Eduard Hanslick

(1825-1904)

Vom Musikalich-Schönen
 Biography
• Born in Prague in 1825.
• Was musically educated but opted for a legal
profession.
• Wrote music criticism throughout his career –
attained prominent post in Presse.
• Subsequently went on to lecture and
eventually became a professor.
• He was clearly a consummate music critic.
• Has been coined “the most important music
critic in Europe” of his time
 Historical Context
surrounding the Article
• This article was central to a debate amongst
music critics at the time, and set Hanslick up
as the leader of the Anti-Wagnerian Party.
• He wrote the book as a relatively young man
in 1854 he was only 29 and he lived another 50
years without publishing another major paper,
though were many additions to it over the
years.
• There has been much discussion as to why he
wrote Vom Musikalich Schönen later critics of
Hanslick’s work like Morris Weitz have argued
that it mainly served to set up what was to be
discussed and argued over.
 Definitions
• Formalism noun.
1. Rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms, as
in religion or art.
2. An instance of rigorous or excessive adherence to
recognized forms.
3. A method of aesthetic analysis that emphasizes
structural elements and artistic techniques rather than
content, especially in literary works.

• Autonomist noun. - The condition or quality of being

autonomous; independence.
• Autonomous adj. - Not controlled by others or by outside
forces; independent
 Music and the Emotions
•Much aesthetic theory of the time
emphasised the importance of emotion
in music
•Hanslick wished to deny that the
emotions have any place in
contemplation of musical beauty
•Hanslick believed that music was an
entirely autonomous art from, which
needs no reference to external sources
to explain its beauty
Music and the Emotions(2)
Hanslick gives a number of reasons for expelling
the emotions from aesthetic theory:

• The interpretation of emotions supposedly

represented in music is ambiquous.
• We do not actually experience the emotions
represented in music.
• Music cannot depict extra-musical objects
• Emotions must be directed towards an object
or cause
 What it is to be Musically
Beautiful
• Music is an autonomous art form.
• Its beauty consists entirely in the
relationships between the different
elements within it, eg. Structure,
tonality, rhythm etc.
• Musical beauty is entirely objective
• Musical expressiveness is like an
untranslatable language
 Sensation and Pleasure
• Musical experience may invoke feelings,
but such feeling is neither the source of
musical beauty, nor is it music’s content.
• It is not human emotions which tell us
what is beautiful, but human
imagination, which Hanslick calls "the
organ of pure contemplation".
• Sensation is simple and direct.
• Musical pleasure is different from
normal pleasure as it puts ‘something
beautiful in front of us.’
 Sensation and Pleasure
• In the presence of musical beauty, sensation is
part of an outwardly directed, contemplative
experience, a specifically and uniquely musical
pleasure.
• Feeling on the other hand is inward looking,
and at a certain auditory point feeling and
musical pleasure depart from the sensible in
opposite directions.
• Feeling moves in the direction of internally
subjective musings, and musical pleasure
toward a beautiful object which is music’s true
essence.
 Sensation and Pleasure
• When you receive pleasure. You may also
receive feeling. But pleasure is the true
response to musical beauty, and it is a distinct
kind of pleasure, only aroused by music.
• Feelings can be dangerous as they make us
more inward, looking away from sonorous
beauty that should be engaging our minds.
• Yet Hanslick says feelings aren’t a problem,
but they need to be recognized as ‘nothing
more than a secondary effect.’
 Form and Content
• Content is ‘that which a thing contains
or holds in itself.’
• Music’s content is its tonally moving
forms, the sounds within a composition,
these being the combination of melody,
rhythm, harmony, timbre etc. Hanslick
describes them as ‘the individually
pleasing sounds in significant
relationships to each other.’
 Form and Content
• In other arts form and content are two
separated entities. The content of a painting is
a bowl of fruit and three artists may paint
their own version presenting a different form.
• The notes of a piece are the content, but they
are also ‘form that is already realised.’
• Music is ‘absolutely beautiful and self-sufficient’
relying on nothing extra musical, unlike other
arts where a separate stimulus of content is
needed to produce form.
 Music and Text
• The sound of music is an end in itself.
Whereas speech must use sound to
convey a sense of what it wants,
through the subservience of sound to
thought.
• Transition of speech to singing is
‘always a descent,’ vocal music can
never be equal to instrumental music.
• Musical meaning has nothing to do with
words. It may increase its power, but
not the beauty of music because music is
already complete.
 Music and Text
• Hanslick sees recitative as a perfect example
of where music ‘degenerates into a mere
shadow and relinquishes its individual sphere
of action altogether.’. The music is subordinate
to the text, and therefore loses something from
its tonally moving forms.
• Opera is a beautiful merger of both music and
drama, but it sees sacrifices and compromises
on both sides. Therefore, it is not as pure as
instrumental music.
• Music’s content is only present like this in
instrumental music where there are no extra-
musical elements to water down music’s
objective beauty.
 Instrumental Music
• Believed instrumental music to be the
purest form of music, as it is free from
any mistaken connections with extra-
musical factors.
• Extremely critical of programmatic
music as it attempts to represent
emotions and objects which are external
to the music.
• Believed opera and text settings served
to devalue music as they impose
constraints upon a piece and restrict the
free play of the composer’s imagination.
 Scientific Approach
• Hanslick advocates a scientific approach to the
appreciation of music, consistently promoting
objectivity as key to the intelligent listener.
• He also points the reader towards certain
beautiful concepts which humans find
appealing, for example when he is discussing
nature and arabesques.
• However he disparages the link between maths
and music which could be seen as a
contradiction after taking the time to promote
proportion.
 Composer-Performer-
Listener-Musician
• Although Hanslick does offer us a hierarchy of
the composer, performer and listener, he does
show a tendency to lean towards the Romantic
presentation of the composer as genius.
• ‘The artist may be unfathomable, but we cab
still fathom his creations.’
• Gives impression that the composer is a
profound and enigmatic being
• Makes no special case for the position of the
listener, but highlights the correct way of
listening to a piece, searching out musical
pleasure rather than feelings.
 Composer-Performer-
Listener-Musician
• Interestingly though he then goes on to
make this comment about musicians as
a whole.
• ‘Musicians themselves, however, are less
prone to the mistake of making all the
arts independent on feelings, since they
believe that what distinguishes music
from the other arts is precisely this
power and tendency to arouse emotions
of all kinds in the listener.’
 Writing Style
• Hanslick’s writing style has caused a great
deal of controversy – mainly as to whether it is
a polemic or philosophical document.
• Polemic – Mainly comes through in his
strident tone, and “unsupportable views”.
Critics have also attributed the early success of
the book to it’s polemic tone and the reaction
that the writing caused.
• Philosophical - Argument stems the different
philosophical direction that his writing takes
and the fact that he did not write another
major paper. Also the continued interest in the
paper once the controversy died down would
suggest that it had more to offer.
 Writing Style Continued
• Hanslick himself admits that this negative
doctrine was polemically intended and is
argued by him in a deliberately provocative
and rhapsodic manner.
• Consistency e.g. Feeling should be a secondary
reaction to the music, music should be viewed
objectively.
• Repetition
• Analogy e.g. wine analogy page 16
• Repetition
• Boldness e.g. opening paragraph
• Repetition
• How much of his writing style is Hanslick’s
personality or is he just being Anti-Wagnerian
for the sake of the artistic debate?
 Comparisons with other
Similarities:
Writers
• Kant and the idea of the disinterested listener
• Schopenhauer’s view that instrumental music
is the purest form.
• The scientific approach of Quantz and Rameau
• The Ancient Greek notion of the educated
listener
Differences:
• Hanslick’s denies that maths has any place in
music theory, contrary to the Ancient Greeks.
• Hanslick denies that the emotions have any
place in aesthetic theory, contrary to both the
Greeks and to his contemporaries of the
Romantic era.
 Conclusions
• Regardless of how polemically intended the work is the
fact that it is such a departure from previous musical
aesthetic theory makes it an important document.
• Hanslick emphasises the importance of a scientific
approach towards aesthetic appreciation.
• Beauty exists solely in objective contemplation of music.
• Music is the only art form in which form and content
are inseparably linked, as it form is its content and vice
versa.
• Instrumental music is the purest form of music, and
extra musical effects, including the addition of text
undermine and devalue music’s beauty.
 Critical Questions
• How effective is Hanslick’s writing style in
convincing the reader of the validity of his
concepts?
• Is it possible for music to be objectively
beautiful without appeal to a metaphysical
realm? Is beauty not a concept created by the
subjective human mind?
• Is it true that the emotions have nothing to do
with aesthetic contemplation?
 Bibliography
Thomas Grey, ‘Hanslick, Eduard’, Grove Music Online
(2001) [12/03/2007].
Geoffrey Payzant , ‘Hanslick, Sams, Gay, and "Tönend
Bewegte Formen" ’, Jstor (2006) [12/03/2007].
Peter Kivy , ‘Something I’ve Always Wanted to Know About
Hanslick" ’, Jstor (2006) [12/03/2007].
Kivy, Peter, ‘What was Hanslick Denying?’, The Journal of
Musicology, Vol. 8, No. 1. (Winter, 1990), pp. 3-18
Bowman, Wayne, Philosophical Perspectives on Music
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Hall, Robert, ‘Hanslick and Musical Expression’, Journal of
Aesthetic Education, Vol. 29, No. 3. (Autumn, 1995), pp.
85-92.