On Hanslick and the musically beautiful

Abstract

The content of music is not the representation of specific feelings, rather the content of music is forms realised in tone.

Eduard Hanslick is known for his negative story and formalistic claims. After having discussed the claims of the negative story the main emphasis of this thesis is to enable a proper reading of Hanslick’s positive story. Hanslick’s main aim is to find what can stand as a foundation of a principle of the musically beautiful, and concludes that this foundation cannot be feeling. This negation of feeling as the content and purpose of music is founded on a belief of music as contentless. It is concluded that this idea of contentlessness is merely another way to claim that there is no form and content distinction in art, as there is no independent content. This distinction, as will be shown with the help of R.G. Collingwood, is what separates art from craft, as art has two kinds of ends, a technical end and an expressive end. Hanslick offers a similar distinction between Inhalt and Gehalt. This distinction is essential to understanding the picture Hanslick offers, as this distinction not only suggests the way in which we understand music by alluding to different aspects of understanding, but furthermore it offers a different way to read and interpret the main positive thesis of the content of music. Furthermore, this distinction stands as the foundation for how we should consider and value the process of the composer, the relation music has to nature, the musical system and the value of the listener. And last but by no means least, this distinction offers justification for an alternative reading of Hanslick where Hanslick is indeed a formalist but where he does not exclude everything that goes by the name of feeling.

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ORCID for Lee Walters: orcid.org/0000-0003-3899-3522

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