How Hanslick’s Concept of Musical Beauty Transformed Music Aesthetics
How to approach Hanslick’s writings
Eduard Hanslick’s work can be examined in several ways. There is room for textual analysis as well as historical investigation of his ideas and their surroundings. But it is also worth engaging in advocacy — exploring what Hanslick has to teach us, and defending those lessons. Even if a text carries historical weight despite being wrongheaded, that is not the case with Hanslick’s writings. The value of what he wrote largely accounts for its historical significance. His views, even when not the final word, remain compelling both in substance and in the way he expresses and articulates them.
Hanslick cannot be separated from his historical and musical milieu. Yet his arguments can be discussed and assessed on their own terms without being reduced to context. His background in culture and music is not irrelevant, but it does not need to dominate. He speaks with his own voice. Hanslick, the man and his musical vision, can be understood as having a life of its own. No one functions as a mere puppet of their zeitgeist, least of all Hanslick, despite having context and influences. Broader currents of thought within German-speaking and wider European culture certainly shaped the ground on which Hanslick, his allies, and his opponents wrote: the classical-romantic split in music, and the idealist-realist divide in philosophy. Moreover, Hanslick’s appointment to a professorship in aesthetics in Vienna was possible only because Austrian government policy actively opposed German idealism and romanticism, and supported an Austrian form of realism.
Yet while recognizing this context, we can still probe Hanslick’s distinctiveness. His views deserve scrutiny for what they are, not merely for what they represent within some Wagner-centric narrative.
Why musical‑beauty matters
I can state plainly that On the Musically Beautiful (henceforth OMB / VMS) embodies certain convictions, even though Hanslick’s book is actually a patchwork incorporating prior published essays, with multiple and shifting influences across editions (chapters 4, 5, and 6 were published before). Still, the primary doctrines throughout the different parts and editions remain consistent.
Hanslick’s approach to music places musical‑beauty at the center. I write “musical‑beauty” with a hyphen — it appears that way in the German title of OMB. This is significant because “musical‑beauty” designates a specific type of beauty that does not apply to the other arts. (Gustav Cohen translated the title as The Beautiful in Music, which misses the medium‑specific quality of the beauty Hanslick had in mind.)
Hanslick holds that producing audible musical‑beauty is music’s essential function for a broad range of kinds (OMB, chaps. 1–3). In his conception, most music has the purpose or function of sustaining a particular sort of beauty, either as its only aim or as a very significant one. So music is an artifact with a specific purpose or function. (From here on, I will not draw a sharp line between “purpose” and “function.”) Let us set aside debates about essences and focus on the musical‑beauty function itself.
This emphasis on functionality explains some surprising remarks by Hanslick: what is musically beautiful now may not be so fifty years from now (OMB, 35). Musical beauty is not eternal. Why? Because music is not a natural object but something we produce intentionally for reasons. Musical beauty belongs to an artifact considered as such, which is why it is not timeless. It is a sonic artifact that must be appreciated as a human achievement. It is not merely sonic beauty, but musical‑beauty — always with that crucial hyphen. Hanslick disagreed with his friend Robert Zimmermann (1824–98), who believed in timeless musical beauty. I am honestly not certain whom I side with on this point. It is possible to acknowledge both kinds of beauty, or to take Hanslick’s position that all beauty in music is a time‑bound musical‑beauty.
Finding the core of Hanslick’s claim
Hanslick asserts that musical‑beauty “consists” in “tones and their artistic combination” (“einzig in den Tönen und ihrer künstlerischen Verbindung,” OMB, 28; VMS, 74). This is a claim of central importance. I prefer citing this formulation rather than the musicologist’s well‑known phrase “tonally moving forms” (“tönend bewegte Formen,” OMB, 29; VMS, 75) for two reasons. First, “tonally moving forms” contains a metaphor of motion, and interpreting that metaphor brings up all the controversial issues. The first passage, by contrast, stays relatively clean and straightforward. Second, while the “tones and their artistic combination” statement concerns what musical‑beauty is constituted of, “tonally moving forms” addresses music’s content, a harder notion. Our main interest lies in what makes music music, what constitutes it. Whether music has content and what that content might be is far more doubtful. Everyone agrees that something constitutes music; not everyone agrees that music has a content.
A general account, not a straitjacket
In my judgment, Hanslick’s emphasis on musical‑beauty as the dominant function of a great deal of music — from many traditions and eras — is plausible and can be defended. Certainly some music does not fit, such as much Buddhist ritual chanting music and certain Western avant‑garde products. But Hanslick’s view covers an enormous swath of music, so it is both theoretically useful and insightful. What we need is a theory that fits and explains a large quantity of music, not a totally all-embracing definition with zero counter‑examples. The goal is insightful description and explanation, not a knock‑down verbal formula.
Beyond absolute music
Hanslick is often characterized as the champion of “absolute” music — alone, without text or meaning, self‑contained. And he is assumed to judge this kind of music as better or more fully music than music that is not like that. This picture is nowhere near fair to Hanslick’s views in OMB or elsewhere. In reality, contrary to this cliché, Hanslick also recognizes non‑absolute music. In this discussion, I want to examine what Hanslick says about non‑absolute music. That exploration is part of defending and rehabilitating Hanslick, because it reveals how his general position can make sense of the diversity of music, and of the impurity in much of it, all without contradicting his overall outlook. Hanslick does not hold a one‑size‑fits‑all view of music.
To recognize the power of Hanslick’s take on music’s essence, we need to see that he can also accommodate contextual matters. The way forward, I believe, is to recognize that music’s essential function — preserving musical‑beauty — is compatible with music having many other effects and uses (OMB, 38–39). Music can fill religious, political, military, sporting, or other roles. Hanslick may even grant that the musical‑beauty function is not always the dominant function, as long as it remains an important one.
Not only does the idea that music has the function of generating musical‑beauty, embodied in artistically combined tones, permit other functions — it also allows musical‑beauty to combine with those other functions to produce non‑decomposable values. There are combinatory values in which musical‑beauty is a constitutive part, but only a part. (This is an important concept that will appear again because it takes a particular form for Hanslick.)
Let me illustrate Hanslick’s openness to musical impurity with a passage from OMB that has been much discussed, though, in my view, frequently misinterpreted. It deals with the “Che Farò” aria of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s (1714–87) opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Hanslick expresses qualified agreement with critics who are sceptical about how well the text and music fit in that case. He then writes: “Music possesses far more specific tones for the expression of passionate grief” (OMB, 18). A newer translation, by Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer, renders it: “music certainly possesses far more specific tones for the expression of the most poignant sadness” (“sadness” is a better word than “grief” — grief suggests a particular intentional object, while “sadness” can be a more general feeling or mood).
Correcting a long stand of misunderstandings
A number of writers — including Peter Kivy, Stephen Davies, and Robert Yanal — have seized on this phrase and accused Hanslick of contradicting himself. They read it in the light of Hanslick’s supposed attack on expressiveness in music, and then uncharitably interpret him as inadvertently admitting that music might, after all, express grief or sadness, which his own theory supposedly forbids. According to this story, Hanslick blunders into obvious contradiction because his official position is too implausible.
This is pure fantasy. Kivy, Davies, Yanal (and some others) assume the sentence makes a commitment to emotion inside the music. In fact, the very same sentence says that it is the text that expresses passionate grief — not the music. The sentence presupposes that music and text can match one another, more or less, and in this opera case the fit is lacking. Hanslick is saying that different tones, which Gluck did not use, could allow the text to express grief/sadness more directly. These critics, as a result, impose both a misreading of this particular sentence and a misreading of the larger dialectical argument on those pages. In reality, there is no difficulty for Hanslick here. The truly interesting questions concerns music–text fit and how it works: for Hanslick, does the music do no more than provide “rapid impulsive motion” (“rasche, leidenschaftliche Bewegung,” OMB, 17; VMS, 55) suited to grief/sadness? To him, music–text fit depends on matching kind of dynamic contours (OMB, 9–11, 20). That is a question for a different day. For now, what matters is that this moment displays Hanslick’s embrace of impurity in music, and corrects a long̕-lived misunderstanding.
Hanslick can and should recognize all the different things music does besides aiming for musical‑beauty — though he thinks musical‑beauty is, in a sense, music’s central goal. He does not deny music’s other objectives, nor does he claim all music is “absolute” or that any such music is inherently superior. That portrayal would be an unfair caricature. Moreover, more than one logic governs the non‑musical‑beauty roles music may serve. We should describe those differing roles carefully, without disregarding music’s central, basic function: the projection of musical‑beauty.
Tons of authors have probed Hanslick’s notions of “absolute,” “pure,” and “autonomous” as they apply to music. I instead direct attention to their opposites — what non‑absolute, impure, or heteronomous music means for him. The hope is that this second focus throws light on the first.
A more measured understanding
We can define “absolute” music as music that has only the musical‑beauty function. Some works fit that; others do not. This definition of “absolute music” is evaluatively neutral, as our term needs to be if debates about its value are to happen usefully. Hanslick himself makes no claim that only such music matters; he simply acknowledges that much music measures up well even though it is not absolute. Interpreting him otherwise sets up an unfair stereotype, a straw man.
A minority of musicologists do collapse the distinction between absolute and non‑absolute music. For writers such as Lawrence Kramer, Susan McClary, and others grouped roughly under “new musicology,” most or all music is representational. First, that is a pointless abandonment of a useful distinction. Second, few arguments support this view whether one starts from philosophy, psychology, history/musicology, or ethnomusicology.
The phrase “absolute music” does not appear anywhere in Hanslick’s OMB. He only remarks that “only instrumental music is music purely and absolutely” (“nur sie [i.e. instrumental music] ist reine, absolute,” OMB 15; VMS 52). Some suspect he deliberately dodged Richard Wagner’s (1813–83) term — Wagner originally coined the label in 1846 with a negative meaning. Mark Evan Bonds proposes that Hanslick intentionally repeats it, twisting the usual negativity. Yet it is not obvious that Hanslick actively avoided Wagner and then creatively inverted his language. Christoph Landerer does argue that Hanslick’s comparison of music with a “kaleidoscope” (“Kaleidoscop,” OMB 29; VMS 75–76), which he uses while explaining “tonally moving forms,” was a deliberately provocative reversal of Wagner, who thought music unlike a kaleidoscope. But on that point we may still disagree.
The kaleidoscope passage makes it more likely that Hanslick is also using “absolute” provocatively, as a deliberate inversion of Wagner’s claims? I do not think so. For one thing, it is far from obvious that he is making the positive evaluation of instrumental music over non-instrumental music that is usually attributed to him. If that were what he thought, why did he not make a bald statement to that effect? Hanslick did not mind making provocative statements—hence the strong reactions for and against OMB that have been evoked down the ages since its publication. But Hanslick just does not hold the view that absolute music is somehow better than non-absolute music, which is why he does not make that claim. Hanslick does hold a claim roughly in the area of that claim, as we will see below, but not that claim itself. If so, he has no motivation for deliberately and provocatively inverting the negative implications of Wagner’s use of “absolute.” Furthermore, Wagner uses the words “absolute Musik” as against Hanslick’s “absolute Tonkunst”; if the words are different it is unlikely that Hanslick was signaling Wagner; for that he would presumably have kept the words the same.
5. Musical Essence
Hanslick is committed to the idea that music has an essence. For example, Hanslick talks of “the inner nature of … works” (“das Innere der Werke,” OMB, 6; VMS 1881, 31); of the “specific essence of music” (“das specifische Wesen der,” OMB, 5; VMS 1858, 30); the “essential difference between music and the other arts” (“principiellen Unterschied derselben [i.e., the other arts] von der Musik,” OMB, 5; VMS, 30); the “essence and nature” of all music as such (“ihr Wesen und ihre Natur,” OMB, 14; VMS, 52); the “essence of music” (“Wesen der Tonkunst,” OMB, 20; VMS, 60); and “the essence and character of music” (“dem Wesen und der Natur der Musik,” OMB, 23; VMS 1881, 67).
That’s a lot of essence! Hanslick clearly takes talk of essence seriously, and in my view, this is to his credit. Perhaps it is a reflection of his Austrian realist philosophical tradition. It is characteristic of idealists of various kinds to be hostile to essence.
Appealing to the essence of music, as Hanslick does, is compatible with great diversity in music. Indeed, that is the very point! Essences explain, and what they explain is diverse. Water is one thing: H2O. But water takes many forms: ice, steam, liquid, depending on its temperature and context. The essence explains the variety of forms that the water can take and the variety of effects of water. In a similar way, the Hanslickian essence of music is needed to explain the variety of other things that music does: if it did not do the Hanslickian thing, then it would not do the other things.
What, then, is this distinctive essence? Hanslick knows well that not all music is absolute in the sense of only having an aesthetic function. Music with nonaesthetic functions exists. There is music for marching, for prayer, and for dancing. Furthermore, music may be mixed with other arts, as for example in song. What is in question is the priority of musical-beauty, explanatorily and normatively. That is how his appeal to the idea of musical essence is supposed to work. A rousing national anthem had better also work as Hanslickian musical-beauty. But how should this priority be understood?
6. Two Examples of Hanslick’s Approach to Non-Absolute Music
I shall first give two examples of Hanslick’s take on particular cases of non-absolute music, before proceeding to consider how he proposes to understand it theoretically.
One case study of Hanslick allowing for non-absolute music is his excellent review of Wagner’s Parsifal. With painful precision, Hanslick takes the music and text apart (just as Wagner said you cannot) and then puts them back together, in the face of Wagner’s attempt to drown the musically-beautiful in the literary ambitions of the work. Parsifal fails to be a “total work of art” (“Gesamtkunstwerk”), if that means that dissection is not possible. As Hanslick grants, Parsifal has some virtues; but as he details, with somewhat cruel but perfect accuracy, it has flaws as text, and also as music, that are not redeemed in a music–text synthetic combination. His review of Tannhäuser has similar virtues. No wonder Wagner was not happy about Hanslick and attempted to take petty revenge with a self-serving unflattering portrait of Hanslick as the character Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Another example of Hanslick’s critical assessment of non-absolute music is his review of a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685–1750) Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244 (St. Matthew’s Passion). Like Richard Taruskin and Bettina Varwig when they discuss Bach’s sacred cantatas, Hanslick stresses that St. Matthew’s Passion is a work of fundamentally pre-modern religious Pietist sensibility. Hanslick makes some insightful observations, contrasting Bach’s religious choral works with Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770–1827) Missa Solemnis and Georg Friedrich Handel’s (1685–1759) Messiah. He also notes some musical devices with religious meanings (Jesus’s musical “halo”). Nevertheless, he also writes: “In the first chorus, possibly the most perfect of the whole work, we have a polyphonic wonder whose enormous craftsmanship one admires without being oppressed or overwhelmed by it.” And “The smaller arias are less imposing and artful, but no less profound and thoughtful. … The thin accompaniment (especially, as in the Vienna performance, where the complementary organ was missing) and the absence of any brass instruments lend these arias an unusually chaste, earnest, and, at the same time, exotic expression. After the extended dominance of the flutes and oboes, it is actually refreshing when a violin takes up the accompaniment of the second part of the beautiful alto aria.” On this approach, the musically-beautiful plays a dominant role, while allowing for religious functions. On rival approaches, musical-beauty is downgraded or even obliterated. But Hanslick several times in OMB describes Bach’s music as beautiful (OMB, 22, 38, 40).
Hanslick allows combinations of music and text, but he thinks that music should remain the primary partner in that combination. Hence the major disagreement with Wagner. However, we are not yet clear about the exact nature of the priority of music over text where they fit together.
7. “Scientific” Aesthetics and the Back Door to Hanslick’s Aesthetics
In exactly what way does musical-beauty have priority in non-absolute music? How exactly does this work?
The first move that Hanslick makes in this direction in OMB is his claim, right at the beginning of the book, that the properly “scientific” (“wissenschaftliche”) understanding of the art of music should focus on what is particular to and distinctive of music (OMB, 1–2; VMS, 21–23). Therefore, we must focus on what is “proper to each particular art … inseparable from the distinctive characteristics of its material and its technique” (“daß die Schönheitsgesetze jeder Kunst untrennbar sind von den Eigenthümlichkeiten ihres Materials, ihrer Technik,” OMB, 2; VMS 1858, 23). Let us put to one side the role this plays in sidelining feelings in the analysis of music. Hanslick’s main claim is a positive one, and the negative claim about feelings is a consequence of it.
Two questions we can ask are these: First, does the positive claim about the proper “scientific” approach to music unfairly load the dice in favor of an overly unitary theory of music? Second, does it lead one towards a view like Clement Greenberg’s (1909–94) view of modernism in twentieth-century visual art, which foregrounded the material distinctive of each art? Greenberg thought that arts could be more or less pure depending on whether they deal more or less in what is distinctive of art of that sort. This seems to invite the normative idea that a work of art ought primarily to do what is distinctive of art of that sort, rather than doing what other arts can also do. Thus, the tendency to flatness and abstraction in twentieth-century art is celebrated by Greenberg, because the semantic content of paintings can be shared with literature. The idea would be that pure instrumental music is praised by Hanslick and placed on a higher level than “impure” music that also serves various non-musical purposes. So it is often said. Each art should do what only it can do; therefore, instrumental music is the highest form of music. Is that what Hanslick is saying?
To both questions: no. The quite general problem of impure and non-instrumental music is raised in chapter 2 in an oblique way. The context is disposing of the dubious view that music represents feelings. But if we focus on that, we will not see the more general issues that are being addressed about impure non-absolute music, from the “scientific” point of view. About halfway through the chapter, with his critic’s hat on, he tells how it should be done: he gives a broadly “formalist” description of a passage of Beethoven’s “Prometheus” overture, focusing on relations of tones, describing what constitutes the musical-beauty of the passage. He uses architectural metaphors. We may presume that this is what he thinks is a “scientific” approach in his earlier sense. He is telling critics how to write criticism.
He then appeals to disagreement over the emotion or feeling content of the music in order to disparage feeling theories of music and make a contrast with his own more “objective” description of the “Prometheus” overture. He then makes this fascinating statement, which I think is central to his project: “We have deliberately chosen instrumental music as our example. This is only for the reason that whatever can be asserted of instrumental music holds good for all music as such. If some general definition of music be sought, something by which to characterize its essence and nature, to establish its boundaries and purpose, we are entitled to confine ourselves to instrumental music. Of what instrumental music cannot do, it ought never to be said that music can do, because only instrumental music is music purely and absolutely” (OMB, 14–15). Landerer and Rothfarb render this as follows: “We have intentionally chosen instrumental movements as examples. For only what can be asserted about instrumental music is valid for music as such. If some specific characteristic in music is examined, something that is supposed to characterize its essence and its nature and to establish its boundaries and orientation, there can be talk only of instrumental music. Whatever instrumental music cannot do, can never be said that music can do it. For only instrumental music is pure, absolute [reine, absolute Tonkunst].” Both translations take the last “die” to refer to “die Instrumentalmusik” rather than “die Tonkunst,” even though the sentence itself is strictly ambiguous. I agree with that. But Landerer and Rothfarb helpfully let us know that what is said to be pure and absolute is “Tonkunst,” not “Musik.” The last phrase could be rendered “only music is absolute tonal-art.” After a few lines, Hanslick concludes: “Union with poetry extends the power of music, but not its boundaries” (OMB, 15).
These passages are what I think of as the back door to Hanslick’s general view. (Notice the tacit commitment to the existence of non-instrumental music in this passage. He here recognizes the existence of non-instrumental music, even allowing that “the union [of music] with poetry extends the power of music.”)
Now Hanslick has three crucial words around which this passage turns: Instrumentalmusik; Tonkunst; Musik; and this presents problems for an English translator. They need to be separated if we are to follow Hanslick’s argument. His last sentence connects instrumental music with tonal art, such that it gives a reason (“denn”) for a view about the general characteristics of Musik being given in terms of instrumental music. Remember that in chapter 3 he will say that musical-beauty is constituted (“liegt”) by tonal art (“tones and their artistic combination”). They are not the same thing; hence the constitution relation. This is why Hanslick cites instrumental works (“Instrumentalsätze”) as his examples, because anything true of instrumental music is true of music as such. So the argument can be reconstructed like this: only instrumental music is tonal art purely and absolutely. So the general nature of music is to be given in terms of instrumental music. (There is a slight confusion with the sentence “Of what instrumental music cannot do, it ought never to be said that music can do,” which seems [a] implausible, and [b] in flat contradiction with “union with poetry extends the power of music.” If it extends the power of music, then it can do something instrumental music cannot. The solution is to note “Music” is italicized, like “instrumental music,” and thus it means music as such, in its general nature, as outlined in the previous sentence.)
Consider this analogy (with apologies to Swedish Absolut Vodka). Only 100% pure alcohol is a pure and absolute intoxicant. It is true that alcoholic drinks, like vodka, wine, and beer, can do something that pure 100% alcohol cannot do, perhaps mixing well with tonic water or enhancing parties. But if you are looking for the general characteristics of alcoholic drinks, we can confine our attention to 100% pure alcohol. For those drinks are unified by having alcohol as an ingredient. That determines the boundaries but not the power of alcoholic drinks. The power of alcoholic drinks may be extended by unification with fruit or vegetable ingredients. But they are alcoholic drinks in virtue of the alcohol in them, and so we are justified in focusing on 100% pure alcohol in order to analyze what alcoholic drinks are.
Hanslick understands non-instrumental music in a way that accords a certain priority to instrumental beauty (“only instrumental music is music purely and absolutely”). He denies neither the existence nor the value of non-instrumental music. But it is a claim about the essence of music as manifested in non-absolute music.
8. The Key to the Back Door
Against Hanslick, one might ask: why not treat the two elements as equals—an amalgam or fusion of items holding equal status? In vocal music, for instance, why not say that music and text each contribute to the value of the whole? Hanslick maintains that this is not the case. It could be like that in some barely possible sense, but in reality it is not how things typically stand.
This might seem a surprising claim. “Why not?” we might ask. Surely hybrid art forms exist where two elements combine and each contributes equally to the whole. What is going on? Can Hanslick’s view be defended? Three possible positions occupy the intellectual space: music first, text first, and parity. Why rule out this last option? One could classify some drinks as alcoholic and others as non-alcoholic and then detail varieties of alcoholic drinks; but one could also classify varieties of coffee and list Irish coffee (coffee with whiskey) among the varieties of coffee. Why not give both ingredients equal status? The same might be asked of music and text when they are mixed.
Only a few pages after stating his view, and following it with a number of musical illustrations, Hanslick is ready to offer an argument for his claims. He writes:
How does it happen that in every song we can make many small alterations which, without in the least weakening the expression of feeling, immediately destroy the beauty of the musical theme? This would be impossible if the latter were dependent upon the former. And how does it happen that many songs which flawlessly express their text seem to us intolerably bad (OMB, 26)?
The new translation by Rothfarb and Landerer clarifies the reference of “the first” and translates “läge” more accurately:
How is it that we can undertake one or another small modification in any vocal piece that, without weakening in the least the accuracy of the expression of feeling, nevertheless immediately destroys the beauty of the theme? That would be impossible if the beauty of the theme lay in the accuracy of the expression. How is it that some vocal pieces that flawlessly express their text seem to us intolerably bad?
I think this argument is the key to the back door! The key has three main teeth. The first sentence claims that music may vary while text stays constant, leading to a loss of the musical beauty of the whole. The third sentence makes a claim about the possibility and actuality of songs that work as a vehicle for a text but are bad overall as far as musical beauty is concerned. The second sentence draws a conclusion from each of the other two sentences either side of it, namely that the musical beauty of the whole does lie in the accuracy of the expression of feeling of the text. I see “lay in” as suggesting constitution rather than dependence (as Payzant translates it). The conclusion in the second sentence, concerning constitution, aims to support the prioritarian analysis of non-absolute music enunciated in the chapter. The two premises give independent support for the constitution claim, which supports the priority of musical beauty in non-absolute music, claimed earlier in the chapter. It is that claim, in my view, which is fundamental to the general view of music that Hanslick endorses, and it generates his war with Wagner.
The variation argument holds that small variations in the music can spoil the beauty of the whole, while small variations in the text do not. I think this is a good argument. It shows that musical beauty—here he means the non-absolute beauty of the whole—does not lie in (does not consist in) the poetic theme, but it does consist in the instrumental aspects of the music. (Or perhaps we should put this as a matter of degree and say that it consists in one far more than the other.) If so, there is no equality. The second argument, that adequate “expression” of the text does not make for a good song, is also a good argument for thinking that the musical beauty of the whole does not consist in expressing the text well. So, there is no equality between music and text. (Hanslick makes a similar point in chapter 3 when he says, “If the musically beautiful is missing, it will never be compensated for by cooking up some great meaning” [OMB, 36].)
Wagner is possibly engaging with these questions in his opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act II, scene 6, where he has Sachs make adjustments to the text apparently to fit music that stays unchanged. Sachs then says, “Methinks tone and word should fit,” to which Beckmesser (Wagner’s representation of Hanslick) replies, “Who would quarrel with that?” Indeed. The issue is which fits which.
Gustav Klimt’s extraordinary 1902 wall-paintings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna are done very much with Wagner’s idea of a “total work of art” in mind, whereby the elements of the opera fit together and the music does not have priority. Spectacular though they are, they hardly constitute an argument; indeed, the power of the paintings depends on our independent knowledge of the music (as well as the words) of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Thus, the paintings fit the music, not vice versa, just as Hanslick would have said.
9. Music–Text Asymmetry
Hanslick compares opera to a “morganatic marriage” (“morganatische Ehe,” OMB, 26; VMS 1881, 73), where divorce can easily be obtained and one side retains what they put into the marriage. The union of music and poetry is not at all indissoluble, as Hanslick shows in his reviews, where he often considers first one, then the other, and then the combination. Hanslick appeals to our powers of mental “abstraction” (“Abstractionsvermögen,” OMB, 16; VMS, 55), by which he seems to mean our power to separate in thought what in fact exist together but can exist separately.
It is Mozart who Hanslick thinks perfectly understands the asymmetrical relation of music and text and perfectly puts that understanding into practice in his operas. It is not that Hanslick thinks there is a tragic musical dilemma and either text or music must suffer. For Hanslick thinks that Mozart perfectly reconciles the demands of music and text. But the harmony is achieved by music dominating text. Allowing text to dominate music leads ultimately to recitative, which is not “the noblest and most perfect music” (“die höchste, vollkommenste Musik,” OMB, 22; VMS, 65); and we might say the same of rap or much Wagner, in which words are dominant. Indeed, Hanslick says that an opera in which the music is entirely a means for dramatic expression would be a “musical monstrosity” (“musikalisches Unding,” OMB, 25; VMS, 70).
Hanslick praises Mozart for never sacrificing music to the text. But this is what Wagner does, where music is supposed to play second fiddle to drama in many of his operas. Hanslick thinks that poetry should serve music in opera, and in song more generally. This is a case of the priority of the instrumental aspect of music in non-absolute music.
Hanslick thinks that Mozart’s views and practice follow from “the essence and character of music” (“dem Wesen und der Natur der Musik,” OMB, 23; VMS 1881, 67). For Hanslick, that essence is its purpose, what I call its function; and that is what is sidelined in recitative, rap, and much Wagner. There is a loss of melody as the meaning of the words dominates.
The music of Mozart suits both low comedy and high drama. It is the asymmetry between music and text that explains the adaptability of music to
text. Compare architectural functions. Roger Scruton criticizes the architectural modernist credo that a building should be designed for some specific architectural function, such as a library, station, or residence. Scruton points out that a well-designed beautiful building may serve a variety of specific architectural functions. Hagia Sophia was built as a church, used as a stable and an armory, after that a mosque, and now a museum. Manhattan warehouses have been converted and used in multiple ways. Similarly, a well-designed piece of music may fit many different kinds of texts. Hanslick points out many examples of composers who reuse musical themes for very different texts. J. S. Bach often reused musical themes in and out of religious and secular contexts. Some of the musical material in the secular “Trauerode” (“Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl,” BWV 198) was recycled for the Markus-Passion, BWV 247 (St. Mark’s Passion). This flexibility is what we would expect of Hanslick’s asymmetrical, music-first view of the relation between music and text.
In his review, Hanslick even writes that it is “a sad indication of extensive derangement” to “celebrate the interdependent and harmonious relationship of music to [Wagner’s] poetry as the new great achievement, next to which the question of the beauty of the music is of no concern.” That is a very strong statement! In mitigation, though, we should note the strength of the view that the beauty of the music is of no concern at all. A range of views could be classified according to how much concern there is with beauty in music in proportion to other concerns. The strong claim that Hanslick mentions, which lies at the end of a spectrum, flies completely in the face of the “essence and character of music.”
10. Hanslick and Formalism
Finally, let us ask the rather general question: should we say that Hanslick’s view is “formalist”? Music is a human artifact that (typically) has among its functions that of generating musical beauty—a beauty that consists “simply and solely of tones and their artistic combination” (“einzig in den Tönen und ihrer künstlerischen Verbindung,” OMB, 28; VMS, 74). That basis excludes most of the sociopolitical contextual factors that many musicologists are interested in, which suffices to make Hanslick’s view of musical beauty “formalist” on most understandings of
that term, since such contextual matters are something over and above sounds or tones artistically combined. On the other hand, since music is an artifact, and its musical beauty is the beauty of an artifact, it is not formally beautiful in the sense of beauty dependent solely on sounds. That is why it has musical beauty. Music and musical beauty are human creations.
Musical formalism need not be the implausible view that all music is absolute; rather, it can be the view that makes musical beauty central and aims to explain other values and functions of music not completely in terms of musical beauty, but where the goal of musical beauty is an essential and ineliminable part. That essence is necessary for explaining whatever else music does. Hanslick can say that the musical beauty function is sometimes the only function of music, but also that much music has musical beauty functions as well as other functions. These other functions may even be more important than the musical beauty function. Many are the ways that musical beauty combines with other functions of music. But in most cases, it does so partly in virtue of sustaining musical beauty.
Thus, Hanslick has a plausible view of non-absolute music, one in which musical beauty plays a central explanatory role. To be sure, some aspects of that view need further elucidation and development; but I think it is clear that the effort will be worth it. Since Hanslick’s views on non-absolute music are an integral part of his overall view, what we have seen here adds yet more credence to what Hanslick has to say about music in general.