence (and is thus mainly discussed in Chapter Ten below),
envisages the whole of music in terms close to Leibnizs cosmic structure: for
29 See esp. Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought [], passim; also Chapter
Two above.
384
Chapter Nine
him, the basic unit of music is the individual reinen Ton [clear note], which
is combined through der Seelen Einklang [the consonance of souls] with that
of an other, and multiplies through der se Wohlklang [the sweet harmony]
of general human love and kindness into an infinite progression towards
complete universal harmony, zu welcher Symphonie der Symphonien.30 We
can still see the idea at work in Goethes late critique of Wilhelm Tischbeins
Idyllen, one of which recalled for him:
Alles, was uns bewegsam beglckte, Musik, Tanz und was sonst noch aus mannigfaltigen,
lebendig-beweglichen Elementen sich entwickelt, im Kontraste sich trennt, harmonisch
wieder zusammenfliet.31
[All the things which ever delighted us with their fluidity, music, dance, all the things
which arise from manifold living moving elements, separate into contrasts, and recombine harmoniously again].
Shaftesburys relocation of the human individual to the

heart of the harmonious cosmos
Alongside reception of Leibniz, reception of Shaftesbury must be ranked as
a crucial influence on eighteenth-century modifications to the traditional
concepts of cosmic harmony. His work presented a twofold shift of emphasis:
Man is no longer perceived as distant onlooker in the harmonious universe,
but set at the very heart of it; and for good measure this human onlooker
becomes the central focaliser through whom the universe and its harmony
are perceived, when Man contemplates Nature and creates Art. This change
to an anthropocentric view of things can be found alongside older ideas of
harmony in Shaftesbury: Divine order and proportion are perceived not only
in numbers, and those powerful Arts founded on their management and use,
but also in living things and in music:
30 Herders Zerstreute Bltter, his essay Ccilie and the rhapsody which follows: Suphan
16, 25372, esp.271f. Cf. also Chapters Two, Six, Seven and Eight above.
31 Wilhelm Tischbeins Idyllen, [No. 14], ber Kunst und Alterthum III,3, 1822, AA 13,
904.
385
Whatever Things have Order, the same have Unity ofDesign and [] are Parts constituent
of one WHOLE, or are, themselves, intire Systems. Such is a Tree, with all its Branches,
an Animal, with all its Members, [] What else is even a Tune or Symphony, or an excellent Piece of Musick, than a certain System of proportiond Sounds? []
All Natures Wonders serve to excite and perfect this Idea of their Author. Tis here he
suffers us to see, and even converse with him, in a manner sutable [sic] to our Frailty.
How glorious is it to contemplate him, in this noblest ofhis Works apparent to us, The
System of the bigger World!32
Again, this universal system contains Absurditys, in both human nature and
the natural world at large, but the overall pattern balances them out: Pleasure
and Pain, Beauty and Deformity, Good and Ill, seemd to me every-where
interwoven.33
According to Shaftesburys scheme of things, Man can not only perceive universal patterns, but communicate what he has seen, both in speaking
with the Divine through Nature and in speaking to others; and like Goethe
Shaftesbury envisages a manifold language for this task. Man can communicate his perceptions in mathematical terms, and also in verbal language
through reason and rational discourse. In addition, he can use the language
of enthusiasm: a heightened emotional response to the perception of the
harmonious whole in a single object or in the wider universe, and an appeal
to both the feeling and the intellect of his fellow-men:
O mighty Nature! Wise Substitute of Providence! Impowerd Creatress! Or thou
impowering DEITY, supreme Creator! Thee I invoke, and thee alone adore. To thee
this Solitude, this Place, these Rural Meditations are sacred; whilst thus inspird with
Harmony ofThought, tho unconfind by Words, and in loose Numbers, I sing ofNatures
Order in created Beings, and celebrate the Beautys which resolve in Thee []
Prodigious ORB! Bright Source of vital Heat, and Spring ofDay! Brightest Image,
and Representative ofthe Almighty! [] Around him all the PLANETS, with this our
Earth, single, or with Attendants, continually move [] they keep their heavenly Order:
and in just Numbers, and exactest Measure, go the eternal Rounds []
Whether I have made good my Promise to you, in shewing the true Good, I know
not. But so [] I shoud have done with good Success, had I been able in my poetick
Extasys, or by any other Efforts, to have led you into some deep View of Nature, and
the Sovereign GENIUS []
32
33
The Moralists, A Rhapsody, in Characteristicks, ed.cit. vol.2, 284f., 370.

Ibid., 20016 passim.
386
Chapter Nine
You have indeed made good your part of the Condition [] I must [] consider
that all sound Love and Admiration is ENTHUSIASM: The Transports of Poets, the
Sublime of Orators, the Rapture of Musicians, the high Strains of the Virtuosi; all
mere ENTHUSIASM! Even Learning it-self, the Love of Arts and Curiositys [] all
ENTHUSIASM!34
The speaker here takes on the role of poet/prophet; and unlike the planets
which keep their heavenly order [] in just numbers, and exactest measure,
his song is unconfined by words, and in loose [i.e. inexact] numbers. As we
saw in Chapter Two, Leibniz had acknowledged that not all relations can be
expressed in numbers, and that measurable and immeasurable exist in the
universe side by side.35 This idea is here made central. The finite human being
cannot speak accurately ofthe universe, nor measure and calculate it precisely;
but as he contemplates Creation he can perceive something ofthe vast order
within the vast diversity, and something of the Creator behind it, and can
convey this inspired vision in enthusiastic utterance, poetick extasys. Like
the lallen ofPietist worshippers, these may break the syntax and rhythms of
rational discourse; but they reflect an ordered totality beyond Man, beyond
language and beyond number, and are thus inspired by harmony ofthought.
They are validated as shewing the true Good because they present a perception of the cosmic context in which Man exists.
Man as beholder, laudator and creator of cosmic harmony

in Nature: The human voice becomes part of cosmic polyphony
Elsewhere, Shaftesbury reaffirms presentation of cosmic harmony as the particular task ofthe true poet, whom he celebrates as a just Prometheus under
Jove, because the artist imitates Nature and its Creator when he presents each
work and each human character as an ordered whole:
Like that Sovereign Artist or universal Plastick Nature, he forms a Whole, coherent and
proportiond in itself, with due Subjection and Subordinacy of constituent Parts. He
notes the Boundarys ofthe Passions, and knows their exact Tones and Measures; by which
34 Ibid., 345, 371 f., 399f.
35 See Chapter Two above.
387
he justly represents them [] The moral Artist, who can thus imitate the Creator, and
is thus knowing in the inward Form and Structure of his Fellow-Creature, will hardly
[] be found unknowing [] in those Numbers which Make the Harmony of a Mind.
For Knavery is mere Dissonance and Disproportion.36
Again, such an artistic whole in any medium encompasses the irregular, as

the created universe encompasses evil:
In Painting there are Shades and masterly Strokes [] in Architecture there is the Rustick;
in Musick the Chromatick kind, and skilful Mixture ofDissonancys: And is there nothing which answers to this, in The WHOLE?37
In Shaftesburys perception, the presence of order, proportion and number in

the cosmic framework is thus maintained alongside the dissonancys. But when
he brings the human individual into the centre of it, he not only empowers
the human being to speak of cosmic order as perceived in Nature, but entrusts
Man [rather than angels] with the task; cosmic harmony is now manifest in
the human song which celebrates the coordinated diversity ofthe universe,
contrarietys and disharmony included. Schillers singing punch drinkers are
thus not merely enjoying themselves, but fulfilling an essential human role;
the artists whom he admonishes at such length in Die Knstler do indeed
have a role of cosmic significance. Whether or not they like what they see,
these human onlookers are confident that they have access to the order ofthe
universe, and through it even to its divine originator.38
Goethes work in particular shows the stamp of Shaftesbury,39 especially where the conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony involves the human
individual as appraiser and laudator. This is implicit where (as we saw in
Chapter One) Goethes presents the cosmic order as inevitably seen through
human perception, and thence inevitably shaped by the thought and culture
36
37
38
39
Advice to an Author, in Characteristicks [], ed.cit. vol.1, p.207.

The Moralists [], vol.2, p.400. The chromatic kind is still in use as a mode today, in
addition to major and minor.
Schillers absorption ofthese ideas is evident in the early essay Theosophie des Julius; see
esp. Cassirer, Schiller und Shaftesbury, PEGS NS XI (1935), 3759, esp.419. Cassirer
considers that this influence persisted even after Schillers encounter with the thought
of Kant (49).
Goethe encountered Shaftesburys thought at a very early stage, and seems to have
assumed that his readers would be familiar with it too. See e.g. Zum Schkespeares Tag
(17712), DjG II, 85 and notes 329; also Zimmermann II, 315.
388
Chapter Nine
of human epochs as for example in the Christian cosmic harmony of the

Easter Chorus, or the Renaissance and Shakespearean perspective presented in
Anmutige Gegend. But the Theaterdichter in the Vorspiel to Faust sees himself
and his Welttheater more explicitly in Shaftesburys terms. Here as in most such
cases the conceptual metaphor of musical harmony is drawn on as a means
of presenting this view: not only in terms of sounds, but the structural basis
of rhythm, and full communal chords of human voices and created things,
a cosmic polyphony:
Der Dichter sollte wohl das hchste Recht,
Das Menschenrecht, das ihm Natur
vergnnt,
[The Poet is to lightly cast aside

The human right bestowed on him by
Nature,
Um deinetwillen freventlich verscherzen!
Commit such dereliction just for you!
Wodurch bewegt er alle Herzen?
By what means does he move all hearers

hearts?
By what means does he bend each element?
Does not the harmony which fills his soul
Wodurch besiegt er jedes Element?

Ist es der Einklang nicht, der aus dem Busen
dringt
Und in sein Herz die Welt zurcke schlingt?
Wenn die Natur des Fadens ewge Lnge,
Gleichgltig drehend, auf die Spindel
zwingt,
Wenn aller Wesen unharmonsche Menge
Verdrielich durcheinander klingt,
Wer teilt die flieend immer gleiche Reihe
Belebend ab, da sie sich rhythmisch regt?
Wer ruft das Einzelne zur allgemeinen
Weihe,
Wo es in herrlichen Akkorden schlgt?
Wer sichert den Olymp? Vereinet Gtter?
Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbart.
(13549, 156f.)
Reach out to bring the whole world in his

heart?
When Nature draws the long unending
thread
Upon her turning spindle with no thought
When the discordant crew of living
creatures
Raises its great confused cacophony,
Who allocates this long unvaried flow
Its beating measure, brings it thus to life?
Who summons forth each isolated thing
To where it sounds in great communal\
chords?
Who makes Olympus firm? Unites the
gods?
The power of Man, manifest in the Poet.]
389
The Leibnizian structure of simultaneity and sequence is still there, but combined with the simultaneous and sequential structure of musical polyphony, as
the Poet not only praises the cosmic order, but recreates it, dissonances included
(the discordant crew ofliving creatures). Like Orpheus, he is empowered to
impose order on Nature. Furthermore, his order has both numbered measure
(teilt [] ab) and rhythmic movement; each single thing becomes a note in
the whole, producing the herrlichen Akkorden [marvellous chords] of the
cosmic harmony as they make their diverse sounds together. Similarly, when
Faust curses the entire world the Spirit Chorus deplores the shattered image
of cosmic, human and musical harmony, and urges him to restore it:
Weh! Weh!
Du hast sie zerstrt,
Die schne Welt
[=cosmos]
Mchtiger
Der Erdenshne
Baue sie wieder,
In deinem Busen baue
sie auf !
Neuen Lebenslauf
Beginne,
Mit hellem Sinne,
Und neue Lieder
Tnen darauf ! (1607ff.)
Alas! Alas!
You have destroyed
This beautiful world
Mighty among
The sons of earth
Build it again,
Build it again in your heart!
New course of life
Begin,
With unclouded mind,
And new songs
Will then sound forth!
Faust commentaries do not usually consider Shaftesbury in their comments on

these passages; connecting them instead with Goethes own views elsewhere
and/or with Anmutige Gegend as depictions of an amoral natural world.40 But
since, as we saw earlier, the other depictions of cosmic harmony in Faust gradually build up a review ofthe versions ofthe harmonious cosmos envisaged in
different human cultures, it makes better sense to take these episodes as part
ofthe series, making even the recent past (from the eighteenth-century point
of view) part ofthe diachronic perspective on Mans views ofthe cosmos. And
as with Goethes other versions of cosmic harmony, this one too is presented
40 Cf. e.g. Trunz, 493, 508; Schne, FA 7/2, 159, 257f., with further bibliographical
references.
390
Chapter Nine
as less than absolute. The Poet of the Vorspiel has to contend with audience,
players and impresarios. When Faust returns to his study after his Easter walk,
the love ofMan and God and the sacred tones which fill his soul as a result,
are interrupted by the tricks of the poodle (Studierzimmer I, 11781204),
who reveals himself as Mephistopheles, and continues throughout the play
to negate the human vision of harmony and Mans ability to voice it. Like
Shaftesburys knavery, Leibnizs shadow and Rameaus discords, Mephisto is
presented as a necessary stimulus der reizt und wirkt, to propel Man forwards
in the Lords harmonious universe (33643). Mephistos counter-vision of
the world, though without Sonn und Welten (279), is couched in recurrent anti-musical metaphor. From what he calls Mans monotonous altes
Liedchen (290), through to the song and harps of the angels who challenge
him for Fausts soul, he negates the Lords cosmic harmony:
Mitne hr ich, garstiges Geklimper
Von oben kommts mit unwillkommnem
Tag
[Dissonant tones and nasty little twanglings,

Come from above with most unwelcome
light.] (11685f.)
Sometimes this view is presented by a related figure; as for example when

Sorge [Care] assails Faust with her schlechte Litanei (11469) [wretched
litany], cancelling the vision of cosmic order in the mind of Man:
Wen ich einmal mir besitze,
Dem ist alle Welt nichts ntze;
Ewiges Dstre steigt herunter,
Sonne geht nicht auf noch unter. (11453)
[For the Man in my possession,

Even the whole world cannot profit,
Never-ending gloom falls on him,
And the sun nor sets nor rises.].
There are even times when Faust agrees with Mephistos view, and expresses
it in terms of negative music:
Was kann die Welt mir wohl gewhren?
Entbehren sollst du! Sollst entbehren!
Das ist der ewige Gesang,
Der jedem an die Ohren klingt,
Den, unser ganzes Leben lang,
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt. (154853)
[What has the world to offer me?

Unsatisfied! You are to be
Unsatisfied! the constant song
That sounds in every human ear
A dreary human lifetime long,
Hoarsely repeated hour on hour.]
391
As we saw in Chapter Two above, some of these metaphors are realised in

episodes with musical setting of various kinds: the wtender Zaubergesang
of the Walpurgisnacht, the cacophonous roarings of Auerbachs Keller, the
grell und scharf satanisch notes ofthe Emperors phantom armies (Faust II,
Act IV), even the grotesque parodies of Shakespeare songs as the Lemuren
dig Fausts grave. These cumulative references form a negative counterpoint
to the series of visions of cosmic harmony, and are not resolved until the
Grablegung and Bergschluchten scenes at the end of Part II.
Cosmic harmony and science

A final Shaftesburian vision of cosmic harmony is presented in the late stages
of Faust. Lynkeus as watchman sings of a cosmos in which the human individual is at the centre of a balanced universe (near/far, sky/earth), and is
bestellt [commissioned] to contemplate and praise the harmonious whole,
evil included (11288303). There is then a hiatus (Pause) before the second
section ofhis song. This challenges [Shaftesburys] optimism: it contemplates
evil not in a cosmic context, but close up and with horror: the fire in which
Mephisto destroys Philemon and Baucis, their hut, their tree, and their church
(11304335). Then after a long pause, Lynkeus ends his song by returning to
a long perspective: something which has pleased the eye for centuries has
been wiped out, along with those past centuries (11336f.). This destruction of
a harmonious existence in worship of den alten Gott impels Faust to try to
restore balance, by renouncing the aid of supernatural forces, and taking his
place in Nature as ein Mann allein (11406). He sets out, like Shaftesburys
just Prometheus under Jove, to make a smaller version of cosmic harmony,
ein paradiesisch Land in the polder reclaimed by modern engineering from
the sea (1155986). This plan is harmonious in that it has balanced order and
creativity and tames the elements, and it has totality insofar as the coordinated
efforts of the whole community will be required to maintain the new land.
But though thus inspired by harmony of thought, in Shaftesburys term,
he is in fact still enmeshed with magic and myth (Mephistopheles and the
Lemuren), and still seeking to bypass human limitations:
392
Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdetagen
Nicht in onen untergehn. (11383f.)
Chapter Nine
[The traces of my days on earth
Unending ages will endure]
In this episode, the conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony becomes part

ofGoethes depiction of a crisis ofknowledge: that is, a crisis ofhow to integrate new knowledge into the body of what is already known and valued. Jane
K. Brown has suggested that the play has little concern with theology, and
that it depicts a world that is thoroughly secular. But the eighteenth century
was an epoch theologically and scientifically literate to a remarkable degree,
and one which tried to assimilate a huge breadth of possibilities concerning
the cosmic system and mans position in it.41 In particular, the reception of
Lucretius De rerum natura in the last two decades of the century had made
Herder and others acutely aware that the sciences were as yet too fragmented
to offer a coherent account ofthe cosmos. Herder, Goethe and other figures
in Weimar, and Alexander von Humboldt, considered whether and how a
cosmic perspective might be supplied by an epic poem; Schelling and others
41 J.K. Brown, Faust, in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed. L. Sharpe, Cambridge
U.P., 2002, 86, 100. The classic study ofBiblical reference in Faust is by O. Durrani, Faust
and the Bible. A study ofGoethes Use ofScriptural Allusions and Christian Religious Motifs
in Faust I and II, Bern: Peter Lang, 1977. See also E.M. Wilkinson, The Theological
Basis of Fausts Credo, GLL N.S. X (1957), which makes clear that Goethe includes
this cultural material to create a diachronic perspective, reminding readers that these
things have been argued and fought over through the ages. Most Faust editions (e.g.
Trunz, Schne) make clear that Goethe retained his interest in such matters into old
age, and borrowed concepts in a general way from an enormously wide range of writers
on theology and other topics related to God, Man and the cosmos. Zimmermann shows
the importance offigures such as F.C. Oetinger and G. Arnold, theologian and church
historian respectively, [e.g. I, passim, esp.20ff., 149ff.], and Goethes habit of keeping
his own eclectic Privatreligion to himself (I,8797) while exploring both the ideas
of Christian orthodoxy and of concepts deemed heretical. Zimmermanns article on
Goethes Polarittsdenken im geistigen Kontext des 18. Jahrhunderts, JbDSchG XVIII
(1974), 30447) shows how widely and generally he ranged through philosophy, theology and other thought to form his own ideas. The topic also continues to attract critical
attention to Goethe and his contemporaries: see e.g. J. Pelikan, Faust the Theologian, New
Haven: Yale U.P. 1995; P.E. Kerry et al. (eds), Goethe and Religion, Provo, UT: Brigham
Young, 2000; contributions by Destro, Durrani, Dye, Smith, Hamlin and Stephenson
to Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust: Parts I and II, Rochester NY/
Woodbridge: Camden House, 2001; and unsurprisingly Herder, in M. Kessler, V. Leppin
(eds), Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005.
393
suggested that the problem would require a new mythology, for the foreseeable future and beyond.42 But until the immeasurably distant future when the
sciences were also able to offer a complete picture ofNature, Herder felt that
the task of creating a cosmic perspective, and ofholding in play mans various
conflicting insights, systems and beliefs, fell to poetry alone:
Erscheint einst ein solches System, sind die Wahrnehmungen der Astronomie und
gesammten Naturlehre, der Chemie und gesammten Naturgeschichte, so wie die
Geschichte des Menschen von innen und aussen so gebunden und geordnet, da in
Allen die hchste Reinheit und Einheit, ein Unendliches and Folgen in jedem Punct
erscheinet; kein Zweifel, ein solches System ist selbst die reinste und hchste Poesie [] Der
Orpheus der Natur wird, wenn die Wissenschaft reif ist, seine Leyer rhren.43
[When one day such a system does make its appearance, when the observations of
astronomy and all the natural sciences, of chemistry and the whole history ofNature, as
well as the history ofMan both within and without [= psychology and anthropology],
are so arranged and correlated that in all of them the greatest precision and coordination, and their infinite implications are evident at every point then make no mistake,
such a system is itself the purest and highest poetry The Orpheus of Nature will sound
his lyre when science reaches maturity].
In Lynkeus song, with Man at the centre of Nature, Goethe supplies such a
poetic vision of wholeness; but it is immediately challenged both by Mephistos
swift destruction ofPhilemon and Baucis, and by the defeat ofNature by mandevised new technology (1155986). This new domain of Fausts is secular;
his realm is planned as self-sufficient; there is no mention of seeing God or a
cosmic plan in Nature, and no link with cosmic music.44 Faust does not deny
the existence ofbeings and forces outside the human range, but he decides to
ignore them (11450); taking Shaftesburys vision a step further by suggesting
that Man can make his own world by subduing Nature, not contemplating
it; and by looking not to its Creator, but to himself. Set against the series of
42 See esp. H.B. Nisbet, Lucretius in Eighteenth-Century Germany, MLR 81 (1986),

91115; H.B. Nisbet, Herder und Lukrez, in Gerhard Sauder (ed.), Johann Gottfried
Herder, 17441803 (1987), 7787, esp.827; Aeka Ishihara, Makarie und das Weltall
(1998), 2234 and passim.
43 Herder, Adrastea (1801), Suphan XXIII 244f., cit. Nisbet, Herder und Lukrez, 85.
44 As John R. Williams and others have noted, this led Marxist critics to see this episode
as a vision of society and community akin to those of the Utopian Socialists such as
Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and Charles Fourrier: Goethes Faust (1987), 202f.
394
Chapter Nine
versions of cosmic harmony from other epochs presented in the play so far, it
is smaller in scope but undeniably topical: this entrepreneurial Faust voices
nineteenth-century confidence in human ability to conquer Nature through
nineteenth-century technology and mass labour, and brings the series of such
presentations up to its authors date.
However, this is not Goethes idea of the ultimate new Jerusalem.
Amongst his aphorisms reviewing the history of science is one which makes
clear that Goethe shared Herders long-term view oftechnological and scientific advance as a process which would continue as long as mankind. His own
comments on science show that like Herder he retained what Nisbet calls a
Leibnizian dynamism.45 He expected each new challenge to be eventually
(in the distant future) integrated as Leibniz universe integrated dissonance,
provided that the polar opposites of theory and practice were allowed to
interact. And he again deploys the metaphor of musical harmony to provide
an overall context for this process:
Die Geschichte der Wissenschaften ist eine groe Fuge, in der die Stimmen der Vlker
nach und nach zum Vorschein kommen. Die Deutschen, und sie nicht allein, besitzen
die Gabe, die Wissenschaften unzugnglich zu machen. Der Englnder ist Meister,
das Entdeckte gleich zu nutzen, bis es wieder zu neuer Entdeckung und frischer Tat
fhrt.46
[The history of science is a great fugue, in which the voices of the nations gradually
make themselves heard in turn. The Germans, and others besides, have a talent for
making science inaccessible; whereas the Englishman is a master in finding a prompt
application for each new discovery, and this in turn leads to new discoveries and new
applications].
Such harmonisation was not only a very distant prospect, but a difficult and
at times apparently impossible one. Giovanni Sampaolo draws attention to
late essays in which Goethe experienced the difficulty of accommodating
Simultanes und Sukzessives in one mental process of scientific study, and
even seemed inclined to give up the idea of a possible synthesis.47 Yet the
45 Nisbet, Herder und Lukrez, 81.

46 Aphorismen und Fragmente [Wissenschaftsgeschichte], AA 17, 766f.; FA I,13, 45.
47 G.S., Raum-Ordnung und Zeit-Bewegung. Gespaltene Naturerkenntnis in Wilhelm
Meisters Wanderjahre, Goethe Jahrbuch 2007, 15360, esp.159f.; Goethes essays Bedenken
395
botanist Ernst Meyer, who provided the Erwiderung to Goethes Problem,

used extended musical analogy between the fixed tonal scale and melody,
and between the rules of polyphonic harmony and melody, to illustrate the
relation between typology and individual phenomena.48 In these exchanges,
the structural concept of simultaneous and sequential has been retained,
and so has the analogy with the structure of polyphonic music and of the
scale (envisaged as successive notes). The connection with Leibniz and the
cosmic order has become implicit, not explicit: but in describing the role of
the human mind in imposing order on Nature, Meyer is describing the same
process ofpolarity and enhancement which Goethe had often envisaged as
essential to harmony:
Mit mathematischer Strenge beherrscht der Generalba die Harmonie. Um so freier
bewegt sich die Melodie [] Takt und Tempo streben umsonst sie zu fesseln. Beide
[i.e.melody and harmonic system] in der Tonwissenschaft (die von Melodie eigentlich
gar nichts wei) unmittelbar zu vereinigen, wre wenigstens eben so schwer, wo nicht
unmglich, als in der Botanik eine unmittelbare Vereinigung des Systems mit der Idee
der Metamorphose. Aber die wahre Vermittlerin ist die Kunst [Meyers italics]. Die Kunst
der Tne [] ertrotzt von der Natur die Geregeltheit, erschmeichelt das Flieende von
der Theorie.49
[The thoroughbass rules harmony with mathematical strictness. Melody can thus move
all the more freely rhythm and tempo try in vain to bind it. Attempting to combine the
two directly in acoustic science (for which melody is an irrelevant concept) would be at
least as difficult, if not impossible, as attempting a direct combination in botany ofthe
[classification] system with the idea of metamorphosis. The real mediator is art. The art
of music imposes organisation on Nature, and wheedles flexibility from theory].
und Ergebung(1820) and Problem und Erwiderung (1823), MA 12, 99 & 294305 resp. (In
AA, Bedenken und Ergebung vol.16, 872f.; Problem und Erwiderung vol.17, 17689).
48 MA 12, 300; cit. Sampaolo, 159. Canisius discusses this exchange, but only as an instance
of music and science coming together harmoniously in Goethes art, which misses the
point and trivialises the episode (op.cit., 10617, esp.115ff.)
49 MA 12, loc.cit. As usual, metaphor does not depend on scientific accuracy. Meyers
metaphor works effectively although, in the wake of Rameaus theories, the thoroughbass had long since ceased to be the basis for musical harmony (NHDM 856). Rdiger
Grner notes a similar metaphor used by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810, also apparently
meaning a determining foundation: Generalba, malerische Schrift und Dichtkunst:
berlegungen zum SprachkunstbegriffHeinrich von Kleists, PEGS LXXVIII (2009),
113.
396
Chapter Nine
Like Schiller when faced by the ending of Goethes Egmont, Sampaolo uses
the term Salto mortale for the Steigerung, the qualitative shift in thought
and discourse which such a harmonisation of opposing perspectives requires.50
Yet as with Egmont, this sudden shift grows out of a process of interacting
opposites which has been underway throughout.51 Knowingly or not, Meyer
is answering Goethes problem out of Goethes own theories and practice.
Cosmic harmony, science and the future of Man

The issue of relations between scientific knowledge and a valid account ofthe
cosmos as a whole, and between sacred and secular, is also raised in Wilhelm
Meister.52 In the Lehrjahre, the narrative is at first focused on the earth; the
heavenly powers cited in the Harpers song can hardly suggest superhuman
dimensions, since it asserts that alle Schuld rcht sich auf Erden (II,13)[all
guilt is punished on earth]. In particular (like the Kindheit, Mann und Greis
ofFausts community), the murals ofthe Saal der Vergangenheit (VIII,5) show
a totality ofhuman life at all stages; the statue ofthe deceased founder bears
the paradoxical epitaph Gedenke zu leben! [Memento vivere]; and with
the Abbs emphasis on Mignons embalmed body rather than on her spirit
these scenes suggest a perspective earthbound and happy to be so. But the
Bekenntnisse einer schnen Seele (VI), and other references at the beginning of
Book VII (harmonious objects as a foretaste ofheaven, reappearance ofthe
clergyman (II, 9) as the Catholic Abb), gradually establish a sense of a wider
context with which at least some figures interact. This is partly treated with
irony: e.g. comments on the human tendency to cultivate religion only when
50 Schiller. ber Egmont, Trauerspiel von Goethe, Allgemeine Literaturzeitung Sept. 1788
[NA 22, 208]; Sampaolo, 160, note 12.
51 Cf. esp. Wilkinson, The Relation of Form and Meaning in Goethes Egmont, Goethe:
Poet and Thinker (1962), esp.71.
52 See esp. Ishihara on plans by Goethe and others for various forms ofkosmische Prosa,
and Goethes plan for a cosmic novel, op.cit., 2844.
397
sick (VII, 6),53 and embarrassment over what to tell children who believe in
Santa Claus (VIII, 2). Many ofthese sections avoid the conceptual metaphor
of music as associated with cosmic harmony or with some idea ofheaven. So it
comes as a shock when the cosmic perspective suddenly opens up in Mignons
song So la mich scheinen, bis ich werde (VIII, 2), and both reader and personae
ofthe novel are suddenly required to consider the superhuman and the directly
religious. The attributes ofMignons angel costume are presented seriously as
symbols of a higher existence, which the adults are constrained to acknowledge since Mignon emerges from this dis-guise in her true guise as a young
woman. The choral music described in the sections on Mignon and her death
inevitably carries traditional associations of cosmic harmony and heaven, yet
these are constantly problematised by the narrative. Natalies uncle, founder
of the Saal, prefers invisible singers as universal voices: eine schne Stimme
ist das allgemeinste, was sich denken lt; yet he explicitly blocks spiritual
or cosmic connotations: hier spricht nicht der Geist zum Geiste [] nicht
ein Himmel zum Menschen (VIII, 5)54 [a lovely voice is the most universal
thing you can imagine this is not a matter of spirit speaking to spirit, nor of
heaven speaking to earth]. In Mignons Exequien, the choral exchanges refer
the children back into life, refusing them access to what is ber die Sterne
(VIII, 8) [above the stars]; yet the adults know that death and mortality must
be faced, as well as the grief of survivors. The Abbs innovative ritual in some
ways befits the forward-thinking Turmgesellschaft; yet it has a certain tackiness,
in his emphasis on her cosmetic embalmment and his ambivalent concessions
to Mignons Catholic observance. As a medium for considering eternal things,
it looks no more satisfactory than Mignons angel costume.55
53
Osman Durrani points out that Goethe himself suffered such a lapse during illness in
1801 (op.cit., 197).
54 This view of music and the singing voice is usually ignored in Goethe criticism, or taken
at face value as Goethes own (e.g. Walwei-Wiegelmann, 69f., Hicks, 117f., Fhnrich
(WM) 144). But in context it is hard to tell what face value might be; these and other
contradictions in the uncles views are persistently set out as such, so it seems inappropriate to smooth them over. The uncle himself admits (VIII,5) to having never quite
harmonised his instincts and his reason.
55 Hannelore Schlaffer, Wilhelm Meister. Das Ende der Kunst und die Wiederkehr des
Mythos, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989, 6475 and passim, deals with these episodes from a
different standpoint but also emphasises the contradictions held within them.
398
Chapter Nine
In accordance with the discussions with Herder on Lucretius, the cosmic

harmony in these narratives is not so described as to suggest a lost or outdated
vision of wholeness in the world. Rather, it depicts the sudden qualitative shift
ofthought and discourse required to move upward and forward from a dead
end conflict of opposites; the harmonising process itself. The harmonising
and harmonious cosmos operates as a dynamic conceptual framework within
which contrarietys and conflicting views can be held in play and continued, even when not yet harmonised; and music is said to function as the allencompassing Element (VIII, 8) which makes this possible without either
catastrophe or false solutions. On an everyday level, the concerts for which
the company meet unite them in mutual support, although they are pursuing
divergent ends and about to disperse (VIII, 10). This is a small-scale, living
harmony constituted by their efforts to coordinate the different requirements of sick and healthy, adults and children, in the face of both death and
life. And like all such harmonies, it is only temporary, part of the ongoing
process of polarity and enhancement.
The Wanderjahre do actually take us above the stars for a wider perspective on these cosmic processes. This happens at two points in the novel (I,10
and III, 1415), so arranged that Wilhelms encounters with Makarie and her
colleagues, and with the starry universe which they partly represent and partly
study, frame the more mundane forms ofharmony which the Wandergesellschaft
seeks to achieve. The social metaphors of harmony in which these last are
couched have no particular metaphysical resonance; they embody the combined diverse voices of the participants (especially the aberrant Christoph),
epitomised in their singing56 and expressing their views on their world. But
the episodes involving Makarie and her colleagues bring out all the contradictions in the company in full force, and explicitly link them to a cosmic perspective. This is not only a matter of mysterious powers and esoteric relations:
new scientific knowledge from mathematics and statistics, astronomy and
56
Cf. esp, Chapter Two above. Giovanni Sampaolo connects the relation between harmony
as simultaneous and melody as successive with the interplay between static scenes depicting visual attributes of a space and progressive scenes depicting action, with reference
to Kant rather than to Leibniz or to cosmic order (op.cit., 159f.).
399
mineralogy57 is brought in, and again the question is raised of how to assess
and assimilate this into existing knowledge and views of the world:
Bei dem Studieren der Wissenschaften, besonders derer welche die Natur behandeln,
ist die Untersuchung so ntig als schwer: ob das was uns von alters her berliefert und
von unsern Vorfahren fr gltig geachtet worden, auch wirklich gegrndet und zuverlssig sei, in dem Grade da man darauf fernerhin sicher fortbauen mge? oder ob ein
herkmmliches Bekenntnis nur stationr geworden und deshalb mehr einen Stillstand
als einen Fortschritt veranlasse? (III,14).
[In the study ofthe sciences, especially ofthose whose object is Nature, a vital and very
difficult question has to be faced: Is what has been handed down to us and accepted by
our forefathers in fact soundly based and reliably argued, to the point where we can feel
confident in continuing to build upon it? Or has traditional opinion merely become
fixed and thence a cause of stasis rather than progress?]
Goethe again offers a tentative interim solution by drawing on the conceptual

metaphor of cosmic harmony, in Leibniz sense of maximum diversity within
harmonious order, traditional and yet designed to create and maintain continuity in the present and into the future. Again, this reflects his debate with
Herder on Lucretius, and his aphorism of science as a great fugue in which
new voices constantly emerge. The musical aspect ofthe conceptual metaphor
is kept in the background here. But Leibniz description of musics relation
to cosmic harmony as a secret and unconscious arithmetical exercise by the
soul58 (III, 15) is applied to Makarie by the Astronomer:59 she is a harmoniser
who perceives the links between the partial harmony of imperfect humans and
the perfect harmony of the starry cosmos.60 She is also herself harmonised
internally and externally: she and her potential successor, Angela, are given a
credible human persona alongside their supernatural nature and functions;
and they are supplemented by figures with opposite and complementary skills,
See Chapter Five above, and Ishihara passim.

See Chapter Five above, esp.105, 118 and note 64.
He attributes her visions to Die Wirkung einer im hohen Grad geregelten Einbildungskraft,
[] eine Mitwirkung der Urteilskraft, besonders aber eines versteckten Kalkls [The
effects of an extremely well regulated imagination, and the influence of judgement,
but particularly of a hidden mathematical calculation]; WJ III, 15, AA 8, 483.
60 Cf. also Ishihara, op.cit., passim, and Hannelore Schlaffer, op.cit., 18394.
57
58
59
400
Chapter Nine
respectively the mathematician and healer Astronomer and the statistician/

pianist. Montan and his water-divining companion also complement Makarie
and the others, by knowledge of what is under the earth, as well as above it.
Wilhelms final wisdom, in response to the shock of confrontation with the
immense cosmos (Was bin ich gegen das All? (I,10)), is to master medical
skills: a genuinely constructive response, and harmonious insofar as (like the
Aesculapean Astronomer) he restores balance in others and himself, eventually
saving Felixs life (III, 18). In all of this, the conceptual metaphor of cosmic
harmony is presented both as an old metaphor of wholeness of perception
and being, and as a vital harmonising force through which modern conflicts
between old world and new, old knowledge and new, may be held in balance
in human consciousness as the human community faces an uncertain future,
in hope of avoiding both catastrophe and false solutions. Without this counterbalancing force, catastrophe is a concrete threat: Faust has already destroyed
Philemon and Baucis and their environment (as Peter D. Smith points out,
Goethes Faust was an orientation point for twentieth-century scientists considering the destructive possibilities oftheir discoveries in nuclear physics).61
Again, there is no immediate prospect of these conflicts being harmonised.
Like Herder on Lucretius and like Schiller in Die Knstler, Goethe envisages
this balance as extending precariously until such time as cultural and scientific
advances enable its resolution. Hence the narrators hope that Makarie will
continue to moderate between human beings and the heavenly Sonnensystem,
even when she has become part of it (III, 15).
Brown draws attention to Goethes certainty about the possibilities of
access to the order ofthe cosmos, however ineffable it may be.62 This special
assuredness, drawn from Shaftesbury, belongs to Schiller rather than Goethe.
Goethe seems to have been sharply aware that such access had to be indirect,
partial and provisional; not least because even science had to be refracted
through human faculties and human media.63 Hence his habitual use of irony
61 Faust, the Alchemists and the Atomic Bomb, PEGS LXXVII (2008), 10112.
62 Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed. Sharpe, 97.
63 Peter D. Smith draws attention to fresh awareness of this in scientific thought of the
present century: Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of
Science 17801955 (2000), 525 and passim.
401
in episodes dealing with relations between human and cosmic.64 The narrator
apologises for his therische Dichtung of Makaries future influence (III,
15); and most ofthe members ofthe society and their proceedings (not least
Makarie in her spiralling bath chair) are shown as both impressively important
and sometimes mildly ridiculous.65 Goethe used irony as a means of keeping conflicting possibilities open and in play without despair or confusion,
because we can never know the full truth about the cosmos:
Das Wahre, mit dem Gttlichen identisch, lt sich niemals von uns direkt erkennen,
wir schauen es nur im Abglanz, im Beispiel, Symbol, in einzelnen und verwandten
Erscheinungen; wir werden es gewahr als unbegreifliches Leben und knnen dem
Wunsch nicht entsagen, es zu begreifen.66
[We can never directly perceive the truth, which is identical with the Divine; we can
only perceive it in its indirect reflection, in instances and symbols, in individual and
related phenomena; we become aware of it as an incomprehensible form of life yet
cannot forego our wish to comprehend it.]
Or as he drily remarked of Faust II:

Aufschlu erwarten Sie nicht; der Welt- und Menschengeschichte gleich, enthllt das
zuletzt aufgelste Problem immer wieder ein neues aufzulsendes.67
[Dont expect to be enlightened: as in the history of man and the cosmos, every time a
problem is solved it only reveals the next one waiting be solved.]
For Goethe, metaphor is a crucial tool when faced with perennial questions
about where Man is going in the future, what he is to do with the scientific
and technical knowledge of the next age, and how his own nature will fit
into the scheme ofthings. The archive Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer
includes the observation that:
64 This function of irony has often been pointed out: see esp. the classic study by Ehrhard
Bahr, Die Ironie im Sptwerk Goethes, Berlin: Schmidt, 1972, esp.1620.
65 The same is true ofthe most revered figures of ancient myth, the Cabiri: they are said to
be the source of all later ideas ofthe gods, but, being pitcher gods, look very unimpressive to modern eyes (irden schlechte Tpfe, Faust II, 8160219).
66 Cit. U. Gaier, Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten als Prinzip in Goethes Faust, in Jane
K. Brown, Meredith Lee, Thomas P. Saine (eds), Interpreting Goethes Faust Today,
Columbia: Camden House, 1994, 158f.
67 Letter to K.Fr. v. Reinhard, 7 September 1831, AA 21, 1002; cit. Bahr, op.cit., 16.
402
Chapter Nine
abschliet und eigentlich nichts Letztes will; dagene die Induktion verderblich ist, die
einen vorgesetzten Zweck im Auge trgt und, auf denselben losarbeitend, Falsches und
Wahres mit sich fortreit.68
[Thinking by analogy should not be despised. Analogy has the advantage of never
reaching finality and making no attempt to do so; whereas the inductive method is
destructive, working towards a predetermined end and dragging truth and falsehood
in its wake regardless.]
The developed conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony enables Goethe to

make tangible an open-ended process, a perpetual continuation of scientific
enquiry in interaction with existing knowledge, oftheory in interaction with
practice, for the irregular and difficult upwards and onwards advancement
ofthe human race. It also enables him to suggest that this is not a continuity
spinning into empty space, but a living process within a cosmic totality.
68 Maximen und Reflexionen, 532, AA 9, 567.
Chapter Ten
Music as Harmony iii): Harmony as Sequence,

Melodie [] in ihrem weiten Inbegrif
This final chapter concerns a developed conceptual metaphor of harmony

which, as far as I can see, is peculiar to the eighteenth century: in some writing, harmony is conceived less as a simultaneous totality and more as a cumulative sequence in time. Leibnizs idea of simultans and successifs in the
cosmos remains as underlying structural concept; but the emphasis is more on
sequence than on simultaneity, and the entailments ofharmony thus conceived
are also somewhat modified. In particular, the musical associations ofharmony
tend to be more prominent where harmony is envisaged as a sequence.
The idea was established at an early stage in music manuals written for a
fairly wide, mostly middle class, cultural base. Mattheson insisted that wouldbe Capellmeister should begin at the beginning, with individual notes and
intervals, then progress to melody and finally create harmony by joining
melodies together:
iedermann [mu] zugeben, [] da die ersten Elemente, woraus eine Vollstimmigkeit
gezeuget wird, in den blossen Klang-Stuffen bestehen, so wie sie hinter einander folgen,
und denn, da in der Natur-Lehre, die ein tchtiger Musicus inne haben mu, der Satz
unumstlich wahr bleibet, da das Einfache eher gewesen, als das Zusammengesetzte,
folglich dessen Ursprung oder Wurzel sey.1
[everyone must allow that the primary elements from which polyphony is made consist
ofthe basic tonal intervals as they succeed each other. Just as in the biological sciences,
with which every musician worth his salt should be familiar, it is an unassailable principle that simple organisms existed before complex ones, and thence must constitute
their origin or root.]
For Mattheson, the smallest unit of harmonic structure is not the melodic
motif, but the individual notes, their Klang-Stuffen [tonal intervals] and then
the rhythmic sequence, wie sie hintereinander folgen. He speaks of a Gewebe
1
Der vollkommene Capellmeister, II,5, 7, 134.
404
Chapter Ten
[web], where one thread is woven around another, or of an organic structure

growing from a melodic root. Individual notes and their sequence thus become
important in the whole, whether succeeding one another or proceeding side
by side. They form a feinen ebenen Faden, flexible but strong, from which
the harmonious whole is spun.2 This concept of structure accords well with
the Hermetic idea ofthe golden chain linking each unit in Creation, and also
with Leibnizs concept ofharmony as a continuing flexible and dynamic whole,
in which individual entities can make their diverse contributions and through
which they can move and develop. But in this view continuity becomes more
prominent than simultaneity, and modifies even the expanded and updated
image of harmony discussed in the previous chapter here.
Paradoxically, Rousseau helped to spread the idea ofharmony as a totality created in sequence, though his ideas were mainly focused on melody and
homophonic music. His concept of unit de mlodie, prescribing that one
melodic line should dominate and all parts express the same emotion, nonetheless allowed for the dominant voice to pass from one part or instrument
to another. He likened this principle to the unity of action in drama; and in
genres more complex than song seems to have envisaged a structural pattern
similar to dramatic dialogue, where each voice contributes in response to
what has been said/sung by previous speakers. The subsidiary parts which
make up the accompaniment also each make their contribution, so that all
join together to make the whole statement:
Les diverses parties, sans se confondre, concourent au mme effet; et, quoique chacune
delles paroisse avoir son chant propre, de toutes ces parties runies on nentend sortir
quun seul et mme chant.3
[The various voices, without impeding each other, combine to the same effect; and
although each ofthem appears to have its own song, we hear one single song emerging
from all these combined parts.]
2
3
Vorrede, VII, 22; main text II, 5, 27, 133f. Lowinsky describes Mattheson as the
representative of stylistic transition (190, n.57), because he moves away from Rameaus
architectonic perception of music.
See his Lettre sur la musique franoise, ed.cit. vol.19, 375; and article Unit de mlodie
in his Dictionnaire de musique, ed.cit. vol.22, 20209, esp.205.
Harmony iii): Sequence, Melodie [] in ihrem weiten Inbegrif
405
Rousseau commended this pattern as the basis for everything from duet and
quartet to full-scale choral and instrumental works, and tried it out himself
in his popular operetta Le Devin du Village (1752).4 This linear concept
of harmony looks very strange now,5 and does not seem to have remained
live for long. Lowinsky makes no mention of it; although kinds of music
constructed along these lines (e.g. canon, fugue, any piece with a main line
passing from one voice or part to another) would have been part of the skill
which, as he notes, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven came to admire when they
rediscovered J.S. Bach in the 1780s.6 In the latter part of the century, I have
not noticed this concept of harmony outside the group of Classical writers
Herder/Goethe/Schiller; which suggests that it lived in literary culture for
longer than in musical culture, and only survived even there as long as the ideas
of Leibniz and Shaftesbury, Mattheson and Rousseau remained influential.
In the writing of its time, however, it exercised powerful appeal; and it
also had the effect ofbringing human voice(s) and human utterance into the
idea ofharmony even more prominently and centrally than Shaftesbury had
done. For Herder in particular, harmonious music consisted of one tone
answering another, one section answering another, in the rhythmic sequence
of contrasting and complementary voices and views which he terms das Band
der Folge, and explicitly relates to Leibnizs cosmology:
Wo ist ein andrer fhlbarer Jngling, der Tne also solche empfinden kann [] Erst
lauter einfache, wrksame Momente der Musik, einzelne Tonaccente der Leidenschaft
das ist das Erste, was er fhlt und sammlet, und das wird eine Musikalische Monadologie,
eine Philosophie ihrer Elemente. Denn verbindet er sie durch das Band der Folge, in ihrer
Annehmlichkeit aufs Ohr, in ihrer Wrksamkeit auf die Seele: das wird Melodie, und sie
in ihrem weiten Inbegrif ist das grosse Hauptfeld seiner Bemerkungen. Harmonielehre,
als solche [] ist fr seine sthetik nur das, was Logik in Poeten ist.7
[Where is the man, young and sensitive, who can receive tones as such? At first simple,
poignant units of music, single tonal accents of passion these are the first elements
which he feels and accumulates, and they become a musical Monadology, a philosophy
4
5
6
7
Ibid.; see also Lowinsky, 194f. and passim. Lowinsky points out that Rousseaus music
is not the full choral experience evoked by his prose, but a relatively thin sound.
NHDM specifically distinguishes melody as relations in succession from harmony as
relations between simultaneous sounds (481ff.).
Op.cit., 202.
Viertes Wldchen, Suphan IV, 100ff., esp.114, and passim.
406
Chapter Ten
of musics basic elements. Then he connects them by means of sequence, according to their
pleasantness for the ear and their impact on the soul: they become melody, and melody
in its widest sense becomes the great field of his observations. The theory of harmony,
as such, is for his aesthetics merely what logic is to the poet.]
Here, Herder disassociates harmony from Harmonielehre, i.e. polyphony and

counterpoint la Rameau. Instead, he links it with the specific continuity of
the Leibnizian universe: a harmony of diverse individual monads which form
a chain of notes, and eventually what he calls Melodie [] in ihrem weiten
Inbegrif [melody in its widest sense]. Melody in this widest sense involves
not simply successive contrasting units and their harmonising opposites, but
also the harmonious totality of larger contrasting sections as they succeed
each other, building harmony cumulatively. He had already made use ofthis
concept when he applied the analogy to poetry in the Erstes Wldchen:
Sie [Poesie] wirkt in der Zeit [] vorzglich, indem sie durch die Schnelligkeit, durch das
Gehen und Kommen ihrer Vorstellungen, auf die Seele wirkt, und in der Abwechselung
theils, theils in dem Ganzen, das sie durch die Zeitfolge erbauet, energisch wirket [] da
sie einer Abwechselung, und gleichsam Melodie der Vorstellungen, und Eines Ganzen
fhig sey, dessen Theile sich nach und nach uern, [] dies macht sie zu einer Musik
der Seele, wie sie die Griechen nannten.8
[It [poetry] works in time primarily, by working on the soul through its tempo, through
the coming and going of its perceptions, and energises partly through its variety and
partly by the whole which it builds up in sequence. The fact that it is capable of such
a variety, as it were a melody of concepts, and a whole whose parts express themselves
gradually, is what makes it a music of the soul, as the Greeks called it.]
His idea of harmonic structure is thus broader and more complex than
Rousseaus, and meant to be equally applicable to poetry, music and dance
or any combination of the genres. Herders notional Greek explains this to
benighted German writers of tragedy:
Der Gang der Tne war hierinn unser lebendiges Vorbild. Wie diese sich verschlingen, damit sie sich froh entwickeln, [] so verschlang, so lsete sich unser Drama, der
Seele melodisch. Aus Dissonanzen stieg die hhere Consonanz mit jeder geschonten
Annherung, [] prchtig hervor; und schlo mit einer Beruhigung, die nicht etwa dumpf
sttigte, sondern einen Fortklang dieser Tne zu hren einlud.9 [Herders italics]
8
9
Suphan III, 134ff.

Adrastea, Suphan XXIII, 347f.
407
[The forward movement of tones was our living model in this matter. Just as they
entwine about each other, in order to make joyful progression, so also our drama was
entwined and resolved, melodious to the soul. From dissonances the higher consonance
grew more splendidly with every careful rapprochement [i.e. of opposites]; and ended
with a closure which did not simply satisfy, but invited the listener to perceive a continuation of these notes.]
Herders comment shows how closely linked to Leibnizs living cosmos this
version of harmony is. The play may end; but the sequence of conflicts and
reconciliations which it presents does not. Each reconciliation of conflicting opposites (jede[] geschonten Annherung) produces a higher harmony,
which in turn meets its opposite and is similarly reconciled. This concept of
cosmic harmony as sequence and continuity does not therefore envisage a
grand finale, but a series of provisional and temporary harmonies, an open-ended
process. Herder found this type of musical harmony particularly well realised
in the sacred music of cantatas, where recitative, aria and chorus accumulated
their pattern of contrasts into a eurhythmic whole.10 In his Erstes Kritisches
Wldchen (1769), he pleads that the sequence of words in poetry should be
similarly arranged, so that all elements ofthe work (concepts, imagery, sound
effects) follow from one another, give way to others and re-emerge like the
melody in music, to produce a harmonious whole which is not static or architectonic, but ein[] Ganz[es], dessen Theile sich nach und nach uern. 11
In the Adrastea of his last years, he admires this structure in the writings of
the Old Testament and in poetry generally: as such sequences accumulate,
the diverse threads are interwoven into a harmonious representation ofthe
whole of human life:
Denn nun treten entweder mehrere Stimmen zu einander; es wird Ein Chor, das
Feierlichste, das ja ein irdisches Ohr hrte. Ein von vielen Stimmen und Instrumenten
gehaltener harmonischer Ton durchdringet die Seele. Oder die Stimmen theilen
sich; sie antworten oder begleiten einander; se Eintracht, das Bild himmlischer
10
11
He wrote a number oftexts for cantatas, some in collaboration with J.C. Bach; see esp.
Nufer, 74 (note), and J. Mller-Blattau, Zur Musikbung und Musikauffassung der
Goethezeit, Euphorion 31 (1930), 444ff. His cantata texts are printed in Suphan XXVIII,
1ff. See also Die Ausgieung des Geistes. Eine Pfingstkantate (Vorlufige Abhandlung),
Suphan I, 59.
[A totality whose constituent parts make themselves heard only gradually]; Erstes
Wldchen, Suphan III, 134ff.
408
Chapter Ten
Zusammenwirkung, Liebe und Freundschaft. Oder sie verfolgen einander, kmpfen,
umschlingen, verwirren sich, und lsen einander zur sesten Beruhigung auf; trefliche
Darstellung des ganzen Gewebes unsrer Empfindungen und Bemhungen auf dem
Kampfplatz des Lebens.12
[For either several voices combine together, they make a chorus, the most solemn thing
which an earthly ear ever heard. A harmonious sound, sustained by many voices and
instruments, penetrates the soul. Or else the voices separate; they answer or accompany
each other: sweet concord, the image of heavenly collaboration, love and friendship.
Or they pursue each other, compete, surround, intermingle, and resolve each other in
the sweetest and most satisfying resolution: a superb depiction of the whole network
of our feelings and efforts in the arena of life.]
Goethes sequences
This view of poetrys close relation to music in the forms of continuity
they shared seems to have permeated Goethes idea of literary form in any
genre where he tried to make a statement about the world as a whole. The
Halbchre, Wechselgesang, solo and answering solo, solo and chorus, cantata and Singspiel sequences, are all deployed to make palpable to the ear the
processes of contrast, enhancement and combination by which the harmonious and harmonising cosmos pursues its functions. In short, they work
like the many and various verse forms which Goethe deploys, not forgetting
the silences of various kinds.13 This range enables both the differentiation
necessary to suggest polarity, and the enhancement to suggest Steigerung
usually indicated by a shift from speech to song or music or vice versa, or by
a striking shift in verse form.14
Such sequences are an alien concept to modern audiences; but it is
worth paying some attention to them, and to the variants ofthem which have
12
13
14
Ibid., 561f.
See esp. Herrmann and Bressem passim; also Trunz and Hlscher-Lohmeyer, and
Chapters Two, Four, Six and Eight above. Hlscher-Lohmeyers comments on the
Mummenschanz sequence (MA 18.1, 705), bring out its particular character and function
in connection with wholeness, polarity and Steigerung.
Cf. also esp. Chapters Four and Eight above.
409
been designated Revue scenes.15 These are often with some justice criticised
as undramatic. Arnd Bohm speaks of the hybridization of Goethes Faust,
where the dramatic form is congruent with the exigencies of epic representation at the end of the eighteenth century; and argues for treating Faust as
an epic.16 But such scenes usually have a quick theatrical immediacy which is
hard to replicate in epic description. This immediacy keeps audience attention through the succession offigures and speeches until the significance they
carry becomes evident at the end; they are literally ein Ganzes, dessen Theile
sich nach und nach uern [a whole whose constituent parts make themselves heard gradually]. These revues are often part of a sequence of formal
contrasts such as Herder praised. They can fill in cultural or mythical context,
and offer a range of views on the main action, as for example do the scenes of
the Walpurgisnachtstraum and the Klassische Walpurgisnacht. They can also
regulate the momentum of a work (narrative or dramatic), as for example in the
Mummenschanz scene and the succession ofNovellen and other interruptions
which punctuate the progression ofWilhelm Meister. At times, their purpose
seems to be precisely to stall a direct and rapid progress towards a resolution, so
that the reader/viewer is made to feel first-hand the errant stages ofpolarity
and enhancement, upwards and onwards, by which human progress is made
in Goethes version of the Leibnizian scheme of things.
Song or musical accompaniment are often employed to make certain
parts of a scene stand out, as we saw in Chapter Seven above. But usually such
episodes are part of a set of contrasts, so that the musical elements supplement
language, linking such episodes into a chain of complementary opposites and
Steigerungen whose full sense only becomes apparent at the end. Examples
of such sequences are Egmonts Siegessymphonie and vision ofKlrchen after
his conversation with Ferdinand; Gretchens songs in relation to the stages
of her life; the Elves songs, the cosmic Getse and Fausts Terzinen at the
opening ofPart II (4679727); and the emergence ofthe Arcadia scene from
the Klassische Walpurgisnacht, and its further progression to the Euphorion
episode and to the first two sections ofFausts opening speech in quasi-Greek
metres (Hochgebirg, IV 1).17
15
16
17
E.g. Emrich, op.cit., 13761, Requadt, op.cit., 30723 and passim.

Goethes Faust and European Epic, 2007, 22 and passim.
Herrmann and Bressem draw attention to such groupings passim; see also Chapters
Four, Seven and Eight above. See also (on Arcadia, etc.) Hlscher-Lohmeyer, 101119;
410
Chapter Ten
Arcadia is a good example of harmony in sequence yet another episode in the series of versions of cosmic harmony, but with its own particular
character. Faust becomes like Shaftesburys enthusiast, praising Nature and
through Nature the divine, the poet/prophet who sichert den Olymp, vereinet Gtter (156). Like the Elves ofAnmutige Gegend, this episode presents a
partial harmony: this time the European myth ofGreece as a place where all
worlds meet (9560f.), perfectly balanced between land and sea, south and
north (8509, 9826), physical and mental, physical and spiritual, Classical and
Romantic. In this context Faust and Helena can indeed meet and produce a
Drittes, Neues, Hheres, Unerwartetes Euphorion. The verse-forms and
metres, including the episode where Faust woos Helena by teaching her to
rhyme, are also gradually enhanced to present this process, until they culminate in the vollstimmiger Musik of the Euphorion episode (SD 9679). The
new Verein [union] (9710, 9736) ofthe three cannot last, given Euphorions
one-sided yearnings; like Goethes other interim harmonies, this one is only
temporary. But Faust nonetheless pauses to appraise the flchtger Tage
groen Sinn (1003966) [the profound meaning of transient days] which
has emerged at the end of it.
This episode serves to summarise some crucial points, concerning Faust
and other works incorporating statements about the cosmos and mans place
in it. Firstly, choral episodes in these sequences do not usually present a grand
finale, but a temporary harmonisation, the partial completion of a process
of polarity and enhancement which is shown as immediately continuing.
Secondly, whether musical elements are prominent or not, harmonies (simultaneous or sequential) do not represent a dnouement: they solve no practical
problems. As we saw in the eighteenth-century discussions of Lucretius, the
framework of cosmic harmony does not solve conflicts between divergent
scientific views of the world, or between science and tradition; but holds
conflicting views in play until such (far-distant) time as the sciences collectively
will be able to give an account ofthe world as a whole, in which these interim
conflicts will, it is hoped, finally be reconciled. Even after the systematic harmonisation ofthe Wandergesellschafts members, there is only hope that the
society will continue successfully in Europe or in the New World, and even
that partly depends on Makaries good offices. Overall, the function ofthese
Schne, 61833; and on Euphorion Ann White, Names and Nomenclature in Goethes
Faust (1980), 11921, 149f.
411
harmonies seems close to that ofSchillers aesthetic condition (including both

state of mind and relation with ones circumstances).18 They lift the individual
out ofhelpless oscillation between conflicting opposites (Faust, Tasso), or out
of a state of numb inability to react to the world (Trilogie der Leidenschaft,
Iphigenie), and enable them to continue; and they do so by offering a vision
of wholeness, of how things could be harmonised. In some cases (Iphigenie,
Trilogie der Leidenschaft, even Wilhelm), this radical shift of perspective on
the world results in a different perspective on their problem, and enables
them to devise ein Drittes, Neues, Hheres, Unerwartetes, a solution. In
others (Egmont, Tasso) the problem remains but the protagonists (and the
readers) come to see it differently. In both cases, a stasis is overcome, and
continuity becomes possible again: as Egmont puts it, ungehindert fliet der
Kreis innerer Harmonien.19 Thirdly, where the version of cosmic harmony is
influenced by Shaftesbury, the human voice is heard at the centre of it, contemplating the universe, creating the perception ofharmony, voicing human
responses. Indeed, where harmony is presented primarily as living continuum,
part of the pattern of contrasts is often some form of ongoing interaction
between Man and the cosmos. This sometimes takes place via earthly agencies: priest/ess figures such as Iphigenie, Makarie, the Astronomer, sometimes
via entities such as the Easter Chorus, Mephistos spirits, the Nature Elves, or
Greek mythical figures. In such exchanges, music often complements shifts of
verse-form in marking the special nature of such communication.
Harmonious sequences and ideal endings: i) Novelle

If we bear these things in mind, the functions of music and musical reference
become clearer in two ofthe more difficult episodes in Goethes late writing:
his Novelle, and the ending ofFaust II. Novelle (1827) presents a third-person
18
19
See, of many, Lesley Sharpe, Concerning Aesthetic Education, in Martinson, A

Companion to the Works of Friedrich Schiller (2005), 14767, esp.15862. As Sharpe
explains, Schiller was sceptical about the possibility of harmony ever being achieved;
but found the idea of wholeness which it represented both attractive and crucially liberating to those caught up in conflicts of irreconcilable opposites.
Egmont V, final scene: AA 6, 100.
412
Chapter Ten
narrative with the interpolated text ofthe gypsy boys song. After the disaster
ofthe fire and the shooting ofthe tiger, more catastrophe threatens with the
escape ofthe lion and the preparations ofthe Princes men to kill it. The boy
tames both lion and hunters with his pipe, evoking the myth of Orpheus
as tamer of wild beasts and the metaphor of music as tamer of human passions. So far, the reference is entirely traditional until the father ofthe boy
and owner of the animals begins to speak. He takes the role of Shaftesburys
observer and laudator, and with anstndigem Enthusiasmus [] mit dem
Ausdruck eines natrlichen Enthusiasmus,20 praises the harmonious Creation
in all its diversity, large and small, near and far, culminating in the human
being, dem Ebenbilde Gottes. The boy accompanies him on his pipe and,
when the speech has ended, extends his accompaniment into a song. The text
of this consists of three stanzas: one describing Daniel miraculously safe in
the lions den, one describing the gypsy boy similarly protected by singing
angels, and a third praising the power ofGod and evoking the Biblical vision
of a peaceful future where wild animals will lie down with tame herds, and
a little child shall lead them.21 So far, the reader might (rightly) think this
an idealised depiction of harmonisation within a vision of the harmonious
cosmos, through interaction of opposites and a Steigerung ofboth to produce
something new and unexpected which enables a solution; especially in view
of Goethes comments to Eckermann:
Ein ideeller, ja lyrischer Schlu war ntig und mute folgen; denn nach der pathetischen
Rede des Mannes, die schon poetische Prosa ist, mute eine Steigerung kommen, ich
mute zur lyrischen Poesie, ja zum Liede selbst bergehen.22
[An ideal, even lyrical conclusion was called for and had to follow; for after the impassioned speech of the man, which is already poetic prose, there had to be some form of
enhancement (Steigerung), I had to move into lyrical poetry, even into actual song.]
20 AA 9, 450, 451.
21 This is a variant ofIsaiah 11, 6: The wolf [] shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them [] They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain.
22 To Eckermann, 18 January 1827, AA 24, 213; cf. Wilkinson, Goethes Principle of
Steigerung, Goethe: Poet and Thinker, 206 and passim for a discussion of these remarks
in the context of Goethes views on botany and on other works.
413
However, it is not usually observed that conflicting contrasts are also given
ample consideration. The narrative presents some very oddly dislocated relations; and it is these, as well as their several and general resolutions, which
make the harmonisation of this world a sequence rather than a totality
(although that is briefly invoked too). As Martin Swales has pointed out, the
Princes planned invasion of the mountain villages and his hunters attacks
on the forest animals are not going to do much for harmony, with Nature or
with society.23 The cosmic order especially the image of it which this society purports to represent is imminently threatened. Although the Prince is
praised as Gods representative on earth, it is the gypsy father, not the Prince,
who understands the situation most fully and devises a solution; and it is
he, not the Prince, who draws attention to the cosmic context within which
human events take place. The apparent conflict is between the civilised world
of town and Court and the barbaric world of mountain and forest, gypsies
and their wild animals outside. Yet the actual savagery lies with the fire inside
the town, with the princely party ready to kill, and with Honorios thirst for
glory and his potentially destructive attraction for the Princess.24 Similar
dislocation can be seen between the narrators description ofthe speech and
song of the gypsy family, and the actual sounds evoked by his narrative. The
mothers lament for the tiger is described as a wild torrent of sound, at odds
with unsern Mundarten [our (= civilised societys) ways of speech]. Yet she
evokes a full and realistic picture (unlike the gaudy placards) ofthe tiger in life
as a beautiful and dignified beast with whom they have a close emotional bond,
as well as a financial interest which she neatly conveys in a Biblical analogy.25
The boys pipe is described in minute detail as a flute douce, and his singing
as intonieren, with a bright, high voice and skilful modulations; his father
23
Particularly emphasising the discrepancy between image and reality in (e.g.) perceptions of the tiger and lion, and the savagery which lurks in most human beings, as well
as human powers to control it: The Threatened Society: some remarks on Goethes
Novelle, PEGS XXXVIII (19678), 4368. See also the section Novelle and Novellen
in Martin Swales contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Goethe (2002), Goethes
Prose Fiction, 12946, esp.130ff.
24 Cf. Swales, opera cit passim.
25 Cf. King James Bible, Judges 14, 14, in the story of Samsons slain lion and the swarm
of bees which nested in it: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong
came forth sweetness. An illustration of this episode still adorns tins of golden syrup
and black treacle!
414
Chapter Ten
then accompanies him in unison with the mother joining in occasionally

as alto. This all suggests gentle, pleasant sound; but taken literally as a musical
performance it would be most bizarrely fragmented: occasional notes here
and there hardly count as an accompaniment, nor does the boys performance
after the lions rescue (alternating a few notes on the flute with a few lines
of song) fit the narrators description glorreich [glorious]. Similarly, we are
told, and several times shown in the recurrent stanzas of the song text, that
the boy uses the lines ofthe stanzas like musical phrases, repeating them and
varying their order; und dadurch wo nicht einen neuen Sinn hervorbrachte,
doch das Gefhl in und durch sich selbst aufregend erhhte [and created by
this means if not a new meaning, at least a feeling intensified in and by itself ].
This is an ambiguous compliment, to say the least: a heightened feeling unconnected with meaning hardly counts as glorious either, even if it is illuminated
by the setting sun. Hannelore Schlaffer accounts for this sense of paradise
undermined by suggesting that Goethe presents a series of pseudo-Biblical
poses in landscape settings, satirising the Romantic Nazarene art which he
detested.26 This seems plausible, but not enough to explain a whole narrative
so carefully crafted. Isaiahs vision of natural violence between animals calmed,
and the boy as a figure echoing Orpheus as magician and as Aesculapean healer,
even the story ofAndrocles and the lion from whose paw he takes a thorn, all
serve as antecedents for an idyll of harmonious relations between man and
beast. Irony in the treatment of moments of idyllic harmony is nothing new,
as we saw in Wilhelm Meister; it serves as reminder that the interim stages
to any Harmonie der Harmonien are not only sweet, but short. However,
most ofthe characters in Novelle do actually rise to the crisis occasion. A real
solution is found, and a real harmony established, within and between the
participants and between them and their surroundings. All this despite the
discrepancy between the harmony evoked and the usual state of relations in
this society (including the killing of the tiger), and despite the discrepancy
between narrative tone and the musical tone evoked a palpable dissonance
if ever there was one.
26 H.S (ed.), Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Erzhlungen (1829), 366ff. She cites Gerhard Kaiser,
Zur Aktualitt Goethes. Kunst und Gesellschaft in seiner Novelle, Jb. der deutschen
Schillergesellschaft 29 (1985), 252.
415
It is easier to follow this as a depiction of the harmonious and harmonising cosmos if we remember that according to Leibniz and Shaftesbury,
such contrarietys are not only the problem, but also the means of a solution,
because they force the situation forward. They do overall produce a more harmonious state of affairs at the end than at the beginning; and this end result
is symbolised, rather than created, by the boys music. The continuing process of harmonisation he celebrates has in fact begun in the early paragraphs
of the story, in the harmonious relations between the Prince and his bride,
the hill people and the plains people, which the Princes father has initiated.
A cosmic perspective is also opened up much earlier, when (with the aid of
Honorios telescope), we are given a suns eye view over the whole town and
its landscape, in the stillness at noon when Pan sleeps.27 This is, in short, a
miniature harmonious cosmos according to the Leibniz/Shaftesbury version:
perpetually disrupted, perpetually reforming and proceeding at a higher level,
and created by the human participants. Moreover, it is not a disembodied
ideal state, but explicitly encompasses the earth and everything in it; and
the music referred to is not displacing earthly language, but connected to it
and extending its range. Goethe draws on the Rousseau/Herder version of
harmony as sequence and continuity: ein ganzes, dessen Theile sich nach
und nach uern, in order to present this microcosm; and the constituent
parts manifest themselves in a sequence of recurrent contrasting voices: the
narrators urbanity, the grave tone of the Prince and his father, the formal
speech ofHonorio and the Princess, the diverse and alien tones ofthe gypsy
family. The boys song forms the formal end to the sequence, but not to the
harmonious and harmonising processes ofthe cosmos: his song is less a musical performance than a demonstration of cosmic continuity: Glorreich sang
das Kind weiter [] das Kind fltete und sang so weiter, nach seiner Art die
Zeilen verschrnkend und neue hinzufgend [The boy sang gloriously on
the boy piped and sang on, with his usual way of interweaving the lines and
adding new ones]. It is the association with the harmonious and harmonising cosmos, not the sound, which fits the description glorreich; and Goethe
provides an ending which, in Herders formulation, does not satiate, but
invites us to hear a continuation of these tones.
27
AA 9, 434, 442.
416
Chapter Ten
Harmonious sequences and ideal endings:

ii) Grablegung, Bergschluchten
The final two scenes of Faust II present a continuity between earth and the
wider cosmos, by means of a sequence structure which begins on earth and continues to be linked to earth, even as it moves towards infinity. This sequence
structure ofGrablegung and Bergschluchten has been widely recognised; but
not always with helpful connotations. The Singspiel also featured a sequence of
formal contrasts; but as a model this is misleading because these Faust scenes
are not primarily lyrical, despite the inclusion of singing voices.28 Nor are they,
like those Goethe envisaged for the continuation of Mozarts Zauberflte,
simply eine bedeutende Folge von Leidenschaften.29 Hannelore Schlaffer
perceives the Revue structure of the scenes, but not the idea of cumulative
meaning, and thus finds them a grotesque Kabarett avant la lettre.30 However,
whether the constituent voices are part of the battle for Fausts soul, or part
ofthe depiction of where he goes afterwards and how, their content is important: they are voices with a view, and the particular view of each contributes
something to the cumulative meaning of the scene.31
In the course ofthe last two decades, critics have increasingly come to see
these last two scenes in terms of a dialectic of different views ofthe cosmos,
i.e. as a sequence of contrasts but without the musical connection.32 As we
saw, Ulrich Gaier points out that such a Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten
or Denkweisen was a well-entrenched part of eighteenth-century epistemology [i.e. by no means confined to Herder and Goethe]. It was, as Gaier
28
This was especially common in some older studies among the first to explore the sequence
structure: e.g. Helene Herrmann, op.cit. 10107; Harold Jantz, The Form of Faust,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1978, esp.12734, cit.Robert Spaethling, Music and
Mozart (1987), 56f.
29 Hans-Albrecht Koch, Goethes Fortsetzung der Schikanederschen Zauberflte, Jb. Des
Freien Deutschen Hochstifts 1969, 12163, esp.126, 140.
30 Paradies und Parodie: die letzten Szenen in Goethes letzten Werken, in Brown/Lee/
Saine, 10211, esp.110.
31 Cf. Chapters Four and Eight above.
32 Ulrich Gaier in Brown/Lee/Saine (1994), 15871, esp.15863; also Jane K. Brown, Faust,
in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Goethe (2002), esp.8487.
417
explains, an attempt to approach ever-elusive truth via a number of what

would now be called contrasting or competing discourses; and in Goethes
case a fundamental poetic principle:
Man sagt, zwischen zwei entgegengesetzten Meinungen liege die Wahrheit mitten
inne. Keineswegs! Das Problem liegt dazwischen, das Unschaubare, das ewig ttige
Leben in Ruhe gedacht.
Hchstes reines Leben wre zu erzeugen durch ein Gleichgewicht von Ja und Nein, []
ein solches Gleichgewicht lt sich etablieren bei Aussagen, bei den Figuren, innerhalb
der Figuren, bei Werten und Bestrebungen, bei sprachlichen und dramaturgischen
Mitteln. Goethe htte nicht jeweils eines gemeint und intendiert, sondern ein System
eines aus horiontalem und vertikalem Widerspruch, d.h. aus Polaritt und Steigerung
sich fortzeugenden Widerspruchs, der dann das Leben nicht in Ruhe gedacht, sondern
sich als ewig ttiges zeigen liee.33
[People say that the truth lies in between two opposing opinions. Not at all! It is
the problem that lies between them, ineffable, eternally active Life calmly
perceived.
The highest and most unadulterated form of life could be engendered by an equilibrium between Yes and No. Such an equilibrium can be found amongst [Goethes] comments and figures, within his figures, in his evaluations and efforts, in his linguistic and
dramaturgical resources. Goethe never said and intended a single thing in any given
work, but [set up] a system of horizontal and vertical paradox, i.e. paradox constantly
re-engendered by polarity and enhancement, which would enable the presentation of
life not as calmly perceived, but as perpetually active].
However, Herders concept of a Melodie der Vorstellungen offers a structure

in which not only such a dialectic of discourses can be held together, but also
the cumulative significance which in his view emerges from the process: the
sequence of rhythmic contrasts between succeeding figures/ideas, succeeding
notes/voices and succeeding sections of the work:
Sie [Poesie] wirkt in der Zeit [] vorzglich, indem sie durch die Schnelligkeit, durch das
Gehen und Kommen ihrer Vorstellungen, auf die Seele wirkt, und in der Abwechslung
theils, theils in dem Ganzen, das sie durch die Zeitfolge erbauet, energisch wirket34
Ibid., 15863, esp.159; the quotation is from Goethes aphorisms in Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahre, No. 616, AA 9, 580.
34 Suphan III, 134ff.
33
418
Chapter Ten
[Poetry works in time primarily, by working on the soul through its tempo, through
the coming and going of its ideas, and energises partly through its variety and partly by
the whole which it builds up in sequence].
It is this structure, as well as but more prominently than melodious sound,

which is the salient feature in the conceptual metaphor of the harmonious
and harmonising cosmic sequence. Whether presented in language or realised in song or other music, it serves Goethe in depiction of the whole, and
in depiction of the sequence of contrasts within that whole.
The final sequence ofFaust begins just before the beginning ofGrablegung,
when Faust dies and the Lemuren lay him on the ground (SD 11586). The first
Vorstellungsart we hear is Mephistos commentary on Fausts life: the last
assertion of his view of the futility of Creation, and his last assertion that
the underlying pattern of existence is not the rhythm which sustains cosmic
harmony, but merely monotony:
Vorbei und reines Nicht, vollkommnes
Einerlei! []
Es ist so gut, als wr es nicht gewesen,
Und treibt sich doch im Kreis, als wenn es wre.
Ich liebte mir dafr das Ewig-Leere.
(11597603)
[All gone, pure null, complete

monotony!
Its just as though nothing had ever been,
And yet it circulates as though it lived.
Myself, Id much prefer Eternal Void].
He is supported by additional voices in the solos and Chorus ofthe Lemuren,

mocking human life as insignificant and Fausts demise as just another death.
But the tone and pace ofthe scene then sharpen markedly, as Mephisto evokes
Hell as conceived by medieval and early Christian iconography complete with
greulicher Hllenrachen [dreadful jaws ofHell] and various sizes and shapes
of devil who come tumbling out ofthem (1161275) to fill the left stage (SD
11644) and surround the prostrate Faust.35 This part of the sequence, i.e.
before the angels appear, is ironic and comic; yet important both for the action
ofthe play and in terms ofthe questions the play has raised about human existence. Mephisto complains that tradition has been weakened and that people
no longer believe in Hell. But conceptions of Hell change over time, as do
conceptions of cosmic harmony: Mephisto himself modernised his image
35
Cf. Schne, 764f., on various sources and parallels for this depiction.
419
when he appeared to Faust in the study. Yet however fallible, these myths
stand for something: death as finality, and punishment by absolute justice
for evil done. We have seen the suffering Faust causes, and might expect Faust
to be damned, given the literary precedents ofMarlowes and other Fausts.36
Instead, as in Novelle, we are faced with a curiously dislocated presentation:
the spectacle of Hell, including the blazing city of Dantes Inferno,37 runs
in silence, like a horror film at the left ofthe stage with the sound turned off.
Mephisto is the only voice who speaks; he stands out as a mythical figure
whose significance has been graphically demonstrated throughout the play
and is still understood, he stands over Faust at this moment of ultimate crisis,
and he stands for much of what is in Faust, not just around him. So he may
be a grotesque joke, as the often casual vocabulary of his language suggests
(so akkurat wei man das nicht (11667)); but the matter at issue is fundamentally important.
Into this monologue come the Heavenly Hosts, i.e. militant angels in
full chorus, preceded by a blaze of heavenly light from stage top right. As
Mephistos counterpart in the mythology of morality plays, the angels embody
an importantly different Vorstellungsart. Here, not yet divided into separate
groups, they act as a host, retrieving Fausts soul from his body and from
Mephisto by scattering their roses of divine love, and occupying the stage
territory so far as to displace the devils and push Mephisto into the proscenium.38 Goethe has made this contrast of Vorstellungsarten palpable to
the ear, as well as to the eye. By keeping the depiction ofHell visually graphic
but silent, he has created a striking contrast between Mephisto, who speaks,
and the sound of the angels. It is thus important that they sing or chant;
their utterances need to be differentiated audibly not only from Mephistos
36
37
38
On antecedents, see J.W. Smeed, Faust in Literature (1975), esp. Chapters One to Six,
1132. Goethes Allgemeiner Entwurf of 11 April 1800 also envisaged the ending as
Epilog im Chaos, auf dem Weg zur Hlle: cit. Dieck, Goethe ber den Faust (1963), 10.
Even in 1827, according to Eckermann, he envisaged the course of the action as Vom
Himmel durch die Welt zur Hlle (6 May 1827, AA 24, 636). The questions of death,
sin, and limited human time still preoccupy producers of current versions of the Faust
story: see e.g. the interview with Silviu Purcarete, producer of a Romanian version in
Edinburgh August 2009, by Laura Barnett, The Guardian 19 August 2009.
See esp. Hlscher-Lohmeyer, op.cit. 1145.
See esp. H.-L., loc. cit., op.cit., 114754.
420
Chapter Ten
continued speech but also from the brief moment when they change metre,
medium, verse-form and focus, and speak to Mephisto (11777f.). Most commentators pass over this; but it marks a moment when he is invited to re-join
their ranks, and cannot. He is thus left behind on earth, still speaking, as they
move upwards and onwards with Fausts soul.
Faust is rescued: freed from futile conflict between his two souls, freed
from his attachment to Mephisto, and enabled to continue. Manifestly, this
is not a process of moral judgment or even of redemption. It is underpinned
by a Leibnizian view of Creation, in which all natural forms are links in a
continuous chain ofbeing, stretching upwards from the simplest elements of
matter through all living forms to the human species, and perhaps on to the
denizens of higher worlds.39 This included a concept of the indestructible
monad, which Goethe also drew from other sources. The Hermetic works he
read early in life regarded Man as part of Nature and Nature as part of God,
and suggested that God would not allow His creatures to perish: wie sie ein
Theil sind von seinem Wesen, so wird er sie nimmer verderben lassen [since
they are a part of His Being, He will never allow them to be destroyed].40 In
later life, Goethe seems to have commuted this into a belief in the persistence
of remarkable entelechies, an Aristotelian concept akin to souls:
Ich zweifle nicht an unserer Fortdauer, denn die Natur kann die Entelechie nicht entbehren. Aber wir sind nicht auf gleiche Weise unsterblich, und um sich knftig als groe
Entelechie zu manifestieren, mu man auch eine sein.41
[I do not doubt that we shall continue to exist, for each entelechy is indispensable to
Nature. But we are not all immortal in the same way; and in order to appear as a great
entelechy in the future, one must actually be one now.]
Similar concepts underpin the different forms of immortal continuity allocated to Helena, her Chorus and Chorus leader (99814), and to Gretchen
(1003966); and what we see at the end of Grablegung is Fausts temporary
harmonisation, enabling him to continue. On other such occasions (the study
H.B. Nisbet, Religion and Philosophy in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), A Cambridge Companion
to Goethe, 2002, 21831, esp.221, 225f.
40 In the Mystische Theologie ofSamuel Richter, in the 1703 edition of which the theologian
and theosophist Gottfried Arnold wrote a Verteidigung; cit Zimmermann, vol. I, 189.
41 To Eckermann, 1 September 1829, AA 371; cit. Nisbet, op.cit. 121.
39
421
at Easter, the Anmutige Gegend, the Klassische Walpurgurgisnacht and the

Euphorion episode), when the harmonising cosmos has responded to Fausts
defiant efforts to understand it, Goethe has deployed music to extend the
range of language. It serves both to differentiate the voices in these dialogic
interactions between the cosmos and earth, and to realise the underlying conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony. In Grablegung music also functions in
these ways, as the angels reaffirm cosmic harmony and a Divine love which
sustains it, and the irren which marks Fausts course through life, against
Mephistos negation ofCreation as worthless monotony and Faust as pointlessly striving grasshopper.
The conceptual metaphor of cosmic harmony also influences the fate of
Mephisto.42 As Zimmermann points out, even in 1814 (in a letter to the physicist and chemist J.S.C. Schweigger) Goethe defended his early cosmological
concepts; and was gratified to find the principle of polarity, first gained from
his earliest Hermetic reading, confirmed in Schweiggers inter-disciplinary
publications.43 In the Lucifer myth which Goethe describes as part of his
own home-made cosmology, Lucifer is separated from both Man and the
angels closest to God by his inability to participate in the particular polarity
which Goethe saw as the rhythm of all cosmic life, the regelmigen Pulsen
between verselbsten and entselbstigen, self-assertion and self-giving; since
Mephisto is monodirectional and capable only of the first.44 Gretchen has
accurately observed da er nicht mag eine Seele lieben (3490); and when
confronted with his opposites the angels and the power of Divine love, he
feels the attraction only in a form then seen as a grotesque parody oflove. He
has no other capacity to interact with them, and none to grow and develop.
42 Cp. Schne in particular, who emphasises the influence of early Christian thought and
heretical theology, especially Origenes, which suggested the devil was to be included
in a kind of cosmic amnesty (78893). H.-L. explains how extensively Goethe modifies this (116568); and R.C. Zimmermann (Klarheit, Streben, Wiederbringung: Drei
Beytrge zum Verstndnis von Goethes Faust, DVJS 74 (2000), 41364) has shown in
detail how selective Goethe was in drawing on these sources, and how far influenced
by others.
43 Letter to Schweigger, 25 April 1814, AA 19, 731ff.; cit. Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des
jungen Goethe, vol.I. 188f.
44 These ideas were formed in his Leipzig period; cf. end of DuW 8, AA 10, 38588; cit.
Zimmermann I, 88ff..
422
Chapter Ten
So he cannot participate in the processes which make up cosmic harmony, and

is left behind to be simply a necessary discord in the cosmic scheme ofthings.
In all this, a strong element of irony is injected by the staginess ofthe scene:
the fracas with tumbling devils, exploding roses, the Hell mouth bottom left
and the blaze of Divine light, top right. But as elsewhere, irony need not
invalidate the events depicted: they are myths, but they are approximations
to something important, otherwise difficult to convey. And then of course
the angels and the readers still have the problem which (here literally) lies
between the two Vorstellungsarten: Faust.
Some late twentieth-century critical studies saw considerable problems
with the kind of multiple discourse which Gaier showed was so important
in eighteenth-century epistemology, and which Goethe encapsulated in his
description of Faust as diese sehr ernsten Scherze.45 Although older studies
tend to find this ambiguity both acceptable and apt for purpose (Trunz,
for instance, speaks of Goethes attitude in his late works as Sympathie und
Ironie zugleich [] Anerkennen und Ironisieren zugleich (p.610)),46 others
have received this diversity as gross discrepancy. In some cases, this refers to
discrepancy between matter and manner: Hannelore Schlaffer, for instance,
speaks of Goethes Respektlosigkeit towards the traditions of his age, and
finds that these scenes alternate between berzogene Feierlichkeit oder
Albernheit [overdone solemnity or silliness], and ruin the seriousness ofden
hohen Ton and das hohe Gefhl of the finale.47 But for Goethe, singleness
of expression would have constituted an inadequate unisono for a subject
so vast in its implications yet so implacably concrete as death and what happens around and after it. It is also misleading to speak of a finale. Neither of
these scenes presents a finale (especially not a full operatic apotheosis),48 but
a structure for continuity.
45 Letter to W. von Humboldt, 17 March 1832, AA 21, 1043.

46 [sympathy and irony at the same time respect and ironisation at the same time] Trunz,
610; as well as Gaier (1994), cf. e.g. also Ehrhard Bahrs classic study, Die Ironie im
Sptwerk Goethes (1975), 17ff. and passim.
47 Paradies und Parodie: Die letzten Szenen in Goethes letzten Werken, Brown/Lee/
Saine, 10211, esp.105f., 110. Cf. also Jane K. Brown, Goethes Faust: The German Tragedy
(1986), esp.249.
48 Brown, op.cit., 247.
423
Elsewhere, the problems appear to be centred on the coexistence of older

and newer world-views and symbols, in Faust generally and in these scenes
particularly. Jane K. Brown finds that Leibnizian cosmology (as a belief rather
than a symbolic representation) has been overlaid by Hegelian dialectic, and
that the Mater Gloriosa (as Catholic icon) sits oddly in a secular play about a
universe governed by scientific principles of development.49 Christoph Jamme
sees the traditional mythologies and cosmologies drawn on in Faust II as a
defence of myth against scientific reasoning;50 and Franziska Schler has
argued that the concept of cosmic harmony represents a restorative utopia,
a consoling counterpart to a perception of the pure immanence of modern
society.51 Goethes treatment oftraditional religious concepts and figures is perceived by many (e.g. Werner Keller and Jochen Schmidt)52 as parody; whereas
R.H. Stephenson argues that they are not parodies, but part of Goethes
diachronic perspective on Western culture and thought.53 Most studies take
the view that, despite the Christian icons, this is not a play incorporating
Christian views; and that Goethe is creating his own mythology.54 Some
critical discussion is couched in terms ofde-mythologising religious figures
and symbols; yet the same essays often also give the impression that Goethe is
re-mythologising them, especially through the incorporation of similar but
49 Faust, in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Goethe, 2002, 84100, esp.86,
91, 100.
50 alter Tage fabelhalt Gebild: Goethes Mythen-bastelei im Faust II, Brown/Lee/Saine
(1994), 20718.
51 Franziska Schler, Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahre, in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust, Parts I and II (2001),
esp.1846.
52 W.K., Gre und Elend, Schuld und Gnade: Fausts Ende in Wiederholter Spiegelung,
in W.K. (ed.), Aufstze zu Faust II (1992), 31644; & Jochen Schmid, Die katholische
Mythologie und ihre mystische Entmythologisierung in der Schluszene des Faust II,
ibid., 384417. Both essays originally date from 1990.
53 The Diachronic Solidity of Goethes Faust, in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to
Goethes Faust Parts I & II, 2001, 24370, esp.2646.
54 A long tradition of criticism along these lines may be represented e.g. by Emrich: Die
religise Symbolik ist durch und durch zu einer Goetheschen Symbolik geworden,
op.cit. 417 (1957ff.); Durrani, op.cit. 16573, offers a systematic comparison ofChristian
figures and traditions with Goethes play (1977).
424
Chapter Ten
more general ideas from Neoplatonism.55 There is little concensus about the
purpose this re-mythologising is intended to serve. However, Gaiers argument shows that Goethe meant what he said when explaining his approach
to complex issues:
Da sich gar manches unserer Erfahrungen nicht ganz rund aussprechen und direkt mitteilen lt, so habe ich seit langem das Mittel gewhlt, durch einander gegenbergestellte
und sich gleichsam abspiegelnde Gebilde den geheimen Sinn dem Aufmerkenden zu
offenbaren.56
[Since so many of our experiences cannot be definitively expressed and directly communicated, I have for a long time now worked by revealing the hidden meaning to the
attentive reader in constructs set in antithesis to each other and as it were mirrored in
each other].
So the reader must n.v. come to terms with the idea that Goethes view of
progress in human knowledge was not monolinear, and his means of depicting an approach to the cosmos and ultimate truth was not an either/or, but
a both/and.
This is a crucial factor to bear in mind when we look at the figures Goethe
selected for Grablegung and Bergschluchten, and at the kind of epistemology
he is suggesting here. These are, after all, suggestions and projections about
what humans know, or can envisage with human faculties, about the world
at the limits of their scope. Since almost two centuries of drastic change
have passed since he wrote these scenes, we must be prepared for odd combinations of affinity and alienation between his views and those of our day
(which are in any case not homogeneous). In these scenes he has used figures who would (however problematically) be received as Christian (Mater
Gloriosa, anchorites, angels, devils). But he has also (pace Stephenson) been
highly selective in omitting Christ as Redeemer;57 and has put his selected
55
56
57
E.g. Werner Keller, op.cit. (1991), 31644, esp.339; Jochen Schmidt, op.cit. (1991),
384417, esp.38995; also Christoph Jamme, alter Tage fabelhaft Gebild: Goethes
Mythenbastelei im Faust II, in Brown/Lee/Saine, 20718; and Schler, op.cit.,
esp.1846.
Letter to K.J.L. Iken, 27 September 1827, AA 21, 763, cit. Gaier, 158.
Certain parts of church tradition, especially Roman Catholic Mariology, also focus on
Mary as Mother of God and thus (more eminently than Christ) the prime means of
salvation. But this extreme view is oflater origin, renewed in the nineteenth century and
later, according to the tastes ofthe reigning Pope. The original focus on Mary dates from
425
Christian icons in a particular relation to figures of his own creation (Faust,

Gretchen). So we have both traditional elements (traditional in the sense of
already known and easily recognisable) and figures familiar from the play but
now in a new context; who, on Leibnizian authority (though in the teeth of
all decent dramatic tradition for post mortem appearances), are in energetic
health albeit in slightly peculiar form.
Although Leibnizs cosmology continued to underpin his mythology, and
although he has here drawn on Biblical and ecclesiastical tradition too, Goethe
had remained open to developments in scientific knowledge, and actively
pursued them himselffor the greater part ofhis mature life. So again we must
expect a combination offamiliar and alien, especially since Goethes relation
to his own age was by this time highly complex.58 As we saw in Chapter Nine
above from his reactions to Lucretius, he viewed myth (poetic or otherwise)
and science as complementary, not mutually destructive, means to account for
the totality of all living things, at least until such distant time as the sciences
could offer a coherent and complete account of the whole universe. Daniel
Steuer thus speaks of Goethes belief that science once developed out of
poetry, and that one day these two human faculties might well meet again
to their mutual advantage.59 Goethes particular pleasure in Schweiggers
interdisciplinary scientific research seems to have derived from the impression that it brought such collaborative and complete understanding nearer.
But his letter also affirms his own pre-scientific modes of understanding, and
reveals a view of relations between the earth and the infinite which now seems
extraordinary, but which is consistent with his efforts to keep both received
wisdom and new ways of understanding in interaction with each other:
58
59
the doctrinally defining debates ofthe second century AD; in order to defend the real
manhood of Christ against heretical contentions that it was merely symbolic, writers
such as Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian emphasised Marys role as the bodily Mother of
God and thus corrective to the disobedience of Eve. See e.g. F.L. Cross (ed.), Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997, 7881.
See esp. Daniel Steuer, In defence of experience: Goethes natural investigations and
scientific culture, in H.B. Nisbet in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Goethe (2002), 16078 passim; and Nisbet, ibid., 21931 passim; also Cyrus Hamlin,
Goethes Faust and the Philosophers, in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes
Faust [] (2001), 22142, esp.239.
Steuer, op.cit., 160.
426
Chapter Ten
Ob ich gleich eigentlich auf diese Welt angewiesen bin, und meine Blicke nicht
gern ber meinen Gesichtskreis erhebe; so ist es mir doch hchst erwnscht, einem
Swedenborgischen Geiste gleich, durch die Augen solcher Mnner das Universum zu
beschauen, die berufen sind, die erscheinende Welt bis ins Unendliche zu verfolgen.
Da der Mensch aller geistigen Organe bedrfe, wenn er sich an das Ungeheuere
wagt, gestehen wir gern. Der Philosoph, der Mathematiker, der Chemiker, der Physiker,
drfen da wohl gemeinschaftlich handeln, und eine solche Vielseitigkeit macht das
Verdienst Ihres Aufsatzes [], da er sich als Resultat der Bemhungen eines freundschaftlichen Zirkels ankndiget []
Seit unser vortrefflicher Kant mit drren Worten sagt: es lasse sich keine Materie
ohne Anziehen und Abstoen denken (das heit doch wohl, nicht ohne Polaritt), bin
ich sehr beruhigt, unter dieser Autoritt meine Weltanschauungen fortsetzen zu knnen,
nach meinen frhesten berzeugungen, an denen ich niemals irre geworden bin.
Ferner nehme ich um desto lieber teil an Ihren Forschungen, als der groe Umfang
von Erfahrungen, hier zusammengestellt, uns ein ewiges Leben fhlen lt und
verheit.60
[Although I am by nature a man ofthis world, and am reluctant to look beyond what is
within my range of vision, I nonetheless feel it highly desirable, like one ofSwedenborgs
spirits, to contemplate the universe through the eyes of men whose vocation it is to
follow the phenomenal world into infinity [= beyond finite limits].
We readily accept that Man needs all his mental resources when he ventures to
approach the Unknown [sic]. Philosophers, mathematicians, chemists and physicists
are well-justified in working together in such matters, and such a polymath approach
is the strength of your essay, particularly since it is presented as the result of the efforts
of a circle of friends. Since the excellent Kant gave as his tersely formulated view that
matter could not be envisaged without attraction and repulsion (which I take to mean
not without polarity), I am encouraged to maintain my views of the cosmos with the
support of such an authority, in accordance with my early convictions which I have
never seen reason to abandon.
My pleasure in following your researches is all the greater because the very wide
range of experience gathered in this article gives us a sense and a promise of an eternal
life.]
Goethe here envisages the universe as a continuum with the earth and with
the life we know: i.e. the underlying concept of the universe here is again
Leibnizs perfect continuity ofsimultans and successifs.61 This makes some
sense of the startling suggestion that the scientific vocation is to pursue the
study of the phenomenal world into infinity. The word here translated as
60 Letter to J.S.C. Schweigger, 25 April 1814, AA 19, 732.
61 See also H.B. Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (1972), 6ff., who points out
that Neo-Platonic tradition offered a similar view.
427
Unknown actually means colossal, or monstrous; Goethe seems to have

in mind something very close to the concept of the Sublime as envisaged
by Kant and amended by Herder in Kalligone (1800). This includes our
response to things we may be able to approach mathematically, but not understand because of their size, complexity or similar qualities;62 and here seems
to mean things at the very limits of our knowledge and beyond. In such a
context, Goethes comment that such research gives hope of an eternal life
looks less like a bizarre religious statement, and more like a declaration of
confidence that human knowledge and understanding of the universe will
extend infinitely, since the (Leibnizian) universe extends infinitely. Again, this
is in accordance with Herders concept of the Sublime as Zuckert explains
it: Herder denies Kants contention that we lose our respect for the Sublime
as we come to understand it, and asserts that we appreciate it all the more as
our understanding progresses.63
It would hardly be defensible to advance this Leibnizian model as definitive, because there are other important factors too: e.g. Neoplatonist thought
(on heavenly hierarchies, God, the soul and redemption),64 the fluctuating
influence ofKant, Hegel and other Idealist philosophers;65 and the legacy of
mysticism and Hermetic thought to which Goethe declared himself still loyal
in his letter to Schweigger.66 But the Leibnizian model does deal with recent
suggestions that the infinity towards which the figures ofBergschluchten move
is either a void or a delusion;67 and it supports the conclusion that Goethe
viewed the universe as a dynamic, organic and divine whole, and extended
62 In Herders Kalligone; see esp. Rachel Zuckert, Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on
the Sublime, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Crticism 61 (2003), 21732, 21921, 2248
and passim.
63 Zuckert, op.cit. 220ff.
64 See esp. Schmidt, op.cit., 38995 and passim.; Hlscher-Lohmeyer, 11638ff., and Schne,
779ff.
65 Cf. Cyrus Hamlin, Goethes Faust and the Philosophers, in Bishop (ed.), A Companion
[], 22142: The central concerns of post-Kantian Idealism are clearly reflected in all
aspects ofthe existential dilemma defined by Faust for himself, [] yet the philosophical
programs developed within the context of Romanticism are all challenged and called
into question in the drama (239); also Steuer and Nisbet, cit. above.
66 See esp. R.C. Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, vol. I, 188ff., vol.II, 92ff.,
and passim.
67 See e.g. Brown/Brown, Schlaffer, in Brown/Lee Saine; to some extent also Schmidt
(op.cit. 417), Gail K. Hart, Das Ewig-Weibliche nasfhret dich: Feminine Leadership
428
Chapter Ten
this Leibnizian continuum to the parts of the universe as yet outside human
perception. Nisbet points out that not many shared the comprehensiveness of
Goethes concept even at the time: [Goethes] conviction that the mind of man
is parallel to and inseparable from the natural world, and that nature embraces
the divinity as an immanent creative principle, was shared by relatively few.68
But since this is Goethes play, it is his concepts that we have to deal with.
Few critical accounts have followed Nisbet in showing how all-pervasive
Leibnizs thought remained in Goethes cosmology. But some have noted
that Bergschluchten presents a world with vertical and horizontal relations,
and have related it (though without consideration of the link with music)
to the Leibnizian cosmic harmony either in structure or in terms of the way
the individual units move within it.69 I would like to take up this thread in
connection with the conceptual metaphor of harmony and its connection
with music, but with two additions. Firstly, Goethe has been at pains, in
Wilhelm Meister and Novelle, to show the cosmos not only as harmonious,
but as actively harmonising. This happens here too: the way the figures of
Bergschluchten move within their environment and in relation to each other
presents an enactment ofthe polarity and Steigerung by which, in Goethes
view of things, this harmonisation takes place and forms the dynamic continuum between earth and the universe beyond. The second rider concerns an
aspect ofFaust and ofGoethes preoccupations which has received rather less
in Goethes Faust and Sacher-Masochs Venus, Brown/Lee/Saine 11222, and Schler,
op.cit. 18286.
68 Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (1972), 6f; cit Peter D. Smith, Was die
Welt im Innersten zusammenhlt: Scientific Themes in Goethes Faust, in Bishop
(ed.), Companion to Goethes Faust [] (2001), 194220, esp.195, qv. See also R.C.
Zimmermann, Klarheit, Streben, Wiederbringung: Drei Beitrge zum Verstndnis
von Goethes Faust, DVJS 74 (2000), 41364, esp.4624.
69 Apart from Gaiers emphasis on the interplay between vertical and horizontal relations and
between other complementary opposites (in Brown/Lee/Saine, 158ff. and passim (1994)),
Werner Keller (op.cit., 1990, esp.339) draws attention to Goethes Monadologie and its
formative influence on the mythology ofthe last scene ofFaust; Jochen Schmidt (1990)
describes Bergschluchten as Goethes eigenen Kosmos (op.cit., 412f.); Franziska Schler
(2001) points to the important functions of a micro-macrocosmic order in Goethes
late works, albeit as counterpart to his depiction of some very unharmonious trends of
the modern world (Progress and Restorative Utopia in Faust II and Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahre, in Bishop (ed.), Companion to Goethes Faust [], 169f. and passim).
429
attention recently:70 Goethes awareness that all human concepts are dependent on media, especially on language. If he viewed the universe and human
understanding as a continuum (i.e. the physical and non-physical world as a
continuum), then the limits of current human comprehension and current
human knowledge are also the limits of current human media: language,
mathematics, visual depiction, music, and (couched in any of them) metaphor, the means by which we approach phenomena as yet beyond scientific
understanding:
sei und die Gegenstnde niemals unmittelbar, sondern nur im Widerscheine ausdrcke.
Dieses ist besonders der Fall, wenn von Wesen die Rede ist, welche an die Erfahrung
nur herantreten Sie lassen sich nicht festhalten, und doch soll man von ihnen reden;
man sucht daher alle Arten von Formeln auf, um ihnen wenigstens gleichnisweise
beizukommen.71
[We never give sufficient consideration to the fact that language can in fact only be symbolical and metaphorical, and can never express its objects directly but only indirectly.
This is especially true when speaking of entities which we encounter only at the margins
of our experience They cannot be fully grasped, yet we need to speak ofthem; and so
we search out all manner of formulae, to capture them in figurative speech at least].
Man is driven, he suggests, to find new Vorstellungsarten and new discourses

to extend human understanding:
Das Wahre, mit dem Gttlichen identisch, lt sich niemals von uns direct erkennen:
wir schauen es nur im Abglanz, im Beispiel, Symbol, in einzelnen und verwandten
Erscheinungen; wir warden es gewahr als unbegreifliches Leben und knnen dem
Wunsch nicht entsagen, es dennoch zu begreifen.72
70 Two exceptions are published in Bishop (ed.), Companion to Goethes Faust [] (2001):
Ritchie Robertson, Literary Techniques and Aesthetic Texture in Faust, 127, 17f. and
passim; and Martin Swales, The Character and Characterisation ofFaust, ibid., 2855,
esp.4053.
71 Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil, Nachbarliche Verhltnisse: Schlubetrachtung ber
Sprache und Terminologie, AA 16, 203f. In his subsequent list of types of formula, he
adds mathematics to the range of media resources.
72 Versuch einer Witterungslehre: Einleitendes und Allgemeines, AA 17, 639, cit. Gaier,
op.cit., 158f.
430
Chapter Ten
[We can never directly perceive the truth, which is congruent with the divine; we can
only contemplate it as reflected, exemplified, symbolised, in individual and related
phenomena. We become aware of it as an incomprehensible life form and yet cannot
relinquish the desire to understand it].
Bergschluchten presents Goethes attempts to depict the unbegreifliches Leben

[incomprehensible life form] in the cosmos as seen from (just) beyond earth.
In previous chapters we have repeatedly seen how music functions in his work
as a metaphorical and actual extension oflanguage, along with gesture, silence,
and other means to suggest the borderlands of experience. Since Shaftesbury,
the human voice and all its sound resources have become part ofthe concept
of cosmic harmony; these voices, their Vorstellungsarten, and the relations
between them, make up their cumulative significance as a harmony dessen
Theile sich nach und nach uern. But here Goethe is depicting a region at the
very edge oflanguage- and media-dependent earth. He is perforce remaining
within language and theatrical resources to write such a script; but the progression ofthis sequence is inevitably towards the end oflanguage, the end of
media, and the end of metaphor even the metaphor of cosmic harmony.
Harmonious sequence and the end of metaphor

Bergschluchten is a scene oftransition from earth; and the frame for this transition is bounded by the highest mountain slopes of earth and, as HlscherLohmeyer points out, the blauen, ausgespannten Himmelszelt [outspanned
blue canopy of the sky] (11999).73 The action thus takes place between earth
and inner space, rather than outer; i.e. in a region still envisageable by human
mind and myth, but not ultimate. Hlscher-Lohmeyer also points out that
Goethe thought of blue as a colour which, though having no power and
substance in itself, attracted the mind and the eye into it. Everyone in this
scene is looking or moving towards and beyond it, led by the Mater Gloriosa
as loving both the Divine and infinite which exists above and beyond it, and
73
H.-L., MA 18.1, 1179f.
431
the humans who yearn beneath it.74 Bergschluchten thus covers only the first
stages in their progression; but it completes the unfinished business of the
Prolog im Himmel and of the Stimme von oben at the end of Faust I by
showing the nature and rationale of Gretchens continuing existence as well
as Fausts.
The relations between the figures of Bergschluchten are both those of
vertical hierarchy and those of sequence, i.e. the simultans and successifs
of Leibnizs cosmic harmony, where opposites interact with and harmonise
each other, then move upwards and onwards into new combinations and
new harmonies. As with Herders sequences, there is more emphasis on the
successifs and on progression through a sequence of contrasts. Within the
permeable frame of mountain tops and valleys and the canopy ofheaven, the
figures are grouped in ascending order as Patres, Angels, and Penitents surrounding the Mater Gloriosa. But these groupings are not distinct: they shift
and overlap. Nor are the movements smoothly continuous: these figures pause,
and occasionally move downwards as well as up. The anchorites are arranged
in ascending sequence in their mountain cells (SD 11844), and the Pater
Ecstaticus floats up and down within their levels. The Pater Seraphicus overlaps and interacts with the lowest ofthe angel groups; the Doktor Marianus is
high enough to see the Mater Gloriosa and the group ofPenitent Women who
surround her; the various hierarchies of angel move between the Patres and
the Penitent Women; and Faust moves from one group of angels to another,
and will potentially move higher still to follow the erstwhile Gretchen, close
to the Mater Gloriosa. This is a dynamic presentation ofthe Chain ofBeing
in hierarchy and in sequence, in which each unit has its own Vorstellungsart
and its own characteristic and appropriate discourse. So we need to see, and
hear, them all clearly in order to grasp the relations between them, and what
they represent cumulatively.75 Various kinds of language and verse form are
74 H.-L., MA 18.1, 1179f.

75 Some commentators envisage this as a vertical movement upwards (e.g. Trunz, 623;
Williams, Goethes Faust (1987), 208). But this would make it difficult to see their
progression, their non-uniform movements, and their cumulative sequence; the problem would be solved by arranging them in Leibnizian order, moving upwards and
onwards, i.e. from low left to high right stage. Hlscher-Lohmeyer points out that the
rocky heights and ravines intermingle with the air and clouds, so that no clear boundary
432
Chapter Ten
supplemented with various kinds of song, so that we hear how each particular
voice articulates its Vorstellungsart, and hear the change when they interact
with another view.
The anchorites opening chorus describes the Mountain Gorges of the
title, not as wilderness but as harmonised Nature of the kind presented in
Novelle, complete with tamed lions. The anchorites occupy the position of
Shaftesburys onlooker, at the heart of Nature and celebrating the Divine
in Nature. It makes sense to have this chorus sung: the Echo (SD 11844)
suggests an answering response from the natural landscape, and an echo is
much easier to produce from sung sounds than from spoken language.76
This is also a moment of unified calm and balance, a temporary harmony
which we need to hear as such before divergent views are presented on the
Divine and on human approaches to it. The first single voice, that of the
Pater Ecstaticus, is quite different: intense to the point of insanity, his view
much closer to erotic than divine love, a version of physical ecstasy derived
from pain, and seeking to annihilate the physical aspects of his humanity
altogether (1185465). He is offset by the Pater Profundus, tiefe Region; who
in a longer hymn celebrates rocks, forest, lightning and raging torrents as
Liebesboten, messengers of the love of God, not hostile forces (1186689);
he prays for spiritual enlightenment, but is at home observing Nature deep
in his gorge. Whether we identify them individually or not,77 it becomes
cumulatively clear that these two Patres complement and balance each other;
and that the Pater Seraphicus, mittlere Region who follows is different again,
because unlike the other two he responds both to the earth around him and
to the spirit world (11890925), and in doing so combines the best insights
of his two predecessors. As in the Prolog im Himmel, where the Archangels
perception of the earth had to be supplemented by die unteren Gesnge,78
between air and earth is marked: qv, 1163f.; Schne also (793) keeps the precise manner
of upward movement vague.
76 Cf. Schnes comment (796) on the popularity ofthe echo effect in Barock music. This
was used for example in cantata treatments ofJephthas Daughter, to depict her time in
the mountains bewailing her foreshortened life before returning as sacrificial victim to
fulfil her fathers vow.
77 See e.g. H.-L., 11715; Schne, 796f., Trunz 630.
78 See Chapter One above, and Canisius, 215f.
433
spirit eyes have to be supplemented by earthly visual organs.79 This is not

only a reference to the mutual dependence of spirit and body; it conforms to
Goethes insistence that knowledge cannot be merely conceptual, but must
also engage with empirical experience.80 The Pater Seraphicus has experience
ofthe earth as a human adult, the Selige Knaben (as children who died shortly
after birth) have none. It is he who establishes the nature of the progression
we see as a gradual growth in knowledge and understanding; he releases the
Selige Knaben from contemplation of the earth through him, to grow and
develop sustained by an increasing perception of Divine love (119235). The
voice ofthe Pater Seraphicus contrasts (whether he sings or speaks) with the
childish piping of the Selige Knaben; they are both human and the lowest
level of angelic life; and this dual identity is harmonised in their Ring o
Roses chorus round the highest mountain peaks (1192633).
At this point Faust is brought into the scene by the angels who have
just retrieved him from Mephistopheles. They now appear as two distinct
but complementary groups: the (Vollendetere) Engel who carry Fausts soul
and gravely explain the issues at stake in its fate, and the Jngere Engel who
bubble over with pride at what they have accomplished and shout in celebration. But both of them are involved in deciding what to do with him for the
time being; it is the excited Younger Angels who point out the role played in
their heroics by the roses from the Penitent Women, and who also, when the
Mature Angels complain of Fausts remaining earthly elements, suggest that
he be settled among the other half-humans, the Selige Knaben (1195489).
This section is in some ways reminiscent of the doubtful solemnities of the
Pdagogischer Provinz, and has an air of Juniors and Prefects comments on
which form a new pupil shall be assigned to (plus satisfactory progress report).
But again these are myths, used with mild humour, to express a process of
post-earth growth and learning otherwise very difficult to concretise. The
difference between the voices of the two groups, with their complementary
views ofFausts rescue and their combination to produce an interim solution,
79 See H.-L., 1173f. on Swedenborg and his mystic thought; also Goethes letter to
Schweigger, cit. above.
80 See Steuer, Nisbet in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, and Peter D. Smith, Was
die Welt im Innersten zusammenhlt: Scientific Themes in Goethes Faust, 194219,
esp.217.
434
Chapter Ten
is partly conveyed in the verse forms: each has their distinct metre, but after
the decision the Selige Knaben carry on in the metre ofthe Younger Angels
(11981ff.). This aural differentiation could be rendered in several ways (for
instance ifboth groups of angels spoke in different ways, and the Selige Knaben
then sang their chorus of welcome); but aural differentiation there needs to
be. The process we are seeing is, again, an embodiment of the interaction of
polarity and Steigerung plus an interim synthesis in the chorus, the processes
ofthe harmonious and harmonising cosmos. And although this is a Goethean
myth developed from Leibniz, it cannot be said that these figures are very
far away from their traditional functions.81 The different categories of angels
traditionally serve God in different ways and at different levels ofhierarchy,
and most ofthe saints he includes have characteristics of identifiable figures;82
so again we are presented with familiar icons, but in new constellations and
connections.
This becomes even clearer when the next group appear. They are introduced, celebrated and finally ushered onwards by the Doctor Marianus. He is a
more harmonious as well as a higher figure than the other anchorites, combining ecstatic adoration ofthe Mater Gloriosa and concern for Gretchen and the
other Bsserinnen (Penitent Women) with a strong consciousness and utterance ofhis own Vorstellungsart. He is focused on the Mater Gloriosa rather
than on the ultimate Divine, so remains below Gretchen and the Penitent
Women in the hierarchy of this realm. But he expresses a blend of sacred
and earthly love (12001ff.) which marks an advance on the tortured earthiness of some of the anchorites, especially the Pater Ecstaticus. The Doctor
Marianus also has more variable verse-forms and utterances: he announces,
comments, expounds, adores, pleads, and reacts audibly to the appearance of
the group (112013ff.). The Penitent Women show similar complexity. They
each have their particular characteristics, but are united in an unusual capacity for selfless love of God as well as ardent love of men, and capacity for
kindness to each other their initial chorus has an echo ofGretchens original prayer to the Mater Dolorosa (12035f.) and their trio chorus (12061ff.)
pleads on her behalf. Gretchen speaks first in an echo of her original prayer
81
82
Cf. Goethes comments to Eckermann, 6 June 1831, AA 24, 504.

On saints, see H.-L. and Schne, loc.cit.; on angels, see ibid., also OED under cherubim
seraphim.
435
to the Mater Dolorosa (12069ff.) and then in a palpably more expositional

and confident tone (and different metre) as she describes Fausts new form of
being and pleads to be allowed to teach him (12084ff.). Together this group
constitute another varied but harmonious unit, including the male voice of
the Doctor Marianus and the childish tones ofthe Selige Knaben (12076ff.).
Again, whatever combination of speech, recitation, song or chant is chosen,
they need to be heard as such.
This part ofthe scene has also caused controversy on several counts. A large
part ofthe problem again seems to be with Goethes multiple Vorstellungsart
and multiple discourse; and one bone of contention is the strong element of
sexual love which has made its way into these allegedly heavenly regions.83
All these women, Gretchen included, have been remarkable on earth for
their strong sexual instincts;84 there is a very strong sexual element in the
ecstatic adoration and love of the Doctor Marianus for the Mater Gloriosa
(to say nothing of the masochistic ecstasies of the Pater Ecstaticus). But an
effort of cultural empathy is required here for a post-Freudian reader. In
the mystic tradition of Christianity, and in other religions, earthly love and
spiritual were regarded not only as not separate, but as mutually illuminating as a reading ofthe Biblical Songs ofSolomon demonstrates, and as even
Mephisto knew (3336f.). This idea was very much live not only in Neoplatonic
thought,85 but in the vein of mysticism which circulated in Hermetic lore in
Goethes time. Zimmermann cites, for instance, the four forms of divine ecstasy
(Furores) listed by Agrippa von Nettesheim as inspired respectively by the
Muses, Dionysus, Apollo and Venus. The latter, Nettesheim explains, takes on
aspects ofJupiter: male and female attributes are combined into an experience
ofthe divine: Im hchsten, glhenden Grad der Liebe (Venus) begegnet die
Seele Gott ( Jupiter), dem sie hnlich geworden ist.86 Zimmermann follows
up the many ramifications of this idea in Wanderers Sturmlied; it arguably
83
This is notably the case in some essays in Brown/Lee/Saine (Brown/Brown, Schlaffer,

Schweitzer, Hart), and to some extent in Jochen Schmidt, op.cit.
84 See esp. Hlscher-Lohmeyer, 11805.
85 H.-L., 1180f.
86 [At the highest, most ardent stage of love (Venus) the soul meets with God ( Jupiter),
whom it has come to resemble]; Zimmermann, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe, vol.II
(1979), 925. Z. traces the influence of Agrippa von Nettesheim (14861535) and his
Occulta Philosophia, Book III, esp. on Wanderers Sturmlied.
436
Chapter Ten
underlies Ganymed as well, and influences the Doctor Marianus combination

of self-giving concern for the Penitents as well as his heilige[] Liebeslust for
Marias various feminine aspects, including her status as Gttin. This is not a
realm where sexual love is made purely spiritual, as some critics seem to have
expected, but where sexual love becomes perfectly combined with divine so
that the two are indistinguishable. It is thus not wholly misleading to interpret
the attracting power ofGretchen and the Mater Gloriosa as partly sexual; but
it is wholly misleading to assume that the women are continually retreating
into a void and thus in a sexual sense leading on Faust, the Doctor Marianus
and the other anchorites.87
It is the function ofthe Mater Gloriosa to extend Gnade, forgiving grace.
She does so first to the Penitent Women, whose ardent pursuit of earthly love
(as prostitutes) has put them at odds with the absolute justice which envisaged
Hell and devils. But in the Biblical and Apocryphal narratives through which
they are known, they are also notable for reacting with forceful independence and defiance of convention to pursue the love of God when they met
it, either in the form ofChrist or in the form ofthe Virgin Mary. The Mater
Gloriosa seems here to be a harmonising force to redress imbalance, freeing
them from penitence so that they may continue in die Ewigkeiten (12064),
with their capacity for both loves no longer conflicting. Goethes unfortunate
concept ofdas Ewig-Weibliche, and the cloud of critical dust and feathers it
has raised, has tended to draw attention away from the interesting fact that
by Goethes own criterion of qualification for reappearance in the afterlife as
a groe Entelechie, this group of women qualify: they have a generic name,
as Penitents, but also an individual identity from Biblical and other narratives.88 Given Gretchens large capacity for love of Faust and love of God,
and given the horror of her fate on earth and the freshness of her durable
effect on Faust, it does indeed appear angemessen [appropriate] (12068) that
she should be harmonised by forgiving grace, and enabled to continue her
loving existence with the other women in this post-earth harmony. All these
87 This is the case in varying degrees in some essays in Brown/Lee/Saine (Schlaffer,

Schweitzer, Hart), and in Brown, Faust, in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), Cambridge Companion
to Goethe, 99.
88 See esp. H.-L., 1181ff., and Goethes comment to Eckermann, 1 September 1829, AA 24,
371 (cit. above).
437
figures, including the Mater Gloriosa, are drawn onwards by their love ofthe
Divine, which is said by the Selige Knaben to lie at the end of their progression (11932f.). But when the Mater Gloriosa speaks to the newly forgiven/
harmonised Gretchen, and invites her to follow to hheren Sphren [higher
spheres] of understanding and love of the Divine, she is setting Gretchens
course, but not yet Fausts.
The perennial problems of reading das Ewig-Weibliche89 have often
hindered the consideration ofthis group as a group (i.e. Mater Gloriosa, the
Penitent Women, Gretchen, and the Doctor Marianus). Discussion of the
feminine principle can lead to a degree of abstraction and generalisation
which focuses on Gretchen and/or the Mater Gloriosa in their relation to
Faust, and usually excludes the others: as Becker-Cantarino complains (190),
the term needs elucidation rather than evocative repetition. A variant ofthis
abstraction is a quasi-psychological perspective which envisages Gretchen/
Mater Gloriosa as a projection or wish-fulfilment ofFaust/male principle, and
ignores the rest, as well as ignoring the strong corporeal existence and strong
personalities which Goethe has given all bar the Mater Gloriosa (whose distinctive character comes rather from her manifold depiction in art).90 Similar
blurring of a picture which Goethe took pains to make vivid and differentiated can result from main focus on Gretchens role as inspiration/redeemer
89 In addition to the edition commentaries by Hlscher-Lohmeyer, esp.118287, and

Schne, 80918, over the last two decades discussions ofthis episode ofBergschluchten
have included those in Brown/Lee/Saine (1994) (by Hannelore Schlaffer, Paradies und
Parodie: Die letzten Szenen in Goethes letzten Werken, 10211, esp.109ff.; Gail K.
Hart, Das Ewig-Weibliche nasfhret dich: Feminine Leadership in Goethes Faust and
Sacher-Masochs Venus, 11322; Christoph E. Schweitzer, Gretchen and the Feminine in
Goethes Faust, 13341; and Cyrus Hamlin, Tracking the Eternal Feminine in Goethes
Faust II, 14255); those in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion to Goethes Faust (2001)
(by Martin Swales, The Character and Characterization of Faust, 2855, esp.41f. &
52f.; Albert Destro, The Guilty Hero, or The Tragic Salvation ofFaust, 5675, esp.72f.;
and Ellis Dye, Figurations ofthe Feminine in Goethes Faust, 95121); and the contribution by Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Goethe and gender, in Lesley Sharpe (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Goethes Faust (2002), 17992.
90 Hart, and in qualified ways Becker-Cantarino and Dye; though none can be accused of
gynokratische Thesen und Programme (Schne, 817), and the two latter offer thoughtful and detailed consideration of most figures, though not as a group.
438
Chapter Ten
for Faust.91 This leaves Gretchen only a backward-looking role focused on

Faust; whereas, like the others, she is looking and moving forward and being
herself attracted upwards and onwards, as well as concerning herself with
Faust. Nonetheless, important points for consideration ofthis group emerge
from the discussions of recent years. One is the picture of upward moving,
dynamic progression, in which female and male attraction functions to create
a polarity and Steigerung which maintains the momentum.92 Another is the
all-pervasive sustaining power of love: whether this is taken to be sexual,
the Divine love which sustains Creation, or simply Gretchens for Faust.93
In particular, both Swales and Dye emphasise various both/and attributes
which figures in this group possess to a remarkable degree: their capacity for
vivid representation of both general significance and individual character,
and their striking combination of both profane and divine.94 Undoubtedly,
Goethe lived in an age of patriarchalism, entertained lofty ideas ofthe feminine as ideal, inspiration and helpmeet, and accordingly found it difficult to
behave well, or even aptly, to individual women.95 But as Becker-Cantarino
points out, Goethes general fictional depictions of gender were finely differentiated: she cites his gender dichotomy, his sophisticated gender discourse,
his negotiations of femininity, masculinity, androgyny, homoeroticism and
male bonding in the patriarchal setting of his age.96
It seems to me arguable that if the Mater Gloriosa, the Bsserinnen,
Gretchen and the Doctor Marianus are looked at as a group (which is how
they are presented), rather more of this sophisticated treatment of sexual
attraction, divine love, and gender rapprochement emerges than is normally
visible through the conceptual and other sorts of cloudiness created by das
Ewig-Weibliche (though this is of course Goethes term and responsibility).
Most particularly, the figures in this group are not redeemers; but in varying
degrees and contrasting styles givers and receivers oflove and forgiving grace,
and enablers and fosterers ofharmony and harmonisation. The Mater Gloriosa
91
92
93
94
95
96
Schweitzer, to some extent Dye, esp.10614.

Schne, 817; Hlscher-Lohmeyer, 1168, 1170; Swales, 41, Dye, 112.
This is mentioned passim by most, but especially developed by Schweitzer, 138ff.
Swales, p.52f., Dye pp.106ff.
See esp. Dye and Becker-Cantarino, passim.
Op.cit., 179.
439
is highest, by virtue of being closest to the Divine, and here generalised into
a personification oflove with which the Divine responds to the cosmos. The
women here do, unlike those in Wilhelm Meister and most other works, bond
with each other and with Gretchen, and form a league epitomised in their
trio chorus.97 Although the Doctor Marianus describes in detail the aspects
of the Mater Gloriosa which inspire the devotion of men (1199712012), he
then goes on to describe the weakness of imperfect humans and their need of
forgiving grace, in language which first denotes the female sinners (12013
19), and then in a different metre becomes non-gender-specific (1202031).
His final stanza, in this same metre, is addressed first to his fellow imperfect
mortals (120969), still in non-gendered terms, and then finally to the Mater
Gloriosa on his own behalf and theirs (121003). Again, the shifts in content
and import are marked by shifts in metre, and some of what he says (especially
his final apostrophe to the Mater Gloriosa) could be sung, provided the words
were clearly audible: this is a harmony of different Vorstellungsarten, not
simply a realm of pleasant sound. So although this scene hardly represents
the gender-bending experimentation of (e.g.) Virginia Woolf s Orlando, it
presents an advance on the almost mechanical harmonisation of the figures
at the end ofthe Wanderjahre. They are all married offto their complementary opposites in best end-of-novel tradition; whereas here Goethe presents
something new in his work, and new in Faust: a harmonious continuum which
can be sustained in die Ewigkeiten, unlike all the temporary cosmic harmonies we have seen before. It is maintained by the interaction of verselbsten
and entselbstigen between both sexes, and made sensuously concrete in the
interaction and blending of the different voices.
Faust has no voice in this scene he seems to be still in a pupate stage,
not yet an identity. He has come thus far by a combination ofhis own striving
(11936f.) and die Liebe gar von oben, pleaded for by Gretchen and enabled
by the Mater Gloriosa; and the angels are attempting to integrate him into
the harmonious hierarchy and sequence of this new realm. He has a model
of fostering, non-destructive male love before him in the Doctor Marianus
(12096ff.), who responds with self-transformation to the Retterblick [saving
gaze] ofthe Mater Gloriosa. He has been given his inspiring and harmonising
97 Cf. Becker-Cantarino, who points out that Goethes work abounds in lively women
characters who have no social context other than their relations to men (187).
440
Chapter Ten
opposite, Gretchen. But although his rapid growth is described by the angels,
we do not see him become fully fledged. It remains to be seen how far he
will allow himselfto be moved upward and onward in response to Gretchens
teaching; so it is appropriate that the Mater Gloriosa speaks, rather soberly,
to Gretchen in response to her prayer:
Komm! Hebe dich zu hheren Sphren!
Come! Rise into the higher sphere!
Wenn er dich ahnet, folgt er nach (12094f.) If he can sense you, he will seek you there.
The last word from an icon of the cosmos is thus addressed to Gretchen,
not Faust. But these figures are already moving away from mediated communication: Faust will not see Gretchen, but [we hope] sense her (ahnen),
as a spirit would.
The idea of a realm in which spirits communed directly soul to soul,
without benefit of the voice and language which characterised human communication, was current in the theology and philosophy of sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century France, as Salazar explains (writings with which Herder
was familiar).98 In Enlightenment semiotics, it became the end state in what
Wellbery describes as:
a notion of [] progressive semiosis moving from the pre-linguistic [] through distinct
cognition [] to a perfect philosophical language in which the semiotic character of
knowledge is shed []. This philosophical language corresponds to divine cognition
which is intuitive and perfectly distinct, an imageless and wordless language of pure
knowledge.99
As the scene moves towards the outer reaches of the cosmos as known to
myth and man, Goethe has to find some way of denoting such a realm. But as
Hamlin points out,100 this is not the first time that he has considered the limits
of language in relation to the Divine, to creation, and to ultimate truth: the
Logos scene and Fausts attempt to translate the New Testament (121637)
98 P.-J. Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIime sicle (1995), 717, also his sections Les
mtamorphoses de la voix, and Variations de la voix mystique. Cf. Chapters Three and
Four above.
99 Wellbery, Lessings Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason (1984),137.
100 Op.cit., Brown/Lee/Saine, 153.
441
has already raised these issues. Faust struggled to render the relation of the
Word, as the beginning of all life, to Sinn [meaning], Kraft [force], and
Tat [action]. Now the Chorus Mysticus proclaims a realm in which the various approximations of language, of metaphor, of all the farbiger Abglanz
and wiederholte Spiegelungen necessary on earth, are made redundant:
thought becomes event and action [Ereignis, getan] directly, without these
intermediaries. Goethe has gone beyond the metaphor of cosmic harmony,
beyond the idea of a harmonious sequence, and beyond Herders ideal of a
harmonious work which, in ending, invited us to hear a continuation ofthese
tones. The Chorus Mysticus is not only the last word in a language-based
human sphere, but also what Schne calls a mystischer Meta-Text101 the
first voiceless communication of a post-semiotic spirit realm.
At first it might look as though Goethes characters are left in the condition
ofhis citizens in Orpheus city, where die Tne verhallen, aber die Harmonie
bleibt. But Goethe took pains, in his final amendments, to remove any trace of
architectonic finality from his projected ultimate realm.102 When he changed
the title of the final lines from Chorus in Excelsis to Chorus Mysticus,103 he
maintained the harmonious and harmonising dynamics which the scene had
presented: his figures move erratically upwards and onwards, in a rhythm of
verselbsten and entselbstigen, forming a Herderean sequence: ein Ganzes
[], dessen Theile sich nach und nach uern.
101 Op.cit., 813.

102 See esp. Schne, 81318, Hlscher-Lohmeyer, 118587.
103 See Schne and H.-L., loc.cit., also the photograph of Goethes altered manuscript in
Bernhard Gajek et al., Goethes Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildern (1966), plate 517,
364 & 480 (commentary), and illustration on title page of Part IV above.
Conclusion
7. The opening section of Goethes Tonlehre (1810), reproduced by permission of the

Klassik Stiftung Weimar. This work remained as a draft. See note in List of Illustrations,
and Chapters Five, Nine and Ten above.
Conclusion
The need for a long and broad perspective

Preceding chapters suggest that eighteenth-century musical reference falls
into place much more clearly if we take a long and wide perspective on it
from the present day, rather than from its immediate nineteenth-century
aftermath. In 1986, John Neubauer argued that the Pythagorean tradition
and [] mathematical approaches to music in general survived in various
forms through and beyond the eighteenth century, alongside equally ancient
verbal (or rhetorical) approaches to music:
They [mathematical approaches] are manifestations of a single and continuous tradition
that outlived Romanticism and continues down to the computer and serial music of
today. [] The alternating dominance, the frequent battles, and the occasional peaceful
coexistence of verbal and mathematical approaches to music constitute the history of
music theory in my view.1
This long perspective confirms the durable importance ofboth the basic traditions of thought on music which the eighteenth century inherited and suggests that we still need both when we consider music and musical reference
in the eighteenth century and thereafter. Yet many cultural studies (across
all disciplines) have focused almost exclusively on what Neubauer calls the
rhetorical aspects of music and musical reference: whether via the neutral
idea of music as language-like (Hamilton), or via the emotionally charged
Romantic idea of music (especially instrumental music) as super-language
of feeling and of the ineffable. Those who have avoided or tried to counterbalance this one-sidedness have been left swimming against the critical
mainstream (Petri, James, Scruton, Zangwill, Graham) or trying to accom-
Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in

Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics, New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1986, 7ff.
446
Conclusion
modate a hugely diverse entity within a conceptual frame too small to deal
with it (Hamilton, some Intermediality studies). A similar bias has often also
been applied in appraisal of musical reception and musical reference in the
eighteenth century: the tendency for some decades now has been to overlay both eighteenth-century writing and twentieth- or twenty-first-century
music with what are predominantly nineteenth-century conceptions.2 The
problem is not, of course, that concern with language-like aspects of music
has nothing to tell us, especially where it has been pursued with an indication of other strands of thought.3 Rather, exclusive focus on it means that
too much of the field of musical reception and musical reference has been
left out or left obscure.4
This does not necessarily inhibit creative use of intermedial ideas: as the
studies by Bucknell (2003, on writers ofthe early to mid-twentieth century)
and Ross (2008, on twentieth-century music) show in different ways, inadequate theory is quite likely to be compatible with innovative practice. But
it is a substantial obstacle to accurate critical reception, especially of complex
writers who overspill convenient categories such as Enlightenment, Classical,
Romantic, etc. It excludes, for example, any concepts, old or new, which
connect music with science and technical knowledge of any kind, and those
which link it with aspects ofthe human body and mind beyond the emotions.
Unnecessary difficulties are thus created in appreciating even indisputably
Romantic German writers such as Novalis,5 and E.T.A. Hoffmann.6 With
2
3
4
5
Stoljar (1985), Morrow (1997), Gramit (2002) are the most recent examples; but the
trend is well entrenched in earlier studies such as those by Hosler (1981). Cp. Bucknell,
op.cit. 2f., Introduction above, and Arnd Bohm, note 8 below.
See e.g. Winn, 287ff., Neubauer, 172ff.
This is especially the case where eighteenth-century writing has been mined for antecedents ofRomantic attitudes (e.g. Le Huray/Day (1981), Preface, xiii), and to a lesser
and unintended extent Morrow).
Novalis brought language into relation with both mathematics and musical signs, and
envisaged what he called Chiffernmusik [a music of ciphers] as special medium for a
larger idea ofthe divinely-inspired world and human knowledge as a whole. See Chapter
Eight above, and especially Novaliss Monolog (1798) and Die Christenheit oder Europa
(1799).
Hoffmann certainly thought of music as arousing emotional responses, but he differentiated sharply between music and language, had musical technicalities at his fingertips,
and was one ofthe first to see Beethovens music as pure organised sound. See Chapter
Conclusion
447
eighteenth-century writers such as Goethe and Schiller, exclusive focus on

music as language-like obscures not only all the musical reference concerned
with various kinds of harmony, but also the connotations (positive or negative) attached to the perception that music was not a language. In particular,
it renders inaccessible nuances of use by individual writers. In Schillers case,
it would exclude the various kinds of harmony which feature in his special
concept Harmonie, and the dichotomy between his ideal concept of musical
form7 and the near-panic embedded in parts of his work in face of musics
physical and emotional impact. In Goethes case, it would exclude all the
sequences he creates by offsetting one kind of musical episode or musical
reference against another, as well as musics part in his efforts to formulate
a manifold language, not to mention his more idiosyncratic notions of the
daemonic, the relations between major and minor, etc. Taken overall, this
is a very large deficit which outweighs any cognitive advantage there may
once have been in seeing Goethe and his contemporaries as forerunners to
Romanticism.8
A differentiated approach to eighteenth-century language:

Metaphor in context
However, Neubauer tends to summarise the content of what is said, with
little attention to formulation or context. One effect of this is that terms
such as music aesthetics, music theory and ideas on music are used almost
interchangeably. Another is reduced awareness of the metaphorical nature
of much eighteenth-century thought and writing on music, of its relation
7
8
Eight above, and especially Hoffmanns review of Beethovens C minor symphony

(full version).
Neubauer (195ff.) suggests that this does have some affinities with Romantic thought.
Arnd Bohm gives an illuminating account of how both conceptions and misconceptions on this issue have arisen: Goethe and the Romantics, in Dennis F. Mahoney (ed.),
The Literature ofGerman Romanticism, Rochester, NY/Woodbridge: Camden House,
2004, 3560.
448
Conclusion
in a given context to non-metaphorical thought and language, and of the

diachronic perspectives set up when traditional metaphors are re-deployed,
with or without modification. As we have seen, eighteenth-century writers
were acutely aware of language, of its relations to other media and to other
sign systems, and of its capacity for intertextual and intermedial reference. We
need to be able to see whether and how their awareness differs from modern
forms of thought, and this can best be done by looking both at their views
and at their formulations.
Many of the writers under consideration, primary or secondary, were
professional wordsmiths but amateur musicians; what they say about music is
sometimes less significant than how they say it, or how they convey it through
recourse to other media (music, dance, mime). When we do look at how eighteenth-century writers refer to music, two characteristics immediately stand out
which differentiate them from nineteenth-century and from modern usage.
Firstly, they rarely refer to music as a whole, but to selected aspects of it (single
notes, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.). Secondly, most of their thought and
language referring to music is metaphorical, but non-metaphorical thought and
language are often brought into the frame as well. This means that our critical perspective needs to be not only broad and long, but much more precisely
focused to deal with the intricate web of interrelations they produced between
music and the world of phenomena, music and the world ofordinary language.
To achieve that, it has indeed been necessary to draw on twentieth- and twentyfirst-century developments in metaphor theory, as well as on a strand ofliterary
criticism from Hermann (1916) through to (for example) Gaier (1994), Riedl
(2004, 2007), and Sampaolo (2007). This has been a large field to survey, but
it has yielded plenty of results, some ofthem unexpected.
Recognition and reading of eighteenth-century metaphor:

A solution to some problems
While Goethes and Schillers metaphorical thought and musical metaphors
may strike us as peculiar at times, they were not produced in isolation. As
recent theory from Lakoff and Johnson onwards has particularly emphasised,
Conclusion
449
most of a writers metaphors are drawn and developed from those available in
his cultural and linguistic community (including imported ideas), and easily
understood by his contemporary readers. To follow Goethes musical metaphors accurately, we need in the first place not contemporary composers, but
Plato and Aristotle, Leibniz, the French Rationalists, Rousseau, Klopstock,
Hiller, and especially Herder and the French ideas of voice to which Herder
introduced him. To follow Schillers, we need primarily Plato, Aristotle, the
French Rationalists, Rousseau, Hiller and Krner. To follow Herders, we need
the familiar Hamann and Rousseau, and also French and Italian thought on
the voice, Leibniz, English ideas on folk poetry, and an acquaintance with
cantata form. This is not what might have been expected from the usual criteria for cultural influence or importance; but discourse history, as a supplement to literary and cultural history, does lead us to them. This enables not
merely recognition of the metaphorical nature of much eighteenth-century
writing on music, but also a more accurate reading of the connotations of
their metaphors. Once that is achieved, some perennial critical problems
with musical reference tend to recede.
For instance, concentration on the what rather than the how has arguably been the most important obstacle to critical understanding of musical
reference in eighteenth-century writing, especially Goethes. In an effort to
achieve clarity, Hans Joachim Kreutzer specifically excludes musical metaphor from his assessment of Goethes musicological knowledge (prior to an
account of musical work inspired by Goethes Faust).9 Yet music was one ofthe
phenomena for which Goethe sought alle Arten von Formeln [], um ihnen
wenigstens gleichnisweise beizukommen;10 and get at it metaphorically he
did. Most ofhis formulae are conceptual metaphors which in turn engender
an enormous range and variety of linguistic metaphors, some of these also
realised in music and other media. This range and variety in Goethes musical reference has caused and still causes difficulty.11 Two extremes of critical
9
10
11
Faust: Mythos und Musik, Mnchen: Beck, 2003, 48.

Schlubetrachtung ber Sprache und Terminologie, in Farbenlehre: Didaktischer Teil
(Nachbarliche Verhltnisse), AA 16, 203.
Two recent studies (Lorraine Byrnes Schuberts Goethe Settings, Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003, and Kreutzers work cit. above), are at pains to distinguish between features of
Goethes work which particularly attracted composers, and the independent contribution
450
Conclusion
reaction are exemplified by a) the compendia of essays on Goethe published

around the recent millennium, which avoided the topic,12 and b) the spate
of post-World War II publications where both parts of Germany laid claim
to Goethe as cultural icon, and to custody of his views on music as a quasisacred mystery:
Das alles zusammengenommen bildet ein wunderlich verworrenes, widerspruchsreiches
Geflecht von Beziehungen. Man kann unternehmen, dieses Geflecht knapp nachzuzeichnen oder in langatmigen Abhandlungen zu verfolgen, entwirren lt es sich nicht.
Das einigende Band ist die Persnlichkeit.13
[All this taken as a whole makes a strangely confused and complicated web of connections, full of contradictions. This web can be briefly described or traced in longwinded disquisitions, but it cannot be disentangled. The unifying thread is [Goethes]
personality.]
(Friedrich Blume, Goethe und die Musik, Kassel 1949)
{Goethes] Verfahren was subjektive Auslese, nicht Wertung als solche vielmehr
Ansaugen und Einschmelzen des ihm Ntigen in den glhenden Sonnenkern seines
Wesens [] das wir schlicht und fromm als gegeben zu verehren haben.14
[Goethes approach was subjective selection, not evaluation as such rather he absorbed
and refined what he needed in the glowing heart of the sun of his being and this we
have to honour with properly simple piety as a given phenomenon].
(H.-J. Moser, Goethe und die Musik, Leipzig 1949)
I couldnt possibly comment on Blumes reference to long-winded disquisitions; but in view of the chapters above, it seems clear enough that there is
a unifying factor, and that it is not die Persnlichkeit, but die Metaphorik,
metaphor.
Secondly, the metaphorical nature ofGoethes thought on music, and its
roots in his epoch, help to explain the great diversity of musical reference which
Blume and many others have seen merely as a mass of contradictions. Hermann
12
13
14
of composers who set his work. Both find his own comments on music enthusiastic, but
diffuse and fragmented.
See Introduction and Bibliography; the exception is the essay by Ritchie Robertson,
Literary Techniques and Aesthetic Texture in Faust, in Paul Bishop (ed.), A Companion
to Goethes Faust, Parts I and II (2001), 127.
Blume, Goethe und die Musik, 5; see also 66.
Moser, Goethe und die Musik, 10.
Conclusion
451
Abert, whose judgments in 1922 have weathered time and critical fashion
better than most, points to the crucial trait which Goethe had in common
with his age and its musical culture: gerade Goethes Musikanschauung zeigt
deutlich, wie fest sich [] das Alte neben dem Neuen zu behaupten vermochte15 [Goethes view of music is a particularly clear example ofhow firmly the
old maintained its standing against the new]. Kvecses and many others have
pointed out that conceptual metaphors can spread across time, and across cultural and national boundaries; and as we have seen, the eighteenth century saw
not only development in musical instruments accessible to non-specialists, and
thus a general expansion of musical experience, but a lively exchange of ideas.
Because ofthis omnipresent interaction of inherited tradition, new theories,
immediate experience and general discussion, it was an epoch in which a
wider range of concepts and evaluations of music was available than for some
time before, and arguably for some time since. To find anything like the rich
diversity of eighteenth-century perspectives on music, we must currently look
not to musical theory or the philosophy of music, but to newspaper reviews
ofthe prodigious variety of real music-making in the globalised twenty-first
century.16 Lowinsky (1965), Morrow (1997) and several contributors to the
Brown/Lee/Saine volume (1994) seem to assume that each set of concepts (of
mankind, music or anything else) gives way promptly to the next as cultural
developments proceed. But the findings of foregoing chapters suggest that
Abert was much nearer the mark in 1922, and Kvecses reflections in 2005
bear him out:17 old and new ideas coexist, and in some cases interact. Both
traditional and new conceptual metaphors of music available in eighteenthcentury German culture operated side by side, not simply in conflict but in
relation to each other: as negative counterparts, reciprocal pairs of opposites,
even sometimes in combination. As a body of thought, they were certainly
complex, but neither arbitrary nor incoherent.
In addition to the concept of negative metaphor, which has been
immensely helpful in analysing the workings of conceptual metaphor on music,
modern metaphor theory has offered the idea that domains of metaphor are
interactive, and that concurrent two-way mappings can be created between
15
16
17
Goethe und die Musik, 46, 53.

The Guardians Friday review supplement is one example of many; but see also Hamilton
op.cit., Scruton, op.cit., and Introduction above.
See esp. Metaphor in Culture, 242.
452
Conclusion
them.18 The concept oftwo-way mapping, here oflanguage on to music and

vice versa, helps to resolve the impasse in which discussion of Goethe and
music has usually ended. From Hermann and Bressem onwards, music and
musical reference have been perceived as an integral part of Goethes own
work, and an important factor in his inspirational influence on composers.19
Yet his musical knowledge and understanding were rightly found to be limited and fragmented; and repeated surveys of the composers Goethe met or
failed to meet were found to shed remarkably little light on the function of
music and musical reference in his work, or even on his thinking about music.
From the study of his musical metaphors and musical reference, however,
it emerges that Goethe did not think like a musician or a musicologist, or
even very much like a librettist. He was a writer acutely aware of both the
splendours and miseries of language; and in implementing Herders idea of
musikalische Poesie, he is creating a two-way mapping: music is to become
communicative and expressive, while language is to be musicalised in tonal
variety and structure. Combining genres seems for him to have been much
less a matter of collaboration than of creating a medium close to manifold
language, a means of maximalising the number and kind ofVorstellungsarten
[discourses] which could be presented. This aim remained the same whether
he was working with Kayser, Reichardt, Zelter, Beethoven, or Frst Radziwill,
or writing a sequel for Mozarts Magic Flute; we should consider the possibility that if he had met Mozart and tried to enlist his cooperation for such
a one-sidedly poetic enterprise, he might have received a robustly negative
reply. Critics rarely reflect that Goethe was not alone in his tangential relation to professional musicians. The main writers of the eighteenth century
who shared his aim of maximised poetic communication also had a chequered
career as collaborators (Klopstock with Gluck, Herder, Schiller); and only
Herder seems to have realised why this might be.20 Insofar as it mapped music
on to language, this concept of writing offered new possibilities for writing, in
rhythm, structure, tonal range, content, and development. It is encapsulated
18
19
See esp. Black and Barcelona, op.cit., and Introduction above.

See most recently Byrne, op.cit., passim on poetry, and Kreutzer, op.cit., on the influence
on opera of Goethes use of music in Faust.
20 Herder pointed out that these intermedial metaphors opened a new field for poetry,
rather than for music (Adrastea, Suphan XXIII, 3323).
Conclusion
453
in Herders phrase musikalische Poesie, signifying not only agreeable sound

and rhythm but a particular rhythmic concept of structure, schne Folge
a rhythmic sequence of contrasting ideas, reactions, perspectives, discourses
and much else. But where writers saw music as language, and attempted to
impose poetic expression on musicians with whom they collaborated, severe
restrictions on musical rhythm, tempo, pitch, tonal relations and structure
meant that the results were unlikely to come anywhere near the sophistication ofthe verbal work to which they were attached. Where these collaborations do seem to work (for instance with Beethovens Egmont music or with
Schuberts setting of Der Musensohn), the writer has in fact set up a broad
sequence of contrasts and left the composer more freedom, or the composer
has subtly altered structure and other features to give his own counterpart
of the sequence.21
Schiller
Overall, Schiller has been a secondary figure in the chapters above, although
he has featured prominently from time to time. I would not claim that this
study has entirely fathomed Schillers musical reference; although music
appears to play a smaller and less diversified part in his work overall than is the
case with Goethe, and possibly even with Herder. Alongside Margaret Ives
incidental remarks (1964, 1970),22 there has as far as I know been only one
attempt to study Schillers musical reference in depth (Longyear, 1966). As
many critics did with Goethe, Longyear painstakingly follows the encounters
with music in Schillers life, and finds a similar discrepancy: limited knowledge and restricted concepts of music alongside considerable and consistent
love of it, and a tendency to mythologise it. Longyear does often recognise
21
22
See esp. Byrne, op.cit., 15461 on Der Musensohn and its setting.
Ives main study, The Analogue of Harmony (1970) is mainly concerned with the structural analogies in Schillers concept; her earlier article (1964) mainly concentrates on
music as medium of emotion, and finds difficulty reconciling this with the entailments
of harmony.
454
Conclusion
the metaphorical nature of Schillers musical reference; but he takes verbal

or visual metaphors individually, rather than considering how they might be
grouped or interrelated, or how they function overall. His separate chapters
on Schillers musical reference in drama, literary and philosophical writing
tend to fragment even further into lists of occurrences, with the entailments
of the metaphors sometimes arbitrarily explained as each instance occurs.
This makes for an unsatisfactory account, especially since he includes a large
section on composers settings of Schiller, which does nothing to solve the
problem.
Some tentative conclusions do emerge from the chapters above. Schiller
uses the same conceptual metaphors as other writers; but he tends to use them
singly and monodirectionally. For example, although he follows the structure
of Leibnizs harmonising universe in bidding artists create aus Harmonien
Harmonie,23 he creates no discourse involving musical reference as complex
or varied as Goethe creates in Wilhelm Meister, Novelle, or Faust II to depict the
ultimate stages ofthis harmonising process. On the whole, Schiller maps musical structure on to poetic language, but not musical sonority: like Klopstock,
he writes about music rhetorically, rather than musically.24 Where he depicts
the power of music over human emotions in poetry, he tends to do so either
via the idea of music as rhythm and beat (as in Der Tanz), or via the idea of
music as overwhelming expression (as in Die Macht des Gesanges or Laura
am Klavier). Where he does use both the idea of harmony and the idea of
musics emotional and physical power, as in Der Tanz, his metaphors tend to
collide rather than combine.
The rationale ofSchillers musical reference seems to me to emerge more
clearly from his dramas. Longyears account gives the impression that Schillers
musical reference in drama is much more theatrically orthodox than Goethes,
following Shakespearean tradition and contemporary practice for incidental
music. Its function would thus be to underline dramatic conflicts and contrasts of mood, as well as providing a medium for transitions.25 But as far as
I can see, Schiller does not deploy music or musical reference for transitions.
23 Die Knstler, 257.
24 This is striking not only in Die Knstler, but also in Laura am Klavier and Die Macht
des Gesanges.
25 Cf. Lessings Hamburgische Dramaturgie, esp. Stcke 26 and 27.
Conclusion
455
Instead, he uses music and musical reference to underline mood and type of
moment or character, and then offsets it against its opposite counterpart in
some way: e.g. via different music, contrasting reference, or different words
to the same music. As we saw in Der Tanz, Schiller does follow Herders idea
ofschne Folge, a sequence of contrasts. But he tends to move on from one
sequence of two or three contrasting features to a different set of contrasts.
The depiction of a larger harmony, or of an ultimate conflict resolution, is
almost always done verbally and/or visually. Wilhelm Tell is a good example,
since music and musical reference are better integrated in it than elsewhere.26
When the play begins, the characteristic sound of sheep- and cow bells is
heard before the curtain opens: each sounds a different note, so that a short
sequence is created (SD, I, 1). Then the typical Swiss features oflake, mountain
and pasture are revealed, balanced for the eye of the onlooker at different
heights and in far, middle and near distance. Each part of this environment
has its human inhabitant and occupation: first the fisher boy in his boat on the
lake, then the cowherd on the pastures and finally the hunter on his mountain
track sing oftheir activities and ofthe pattern oftheir lives in this landscape,
in variations on the tune created by the cowbells. But as they then gather on
the stage, there is no joint chorus: the overall harmony ofthis landscape and
way oflife has been suggested by the variations on the same tune, and by the
balanced tableau. This harmony is threatened as each contributes his perceptions and preparations for the end of summer on the pastures and the coming
storm. The idea of threat from the water has already been introduced in the
fisher boys song of the siren of the lake; and it is immediately manifest in
the hasty entrance of the refugee Baumgarten, who begs to be rowed across
the dangerous water to safety. This is a masterly piece of exposition; but it is
better characterised as a counter-balance oftensions than a harmony. When
the conflicts are finally resolved at the end of the play, the music recalls this
first scene for us: the tune ofthe cowbells is heard from the hills, but this time
played by alpenhorns (V, 3), a less passively peaceful variation on the opening
sounds ofthe play.27 Harmony of a kind, the unity in diversity ofthe cantons,
is thus made perceptible for the hearer; but its audible manifestation is less
striking than the visual, the picturesque groups who advance from various
26 NA 10, 131ff.
27 NA 10, 276f.
456
Conclusion
parts ofthe scene to converge on Tells cottage (V,3). Moreover, the music stops
while the arrangements which secure the maintenance of this harmonious
national life are re-established in language (the adoption of Bertha into the
community, her betrothal with Rudenz, and his liberation of all his vassals);
it resumes as a finale when these agreements are complete. Text and visual
effects are thus given greater prominence than music here, even though the
music is far from being purely incidental. A similar order of importance can
be found even in Die Braut von Messina, where Schiller designed the Chorus
and its sung commentaries as sinnlich mchtige Masse to offset the spare
neo-classical dramatic form.28 The finale presents a visual and aural contrast
between the choral singing in the church where Don Manuels body lies on its
bier, and the united voices ofthe chorus in the foreground, as they contemplate
the body ofDon Cesar, and give a final judgment which is full of doubt (IV,
10).29 Harmony of harmonies this is not. Like Herder and Goethe, Schiller
seems at times (e.g. in Die Knstler) to regard the ultimate Leibnizian universal harmony as a real but very distant prospect. In these dramas, however,
it has receded to vanishing point. Music as representing an all-encompassing
harmony seems weaker than the dichotomy between heavenly order and the
emotional chaos of human life. This gulf can be bridged and held together
by human will and effort, but at great cost, and only for a time.
In all this, the idea of individual tone of voice, so lively in Rousseau, Herder
and Goethe, is all but absent. Schillers individuals are memorable for their
characters, their views and their language, but not for their tone of voice.30 It
seems reasonable to conclude, if only provisionally, that nuances and subtle
gradations of sound were not what Schiller mainly associated with music. For
him, it embodied all too forcefully the contrast between its structured order
and the threat of disorder triggered by its emotional and physical appeal.
Putting the two side by side, as he does in Der Tanz, may have been for him a
way of representing dramatic conflict; although a modern reader may simply
receive it as horribly mixed metaphor. As we saw in Chapter Nine, because of
28 See Schillers preface, ber den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragdie, NA, 10, 13.
29 NA 10, 125.
30 It is possible that this is partly due to Schillers own voice problems; Longyear cites several
sources for a view that he could not easily control the register ofhis voice, and that these
difficulties were much increased by his health problems in later years (Longyear, 31ff.)
Conclusion
457
the violent planetary movement Schiller describes, the cosmic order in Der
Tanz comes over as a balance of tensions rather than as harmonious consonance, and a balance that threatens to fly apart at any moment.
Goethe as special maker of metaphor

Goethe has emerged in the chapters above as the writer who deployed music
and musical reference more consistently, more extensively and in more detail
than others of his epoch. Why was this? As far as I can see, it owes much to
the fact that Goethes views ofthe world seem to have developed in a similar
way to his views of music, retaining old alongside new. In Chapter Ten we
saw Goethe asserting that he was still loyal to his early concepts (such as the
mystic and Hermetic world-views, and the idea of polarity). This is not because
he clung to outmoded ideas. Rather (as Elizabeth Wilkinson observed in 1952
and Ulrich Gaier argued afresh in 1994),31 as Goethe encountered each new
field ofthought and experience he explored it separately, then retained it and
drew on it in interaction with other fields as he met them. The development
ofhis view ofthings was thus not linear (e.g. from early to late interests), but
constituted a growing network of ideas with open reference lines to earlier and
to parallel developments. In short, alongside lively awareness ofthe present, he
seems to have developed an inbuilt diachronic awareness, and a consciousness
that he possessed it (Trilogie der Leidenschaft shows the sometimes explosive
interaction of these faculties).
If we now look back over the groups of ideas on music which Goethe
accumulated for conceptual metaphors to depict his views of the world,
we can see how rich his resources were. The simplest element is perhaps his
own musical taste, which remained in the area of strophic song and the more
substantial products of lyrical theatre. But despite progressing mehr durch
31
E.M. Wilkinson, The Poet as Thinker (1952), in Wilkinson/Willoughby, Goethe: Poet and
Thinker, London: Arnold, 1962, 13352, passim; Gaier, Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten
als Prinzip in Goethes Faust, Brown/Lee/Saine (eds), Interpreting Goethes Faust Today,
Columbia: Camden House, 1994, 15871, esp.15863.
458
Conclusion
Nachdenken als durch Genu,32 he learned to follow polyphonic structure

in principle at least,33 he continued to enjoy and be inspired by music and he
latterly approached music via an (uncompleted) scientific study of acoustics.34
This does not amount to much in terms of musicological insight. But as the
studies ofCanisius and Walwei-Wiegelmann show, it networks music, exploring its potential relations with a wide range of other phenomena. This process
was strongly supported by the conceptual resources he found at various stages:
all the inherited traditional concepts of music explored in Part I above, and
major philosophical influences which encompassed musical concepts and
musical reference (the Greeks, Leibniz, even Shaftesbury). As has become
apparent in foregoing chapters, this conceptual material involved relatively
little pure aesthetics, and a great deal of metaphor, i.e. it usually explained
aspects of music in terms of something else. So when we add in the contemporary ideas, cultural values and ways of writing which influenced him most
(Hermetic lore, the French Rationalists, Rousseau, Hamann, Herder, Schiller),
this wide range of musical reference becomes astoundingly full and varied in
its detail. Precisely because Goethe and other writers in his epoch habitually
understood music in terms of something else, and not infrequently understood
other things in terms of music, we can finally see why for Goethe and for some
others music is potentially connected with most things in the universe, and
most things in the universe are potentially connected with music.
It was suggested above that the precision, variety and sheer quantity of
metaphorical traffic between music and the world in the writing ofthis epoch
derives in large part from the fact that eighteenth-century writers very rarely
thought of music as an undifferentiated whole, and rarely thought of music in
the abstract. This applies extensively and particularly to Goethe. He envisaged
music as a concrete physical phenomenon, not as a notional entity or mystical ideal: Makaries archive includes the observation that nicht die Urmusik
macht den Musiker, sondern die Musik, und die bersinnliche Musik bringt
die Musik in sinnlichem Ton hervor [it is not the abstract phenomenon of
music which makes a musician, but his actual music, and music in the mind
32 Letter to Zelter, 19 June 1805, AA 19, 481; see Walwei-Wiegelmann, op.cit., 302.
33 See Walwei-Wiegelmann, op.cit., 17983.
34 See Walwei-Wiegelmann, 21121, and Canisius, Goethe und die Musik, 150226
passim.
Conclusion
459
produces music in sensible tone].35 This is a late observation, but it is in line

with his early and ironic portrayal of Werthers conviction that he is a great
painter despite being unable to put pencil to paper.36 Moreover, whether or not
Goethe speaks of die Musik, he is usually envisaging a specific and concrete
aspect of music: pitch, volume, timbre, tone, melody (vocal or instrumental,
solo or accompanied), individual instruments, rhythmic pattern as beat or as
measure, movement and dance to music, harmony simple or complex, polyphonically rigorous or grand tutti, choral or instrumental. So a simple index
check under Musik is unlikely to reveal musics extensive function in his
works. A more accurate indication would require a search under Stimme, Ton
(in several senses), Klang, Melodie, Weise, Dur, Moll, leise, fortissimo, Tempo,
Spiel, Spielart, Violine, Klavier, Blasinstrumente, Rhythmus, Ma, Takt, Lied,
Gesang, singen, and various sorts ofharmony, to name relatively few; and this
list takes no account of other acoustic phenomena such as silence, noise, and
qualities related to the voice between speaking and singing.
Related to this fine tuning ofthe concrete musical features envisaged is
the point that plain [i.e. everyday] and/or non-metaphorical language were
often brought into the frame alongside more complex eighteenth-century
metaphor deployment. This too applies particularly to Goethe. We shall only
gain limited insight into his musical reference by going through his verbal
metaphors of music, songs, dances, etc. in isolation. As Josef Stern argued,
metaphors need to be put in context to yield their meaning; and in Goethes
case, the context usually includes various other kinds of text surrounding a
metaphorical feature, and any intertextual or intermedial associations this
juxtaposition creates. As we have seen in the final chapters above, and shall
consider again below, this can engender very complex metaphorical reference
when Goethe deems it necessary. But we should bear in mind that complex metaphor is only one end of the spectrum through which he ranges.
An ordinary register of speech (or a fictional representation of it), certain
kinds of music, song and dance (whether realised or described) help to signal
when we should take a simple utterance, deed or gesture simply. Gretchen,
Lotte, Klrchen, Philine, all make simple utterances of quite different kinds
through song; the dance-poem Christel inhibits the idea that we search it for
35
36
AA 8, 497.
See e.g. letter of 10 May, Book I, AA 4, 384.
460
Conclusion
deep meaning; one of the congenial traits of Egmont and Faust is that they
understand and value simplicity, whether or not they respond aptly. Such a
quality of simplicity marks a level against which we can recognise not only
the various gradations ofthought, feeling and language such as those set out
in Regeln fr Schauspieler, but also the moments when experience beyond
speech, meaning too complex for words, relations beyond the reaches of our
souls, phenomena at the limits of our understanding, have to be conveyed by
complex metaphor in one medium or another. As we saw in the Dom scene
ofFaust, for instance (3776834), Gretchens desperation is expressed in very
simple terms, set off against the aggressive fluency ofthe Bser Geist, the hostile message and alien Latin official language in the chanted Dies Irae, and
the overwhelming noise of the organ, with annihilating effect on Gretchen.
Some ofthe clearest examples can be found in Goethes aphorisms on scientific activity. Of international scientific enterprise, he had said:
Die Geschichte der Wissenschaften ist eine groe Fuge, in der die Stimmen der Vlker
nach und nach zum Vorschein kommen. Die Deutschen, und die nicht allein, besitzen
die Gabe, die Wissenschaften unzugnglich zu machen. Der Englnder ist Meister,
das Entdeckte gleich zu nutzen, bis es wieder zu neuer Entdeckung und frischer Tat
fhrt.37
[The history of science is a great fugue, in which the voices ofthe nations gradually make
themselves heard in turn. The Germans, and other besides, have a talent for making science inaccessible; whereas the Englishman is a master in finding a prompt application for
each new discovery, and this in turn leads to new discoveries and new applications].
The metaphor comes first, as a succinct but comprehensive statement; the two
following sentences explain some implications of it for the two distinctive
attitudes attributed to Germans and English. It is important to bear in mind
that in eighteenth-century thought, metaphorical and plain language were
often regarded as complementary; metaphor was a form of thought at the
writers disposal, not simply an ornament.38 The example above would probably
now be regarded as a scientific model, a simple analogy with limited entail-
37
38
Aphorismen und Fragmente [Wissenschaftsgeschichte], AA 17, 766f.; FA I, 13, 45.

Cf. Introduction above; and for example Goethes aphorism 559, on the need to
keep myths and legends out of scientific discourse, MuR, Aus Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahren, AA 9, 572.
Conclusion
461
ments, to avoid obscuring the point with complex reference.39 Smaller verbal
metaphors need not be excluded from simple statements (Gretchens speech
in Dom involves two simple similes, which do not detract from the power of
the multiple discourse and combined conceptual metaphors involved). The
tendency to see metaphorical and plain language as operating in tandem
rests on some core eighteenth-century beliefs. One was that all language is
inherently metaphorical (Man bedenkt niemals genug, da eine Sprache
eigentlich nur symbolisch, nur bildlich sei und die Gegenstnde niemals
unmittelbar, sondern nur im Widerscheine ausdrcke).40 The second was
that poetry [=literary thought and writing] had the function ofkeeping all
the different Vorstellungsarten, metaphorical and analytic, all the discourses
of scientific and other kinds of knowledge, in play until such distant time as
the sciences were able to offer a complete picture of the natural world and
Mans place in it, thus acquiring the universal validity to which poetry already
aspired. As Herder put it:
Erscheint einst ein solches System, sind die Wahrnehmungen der Astronomie und
gesammten Naturlehre, der Chemie und gesammten Naturgeschichte, so wie die
Geschichte des Menschen von innen und aussen so gebunden und geordnet, da in
Allen die hchste Reinheit und Einheit, ein Unendliches und Folgen in jedem Punct
erscheinet; kein Zweifel, ein solches System ist selbst die reinste und hchste Poesie [] Der
Orpheus der Natur wird, wenn die Wissenschaft reif ist, seine Leyer rhren.41
[When one day such a system does make its appearance, when the observations of
astronomy and all the natural sciences, of chemistry and the whole history of Nature,
as well as the history of mankind both within and without [= psychology and anthropology], are so arranged and correlated that in all of them the greatest precision and
coordination, and their infinite implications are evident at every point then make no
mistake, such a system is itselfthe purest and highest poetry The Orpheus ofNature will
sound his lyre when science reaches maturity].
Cf. Black, Models and Metaphors, title essay in Models and Metaphors [], passim, also
Introduction above.
40 [We never give sufficient consideration to the fact that language can in fact only be
symbolical and metaphorical, and can never express its objects directly but only indirectly]; Farbenlehre, Didaktischer Teil, Nachbarliche Verhltnisse: Schlubetrachtung
ber Sprache und Terminologie, AA 16, 203f. See also Peter D. Smith, Metaphor and
Materiality [], esp.225, on this perception in modern scientific writing.
41 Herder, Adrastea (1801), Suphan XXIII, 244f. Cf. Nisbet, Herder und Lukrez, 85; and
Steuer, in Cambridge Companion to Goethe, 160.
39
462
Conclusion
In 1814, Goethe reiterated this view in plain language in a letter to a

scientist:
Da der Mensch aller geistigen Organe bedrfe, wenn er sich an das Ungeheuere wagt,
gestehen wir gern. Der Philosoph, der Mathematiker, der Chemiker, der Physiker, drfen
da wohl gemeinschaftlich handeln, und eine solche Vielseitigkeit macht das Verdienst
Ihres Aufsatzes.42
[We readily accept that Man needs all his mental resources when he ventures to approach
the Unknown [sic]. Philosophers, mathematicians, chemists and physicists are welljustified in working together in such matters, and a polymath approach of this kind is
the strength of your essay].
His own attempt at a poetic survey ofhuman life and knowledge, Faust, occupied him for most of his life: he finally sealed the manuscript in 1831, at the
age of eighty-two.43 It involves an extraordinary range of language, pauses,
silences, music, musical reference, dance, mime, and verse form, some light
and casual, some serious and densely crafted. Conceptual metaphor, realised
in verbal or other forms, including music, has an important role in holding
all this together. But it also has an important role in suggesting that this is not
the last word, even though it encompasses all Goethe could offer in his time.
He valued metaphor precisely because it offered constant open-endedness
to potential new relations:
abschliet und eigentlich nichts Letztes will []44
[Metaphorical thinking has its points. Metaphor has the advantage that it is open-ended
and does not in fact aim at absolutes]
42 Letter to J.S.C. Schweigger, 25 April 1814, AA 19, 732.

43 See his letters to Sulpiz Boissere, 27 September and 24 November 1831, AA 21, 1002f.,
1021.
44 Maximen und Reflexionen 532, AA 9, 567.
Conclusion
463
Goethes late special metaphors

Dealing with dead or inaccessible metaphors
Some works considered in Part IV above (Novelle, and the final scenes of
Wilhelm Meister and of Faust) present the reader with some of Goethes
most complex conceptual metaphors, and some oftheir most complex realisations in language or whatever other medium. At such points in his work,
the alienating effects of cultural and historical distance are most acutely felt,
and the effectiveness of Sterns method (putting metaphor in context) most
severely tested. For example, I had not expected that the late Goethes highly
complex view ofthe world would become as closely identified with an idea of
cosmic harmony as seemed to be the case in these three works, even though
the concept had obviously been much expanded and modified. Goethes discussions with Herder and others on Lucretius did confirm that this was the
case.45 But the rationale ofthe metaphor still proved rather elusive; and such
difficulties may have fuelled the tendency to deconstruct and even re-write
the ending of Faust II found in some of the essays (1994, 2001) discussed in
Chapters Nine and Ten.
One better alternative to such rewriting is to ask what aspects of our own
experience exacerbate the difficulty. Rachel Zuckert suggests in her discussion
ofHerders concept ofthe Sublime that some ofthe difficulty arises because
present-day experience militates so heavily against any idea of inclusion in a
harmonious whole, and that the theistic vision ofthe universe which underlies Herders Sublime is alien to many current readers.46 This is helpful when
applied to Goethe. It is easier to see that his idea ofthe Divine as das Wahre,
mit dem Gttlichen identisch [Truth, identical with the Divine], one ofthe
many absolutes which Man had to approach indirectly,47 hardly amounts to
religious orthodoxy. Neither does his concept ofhuman scientific endeavour
as a form of immortality within Leibnizs continuous universe, envisaging
45 See note 43 here, and Chapters Nine and Ten above.
46 Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime, Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism
61 (2003), 226ff. and notes.
47 The opening remarks of Goethes Versuch einer Witterungslehre, AA 17, 639.
464
Conclusion
what Steuer has called a continuous dialogue between experience and theoretical abstraction in reaction to the phenomena themselves. The concept
may indeed be strange to us, but it need not be inaccessible.
Nonetheless, the process of cultural obsolescence is inevitable (as we saw
at the beginning of this study with Forsters Howards End); and our efforts
at empathy may not always work completely. Although the idea of cosmic
harmony remains tenuously alive (cf. Chapter One), some of its entailments
are very hard to access now, and may have been so even by the time Goethe
felt the need to seal his manuscript. At the very end of his life, he spoke of
his fears that:
meine redlichen, lange verfolgten Bemhungen um dieses seltsame Gebu [Faust] wrden
schlecht belohnt und an den Strand getrieben, wie ein Wrack in Trmmern daliegen
und von dem Dnnenschutt der Stunden zunchst berschttet werden.48
[my honest and long maintained efforts on this strange contraption might be poorly
rewarded and stranded, left to lie there like a wreck in ruins and soon buried by the
sands and detritus of time].
However, in middle and later life Goethe was well aware that cultural shifts
meant obsolescence somewhere and at some time; and also well aware that
the past may be recovered and appreciated, if only briefly and partially. Both
the Lehrjahre and the Wanderjahre consider more and less effective ways of
preserving and recovering the past, its thinking and language, e.g. in the songs
of Mignon and the Harper, and especially in the episodes concerning the
Saal der Vergangenheit and Mignons Exequien. His introductory Zueignung
to Faust and the Trilogie der Leidenschaft pursue this even further, into the
revival of past experience and its expression when looking back at his own
work. Although he found the loss of vivid meaning a sad and sometimes painful affair, he seems to have accepted with a certain urbanity that partial comprehension (his own and other peoples) was part of the human condition:
48 See letters to Boissere, 8 September 1831, 24 November 1831(AA 21, 1003, 1021); and
especially the last letter of his life, to Wilhelm von Humboldt, 17 March 1832 (AA 21,
1043).
Conclusion
Vielleicht da sich was bessres freylich fnde.
Des Menschen Leben ist ein hnliches
Gedicht
Es hat wohl seinen Anfang und sein Ende
Allein ein Ganzes ist es nicht.
Ihr Herren seyd so gut und klatscht nun in
die Hnde.
465
[Admittedly, there could be better versions
But human life would make a poem like
this
It does have its beginning and its end
But certainly it does not make a whole.
Gentlemen, thank you, and now please
applaud.]
Abkndigung, 17978.49 [One of the epilogues to Faust which were eventually omitted].
We may never quite get to the bottom of Goethes special metaphors as he

meant them; but Chapters Nine and Ten have given them whatever benefit
of their context I could muster, and have cleared away at least some of the
Dnenschutt der Stunden.
Combined metaphors and mega-metaphors
Combining conceptual metaphors is identified at least from Lakoff onwards
as a powerful form of creative working with metaphor: Kvecses cites a
Shakespeare sonnet which combines at least five metaphors in four lines of
poetry.50 Not every combination is as complicated. In Der Musensohn, for
instance, the combination of rhythm and its connotations with voice and
melody and their connotations is not at all problematic; nor is it in the various scenes (Walpurgisnacht, Euphorion episode, Wilhelms walking rhythm
and the companys song derived from it) where ways of moving and ways of
speaking or singing epitomise ways of going through life. I have thus paid
little attention to combined metaphors as such in the chapters so far. But I
had not initially expected that conceptual metaphors concerned with music
and language would be combined with those concerning cosmic harmony
(as they are e.g. in Lynkeus song as Trmer, or in other scenes at the end of
Faust). They have been considered above in their various contexts; but more
general consideration will show how rich they are.
49 See MA, 18.1, 115961; FA 7.1, 573f., FA 7.2, 954f.

50 Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (2002), 49; and Metaphor in Culture (2005), 261f.,
also citing Lakoff and Johnson, More than Cool Reason (1989).
466
Conclusion
As we saw, the eighteenth century and Shaftesbury in particular had a

view of the universe as anthropocentric and language-centric. Man with his
powers of observation and utterance stood at the heart of physical Creation,
between the extremes of spiritual and animal, with a duty to articulate what he
saw. This essential human function can only be carried out in language, verbal
or mathematical. As emerged in Chapter Five, Goethe viewed mathematics
as fatally prone to die Abstraktion, vor der wir uns frchten [the abstraction we dread], and in any case he did not command it. So verbal language it
had to be. But Goethe was fully aware of the limitations of language: durch
Worte sprechen wir weder die Gegenstnde noch uns selbst vllig aus, as he
put it in Symbolik.51 Indeed, he considered all media to be finite; protesting
against the falsche Vorstellung, da man ein Phnomen durch Kalkl oder
durch Worte abtun und beseitigen knne.52 Shaftesburys requirement seems
to put mankind in a heroic but ludicrous position, attempting what is perennially impossible.
As a contribution to modern intermedial studies, Ulla-Britta Lagerroth
suggested that texts which are in any way combined with music and/or incorporate musical reference, become self-reflexive: the presence of the music
relativises and problematises the text as text.53 Although this would probably
not apply to Goethes Singspiele, it does make sense when applied to a great
deal of his musical reference elsewhere. When Faust responds to the Easter
Chorus, he answers differently to their words and their music; when Tasso
speaks ofMelodie und Rede, he designates his successful poetic language as
opposed to the personal language in which he tries unsuccessfully to communicate with the court. The Mummenschanz, Wasserfest and many other
scenes in Faust, as well as the endings of Wanderjahre, Novelle and Egmont,
deploy music and musical reference in various ways to relativise, amplify, even
occasionally contradict, the message of their text and its validity.
51
52
53
[Words are not a means by which we can say all there is to say, either of ourselves or of
other phenomena]; Aphorismen und Fragmente, AA 17, 775.
[The mistaken idea that a phenomenon can be dealt with and disposed ofby calculation
or by words]; Aphorismen und Fragmente, AA 17, 770.
Reading Musicalized Texts as Self-Reflexive Texts, in Bernhart/Scher/Wolf (1999),
20520, esp.218.
Conclusion
467
When Goethe combined the conceptual metaphors attached to the

human voice and song with those attached to cosmic harmony, he gained a
wealth of resources for suggesting the ambiguous role and status of mankind
when it stands amid Creation and gives voice to what it sees. Finite humans
imperfectly practising their duty to praise and appraise the infinite cosmos
are shown to be at best provisional, on average slightly ridiculous and at worst
deluded or fraudulent, but nonetheless heroic in their attempts: Lynkeus
song on the watchtower, and his report of the destruction of Philemon and
Baucis and their world, has something of all these aspects. In this way, Goethe
maximises the number of different Vorstellungsarten in which an episode
can be presented, and thence ironically relativises each of them. This seems
to be part of what Ehrhard Bahr meant by die metaphysische Funktion der
Ironie:
In seinem hohen Alter glaubt Goethe, da jeder Wahrheitsanspruch, der etwas eindeutig
festzulegen versucht, die Wirklichkeit nicht erfat [] Die Ironie hat [] die Funktion,
immer wieder herauszustellen, da die Dinge nicht eindeutig festzulegen sind, sondern
immer problematisch bleiben mssen, wenn man ihnen gerecht werden will.54
[In his advanced old age Goethe is of the opinion that any claim to truth which seeks
to define something absolutely has not in fact encompassed its full reality Irony has
the function of constantly reminding us that phenomena cannot be pinned down completely, but must always remain problematic if we are to do them justice.]
Faust was Goethes most detailed attempt at such cosmic appraisal; and when
he spoke of it as diese sehr ernsten Scherze [serious jokes], he drew attention to its multi-valent perspectives. Lagerroth argues for a mode of reading
which does justice to the multi-medial writing by which such perspectives are
achieved. Here, too, unless we take music and musical reference as an integral
part of Goethes statements in most of his works, we shall inevitably reduce
the force and scope of his manifold language.
The wide range and ramified nuance of combined metaphors requires
some form of structural coherence; it has even been suggested that the basic
model involving two interacting domains should be expanded to envisage
54 Bahr, Die Ironie im Sptwerk Goethes (1972), 18 and note 25.
468
Conclusion
several domains from which features were mapped on to a communal space.55

In much of Goethes work, however, this model seems unnecessary, as the
rapprochement of concepts of harmony and concepts of music as language
is facilitated by a salient common factor, a concept of structure. This is the
co-existence and interaction ofvertical and linear relations: in music exemplified as polyphonic and homophonic, harmony and melody; and in more
general Leibnizian terms as relations between simultaneous and successive
units. We saw this especially in Goethes fable of the city built by Orpheus
(Chapter Nine), in the final scene ofFaust II, at various stages ofhis Lehrjahre
and Wanderjahre, and in the relations of polarity and Steigerung which in
his view underpinned human life and the cosmos at large. Novelle perhaps
presents his most densely-woven and challenging deployment of these combined metaphors; both because its hierarchies and its sequences are important,
and because the role of contrarietys, misfits and discords in this structure is
evident at every turn of the story. Chapter Ten followed the developments
of Herders concept of harmony as melody in its widest sense; and this too
combines the two conceptual metaphors on the basis of a common structure,
although with more emphasis on the patterns built up in succession.
In using this structural model so extensively, Goethe links up with a concept which is not confined to the German eighteenth century. In his survey
of relations between poetry and music (1981), James Anderson Winn points
out its importance not only in his section on J.S. Bach, but also in connection with the poetry of Mallarm and Pound, where he speaks of the axis
of polyphony where poets exploit both the synchronic and the diachronic
sense of words:
Twentieth-century advances in linguistics have made all of us more aware ofthe extent
to which all words are simultaneities. A word has a history; it may once have meant
something else; it may once have been more overtly or physically metaphorical; it has
cousins in the great linked family of languages, brothers within its own.56
55
56
See e.g. Kvecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (2002), 227ff. The theory was
proposed by Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, Conceptual Projection and Middle
Spaces, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, 1994.
Unsuspected Eloquence: A History ofthe Relations between Poetry and Music, 220ff., 331ff.,
and passim.
Conclusion
469
This rather scrambles the ideas of diachronic and synchronic perspectives, but
clearly Anderson Winn includes both. For present purposes, it is important
that he uses a Leibnizian term (simultaneities) in his description of these
relations of simultans and successifs in the world, in language and in art.
This is not to suggest that Leibniz directly affected the thought oftwentiethcentury critics. What it does suggest very strongly is that this concept is one
of what Kvecses calls mega-metaphors, which recur at intervals through
the ages and across many fields of application.57 We now usually borrow de
Saussures terms from linguistics, diachronic and synchronic, to consider
these relations. But this structural concept also supports Leibniz theory of
the structure of the universe, Goethes diachronic and synchronic perspectives, the organisation of poetic language in Pound and Mallarm, and the
work of project managers or scientists (including Goethe and Ernst Meyer)
who explain relations by means of a two-axis graph. This can hardly be due
to a common theory or a common purpose. But it is compatible with the
durability and flexibility of a mega-metaphor with an unusually good fit.
In short, the remarkable persistence and pervasiveness of musical reference
in Goethes thought and language is partly accounted for by the same factor
as accounts for the persistence in Goethes thought of Leibniz ideas, the
Hermetic world view, and the concepts of polarity and Steigerung;, and also
for the widespread application in the present of de Saussures linguistic terms,
although he died in 1913. They all present relations which can be adequately
understood as interacting simultans and successifs, and are in turn relatable
to other phenomena which can be thus understood.
So while not every conceptual metaphor, musical or otherwise, might
serve to underpin Goethes very rare conceptions of the future, it is credible
that this mega-metaphor might serve such a difficult purpose. This metaphor helps to explain the fearful symmetry with which the members of the
Turmgesellschaft link themselves with their complementary opposites as they
proceed towards an uncertain future, and the devotion with which they listen
to music together before diverging to pursue different courses in life. In particular, it explains the precise and finely-graded relations between the various
hierarchies and succeeding groups of figures who appear in Bergschluchten;
they all have a past, as well as a present, and are continuing into the future
57
Kvecses, Metaphor: A Practical Instroduction (2002), 51ff.
470
Conclusion
in the same structured sequence that supports the universe. It even gives us
some access to Goethes late beliefthat the ongoing complementary research
of scientists in different fields is a promise of perpetual continuity (uns ein
ewiges Leben fhlen lt und verheit).58
The sensualisation of sense in symbolic forms

In the Introduction to this study, we looked briefly at Cassirers theory of
symbolic forms. This suggested that language itself involves a metaphorical
process, in that it transposes ideas and emotional experience into sound, and
is thus one of many symbolic forms through which man gives sensuous form
to his ideas on what he perceives.59 Recki adds that this does envisage thought
outside language, since all the media are concerned with the sensualization of sense,60 the transmission of whatever ideas are best conveyed through
each. Cassirer posits a comprehensive system of connections thus built up
between the human mind and the world by the different branches ofthought
and discourse. Language is the most versatile medium in his scheme, since it
includes both scientifically exact and poetic expression, including descriptive
and metaphorical utterance.61 This seems to me the best framework available
so far for reading Goethes use of music and musical reference; it also brings
more clarity and breadth of perspective to modern intermedial studies, and
to their application to present-day thought and writing.
Goethe had an anthropocentric and language-centric view ofthe world;
yet was well aware that there is more to the universe on all sides than man and
his media can encompass. In this perspective, his comments on sound phenomena appear less like indecision and more like an appraisal oftheir faculty
for conveying ideas on the very edge of thought, experience and language:
58
[Gives us a taste and a promise of an eternal life]; letter to J.S.C. Schweigger, 25 April
1814, AA 19, 732.
59 See Introduction, note 77.
60 Recki, op.cit., 2ff., 13ff.
61 Ein umfassendes Bezugssystem: see Recki, op.cit., 11, 19, note 31.
Conclusion
471
Die sonoren Wirkungen ist man gentigt, beinahe ganz obenan zu stellen. Wre die
Sprache nicht unstreitig das Hchste, was wir haben, so wrde ich Musik noch hher
als Sprache und als ganz zuoberst setzen.
Wenigstens scheint mir, da der Ton noch viel grerer Mannigfaltigkeit als die Farbe
fhig sei, [] hat er doch eine unglaubliche Biegsamkeit und Verhltnismglichkeit,
die mir ber alle Begriffe geht und vielleicht zeitlebens gehen wird, ob ich gleich die
Hoffnung nicht aufgebe, aus der konventionellen eingefhrten Musik das physisch
Einfache noch herauszufinden.62
[One must perforce place sound phenomena very near the topmost place. If language
were not indisputably the highest thing we have, I would set music above language and
in the very highest place.
At least, it seems to me that sound is capable of much greater variety than colour
[] after all it has an incredible flexibility and capacity to relate to other things, more
than I can and probably more than I ever will grasp although I have not yet given up
hope of finding the physical rudiments [of sound] within conventionally presented
music].
Through dance, gesture and mime, music overlaps with the visual media.
But here it is seen especially as the organised core, around, above and below
language and its sounds, of a vastly greater range of sound phenomena. In
this view, music can potentially sensualise a great deal more sense about the
universe than language can, especially in areas on the very edge of perception
and language. In Goethes work, music and musical reference are not merely
ornamental: they share with scientific, poetic and metaphorical language the
function of sensualising in sound whatever sense mankind can make of the
universe discords and contrarietys included.
62 Physikalische Wirkungen, in Zur Wissenschaftslehre, Farbenlehre, AA 16, 862.
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487
Winternitz, Emanuel, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art (London:
Faber, 1967, repr. 1979)
Zimmermann, RolfChristian, Das Weltbild des jungen Goethe: Studien zur hermetischen
Tradition des deutschen 18. Jahrhunderts: Erster Band: Elemente und Fundamente
(Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1969); Zweiter Band: Interpretation und Dokumentation
(Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1979)
Klarheit, Streben, Widerbringung: Drei Beitrge zum Verstndnis von Goethes
Faust, DVJS 74 (2000), 41364
Zuckert, Rachel, Awe or Envy: Herder contra Kant on the Sublime, Journal ofAesthetics
and Art Criticism 61 (2003), 21732.
Index
Works by Goethe, Herder and Schiller are indexed separately.
Page numbers in italics refer to citations in footnotes.
Abert, Hermann 290, 4501
Abrams, M.H. 27
Acoustics 1947, 21719
Adler, Hans 21
Aeschylus 156
Allen, Richard J. 3567
Alt, Peter Andr 60, 382
Anderson Winn, [see Winn,
James Anderson]
Ankersmit, F.R. 31 (96)
Anna Amalia, Duchess of SaxeWeimar-Eisenach (as
amateur composer) 301
Apollo 1547 passim 16874 passim,
180, 332, 3412, 435
Aristides Quintilianus 79, 153, 157
Aristotle 7881, 11215, 123, 146, 209, 278
De Caelo 52
Politics 52, 109 (15), 11215 passim
Rhetoric 11415
Asklepios (Aesculapius) (healer, son
of Apollo) 157, 180, 414
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel 10
(30), 12, 117, 2878
Bach, Johann Sebastian 624,
194, 208, 405
Bachmann, Ingrid (silence, language and music) 275
Bahr, Ehrhard 422, 467
Barcelona, Antonio 34, 4512
Barenboim, Daniel
intramusical metaphor 40,
mathematical ratios as associated with music 267 (2)
metaphorical critiques of music in
non-musical terms 17, 401
rhythmic and melodic sequence 2246

silence and sound 274
Barker, Andrew 512, 7881, 10714
passim 1557, 193, 36970
Barth, Ilse-Marie 338
Batteux, Charles 125, 137, 230, 325, 327, 335
Bayreuther, Rainer 160
Beattie, James 5
Becker-Cantarino, Barbara 4379
Beckett, Samuel 274
Beethoven, Ludwig van 1745, 355, 357, 453
Bs music (C minor Symphony) as pure
organised sound (Hoffmann) 3224
C minor symphony (Fifth) played to
Goethe by Mendelssohn 170 (58)
Goethes comments on Bs music
and personality 172
reception of C minor symphony
in Forsters Howards End 12
Benda, Franz 283
Ben-Horin, Michael 275
Berliner Liederschule
First, including Frederick
the Great 2889
Second, including Reichardt
& Zelter, qv 2889
Birgfeld, Johannes 290
Birke, Joachim 277
Bishop, Paul 251 (88)
Black, Max 2731, 274, 4512
Blackall, Eric 20, 340 (82)
Blume, Friedrich 450
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus
(De institutione musica) 1578
Bohm, Arnd 102, 271, 409, 447
Bressem, Margarete 43, 2501, 254
Brosses, Charles de 282
490
Brown, Jane K. 173, 251, 392, 400, 423, 436
Brhl, Graf Karl Friedrich Moritz
Paul von 354
Bryden, Mary 274
Bucknell, Brad 2745, 446
Burmeister, Joachim 1245, 286
Busch, Gudrun 160
Byrne, Lorraine 453
Caldern de la Barca, Pedro 242, 243
Campe, Rdiger 121, 139
Canisius, Claus 63, 701, 154,
211 (63), 359, 361
Cantata as on watershed between language & music (Herder) 2824
Cassirer, Ernst theory of symbolic
forms 247, 4701
see also Recki, Birgit
media offer an umfassendes
Bezugssystem between individual and world 25
language, especially poetic language,
as most versatile medium 256
on Schiller & Shaftesbury 382
thought realisable in different
media 32 (see also Recki)
Chailley, Jacques 3323
Chladni, Ernst Florens Friedrich 120
(49), 197, 217
Chorus 3045
see also under music, polyphonic music
Christensen, Thomas 856, 194 & note (14)
Cohen, Ted metaphors as like jokes 28,
twice-true statements 29
Cole, Catherine J. 279
Concord, Greek concepts of 7980
Cone, Edward T. 18, 221, 224, 245
Connon, Derek 6
Cooke, Deryck 270
Cosmic harmony see under Harmony
Cotti, Jrg 3601
Couturier-Heinrich, Clmence 235
Daemonic 16872, as positive force 173
Dahlhaus, Carl 271
Index
Dahlstrom, Daniel 3767
Dance, gait and movement as
media 1756, 22630, 2525
arsis & thesis as rhythmic
structure 22930
Dante Alighieri 74
Darwin, Charles 37884
Dauphin, Claude 130 (79), 2789
David the Psalmist 174
Descartes, Ren 199, 2268
Compendium Musicae 227
Les passions de lme 227
Destro, Albert 263 (103)
diastole/systole see under rhythm, sequence
Diderot, Denis Le neveu de
Rameau 68, 879, 129, 210
Essai sur la peinture 63
Dionysos song/dance as possession, divine madness 1557
passim, 1735, 3413, 362, 435
see also Apollo, Orpheus
Discord see Disharmony
Discourse on music among eighteenthcentury public: England
and Scotland 46
France 67
Germany 711
Disharmony (discord, dissonance) 4950, 77104 passim
(as part of harmonious system,
see Aristotle, Diderot, Leibniz,
Plato, Shaftesbury)
Dissonance see Disharmony
Divine as un-speakable, beyond
language 3323
Dixon, Peter 115
Dohm, Burkhard 160
Drewing, Lesley see under Herder,
Shakespeare translations
Dubos, Jean Baptiste 125
Durrani, Osman 45, 397
Dyck, Martin 198
Dye, Ellis 4378
Dzialas, Ingrid 359
Index
Eighteenth century, long 33
Element, [basic stuff of form]
Elementarische [chaotic matter] 35963
see also under Beethoven, Goethe,
Schiller (Die Macht des Gesanges)
Emrich, Wolfgang 359, 361, 379 (16)
Engel, Johann Jakob 1267 & 126 (70)
Fairley, Barker 251 (84)
Fauconnier, Giles 34, 4678
Fenton, James 2712
Ficino, Marsilio 74, 106 (3)
Fischer, R. 305 (84)
Fisette, Jean 278
Fludd, Robert 47
Folksong see under Music, Song
Forster, E. M., Howards End 12, 464
Frantzke, Thomas 3002
Frederick the Great (as amateur musician
in 1st Berlin Liederschule) 2889
Friedlnder, Max 288
Friedlnder, Paul 74, 255, 379 (16)
Fugue 394, 460
see also Goethe
Gaier, Ulrich 457
Dialektik der Vorstellungsarten, 21,
4012, 41617, 424, 42930, 448
Herders use of Ma 234 (44)
myth and inspired human
utterance 176 (69)
Gassendi, Pierre (Petrus) 85, 106 (3), 121
Gellert, Christian Frchtegott 289
Genast, Anton 243
Genast, Eduard 2434
Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm von 1667
Gess, Nicola 163
Gleim, Johann Wilhelm
Ludwig 289, 3489, 361
Glossolalia (lallen, speaking in
tongues) 3303, 3415, 3856
Gluck, Christoph Wilibald (his collaboration with Klopstock) 336
491
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Alsace folksongs (by contrast with
pastoral convention) 2956
amateur musician 2937
on J.S. Bach 624
canon form of harmony 100
charakteristisch in art 3568
choruses
as part of rhythmic sequence 25263
as problematic 3967
as provisonal harmony, not ultimate finale 41011, 422
as representing harmonious diversity 379
combined metaphors(language &
cosmic harmony) 3856, 4667
composition, rhythmic attempt at 2423
concepts of metaphor 213, 4012
cosmos as both harmonious & harmonising 398402, 43041 passim
critical reception of music in his
life and work 424, 447
dance, gait and physical movement as
media 1736, 23863 passim 43041
declamation
art of stage declamation as
music in prose 351
differentiated sonority &
rhythm in declamation, as part
of mannigfaltige Sprache
(qv) 34856, 43041
grade of slightly heightened
speech within this art 3501
destructive trivial figures depicted
through music 150
diachronic perspective on concept of
cosmic harmony 6776 passim 1034,
263, 38790, 3934, 41921, 4248
diachronic perspective on concepts of evil 1726 passim 263,
3901, 3934, 41819, 4212
diachronic perspective projected
into future of Man 393402,
4258, 43041 passim 46971
492
[Goethe cont.]
diastole/systole
as fundamental principle of
life 219, 23942, 261, 263
in sound monads, to explain
major/minor 21819
dilettantes, hybrids & androgynes
often associated with music 358
fictional scenarios showing interaction of
different thought & discourses 206
10, 21317, 37980, 396402, 43041
finale see choruses
fondness for spoken language and declamation 1367, 294, 3401, 459
formative influences on view of
music 614, 2936, 4578
formative influence on his use of
musical reference 4589
fugue as negative (form of
unison) 99100
as model for eventual harmony
of diverse voices & discourses
in world 3946, 460
glossolalia (lallen, speaking in
tongues) 3303, 3415
harmony as continuity (of polarity &
Steigerung) 3802, 40341 passim
harmony as coordinated diversity
based on vertical & horizontal
relations 99100, 20610, 21317,
37884, 41215, 43041 passim
see also Harmony, Leibniz
harmony as perceived & created by
human mind & media 38790, 4012
harmony as (open-ended) sequence 100,
37884, 41011, 41015, 43041
harmony as sequence, including dissonances still unresolved 41315, 43041
influence of Herder 1379,
24963, 2957, 301, 431
influence of Leibniz in late philosophy 369402, 40341 passim
see also Harmony, polarity & Steigerung
Index
influence by writers on his use
of musical metaphor 449
influence of Rousseau 297302
instrumental music as part of graded
degrees of music & language for mannigfaltige Sprache in drama 3546
language & music as meaningless
sound 1478, 1501, 1756
language & music in relation to each
other as sound media 33945
greater diversity & range signals
more complex content 4349
on Lavaters view of cosmic
harmony 612
major/minor 98100, 21719, 2412
mannigfaltige Sprache [multiple discourse, manifold language]
20410, 3309, 33956 passim 345
58, 3568, 41215, 43041
music at both ends of spectrum
of media & forms 3613
includes dissonances &
odd voices 41215
see also charakteristisch, declamation
manifold language as concept
which severely restricted his capacity in collaborations 452
master musicians as irregular,
subversive 142
on mathematics
G. lacking mathematical skills 204
in cosmos 189, 198203 passim, 219,
in music 192202, 21219 passim
mega-metaphor, key function
at end of Faust 46971
metaphor as means to structure experience & knowledge 1034, 3946
metaphor as means to counteract one-sided thought 2057
metaphorical thought as
open-ended 462
metaphor realised in several media 1034
Index
[Goethe cont.]
metaphor crucial in scientific thought 4012
metaphor subject to cultural flux 4635
music as ambiguous 1726 passim
music in Gs thought as concrete sound
phenomenon, not abstract idea 4589
music as Element (associated
with water, air) 35963
music/water/air as environment for
changes of form 3602, 37880
music as quasi-language 1734
music & language as special utterance 1736
music plus language & dance as ideal
communication, worked in poetry but
not in collaborative practice 3556
see also Herder, Klopstock,
Schiller, Zelter
musical instruments (esp. organ)
as symbolic 137, 1402
see also under Instruments
musical reference centrally important
in his work, limited in his life 452
musical reference ranging from simple
to highly complex 45961
musical & vocal sounds on borders of language 33945
see also mannigfaltige Sprache
musician/poet as medium 1735
narrative dislocation to suggest disharmonious relations 41415
noise/threat of chaos 99103, 1412
orator figures 142
organ as incompatible with human
voice and faculties 137
Orpheus as builder of harmonious city (response to Schellings
idea of architecture as frozen
music) 3702, 468
perpetual metaphor-maker 23,
45762, 46371
passages realisable in either speech
or song 30911, 3536
493
pitch fluctuations as aspect
of rhythm 241
polar complementary opposites as basis
of harmony & continuity 3578,
3802, 394402, 40341 passim 468
dilettantes & hybrids as falling between poles 3578
sacred & folk music as the two
poles of musical art 357
polarity & Steigerung as principle of
harmonious progression 3802,
394402, 40341 passim
speech, song & silence as media for
depiction of this 40841 passim
polyphonic music 624, 37980
preference for music to which he
could imagine something 412
Pythagorean concept of harmony 624, 99
recitation (part of art of stage
declamation) 350
repetition as problematic in text 248
Revue as form of harmonious sequence,
not merely succession 40911
rhythm 23863 passim
rhythm/repetition epitomising two
views of life 25563, 41819
rhythm as simulation of
life and art 258
rhythm as theme in fiction 2458
see also diastole/systole
rhythmic dialogue (high level of stage
declamation, used for verse) 350
rhythmic sequence of sections of a
work (dance of ideas) 2423, 245
including sections of language alone 25563
rhythmic sequence as enabling diachronic perspective 25163
rhythmic sequence as foundation for harmony 255
and Romantic composers 139, 170, 447
and Romantic philosophers 240, 263, 427, 447
494
[Goethe cont.]
scientific knowledge & discourse as
element in fiction 21019, 391402
scientific knowledge & traditional knowledge 391402
scientific writing, metaphor in 23940
sense of incompetence in music 412
sequence (Herders schne Folge) as
structural principle 24963, 40841
passim, 453 (see also Revue)
and Shaftesbury 38791, 3916, 41215
sharp ear for sounds of language
or music 1367, 2947
on sign systems/formulae (linguistic,
mathematical, musical) 1912, 199202
silence as expressive
medium 3303, 33945
silence as part of sequence of voices,
views & visual images 419, 439
solo singers and players 1428,
14750 passim 21617, 3967
song: Gesang as differentiated from Lied 30911
sonore Wirkungen, sound
phenomena 33941
sounds, cries, sighs as expressive medium 219, 33945
see also glossolalia, lallen, silence
speech/song in close relation 146, 1756, 30911
spiral as taking opposites up and
out of conflict 21315
timbre of note/voice as significant (singly or in groups) 1408
passim 1756, 219, 31011, 343,
41215, 421, 434, 4369
trajectory of individual unit through harmonious structure (irren, hinauf und
vorwrts) 37884, 42830, 43740
unison as threatening or
unhealthy 99102, 422
unpoetic language & unmusical poetry 3489
see also separate index of Goethes works
Index
Golden Chain of Being 568,
645, 382, 404, 43041
see also Zimmermann, Mega-metaphor
Goldschmidt, Hugo 124 (62)
Gottsched, Johann Christoph 126,
190, 3367
Graham, Gordon 17, 268, 445
Gramit, David 446 (2)
Grapa, Caroline Jacot [see under Jacot]
Grass, Gnter 30, & note(95)
Greek modes see under Harmony
Greek mythology 1756, see also
under Apollo, Dionysos
Greek thought concord/discord,
see Plato, Aristotle
Ha-Cohen, Ruth 812
Hagedorn, Friedrich 289
Hamann, Johann Georg 20f.,
119, 168, 2812 & note 15,
3303, 341 & note (84)
Hamilton, Andy: 13 (39), 15, 17, 446
music as like human utterance 268
Hamlin, Cyrus 427 (65), 4401
Hanslick, Eduard 272
Harmoniai 51, 113
Harmony
accessible to Man in Neo-Platonist
thought 745, 38591
as all-encompassing dynamic
whole 367402 passim
chorus of individual voices representing harmonious whole 37980
as continuity & sequence 568, 901,
3726, 3824, 40341 passim
see also Golden Chain of being
as continuum infinitely sustainable into future 372, 3824,
391402 passim, 40341 passim
as cooperation of opposites (lesser harmony) 209, 21317, 3702, 37984
see also polarity, Shaftesbury
as coordinated diversity 518, 726,
824, 1534, 20610, 367402 passim
Index
[Harmony, cont.]
cosmic harmony as traditional
concept 5176 passim
cosmic structure 558, 726, 3712
based on Leibniz simultans &
successifs 372, 376, 37980,
391402, 40341 passim
based on Goethes polarity & Steigerung 3802,
391402, 40341 passim
encompassing conflict between
traditional knowledge & science 391402, 40341 passim
sustaining unresolved disharmonies for foreseeable
future 391402, 40341 passim
created by Man in Neo-Platonist
thought 38491, 391402
in French masques of sixteenth century 53
Goethes diachronic perspectives
on 756, 391441 passim
Greek modes (harmoniai) 80 (& note 11)
harmonising cosmos 382,
391441 passim
Hermetic lore 537, 382, 4202
human voice incorporated into harmony, musical & cosmic 4058
as mathematically based order/
symmetry 515, 370
see also Mathematics
melody (sequence of notes)
as constituent of polyphonic
harmony 3702
as itself forming a cumulative
harmony of contrasts 372
see also harmony as
continuity/continuum
musical harmony & cosmic harmony as
two-way metaphor 36970, 3834
musical reference sometimes secondary in concept of harmony 370
see also Schiller
495
musical structure & cosmic structure as
two-way metaphor 36970, 3804
in natural world & in art 726, 38491
progression of individual unit through
harmonious structure 37884
as Pythagorean and Greek concept 512, 367, 36970
rhythm as basis for dynamic concept of harmony 3702
in Schlegel, August Wilhelm 53
as a totality of lesser harmonies
(qv above) based on vertical
& horizontal relations 3716,
391402, 40341 passim
traditionally inaudible to Man 52, 59, 371
within individual & between individual & world 3702, 38491
see also Goethe, Herder, Kepler,
Leibniz, Schiller, Shaftesbury
Harrison, Jane Ellen 155, 370
Hatten, R.S. 272
Haverkamp, Anselm 31 (96)
Haydn, Franz Joseph see Schiller
Heinse, Johann Jakob Wilhelm 326
Herder, Johann Gottfried 20f.,
1325, 140, 168, 302
amateur musician 293
anti-mathematics as basis for
music 132, 189, 1957
cantata as form/medium 282, 4078
chaos & cacophony, threat
to harmony 93
chorus as part of diverse
harmony 4078
common origins of language & music
in articulated sounds 32730
consonance/dissonance in
single note 913
dance as expression based
on rhythm 2324
arsis/thesis as aspect of
rhythm 2324
direct appeal of music to soul 118
496
[Herder, cont.]
ear as Saitenspiel von Gehrfibern 119
expansion & contraction of nerves
as sound is received 2323
glossolalia (lallen, speaking in tongues) 3313
Greek attitudes to music 133
harmonics/acoustics 1957
harmony as chain of notes and melodies
(Einklang, Wohlklang) 934, 3834
harmony of harmonies (Symphonie
der Symphonien) 93, 3834
harmony as sequence, schne
Folge 2314, 4058, 41718
harmonious structure as openended continuity 4068, 415
Hermetic lore 239
influences on his use of musical metaphor 449
influence on Goethe 1379,
2957, 301, 398
influence of Leibniz on 394
influence of Lucretius on 3928
influence of Rousseau on 2804
instrumental music as problematic 1345
Ma (Maas) rhythmic pattern
rather than moderation 2338
music as dangerous 123, 161
music as element (air) 164
music as irrational 1612
music as Melodie des Herzens 2804
music as orgiastic, Dionysian 162
music as vague, needing language for
maximised communication 128, 336
musikalische Poesie poetic ideal,
tho it limited music 135, 452
musikalische Poesie a two-directional metaphor 4523
opera as ideal multi-media form,
Gesamtkunstwerk 337
pitch modulation as part
of rhythm 2323
poetry as supplying cosmic perspective
where science still could not 3923
Index
received and criticised French
thought 914, 44041
rhythm as both metre &
movement 2304
rhythmic sequence in life and art 2304
rhythmic sequence as foundation for harmony 2304
Schall/Ton 197
sequence (schne Folge) 94
as structure of whole
work 2314, 24963
sighs, cries, sounds on borders of language 3279
sublime 320, 427
timbre of single note as crucial to human
reception of music 914, 134, 2804
translated Shakespeares songs
in drama 1667
the watershed [Rain] between
music and poetry 282, 31011
see also separate section on
Herders works
Hermetic lore
the elements 35963
Golden Chain of Being 567
Vertical & horizontal structure of the universe 568
Mystic and Hermetic concepts in Pietist songs 160
origin of the term 238 (55)
use of silences 332
see also Zimmermann
Herrmann, Helene 43, 250, 254, 448
Heterophony 52
Hicks, W.C.R. 355
Hiller [Hller], Johann Adam
human response to music deceptively close to real feeling 117
human response to music only
vague without a text 127
music as dangerous to human
constitution 122
music as magical deception 160
music as miraculous 161
Index
music as organised sound, neither
imitation nor communication 277
music conveys expression beneath &
beyond reach of language 3267
notes on music theory in his periodicals (copied by Goethe) 295
scorn for Tonmalerei 124
song to be multi-media genre appealing to both mind and heart 3356
translated & publicised Batteux &
Rousseau in Germany 2889, 3256
wrote songs & Singspiele in Leipzig 294
Hilliard, Kevin 291 (see also Klopstock)
Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus 3225
passim 4467
Beethovens music as not expressive, pure organised sound 324
Beethovens (Fifth) Symphony in C
minor 3224, & notes 25 & 29
music fills gaps between words, beneath
& beyond language 325, 327
Hoffmeister, Gerhart 263 (103)
Hollander, John 53, 82, 11516, 286
Hlscher-Lohmeyer, Dorothea 379
(16), 408 (13), 4301
Holtbernd, Benedikt 3002,
31011, 34956 passim
Horace 115
Horizontal relations
in the universe see Leibniz, Successifs
in music 558, 726, 369
402, 40341 passim
Hosler, Bellamy 446 (2)
Hller, Johann Adam: see Hiller
Humboldt, Alexander von 392
Ideology in musical reception 12, 277311 passim
see also Rousseau, Herder, Romantics
Iken, Karl 424
Instruments, & their symbolism &
metaphorical significance
Aeolian harp 174
aulos 109, 113
497
brass 362
cello 2956
flute douce 41314
horns 165
kithara 109, 113, 155
lute 284
lyre 155, 174
piano 294
Saitenspiel (stringed instrument) 293
Intermediality 1819, 446
Intervals (chromatic, enharmonic) see Rameau
Ishihara, Aeka 21017, 361 (151), 396 (52)
Ives, Margaret Christine 453; see
also Schiller, harmony
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 21
Jacot Grapa, Caroline 867, 1289, 333
Jahnn, Hans Henny (musical form
in literature) 273
James, Jamie 53, 445
Jamme, Christoph 423
Johnson, Mark 31, 31 (96), 465
Jones, Catherine 5
Kabbalistic writings (models for structure
of poetry & song) 701, 3323
Kant, Immanuel (Kritik der
Urtheilskraft) 13, 13 (39),
119, 125, 1945, 198, 427
Kayser, Philipp Christoph 62,
31011, 3513
Keller, Werner 423
Kepler, Johannes (Harmonices
mundi) 53, 193
Kerenyi, Karl 370 (16)
Kerry, Paul 332
Kintzler, Catherine 278
Kircher, Athanasius 85, 1201
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 140,
2901, 302, 331, 3336, 3401
Koch, Hans-Albrecht 416
Koch, Heinrich Christian
(music theorist) 12
498
Kohl, Katrin 29091, 3345
Krner, Christian Gottfried 329
Kvecses, Zoltn 347, 451, 4656, 4689
metaphor realisable in media
other than language 34
negative metaphor 367, 4950
old & new entailments can coexist in cultural usage 181, 451
Krause, Chr. G. 288
Kreutzer, Hans Joachim 449
Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta musicalised texts
as self-reflexive 19, 4667
Lakoff, George (see also Johnson,
Mark) 31, 465
Lange, Victor 331, 3435
Langer, Susanne K. 224
Language
different discourses for different
Vorstellungsarten 2046,
3323, 3335, 3359, 3415, 345
58, 3856, 42930, 4601
these explored in fictional scenarios 20610, 34558
see also Gaier
divine as un-speakable 3323,
42930, 4401
intrinsically metaphorical 24, 39, 42930
limits of language, media & metaphor 42930, 4401
linguistic signs and other signs 177
80, 20310 passim 285
origins of language (& music) as origins of articulated sound 32730
as meaningless sound 1478, 176
medium of rational thought 176, 3425
metaphorical reference in scientific discourse 20610, 460
as possession, prophecy 1547
poetic language:
common ground with song (&
dance) 1325, 285, 3024
Index
diversity of thought & discourse
needed to describe world 3856
form & thought as close as possible (Herder) 296
holding all forms of discourse,
including scientific, in play 461
see also Chapters Nine & Ten, passim
medium of divine possession 1557 passim 16872
most versatile medium of
communication 267
Romantic views 3206 passim
and truth 267, 20510
unmusical poetry 3489
polyphonic writing 4678
power of spoken word 115
(see also Rhetoric, Riedl, Solo)
problems in setting words
to music 34956
see also Goethe, Gottsched,
Herder, Schiller, Zelter
in relation to other media 17780,
20310 passim 3415, 34956
repetition as doubtful structural element in text 2256
and rhetoric 277311 passim
as significant sound 17280 passim
silence as communication in context of language 3303, 3435
sing-song language, sounds & cries on
borderline of language 11921, 17680
passim 219, 280, 32830, 3415, 3856
spirits and angels communicate without
it 121, 154 & note (4), 177, 4401
a symbolic form 247
thought outside language 24
thought outside any known media 441
twentieth/twentyfirst-century views of
language in relation to music 26776
unpoetic language (part of communication spectrum) 135, 322, 3489
Lavater, Johann Kaspar 612, 97
Lee, Meredith 1723, 179, 3402 passim
Index
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
Disharmony as central to system of
music and cosmos 823, 372, 380
Essais de theodice 54
chantillons not tincelles, 54 (18)
Geometry includes unmeasurable 83
Libert et Optimum (Dialogue
avec Dobrzensky) 55
monads 218, 4201
their progression & development through harmonious
structure 37884
Monadologie 53, 372
Music & symmetry as analogues for
cosmic harmony 5960, 159,
Music as unconscious arithmetical
exercise by the soul 193, 21213, 399
Opera as multi-media genre engaging all human faculties 335
Power of music over emotions 116,
Preference for simple music
as more moving 284
Sagesse et Bonheur 159
Simultans and Successifs in
structure of the universe 558,
37684, 394402,
this structure continuing beyond
earth & beyond human life 4268
Successifs as dominant in
concept of harmony as
sequence 40341 passim
Trajectory of monads development
(upwards & onwards) 37884, 4202
relation to Darwinian concept of evolution 378
Leipzig (musical culture in Goethes
time there) 2945
parodied in Goethes
Wanderjahre 299300
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (Hamburgische
Dramaturgie) 1267, 165,
186, 285, 3367, 376
Lohmeyer, Dorothea [see Hlscher-L.]
499
London, Justin 270
Longyear, R.M. 4534
Lowinsky, Edward E.
ideology in musical reception 1, 279
music as language metaphor worked
better in literature than in music 290
polyphonic music and structure of the universe 557
rediscovery of J.S. Bach 405
Rousseau 90, 121, 123, 279
shift in musical culture towards
individual expression 2845
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius
Carus), 3913, 398
Luke, David 251
Macdonald, Robert David 712, 2512
Macrocosm/microcosm 21417
Mainberger, Sabine 189 (1), 237
Manifold, J.S. 141 (112)
Mann, Thomas (Dr. Faustus) 901, 1723
and note (64), 201, 2756 (33)
Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm 11718, 2889
Martin, Peter J. sociology of
music 3940, 26970
Mathematics
in cosmos 512, 55, 1923
see also harmony
as measurement 193202 passim
as quasi-language 20510
in music 512, 55, 185219 passim
in relation to other sign systems 190202, 203, 20510
mathematical discourse within harmony
of views/discourse 20610, 3846
mathematical models often rejected
in eighteenth century 1859
mathematical skills within harmony of
human activities 20610, 3846
mathematics and music as complementary opposites 2079
metaphorical nature of mathematical signs
in relation to phenomena 190, 3856
500
Mattheson, Johann 10(30), 12
dance linked with music, poetry
& temperaments 22930
diastole & systole in musical rhythm 22630
on Greek modes & modern
temperaments 126
on harmony 60, 15960
instrumental music modelled on
song (Klangrede) 2867, 289
on mathematics in music 1945
melodic sequence as essence
of harmony 4034
music as linking extremes
(divine/devilish) 164
music as labile, flexible 164
pitch fluctuation as aspect
of rhythm 22630
on rhythm 2269
on song 15960,
Matthisson, Friedrich see under Schiller,
ber Matthissons Gedichte
May, Kurt 260
McGuiness, Rosamund 5
Melody (played or sung)
as einfache Harmonie 285
as expression of feeling 2849
essential to metaphor of music as
individual expression 28490
as itself a harmony, built up
in sequence 40341
Mendelssohn, Felix 170 (58), 171
and note (61), 208
Mendelssohn, Moses 154,
1901, 285, 3767
see also Wellbery
Mennemeier, Franz Norbert 323
Mersenne, Marin 85, 8990, 1201
Metaphor:
cognitive theory after Lakoff
& Johnson 348
combined 34, 3002, 367,
3956, 40341 passim,
Index
(harmony & language) 40341
passim 4659
conceptual metaphor definition 7 (17)
conceptual metaphor established as an
operation of the human mind 201
consistency 35, 46970
in context (Stern) 312
created in social and linguistic context 33
as device to impose cognitive
preference 1856, 2779
see also Rousseau, Romantics
diachronic perspective 35
see also Goethe
eighteenth-century theory and
views of, 204, 44853, 4602
entailments
old & new can coexist for a
time 181, 367, 400, 451
can change radically with cultural change 3224
can outlast cultural
change 4268, 451, 462
historicity of 35 (see also diachronic perspective in)
interactive theory of, Black 2731,
Barcelona 34
interact with each other, as well as
with other types of discourse 451
intramusical metaphorical reference 401
invented by writer 30 (see
also Goethe, Grass)
like jokes 28, 30, 33
limits of media and limits of
metaphor 42930
mega-metaphors 35, 46870
meta-medial & meta-metaphorical
thought & formulation 441
metaphor and myth (Cassirer) 267
metaphorical thinking open-ended 462
modern theory of 2439
negative 367, 4950, 451
of the elements 360
Index
[Metaphor, cont.]
of harmony 77104 passim
of language 10551
passim, 15381 passim
network of metaphorical allusions 67
problems of reading metaphor from other cultures and
epochs 23, 44853, 4635
realisable in several media 31,
106, 25263
relation to other types of discourse 223,
279, 379, 2067, 448, 4602
renders listeners experience of music 1718
restricts/expands perspective and
focus 29, 347, 288, 3389, 3556
in scientific discourse 2067,
4012, 4602, 46970
semantic theory of 323, 4635
similarity and salience 32
need not be scientifically true
to work (Black) 395 (49)
twice true (Cohen) 2930, 255
two-directional 34, 2726, 3002,
338, 3556, 367, 4523
universal 35
Metz, J.F. 2389
Meyer, Ernst (botanist) 3956
Middle-class mid-century German musical culture 28890, 2935
Miersemann, Wolfgang 160
Mizler, Lorenz 1934, 202 (39), 277, 2845
Mommsen, Katharina 255, 379 (16)
Monochord 47
Mooij, J.J.A 31 (96)
Morrow, Mary Sue 910, 446 (2)
Moser, Hans-Joachim 450
Mouth as meeting point of individual & world 2779
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 171, 349, 452
Mller, Gnter 30910
Mundt, Theodor 249
Music
analogue for cosmic harmony 5176 passim
501
canon form (rhythm repetition) 226
choral music (unified, polyphonic,
or alternating with solo) 3041
as complement to other media
(language, mathematics) 178
80, 2079, 32439 passim
direct appeal to body 11314, 11618,
11923, 126, 1734, 22930
direct appeal to soul 114,
11618, 126, 1734
eighteenth-century philosophy of 1113
eighteenth-century literary
reference to music as metaphorical in nature 44853
fugue 99, 208
identified with humanity (voice, song,
dance) 108, 111, 118, 131, 1356, 139
identified with heavenly, spiritual,
supernatural 15381 passim 16876
passim, 17780, 3234, 3415
identified with devilish, subhuman 15381 passim
in the theatre 126, 1647, 3369, 34956
instrumental music associated with
Romantic ideology 3204
meaning (& lack of ) in 16, 128, 1478
mouth where individual meets world
in speech & song 2779, 298
multi-media genres (& metaphors)as
essential in cosmic perspective 4678
multi-media genres as means to engage
both thought & feeling 3359
multi-media genres as problematic in practice 3359
musical form in literature 401, 2734
musical ontology 17 (55), 268
musical structure 185263 passim
see also under Rhythm
music and magic 17780, 343
music as ambiguous 15381 passim
music as beyond metaphors of
communication 277, 324
music as dangerous to
humans 1223, 1603 passim
music as divine possession 1687, 1726
502
[Music, cont.]
music as language, special utterance 267311 passim
music as mediating between human and
other worlds 17781, 279, 3415
music as medium of feeling 2678
music, language, sounds & silence
forming media spectrum for
maximised communication 34558
see also mannigfaltige Sprache
negative comparisons with language 10551 passim 275
as orgiastic, Dionysian 1557 passim
origins of music (& language) in origins of articulated sound 32730
pitch rise & fall as part of
rhythm connection with arsis/
thesis in dance 22930
as relation major/minor 218
polyphonic music
(Goethe in Italy) 3048
see also under Bach, J.S., Harmony,
Mendelssohn, Schtz
pre-language in communication of
thought & feeling 32530, 3467
post-language in communication of thought & feeling 324,
326, 32930, 3478
present-day philosophy of 1418
repetition as structural element in music 2246
restricted by Herders ideal of
musikalische Poesie 1356
rhetoric and music 2858
Romantic views of 3206
silence as communicative medium in
context of music 3303, 3415
sociology of 3942, 269
71, 2889, 2937
superior to language 3206
temperament & tuning 21718
see also harmoniai
Tonmalerei 124
Index
unconscious arithmetical exercise by
the soul (Leibniz) 193, 21213
unlike language, pure organised sound 277, 3224
see also under Instruments,
Musician, Voice etc
Musica humana 71, 386
Musica mundana 6476 passim 386
Musician
master musician as dubious 11011, 114, 139
musician as medium 1736
see also Apollo, Music, Poetic language
Negative metaphor see under Metaphor
Neubauer, John 201, 285 (23), 445, 447
relation of musical theory
and practice 1112
Neumann, Editha S. 300
Newton, Sir Isaac 199
Nicolai, Friedrich 2012
Ning Yu 31 (96)
Nisbet, H.B. 1989, 2046, 349,
3926, 420, 426, 428, 433
Nivelle, Armand 119 (46)
Noise, cacophony: analogue for
chaos, disharmony in music
& cosmos 734, 84
Novalis [Friedrich von Hardenberg] 446
(Heinrich von Ofterdingen) 172, 3202
Monolog 3201
Noverre, Jean-Georges 233
Oden mit Melodien (mid-century songs for domestic
music-making) 2889, 293
Oellers, Norbert 163 (34)
OFlaherty, James C. 281
Opera (as ideal of multi-media
appeal to all human faculties,
Gesamtkunstwerk) 3359
Operetta (especially Italian) 289, 3047
Orator figures see Rhetoric
Index
Orpheus
both roused and tamed wild elements
in cosmos & humans 370, 414
Goethes fable of Orpheus as builder
of harmonious city 3702, 468
his song as inspiration, prophecy, divine possession 1557
Osten, Manfred 378
Otabe, Tanehisa 20
Paganini, Nicolo 171 and note (61)
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 74
Pansophists 645, 64(57)
Periodicals, musical reception in 46
Perrin, Jean-Franois 278
Petri, Horst 19, 41, 2734, 445
Peuckert, Will Erich 64 (57)
Pietism (songs & silence,
expression of religious experience) 160, 3313, 3415
Plato 7881, 102, 10712, 123, 1289,
133, 146, 209, 223, 228
Dialogues 54 (16)
Laws 52, 10712 passim
Republic 52, 88, 10712 passim,
1557 passim
Timaeus 52
Poetry & poet figures
as combining thought & feeling, singen & sagen 3024
as creator of harmonious whole analogous to cosmic harmony 38690
divine possession 16872, 1736
in Romantic perspective 3206 passim
see also under Language, Music,
Apollo, Shaftesbury
Polyphonic structure in texts (Hamanns
model from Kabbala) 3323
Powell, Jocelyn 252
Pre-Romantic see under Sturm und
Drang composers and writers
Pythagoreans
concept of the ordered harmonious
universe 523, 645, 1923, 36970
503
seen as reducing the world
to number 193
survival in later Hermetic lore 202
Quantz, Johann Joachim 10 (30)
Quintilianus, Aristides see under Aristides
Radziwill, Frst Anton Heinrich 3545
Rameau, Jean Philippe 6, 129
disharmonious intervals as crucial
to musical harmony 856, 383
Goethes profile of him 97
harmonics crucial to timbre as
well as pitch of a note 194
major in relation to minor 857, 218
Trait de lharmonie 194, 200, 383
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm 2889, 2945
Recki, Birgit Cassirers theory of symbolic forms 247, 4701
all media including language concerned with sensualization
of sense 247
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich 289,
31011, 34956 passim
Repetition see Language, Music
Requadt, Paul 678, 2512, 258, 409
Revue form as chain of complementary opposites 40911
part of harmonious sequence, not
merely succession 40911, 416
sense cumulative, only apparent at the end 40911
theatrical immediacy 409
Rhetoric 11416, 1212, 131, 139, 27884
perceived as having common ground
with music 2858, 3303, 386
Rhythm 22163
conceptual metaphor powerful in
Herder, Goethe, Schiller 2445
critically neglected in modern thought
on music see Hamilton, Scruton,
definitions 2216
diastole & systole as basis for
rhythm 22833, 251, 261, 263
504
[Rhythm, cont.]
eighteenth-century concepts
of 2212, 22663 passim
Greek concepts of 2213
and metre 222, 2245, 22930, 235, 334
modern concepts of 2216
perceived as structure in music 1867
pitch fluctuation as aspect of
rhythm 22833, 237
and repetition 2226
repetition as accumulation in music 2256
repetition as problematic in text 248
rhythm as structural basis for
multi-media genres 3345
rhythm as simulation of life and art 258
rhythmic sequence in life and
art 2358, 2458, 24963
as means to create diachronic
perspective 25163
Ricca, Cristina 3045
Riedl, Peter Philipp 115, 3312, 448
Robertson, Ritchie 251, 429, 450
Robinson, Jenefer 18
Romantic views of music 3206
Ross, Alex 1516, 269, 274, 446
Ro, Werner 256 (94), 257
Rousseau, Jean (French singer &
string player) 228
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 6, 118, 140,
146, 27780, 2889
common origins of language & music
in articulated sounds 3278
language & music equated with rhetorical persuasive discourse 286
silence as expressive in
speech & music 333
Le Devin du Village 123, 2945
Dictionnaire de musique 8990,
122, 230, 278, 333
Encyclopdie 867
Essai sur les origines des
langues 1301, 279, 3278
La Nouvelle Hloise 1212, 2913, 333
Index
parodied in Goethes
Wanderjahre 299300
Lettre sur la musique franoise 131, 4045
Unit de Mlodie 90, 127, 4045
single harmonious song from
many parts 4045
Roveda, Lydia 282
Salazar, Philippe-Joseph 85,
11921, 1967, 4401
Sampaolo, Giovanni 3946 &
398 note (56), 448
Sauder, Gerhard 132, 280
Sauveur, Joseph 120 (49), 197
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
von 371 (4), 3923
Schering, Arnold 124 (62)
Schiller, Friedrich von 446, 4537
aesthetic condition 411
character in art 357
combination of music & poetry
problematic ideal 3379
direct appeal of music to soul
and body 118, 3745
disharmony as driving movement within
harmonious cosmos/dance 375
formative influences on view
of music 60, 234, 3745
harmony encompassing threat
of chaos 947, 3726
lesser harmony (Harmonie) 2378,
3834, 4557
greater (Eurhythmie, Wohllaut,
Harmonie) 2368,
3736, 3834, 4557
harmony as including disharmony 375, 377, 3824
harmony as sustainable rhythmic continuity 3824
harmony in cosmos as only tenuous possibility 400
harmony & wholeness as involving
vertical & horizontal, simultaneous & successive relations 377
Index
[Schiller, cont.]
Haydns Creation as charakterloser Mischmasch 357
Hermetic lore 382
influences on his use of musical metaphor 449
and Leibniz 3824
Man as proclaiming perceived
cosmic harmony 387
Ma (Maas) rhythmic pattern rather
than moderation 2338, 3746
mathematical sublime 198
mathematics 189, 191, 1978
music and poetry as divine
possession 168
music as ambiguous 164
music as element (water) 164, 3746
music as magic 175
music reflecting patterns analogous to
those of emotions 1234, 2356, 2778
musical associations recessive in concept of harmony 95, 3735 passim
musical form & sound as preceding
articulation in language 32930
musical form & sound as disintegrating language 330
musical reference evokes structure
rather than sonority or voice 454
musical reference clearer in dramas
than in poems 4546
musical reference mainly within conceptual metaphors of his culture 454
and Plato 3824
rhythm (Maas, Rhythmus,
Takt) 957, 2338, 3746
arsis/thesis & pitch fluctuation
as aspect of rhythm 237
rhythmic sequence as animating & controlling movement
within harmony 3734
rhythmic sequence as foundation
of harmony 2346, 3724
and Shaftesbury 3824, 387, 400
signs (linguistic, mathematical,
musical) 191
505
Steigerung 396
sublime 320
timbre/tone of voice absent from
his musical reference 456
see also separate section on
Schillers works
Schlaffer, Hannelore 101 (73),
3978, 414, 416, 422
Schlegel, August Wilhelm 53
Schlegel, Friedrich 340
Schlosser, Christian Heinrich 21718
Schmidt, Beate Agnes 45
Schmidt, Jochen 423
Schmidt, Ricarda 3234
Schne. Albrecht 432, 441
Schler, Franziska 151, 215, 251, 423
Schrter, Corona 294
Schubert, Franz 453 & note (21)
Schtz, Johann Heinrich Friedrich
(Badeinspektor Schtz) 624, 208
Schweigger, J.S.C. 421, 426
Science
refracted through human faculties & media 4012
too fragmented to offer coherent account of cosmos 392
this lack to be made good by poetry,
possibly in an epic 3924
by myth of harmonious & harmonising cosmos 393402
Scruton, Roger 445
analogy between language
& music 2678
cognition in music 1617
importance of rhythm in music 1516
concepts of rhythm 2236 passim
Seaman, G.R. 4
Semiotics in eighteenth century
brought music and language
closer together 285
Sensibility see under Sturm und
Drang writers
Sequence see under Herder, Goethe,
Melody, Harmony
506
Shaftesbury, [Cooper, Antony Ashley,
third earl of ] 534, 430, 466
Harmony as mathematically
based symmetry 54, 386
Harmony as inclusive of contrarietys 834, 207, 380
Human view of harmony articulated
in words & loose numbers 386
Man as able to perceive and
create harmony 59, 38494
Man at centre of harmonious universe 38494
Man needs various discourses,
including enthusiasm 3856
Music and rhetoric 286, 386
Shakespeare, William 1579, 1778, 391
Hamlet 143, 1589, 167, 259, 260
Merchant of Venice 812
Midsummer Nights Dream 158
Othello 167
Songs in drama 1667
Tempest 158, 167
translations in Germany 1667
and notes (45, 46)
Twelfth Night 167
Sharpe, Lesley
on Weimar stage 301, 338
on Schiller 411
Sharpe, R.A. 77, 1067
Shockley, Alan musical structure applied
in twentieth-century writing 41
Sign systems
see under Mathematics, Language, Music
Silence (in relation to linguistic &
musical sound) 274, 3303
and rhetoric 3303
see also under language, music
Similarity and salience (metaphor theory) 32
singen/sprechen 712
Singer see under Solo player,
Music, Musician
Singspiel 289, 2945, 3002, 3045, 416
see also Rousseau, Le Devin du Village
Index
Sinn, Christian 3303
Smeed, John W. 201
Smith, Peter D. 39 (115), 206, 400, 433, 461
Sociology of music see under Music
Solo players 2, 21617, 297302
instrument equated with
the voice 2834
Solo singer/speaker 297302, 4369
human appeal 115, 1356
poet figure 3024
power over hearers 115
usual associations problematised in Lehrjahre 397
see also Herder, Instruments,
Music, Musicians, Rousseau
Song
as aria (in relation to simpler forms) 3513, 355
as chorus (unified, polyphonic or alternating with solo) 30411, 3968
as embodying cultural ethos (problematic in Lehrjahre) 112, 3968
folksongs 296, 3057
as Gesang, conveying sound &
sense 30511 passim 3345, 4369
see also Poetry, Poetic Language
having text to give clear context and meaning 180
as Lied, lyrical song conveying
sound & feeling 30911, 3345
see passim under Herder, Rousseau,
solo players/singers
as vehicle for Mans function of
praising harmony perceived in
world 38690, 40841 passim
Wechselrede, alternating voices 3049
see also Herder, Rousseau
Spitzer, Michael 7, 12, 17, 40
Spohr, Ludwig 355
Stam, James H. 274, 3303
Stephenson, R.H. 756, 215, 251, 423
Stern, Josef 323, 459
Stern, Martin 279
Steuer, Daniel 425, 433
Index
Stock, Kathleen 268
Stcklein, Paul 359
Stoljar, Margaret M. 446 (2)
Structure
in the universe 558, 726
in music 557, 726, 185263 passim
Sturm und Drang writers 1657
and 1656 note(43), 186, 274
Sturm und Drang as term in music criticism 186 and note (4), 271
Sulzer, Johann Georg 12, 139, 190
Swain, Joseph P. 18
Swales, Martin 378 (14), 413, 429, 438
Symbolic form see under
Cassirer, Language
Telemann, Georg Philipp 194
Theory of music
no acknowledged concensus 711, 14
Tieck, Ludwig 172, 322, 325
Tischbein, Johann Heinrich
Wilhelm 242, 360, 384
Tomek, Jan Vclav 244, 355
Trabant, Jrgen 133 (89)
Traditional metaphors of music
still live in eighteenth century 1801
modified or differently evaluated
in eighteenth century 1801
Trunz, Erich 379 (16), 422
Turner, Mark 34, 4678
Unison
as detrimental to harmony 4950, 52, 8990, 102
as perfect harmony (Mersenne) 8990
Vaget, Hans-Rudolf 358
Vertical relations
in the universe see Leibniz, Simultans
in music 558, 726
Voice,
individual voice as indication of defined
character, personality 43640
507
physicality and power over other
humans 11922, 219
portal for interaction of individual and
outside world 11922 passim 131
vocal organs and their anatomy 11922, 219
voice and counter-voice 3059
voices of different timbre
and pitch 1201, 219
voices of different timbre, pitch
& viewpoint as constituents of
harmony 40841 passim
voice & sympathetic echo 3059
see also under chorus, Goethes
Works (Faust), Riedl, solo singer
Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich 322
Wagner, Richard 338
Weimar 338, 34956
Wellbery, David E. 154 and note (4),
1901, 285, 377 (9), 4401
Wenders, Wim 272
White, Ann 379
Wieland, Christoph Martin 1223, 337
Shakespeare translation 1667
Wilkinson, Elizabeth Mary 251 (84),
263, 349, 377, 3812, 457
Williams, John R. 297, 393
Willoughby, Leonard A. 251
(84), 300, 377, 3812
Winn, James Anderson 330, 4689
Winter, Paul 3045
Winternitz, Emanuel 141 (112)
Wolf, Werner 19
Wolff, Christian 1934
Wolff, Pius Alexander & Wolff,
Amalie 2434
Yu, Ning 31 (96)
Zangwill, Nick 272, 445
Zecevic, Patricia 215
508
Zelter, Carl Friedrich 62, 208, 217, 289, 339
see also under Goethe, letters to
Zimmermann, Rolf Christian 177,
3323, 356
expression of religious experience in glossolalia 3413
in physical & spiritual love
combined 435
Hermetic lore & the elements 359
Hermetic lore & harmony 537, 382
Hermetic lore & cosmic structure 568, 382
Index
Hermetic lore & divine possession 1734
mystical relations in numbers 202
polarity in Hermetic lore 421
rhythmic patterns in
Hermetic lore 2389
Zon, Bennett 18
Zuckert, Rachel
on sublime, & mathematical sublime 198, 427, 463
starry heavens as archetypal human
experience of sublime 212(67)

[References to conversations and letters cover only those most important for present purposes]
Ariane an Wetty 239
Clavigo 177
Concerto Dramatico 137, 2456, 309
Conversations:
with Eckermann 139, 16971,
263, 348, 412
with Riemer 199, 205
Dichtung und Wahrheit 1367,
138, 294, 341
Egmont 100, 143, 144, 300,
354, 396, 409, 411
Ephemerides (copied extract from Hiller
on language & music in song) 295
Farbenlehre 22, 192, 200, 2046, 240,
3456, 3812, 429, 462
Faust (both parts) 6476, 14251
passim 17780, 3079, 3545,
35963, 37880, 409
anti-music as counter-analogue to
cosmic order 701, 1013, 3901
Christian musical tradition in 668, 1779
cosmos as harmonious &
harmonising 42830
see also polarity & Steigerung
Gretchen scenes 1789,
300, 342, 43640
harmony as perceived & created by Man
(including Faust) 3889, 3916
polarity & Steigerung 37982,
3916, 4212, 428
polyphonic chorus of individual voices 379
rhythm as simulation of life and art 258

rhythm/repetition epitomising opposing
views of human life 25563, 38891
rhythmic sequence as conceptual metaphor & structural principle 24963
scarceness of metaphorical reference to mathematics 2012
sound as sense, dissonance
as non-sense 38891
theological reference in 392 (41)
timbre of note/voice as
significant 1402
trajectory of individuals evolution
(hinauf und vorwrts, irren) 37880
Faust I
Auerbachs Keller 102
Book of Job (Luther) 69
Hexenkche 1478, 202
Kabbalistic writings 70, 202
Prolog in Himmel 6872, 2567
Studierzimmer I 645
Vor dem Tor 148, 379
Vorspiel auf dem Theater 2556
(Shaftesbury) 388
Walpurgisnacht 14950, 179, 253
Walpurgisnachtstraum 14950, 358
Zueignung 174, 3078, 347, 361, 464
Faust II
Anmutige Gegend 726
Arcadia 410
Bergschluchten 255, 41630, 43041, 468
Chorus Mysticus 255, 441
Euphorion episodes 1746,
254, 358, 362, 410
Grablegung 41828
Homunculus 347, 35963
passim 37980
510
[Faust II, cont.]
Klassische Walpurgisnacht 1023, 151,
17580 passim 358, 35963 passim
Lynkeus 3916, 465
Meeresfest 2545, 2612,
358, 35963 passim
Mummenschanz 151, 408 (15)
Rittersaal 1756, 253
Die gefhrliche Wette 101
Gtz von Berlichingen 177, 297, 300, 342
Iphigenie auf Tauris 30911, 344
Italienische Reise 137, 3046, 354
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers 145,
2978, 339, 3423, 348
Letters:
to Boissere 263, 357, 462, 464
to Herder 296
to Wilhelm von Humboldt 263,
363, 464
to Iken 424
to Kayser 138, 3513, 3623
to Schweigger 426, 462
to Frau von Stein 23, 138, 347
to Zelter 63 (55), 98, 137, 171,
200, 239, 242, 243, 357

Trilogie der Leidenschaft (An Werther,
Elegie, Ausshnung) 3478,
361, 457, 464
Urworte. Orphisch 169
Wanderers Sturmlied 246, 3412, 4356
see also Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre (Harper, Mignon)
& West-stlicher Divan
Polaritt (essay, 1805) 381
Problem und Erwiderung (botanical essay,
1823) 3945, see also Bedenken
und Ergebung (1820), 3945
Prolog zur Erffnung des Berliner
Theaters 1701, 347
Rameaus Neffe (Diderot), Goethes
notes on 79, 978, 20910
Regeln fr Schauspieler 2434, 34956
Sequel to Mozarts Magic Flute 171, 416
Singspiele 3002, 3045, 309
11, 3513, 466
Symbolik 307
Tag- und Jahreshefte 361 (150) on Gleim
Tonlehre 98, 138, 21112, 21719, 2402
Torquato Tasso 142, 3034, 348
Maximen und Reflexionen 3701, 4012
ber den Dilettantismus (with

Schiller) 358
Novelle 142, 248, 41115, 468
Versuch einer Witterungslehre 42930
Pandora 246, 251, 309, 362

Poems:
olsharfen 307
Ballade (Gs notes to) 346
Christel 148
Etymologie 1478
Ganymed 4356
Knstlers Abendlied 339
Der Musensohn 142, 174, 2456, 251, 465
Wahlverwandtschaften 147,
207, 2467, 344
Wer ist der Verrter? 100
West-stlicher Divan 307, 344
Wilhelm Meisters theatralische
Sendung 146, 1489, 2989
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre 1456,
149, 243 (67), 2989, 3023,
3968, 464, 468

Harper 149, 3023, 464
Mignon 149, 2989, 3435,
355, 358, 3968, 464
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre 468
Christoph
his (now latent) capacity to
create noise & chaos 99101
his story in Die gefhrliche Wette 101
his groundbass as foundation
of societys harmony 98
his walking rhythm & tempo as basis
of the societys harmony 247
fugue as negative 99100
harmony
coordinated diversity 21317
not perceptible to those
involved in it 98100
perceptible from a higher
standpoint 98100
as built up in sequence 98100
humans as encountering sublime
in the starry skies 21017
lesser & greater harmonies in 396401
major/minor embodying harmony & dissonance 98100
Makarie & her associates 21217, 464
Angelas solo pianist 21617
elements of Pythagoras & Leibniz in
this harmony 21213, 398402
kinship of Makarie & Angela
with Mater gloriosa 215
Leibniz unconscious mathematical exercise 399
spiral orbit 21315
511
noise as threatening chaos 99101
Pdagogische Provinz 146
music as counterbalance to abstract
mathematical relations 2089
music element of education, related
to all media & human faculties 363
parody of education theories of
Plato & Aristotle on music 146
parody of Rousseauesque type &
cult of solo song 146, 299300
parody of music/language problems in song-setting 146, 363
Pilgernde Trin 143, 299300, 343
polarity & Steigerung in 398401
repetition as problematic when represented in descriptive prose 248
rhythm of Wilhelms walking as basis of
Societys song & movement 2478
rhythmic sequence (schne Folge) as
structural principle in WJ 24950
scientific knowledge in (harmonious?) relation to traditional
lore 21317, 398401
silence 3445
unison as negative 99100
Zum Schkespeares Tag 139
Zwo wichtige biblische Fragen [] (in
DjG III. 1224) 3413
Index of Herders Works
Abhandlung ber den Ursprung

der Sprache 137, 1612
Adrastea 123, 135, 337, 393, 4067, 461
Ccilie (Die Tonkunst) 924
Cantata texts 407 (10)
Fragmente ber die neuere deutsche
Litteratur 137, 162, 296, 3278
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
der Menschheit 233, 249
Kalligone 233, 427
Kritische Wlder: IIII 1378, 231, 4067

IV 912, 11819, 128, 1326, 1378, 162,
1967, 2312, 2804 passim 4058
Letter to Karoline Flachsland (later
Herder) 284, 293
Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der
reinen Vernunft 189
Terpsichore (Die Lyra) 132
ber Ossian und die Lieder alter
Vlker 2301, 2804, 327
Index of Schillers Works
Die Braut von Messina 236, 243,

3379 passim 456
Kabale und Liebe 96
Letters
to Goethe 329
to Herder 234 (43)
to Chr. G. Krner 329
Poems:
Dithyrambe 1623
Die Knstler 163, 235,
3824, 387, 400, 454
Laura am Klavier 96, 330, 375, 454
Die Macht des Gesanges 96, 1624
passim, 234, 330, 375, 454
Punschlied (1803) 3756, 387
Der Tanz (2nd version) 957, 163,

234, 237, 3725, 454, 4567
Die Ruber 96, 320
Theosophie des Julius 191, 1978, 320, 382
ber das gegenwrtige deutsche Theater 118
ber den Dilettantismus (with
Goethe) 358
ber den Gebrauch des Chors in der
Tragdie 236, 3379 passim
ber Matthissons Gedichte 95,
1234, 2356, 2778
ber die sthetische Erziehung des
Menschen in einer Reihe
von Briefen 377
Wilhelm Tell 4556
Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur
Nr. 1 Geoffrey Perkins: Contemporary Theory of Expressionism, 1974. 182 S.

Nr. 2 Paul Kussmaul: Bertolt Brecht und das englische Drama der Renaissance,
1974. 175 S.
Nr. 3 Eudo C. Mason: Hlderlin and Goethe, 1975. 145 S.
Nr. 4 W.E. Yates: Tradition in the German Sonnet, 1981. 98 S.
Nr. 5 Rhys W. Williams: Carl Sternheim. A Critical Study, 1982. 282 S.
Nr. 6 Roger H. Stephenson: Goethes Wisdom Literature, 1983. 274 S.
Nr. 7 John Hennig: Goethe and the English Speaking World, 1983. 288 S.
Nr. 8 John R.P. McKenzie: Social Comedy in Austria and Germany 18901933,
1992. 262 S., 2nd Edition 1996.
Nr. 9 David Basker: Chaos, Control and Consistency: The Narrative Vision of
Wolfgang Koeppen, 1993. 352 S.
Nr. 10 John Klapper: Stefan Andres. The Christian Humanist as a Critic of his
Times, 1995. 188 S.
Nr. 11 Anthony Grenville: Cockpit of Ideologies. The Literature and Political
History of the Weimar Republic, 1995. 394 S.
Nr. 12 T.M. Holmes: The Rehearsal of Revolution. Georg Bchners Politics and
his Drama Dantons Tod, 1995. 214 S.
Nr. 13 Andrew Plowman: The Radical Subject. Social Change and the Self in
Recent German Autobiography, 1998. 168 S.
Nr. 14 David Barnett: Literature versus Theatre. Textual Problems and Theatrical
Realization in the Later Plays of Heiner Mller, 1998. 293 S.
Nr. 15 Stephen Parker: Peter Huchel. A Literary Life in 20th-Century Germany,
1998. 617 S.
Nr. 16 Deborah Smail: White-collar Workers, Mass Culture and Neue Sachlichkeit
in Weimar Berlin. A Reading of Hans Falladas Kleiner Mann Was nun?,
Erich Kstners Fabian and Irmgard Keuns Das kunstseidene Mdchen,
1999. 236 S.
Nr. 17 Ian Roe and John Warren (eds): The Biedermeier and Beyond. Selected
Papers from the Symposium held at St. Peters College, Oxford from 1921
September 1997, 1999. 253 S.
Nr. 18 James Trainer (ed.): Liebe und Trennung. Charlotte von Ahlefelds Briefe
an Christian Friedrich Tieck, 1999. 235 S.
Nr. 19 Anthony J. Harper and Margaret C. Ives (eds): Sappho in the Shadows.
Essays on the work of German women poets of the age of Goethe (1749
1832), with translations of their poetry into English, 2000. 280 S.
Nr. 20 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Poetry, 2000. 218 S.
Nr. 21 Rachel Palfreyman: Edgar Reitzs Heimat. Histories, Traditions, Fictions,
2000. 237 S.
Nr. 22 Meg Tait: Taking Sides. Stefan Heyms Historical Fiction. 2001. 208 S.
Nr. 23 Fred Whalley: The Elusive Transcendent. The Role of Religion in the Plays
of Frank Wedekind, 2002. 204 S.
Nr. 24 Philip Ward: Hofmannsthal and Greek Myth: Expression and Performance,
2002. 295 S.
Nr. 25 Florian Krobb and Jeff Morrison (eds): Poetry Project. Irish Germanists
Interpret German Verse, 2003. 276 S.
Nr. 26 Andreas Kramer, Eric Robertson and Robert Vilain: A Bibliography of Yvan
Goll. 2006. 377 S.
Nr. 27 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Drama, 2002. 244 S.
Nr. 28 W. E. Yates, Allyson Fiddler and John Warren (eds): From Perinet to Jelinek.
Viennese Theatre in its Political and Intellectual Context, 2001. 290 S.
Nr. 29 Hannah Burdekin: The Ambivalent Author. Five German Writers and their
Jewish Characters, 18481914, 2002. 338 S.
Nr. 30 Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby: Models of Wholeness. Some
Attitudes to Language, Art and Life in the Age of Goethe. Edited by Jeremy
Adler, Martin Swales and Ann Weaver, 2002. 271 S.
Nr. 31 Martin Kane (ed.): Legacies and Identity. East and West German Literary
Responses to Unification, 2002. 209 S.
Nr. 32 Peter Hutchinson and Reinhard K. Zachau (eds): Stefan Heym: Socialist
Dissenter Jew; Stefan Heym: Sozialist Dissident Jude, 2003. 220 S.
Nr. 33 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Short Prose, 2003. 208 S.
Nr. 34 Matthew Philpotts: The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the
Work of Gnter Eich and Bertolt Brecht, 2003. 377 S.
Nr. 35 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in German Comedy. 2006. 245 S.
Nr. 36 Eleoma Joshua: Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg and the German
Romantics, 2005. 206 S.
Nr. 37 Janet Stewart and Simon Ward: Blueprints for No-Mans Land, 2005.
228 S.
Nr. 38 Paul E. Kerry (ed.): Friedrich Schiller. Playwright, Poet, Philosopher,
Historian, 2007. 343 S.
Nr. 39 Hilary Brown (ed.): Landmarks in German Womens Writing, 2007.
213 S.
Nr. 40 Ruth Whittle & Debbie Pinfold: Voices of Rebellion: Political Writing
by Malwida von Meysenbug, Fanny Lewald, Johanna Kinkel and Louise
Aston, 2005. 208 S.
Nr. 41 John Warren and Ulrike Zitzlsperger (eds): Vienna Meets Berlin: Cultural
Interaction 19181933, 2005. 298 S.
Nr. 42 Lesley Sharpe: A National Repertoire: Schiller, Iffland and the German
Stage, 2007. 306 S.
Nr. 43 Frazer Clark: Zeitgeist and Zerrbild: Word, Image and Idea in German Satire
18001848, 2006. 297 S.
Nr. 44 Barbara Burns: The Prose Fiction of Louise von Franois (18171893),
2006. 151 S.
Nr. 45 Peter Hutchinson (ed.): Landmarks in the German Novel (1), 2007.
237 S.
Nr. 46 J.M. Tudor: Sound and Sense: Music and Musical Metaphor in the Thought
and Writing of Goethe and his Age, 2011. 533 S.
Nr. 47 Peter Hutchinson and Michael Minden (eds): Landmarks in the German
Novel (2), 2010. 170 S.
Nr. 48 Daniel Greineder: From the Past to the Future: The Role of Mythology from
Winckelmann to the Early Schelling, 2007. 227 S.
Nr. 49 John Heath: Behind the Legends: The Cult of Personality and SelfPresentation in the Literary Works of Stefan Heym, 2008. 179 S.
Nr. 50 Deirdre Byrnes: Rereading Monika Maron: Text, Counter-Text and Context,
2011. 203 S.
Nr. 51 Lorenzo Bellettini and Peter Hutchinson (eds): Schnitzlers Hidden
Manuscripts, 2010. 218 S.
Nr. 52 Geraldine Horan, Nils Langer and Sheila Watts (eds): Landmarks in the
History of the German Language, 2009. 320 S.
Nr. 53 John Ward: Jews in Business and their Representation in German Literature
18271934, 2010. 260 S.

Sound and Sense - Music and Musical Metaphor in The Thought and Writing of Goethe and His Age

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Sound and Sense: Music and Musical Metaphor in

Jo Tudor (BA London, PhD Dunelm) focused on German

This study focuses on beliefs about music current in

Britische und Irische Studien

Sound and Sense: Music and Musical Metaphor in

Jo Tudor (BA London, PhD Dunelm) focused on German

This study focuses on beliefs about music current in

Sound and Sense

Britische und Irische Studien

Sound and Sense

Britische und Irische Studien

Edited by H.S. Reiss and W.E. Yates

Sound and Sense

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011

Traditional Conceptions of Music

Music as Harmony i): Music as Order and Form

The Greek tradition (51); Eighteenth-century developments of the

A Negative Metaphor of Harmony: Music as Disharmony,

Disharmony, discord, dissonance (78); French and Italian thought:

A Negative Metaphor of Language: Music as Irrational,

A Further Negative Metaphor of Language:

The perpetuation of these metaphors in Shakespeare (157); The reception

Traditional Conceptions of Music, Reviewed

and Their Influence on Musical Metaphor

Music as Based on Mathematical Relations

Signs as analogues (190); Mathematical ratios in the cosmos and in

Music as Based on Rhythm

Part Three Conceptions of Music and Language: Renewed

Metaphorical Potential from Interactive Domains

Enhanced Communication i): Music and Language as Similar

Rousseau: Music, rhetoric and human utterance (278); Herder and

Enhanced Communication ii): Music as Contrast and

Part Four The Synthesis of These Conceptions of Music

Music as Harmony ii): Music as All-Encompassing Dynamic Whole

Leibniz and the structure of harmonious wholeness: Simultaneous and

Music as Harmony iii): Harmony as Sequence,

Goethes sequences (408); Harmonious sequences and ideal endings:

Lolotte et Werther [Lotte and Werther at the piano]: coloured

Robert Fludds representation of the The Divine Monochord as

Lady Hamilton as Goddess of the Dance, Friedrich Rehberg, engraved

4. Dame am Spinett [thought to be Lili Schnemann], sketch

This arrangement embodies perfectly a concept of harmony designed to encompass

6. Goethes amendment, in his own hand, to the final page of his

Musical reference in traditional literary texts,

Musical reference in a text can be an effective means of conveying milieu,

E.E. Lowinsky, Taste, Style and Ideology in Eighteenth-century Music, in Earl R.

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

A public discourse on music?

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

I have found less information on France, especially on life outside Paris;

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

of a conceptual metaphor17 of music as language of feeling; arguing on this

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

This is not simply an inconsistency in Goethes account. The practice of music,

the periodicals were short-lived with limited circulation,29 aiming primarily

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

Philosophy and theory of music in the eighteenth century

Eighteenth-century Germany seems to have been a time when musical practice

Musical reference in traditional literary texts, and beyond

offered the first comprehensive theory of musical form.38 Kant, by contrast,