## 1. Nineteenth Century


### 1.1 Romantic Musical Aesthetics



At the end of the eighteenth century, a new aesthetic sensibility
emerges in Europe. The imitation of nature loses ground to new values
such as the expression of feelings and the autonomy of art. No longer
confined to the imitation of the sensible world, art is conceived as a
way to attain knowledge of a transcendent reality. This shift in
attitude is of paramount importance for the position of music among
the arts. If the eighteenth century had struggled to fit the growing
instrumental repertoire into the clothes of imitation, the Romantics
proclaimed music's superiority precisely in virtue of its
absolute nature. And while the early modern period had occasionally
touted the pleasures of listening, the Romantics raised the bar,
stressing that music's value is not primarily hedonic, but
rather cognitive.



The rise of this new musical aesthetics is particularly evident in the
works of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773-1798). His
*Fantasies on Art for Friends of Art* [*Phantasien uber
die Kunst fur Freunde der Kunst*] (1799), while unsystematic
and lacking argumentation, is rich in suggestions. For instance, we
find in it a tell-tale comparison between music and the visual arts.
The latter can at best aim at a convincing imitation of natural
objects, though their productions hardly compare to the beauty of
nature. Not so with music, as natural sounds have little value when
compared to musical tones, since these



> 
> 
> are of an entirely different nature; they don't imitate, they
> don't beautify, but rather represent a separate world in itself.
> (Wackenroder 1799: 241, my translation)
> 
> 
> 



If music does not deal with the world as we know it from ordinary
perception, but rather with a transcendent reality, then language will
fail to describe music effectively. This is what we could call the
*ineffability thesis*, which emerges in various forms in the
writings of Romantic philosophers, critics, and musicians. The view is
conveyed not so much by the weak claim that we do not currently have
words to name what music means or expresses, but rather by the
stronger claim that we could not possibly find them. While it is
perhaps Arthur Schopenhauer who is responsible for the most
influential philosophical account of ineffability (see following
section), the composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) gives the
ineffability thesis its most famous formulation when he states
that



> 
> 
> [t]he thoughts which are expressed to me by a piece of music which I
> love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary
> too definite. (letter to Marc-Andre Souchay 15 October 1842,
> quoted in Fubini 1991: 307)
> 
> 
> 



The composer and historian of music August Wilhelm Ambros
(1816-1876), further away from the heyday of the Romantic
movement, makes a somewhat weaker claim:



> 
> 
> Poetry, much like music, is able to express feelings, for which it
> would be almost impossible to find a corresponding term. (Ambros 1885:
> 70, my translation)
> 
> 
> 



The ineffability thesis was put into question around the middle of the
century by the growing support for formalist tendencies, which saw in
our inability to name the feelings expressed by music a symptom of its
expressive poverty (see
 SS1.6).



Precisely because of its strikingly Romantic tinge, it is tempting to
brush off the ineffability thesis as a historical curiosity. However,
it is worth noting that the rejection of language as a model for the
understanding of music is a move that allows us to look at music as a
symbol in its own right, with its own syntactic and semantic rules.
Fubini writes:



> 
> 
> Instrumental music had always been charged with indeterminacy; yet it
> is only indeterminate when it is viewed from the standpoint of verbal
> language. Herein lies the great discovery of the Romantic thinkers,
> that the idiom of music is of a quite different order, and is to be
> measured with an entirely different yardstick. (Fubini 1991: 266)
> 
> 
> 



Far from being confined to a Romantic curiosity, the difference
between language and music *qua* symbol systems will be
explored in the twentieth century by proponents of semiotic approaches
such as Susanne Langer and Nelson Goodman (see
 SS2.3).



Wackenroder also voices another typically Romantic view, according to
which the emotions expressed by an artwork bear a relation to the ones
felt by the artist as she composed the work. In Wackenroder's
*Outpourings of an Art-Loving Monk* [*Herzensergiessungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders*] (1797), the fictional Joseph
Berglinger



> 
> 
> filled his soul with the most sublime poetry, with a full and exultant
> hymn, and, in a marvelous inspiration, but still violently shaken
> emotionally, he set down a passion music which, with its deeply
> affecting melodies, embodying all the pains of suffering, will forever
> remain a masterpiece. (Wackenroder 1797 [1950: 762])
> 
> 
> 



In its strongest formulation, this view holds that a work of music
being sad, happy, and the like, requires the author to have been in
that emotional state when composing the work. This is known today as
*expression theory* (for a classic exposition, see Abrams 1971:
chapter 4), and is sometimes paired with the further claim that, upon
appreciating the work, one will be put in an emotional state similar
to the artist's. Although it is now largely discredited (Tormey
1971; Budd 1985: chapter 7), the expression theory is a paradigmatic
view of artistic production as (emotional) communication between two
individuals. Wackenroder, again through the character of Berglinger,
is comforted by the thought that



> 
> 
> there may be someone whom Heaven has made so sympathetic to my soul
> that he will feel on hearing my melodies precisely what I felt in
> writing them--precisely what I sought to put in them.
> (Wackenroder 1797 [1950: 759])
> 
> 
> 



Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), is arguably the most important
composer who described his compositional practice in ways that are
suggestive of the expression theory:



> 
> 
> [...] like the poet who is inspired by the feelings that he
> transmutes into words, I too am inspired to turn my feelings into the
> music that sounds within me and torments me until finally it has been
> put down in notes on the sheet of paper in front of me. (Beethoven
> 1961, quoted in Fubini 1991: 288)
> 
> 
> 



Wackenroder's writings already show evidence of the change in
attitude toward instrumental music. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
(1776-1822), a writer, composer, and critic, is a crucial figure
in this process. The start of his essay *Beethoven's
Instrumental Music* (1813) is a quintessential expression of the
Romantic conception of music:



> 
> 
> When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not always
> restrict our meaning to instrumental music, which, scorning every aid,
> every admixture of another art (the art of poetry), gives pure
> expression to music's specific nature, recognizable in this form
> alone? It is the most romantic of all the arts--one might almost
> say, the only genuinely romantic one--for its sole subject is the
> infinite. (Hoffman 1813 [1950: 775])
> 
> 
> 



The glorification of instrumental music is paired with the
condemnation of imitation. Extra-musical imagery, however, is not
altogether banned, at least on the listener's side: much like
Wackenroder, Hoffmann helps himself to fanciful descriptions of music,
and uses these in order to bring out the differences among the three
greatest representatives of the Viennese School. Thus, Haydn
"leads us into vast green woodlands" (Hoffman 1813 [1950
[776]), Mozart "leads us into the heart of the spirit
realm" (1813 [1950: 777]), whereas Beethoven's
instrumental music "opens up to us also the realm of the
monstrous and the immeasurable" (1813 [1950: 777]).
Hoffman's essay also contains a version of the ineffability
thesis:



> 
> 
> music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world that has nothing in
> common with the external sensual words that surrounds him, a world in
> which he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself
> to an inexpressible longing. (Hoffman 1813 [1950: 775-776])
> 
> 
> 



While many of these claims are advanced by early Romantics without
much argumentative support, at least some of these views are given a
more systematic defense by Schopenhauer.


### 1.2 Romantic Metaphysics of Music: Schopenhauer



The art of music occupies a central place in Arthur
Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) philosophical system, with
which it is inextricably linked. A brief overview of
Schopenhauer's system is thus in order. He accepts the Kantian
distinction between the world as it is in itself and as it appears to
us, but rejects Kant's claim that we cannot know reality as it
is independently from its phenomenal manifestation. As representing
subjects, our knowledge is bound by what Schopenhauer terms
*principium individuationis*, which orders representations
according to a spatio-temporal structure and determines causal
relationships between them. Objects are thus given to us in a mediated
fashion, as representations. But one object is given to us as
experiencing subjects both in a mediated and in an unmediated fashion.
This is our own body, which is experienced both from the outside, as a
representation, and from the inside, as an incessant succession of
drives and impulses. Schopenhauer claims that this reveals the
fundamental noumenal essence of the world as Will. Since the Will is
endless striving and desiring, and since desiring and striving are by
nature sources of pain, the world is essentially characterized by
suffering. Additionally, Schopenhauer claims that the Will objectifies
itself in the world through a set of Platonic Ideas, which exist
beyond the *principium individuationis*, and are ranked
according to the degree in which the Will is objectivized in them.



In Schopenhauer's system, art acquires its value from its
capacity to represent the Ideas, exploiting a form of cognition that
is different from rational and intellectual cognition, which by nature
cannot go beyond the *principium individuationis*. This
cognition is valuable because it removes us from the network of
deterministically linked representations and motives that constitute
our ordinary existence in the thralls of our desires and longings.



Schopenhauer ranks the various arts according to the Ideas they
represent. The higher the degree of objectivation of the Will in a
given Idea, the higher the hierarchical position of the art
representing that Idea. Accordingly, architecture is found at the
bottom of the hierarchy, as it deals with the Ideas of basic physical
forces and inanimate matter, whereas tragedy occupies the highest
position, as it represents the struggles of the human condition, where
the Will is most evidently manifest.



In this hierarchy of the arts, music's value is superior even to
that of tragedy. According to Schopenhauer, music is not a
representation of Ideas, but rather of the Will itself. Music and the
world are expressions of the same metaphysical principle, the Will.
This motivates Schopenhauer's remark that music could exist even
if there were no world at all (1819: SS52). If music is an
expression of the Will just as the world is, and given that the Will
objectifies itself in the world through the Platonic Ideas, one can
trace a parallel between music and degrees of objectivation of the
Will. Particularly, Schopenhauer sets up an analogy between pitch
range and degrees of objectivation. Thus, the lowest areas of the
audible pitch range are associated with the lowest degrees, such as
inorganic nature and physical forces, whereas the higher regions of
the pitch range match with the highest level of objectivation of the
Will, self-conscious human beings. Schopenhauer motivates this
analysis through a rather audacious interpretation of both acoustics
and music theory. This series of correspondences between music and the
extra-musical world is reminiscent of the Pythagorean notion of
celestial harmony (see the entry
 history of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 1.1).
 Schopenhauer questionably and conveniently identifies high pitch with
melody. This is questionable because the melodic element in music is
not determined by pitch range, but rather by relational properties,
nor is a melody always composed of the highest notes in a given piece.
It is convenient, because the parallel between pitch range and degrees
of objectivation allows Schopenhauer to consider the unfolding of a
melody as analogous to human emotional life. Much as human life is
characterized by an alternation of need and satisfaction, melodies
feature continuous shifts from tension to relaxation. The emotions we
encounter in music have a peculiar status: they are neither
particular, for they are beyond the *principium
individuationis*, nor general, as they are not abstracted from
particular cases as concepts are, and cannot therefore be captured
linguistically.



It should be stressed that, according to Schopenhauer, music does not
*arouse* such emotions in the listener, and if it did, it would
not be valuable on those grounds. In fact, the value of music resides
exactly in its capacity to present us with the Will in its highest
degree of objectivation, without having to experience its stirrings
ourselves--the latter experience would be an inherently
unpleasant one, according to Schopenhauer. The value of music as art
is thus, according to Schopenhauer, eminently cognitive.



From this view of music, some normative consequences follow. First,
because the analogy between music and the world depends on their being
expressions of the same metaphysical Will, and because the Will lies
beyond the scope of conceptual knowledge, Schopenhauer condemns
imitative music, as this depicts the world by imitating its sonic
appearance to a subject, rather than its inner essence. Second,
because the knowledge provided by music is superior to discursive
knowledge, Schopenhauer dismisses works and genres in which the music
is subservient to the lyrics. Third, because Schopenhauer holds the
music's melodic element to be central to its value, he is
dismissive of music in which melody is inconspicuous ("In the
compositions of today there is more emphasis on the harmony than the
melody; I however take the opposite view and regard melody as the core
of music, to which harmony relates as does sauce to a roast"
Schopenhauer 1851: chapter 19, SS 219).



Schopenhauer's view of music influenced a number of composers.
His impact on Richard Wagner could hardly have been greater (see
 SS1.4;
 Magee 1997: chapter 17; Karnes & Mitchell 2020; on
Schopenhauer's musical aesthetics, see Alperson 1981; Budd 1985:
chapter 5; Wicks 2008: 106-111).


### 1.3 Idealist Musical Aesthetics: Schelling and Hegel



Music's rise to prominence among the arts is signaled by the
increasing number of major philosophers who find space for it in their
systems. These include Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
(1775-1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
The greatest contribution of idealist philosophy to the aesthetics of
music is perhaps the idea that music's temporal nature is
crucial to its peculiar status among the arts (see Johnson 1991:
159).



Schelling developed his philosophy of art in a series of lectures he
gave in the years 1802-03 and 1804-05, although the result
of these efforts was published only posthumously in 1859. He conceives
of art as the manifestation of the Infinite in the Finite, and divides
the arts into formative (*bildende*, often rendered as
"figurative") and verbal (*redende*). Formative
arts function by manipulating their characteristic material, that is,
their medium, whereas verbal arts convey content semantically. Music
belongs to the formative arts, alongside painting and sculpture.
Schelling distinguishes three elements in music: rhythm, modulation
(harmony), and melody. On these he projects the triad of the formative
arts, claiming that rhythm is the musical in music, modulation the
painterly, and melody the sculptural. As this suggests, Schelling
believes rhythm, and more generally music's temporal dimension,
to be of fundamental importance. Music's necessary form is
temporal succession. Rhythm allows us to perceive a multiplicity of
temporally contiguous moments as a unity, and thereby performs a
function similar to that of self-consciousness, which allows us to
perceive various experiences as a unified whole (Schelling 1859:
SS79).



Similar ideas are developed in more rigorous and systematic fashion by
Hegel, whose reflections on music are embedded in an articulated
system of the arts (see Moland 2019: chapter 9). This system is itself
related to a historical analysis of art's development, which in
turn is grounded in an idealist metaphysics. According to Hegel,
reality coincides with a self-determining spiritual principle, or Idea
(*Idee*). The Idea develops historically through branching
triadic patterns constituted by a thesis, or positive moment, its
negation or antithesis, and a synthesis of the two. Each moment may
itself branch into a further triadic pattern, which is thus nested
under the higher-order ones. The highest forms of development of the
Idea involve self-conscious Spirit (*Geist*), as we find it in
human life and society. Spirit's third moment is absolute
spirit, which in turn branches into art, religion, and philosophy, the
latter being the culmination of the Idea's unfolding.
Art's relative proximity to philosophy is an indication of its
relatively high value in Hegel's eyes, and its contiguity to
religion will mean that at least some art will share some features
with religion. Whereas philosophy expresses the Spirit through
concepts, and religion does so through metaphors and representations,
art is the sensuous expression of the Spirit's freedom. Beauty
is thus defined as "the pure appearance of the Idea to
sense" (Hegel 1835: part I, chapter I, 3).



According to Hegel, art may be further analyzed in terms of a triadic
structure, in such a way that we may distinguish its development
through symbolic, classical, and romantic art. Hegel's system of
the individual arts is dependent on this historical unfolding, as the
various art forms are differently suited to each of the three stages.
Symbolic art falls short of art proper, and is in fact described by
Hegel as pre-art (*Vorkunst*), as it limits itself to offering
symbols of the Spirit, as opposed to giving an adequate sensory
presentation of its freedom. Classical art is art at its fullest, as
it gives a perfectly adequate sensuous presentation of the spiritual.
Hegel holds that this is best exemplified by classical Greek art, and
particularly sculpture. Romantic art (by which Hegel means Christian
art from the Middle Ages onwards) is characterized by the expression
of a content that transcends the visible realm, since it expresses an
inward freedom, as opposed to an external one. Hegel writes:



> 
> 
> The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its
> corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its
> independence and freedom. (Hegel 1835: part II, section III,
> Introduction, 2)
> 
> 
> 



This content will then best be represented by religion, which follows
art in the triadic sequence.



Because romantic art's content is inward freedom, sculpture is
no longer adequate, as it is bound to the representation of
three-dimensional figures. Painting, however, abandons the third
dimension, and is further able to express interiority through the use
of color. But in subjective inwardness the spatial dimension is
altogether absent. Its only appreciable dimension is that of the
temporal unfolding of our mental life, characterized by the rapid
succession of states that replace one another in our consciousness.
Music is the art that is best suited to the expression of this inward
dimension, as it abandons spatial extension entirely, and develops
solely through time. Music is thus the art form that is best suited to
romantic art.



The perception of one's own persistence through time requires
discrete events that break the otherwise continuous and identical
stream of temporality. This is achieved in music through meter and
rhythm, which subdivide the music's unfolding in ordered,
discrete units. Harmony fills in this abstract structure with notes.
Melody, which Hegel conceives of as a synthesis of rhythm and harmony,
is the highest manifestation of music, "the sphere of its
properly artistic inventions" (Hegel 1835: part III, section
III, chapter II, 2.c).



Melody allows music to give sensuous manifestation to the freedom of
the Spirit by presenting feelings in their temporal unfolding. Hegel
does not say much as to how melody achieves its expressive task. He
contrasts expression in music and painting, claiming that only the
latter is concerned with the exact reproduction of expressive
behavior. However, some kind of imitation of human expressions still
seems to play a role in Hegel's account, as he then adds that in
music



> 
> 
> the simple cry is analysed into a series of notes, into a movement,
> the change and course of which is supported by harmony and rounded
> into whole by melody. (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II,
> 3.a)
> 
> 
> 



This framework allows Hegel to develop an original argument in support
of the otherwise commonplace view that music moves us. The self is
constituted in time, and musical sounds exist in time. It is this
common medium that allows music to exert such a powerful effect on our
emotional life (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II, 1.c).
Poetry shares with music its temporal and aural dimension, but it
separates medium from content, as the concepts conveyed by a poem are
arbitrarily linked to the words that constitute it, whereas
music's content is inseparable from its sounding (Hegel 1835:
part III, section III, chapter II, 1.a).



Hegel distinguishes between accompanying and independent music. To the
former belongs any work that involves music and a text, whereas the
latter is instrumental music. When music functions as an
accompaniment, Hegel holds that the text should be subordinate to the
music (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II, 3). Independent
music is music at its full potential, as it is best able to express
the freedom of the Spirit, for subjective experience unfolds
undetermined by concepts (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter
II, 3.b). However, independent music also harbors a potential danger,
as it may be tempted to rely on its formal complexity and forego
emotional content entirely, in which case it would strictly speaking
cease to be art (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II, 1.b).
Here Hegel pairs a Romantic vindication of instrumental music as music
*par excellence* with an eighteenth century suspicion of music
that is not expressive of emotions.



The originality of Hegel's musical thinking is also manifested
in the few considerations he devotes to the role of the performer.
These are introduced and motivated by an observation on the mode of
existence peculiar to musical works: while in painting and sculpture
we appreciate the product of an activity, in music we appreciate the
process of production (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II,
3.c). Hegel then distinguishes two approaches to performance. The
first relinquishes personal contributions on the part of the
performer, and seeks to render the work as faithfully as possible,
whereas the second allows the performer some initiative (Hegel 1835:
part III, section III, chapter II, 3.c). Hegel claims that the two
approaches bear a relation to accompanying and independent music,
respectively, but does not imply that each approach is best suited to
its corresponding kind of music.


### 1.4 Music and Drama: Wagner



Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is the most important major Western
composer to have left a sizable body of philosophical writings on
music. In addition to the intrinsic interest of his own views and
their relation to the composer's musical production,
Wagner's place in the history of the philosophy of music is
secured by the influence Schopenhauer exercised on him, and by the one
he in turn had on another major philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (see
 SS1.2
 and
 SS1.5).



Despite the vast literature on Wagner's music, relatively few
works take seriously the philosophical details of his writings, and
some are openly dismissive of his undeniably meandering, rhetorically
charged prose (see for instance Fubini 1991: 325; significant works on
Wagner's philosophy and aesthetics are Grey 1995, Magee 2000,
and Young 2014).



Wagner's first substantial theoretical contributions are the
so-called Zurich writings (1849-52), from the name of the city
where he spent his exile for having taken part in the 1848 revolution,
political movements inspired by democratic and liberal ideals. In
these works, Wagner objects to the current state of art in society,
and argues that only a new kind of artwork, a "total"
artwork (*Gesamtkunstwerk*) uniting the various art forms,
could reestablish art's role as the "living utterance of a
free, self-conscious community" (Wagner 1849a [1892: 41]).
According to Wagner, contemporary art is enslaved to either political
or financial power. It will become a genuine expression of the
community that produces it only after its liberation from the
constraints imposed by both the government and the market. Thus,
Wagner claims in *Art and Revolution* (1849) that art is not
essentially revolutionary, although it need be revolutionary given the
current conditions, "because its very existence is opposed to
the ruling spirit of the community" (Wagner 1849a [1892:
52]).



Wagner's paradigm of the total artwork is the Greek tragic
festival. While he does not call for its literal restoration, Wagner
argues that the artwork of the future should be like the Greek one in
some crucial respects. It should involve all strata of society (Wagner
1849a; Wagner 1852b: part II, 2). Most famously, it should unite the
various art forms (Wagner 1849a; Wagner 1849b: IV). Aside from his
reliance on the authority of the Greek model, at least two additional
argument are advanced by Wagner in support of the
*Gesamtkunstwerk*. First, Wagner argues that its multi-sensory
nature is best apt to give rise to an immersive, lifelike experience
(Wagner 1852b: part II, 2; for discussion, see Young 2014:
46-48). Second, Wagner holds that an art is unfree
(*unfrei*) when in isolation, free when it cooperates with
other art forms (Wagner 1849b: II, 2). The argument seems to rely on
an analogy with human freedom, which Wagner conceived as possible only
for an individual who is part of a collective. In both cases, absence
of limitations is equated with an absence of freedom.



Wagner's admiration for Greek tragedy is only superficially
similar to the Camerata's attempt to revive it (see the entry
 history of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.2).
 In *Opera and Drama* (1852), he argues that opera's
fundamental mistake has been that of subordinating opera's end
(drama) to its means (music). He then describes opera as misguided
from its very origins in Italy (Wagner 1852b: Introduction).



In 1854 Wagner encountered for the first time the work of Arthur
Schopenhauer. This produced a decisive and immediate influence on
Wagner's worldview, which in turn had an impact on his musical
production and theoretical works. Although Wagner's late
writings are less systematic than those of 1849-52, a new view
of music and drama finds expression in his essay *Beethoven*
(1870) and in *The Destiny of Opera* (1871).



In the Beethoven essay, Wagner describes Schopenhauer as the first
philosopher who gave a clear treatment of music's place among
the arts. Schopenhauer's philosophy of music gives a privileged
status to pure instrumental music (see
 SS1.2),
 an assumption that contrasts with Wagner's central commitment
to a union of the arts, as well as with his related reservations about
music alone. Under Schopenhauer's influence, the late Wagner
surrenders some central points of his earlier view, as evident from
his claim that "a piece of music loses nothing of its character
even when the most diverse texts are laid beneath it", and the
subsequent contention that the union of music and poetry always
results in the subordination of the latter (Wagner 1870 [1896: 104).
This stands in stark contrast with Wagner's earlier
characterization of melody as an element that should not attract the
listener's attention, functioning merely as "the most
expressive vehicle for an emotion already plainly outlined in the
words" (Wagner 1851 1852a: 372). Wagner denies a contradiction
between his earlier and late views, although Young (2014:
101-107) notes that changes are evident both from Wagner's
writings as well as from the musical production that follows his
encounter with Schopenhauer--especially the three works in the
*Ring* cycle that follow *Das Rheingold*.


### 1.5 Nietzsche



The main elements of Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900)
musical aesthetics are laid out in his first book, *The Birth of
Tragedy* (1872), which bears the clear influence of Schopenhauer
and is dedicated to Wagner. The book describes the world as torn
between two tendencies or principles, the Apollonian and the
Dionysian.



The Apollonian element is the rational view of reality as subject to
the *principium individuationis*, a concept that Nietzsche
borrows from Schopenhauer (see
 SS1.2).
 While ultimately an illusion, the Apollonian order of reality is
necessary to the formation of any civilization. In opposition to the
Apollonian, the Dionysian is the awareness of the fundamental unity of
all beings, again in analogy with Schopenhauer's metaphysical
Will. If the former impulse is expressed in peaceful contemplation,
the latter is manifested in states of ecstatic frenzy, which ought
however to be contained in order to spare individuals and
civilizations from self-destruction. According to Nietzsche, only in
the balance between the two tendencies is life bearable.



In this picture, the arts differ in to the degree to which they embody
one of these two tendencies. Sculpture is the Apollonian art *par
excellence*, while music possesses to the highest degree the
Dionysian component. The reasons for the identification of music as
Dionysian are complex to reconstruct. Sorgner (20003 [2010:
147-149]) isolates three: (1) music relies on an experience of
flow and temporal change; (2) music represents pain and strife through
its use of dissonances; (3) music induces states of intoxication and
self-forgetfulness through which we experience the fundamental unity
of the world.



Greek tragedy is characterized by Nietzsche as the supreme artistic
achievement because it expresses both tendencies. This, at least, is
true of Aeschylus' and Sophocles' tragedies. Euripides,
influenced by Socratic rationalism, expunged the Dionysian element
from tragedy. Once tragedy lost its Dionysian element, it was also
deprived of its redeeming power. According to Nietzsche,
Wagner's operas are to be credited for having brought back the
synthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian elements, and thus to have made
again available the redeeming power of the Greek tragedy.



The second part of *The Birth of Tragedy* is wedded to the
Wagnerian agenda to such an extent that is has been defined as
"by far the most ambitious defence of an individual artist ever
mounted by a philosopher" (Ridley 2007: 31). Despite
Nietzsche's early enthusiastic endorsement of Wagner's
work, his infatuation with the composer soon began to fade, and
finally turned into outright condemnation (on Nietzsche-Wagner
relations, see Ridley 2007: appendix; Young 2014: epilogue; Prange
2013: chapters 1-6). While the reasons for this are complex, it
seems clear that Wagner's failure to embody the values of truly
Dionysian music was crucial. This failure depended not only on
Wagner's own stylistic development, but also on
Nietzsche's reconsideration of the composer's earlier
achievement. Nietzsche later contrasts German and Romantic music with
Dionysian music, which clashes with Nietzsche's own earlier
characterization of German music, and especially Wagner's, as
truly Dionysian (Nietzsche 1872: SS19; about the contrast between
Dionysian and Romantic art more generally, see Ridley 2007:
122-128). In *Beyond Good and Evil* (1886), Nietzsche
contrasts the decadent music of the North to that of the South,
epitomized by Bizet's work, the chief value of which lies in its
life-affirming quality (Nietzsche 1886: SS554).



As is apparent from the above, Nietzsche's evaluation of musical
styles changed along with his philosophical views. Concrete examples
of music he praises vary from Wagner's *Tristan and
Isolde* to Bizet's *Carmen*. The clearest set of
evaluative claims is found in *The Birth of Tragedy*, where
opposition emerges between Apollonian and Dionysian music. The latter
is obviously considered by Nietzsche as superior to the former, as he
defines music as the art in which the Dionysian is present in the
highest degree. Nietzsche offers little in terms of a clear
distinction between the two, but he seems to think of Dionysian music
as privileging melodic and harmonic components, whereas Apollonian
music stresses rhythmical ones. Two other elements of
Nietzsche's view of music can be singled out, and
Schopenhauer's influence on both is evident. First, Nietzsche
believes that music should never be subservient to a text (Nietzsche
1872: SS19). Secondly, Nietzsche holds that music ought to avoid
tone-painting, which is merely an imitation of the world's
appearance (Nietzsche 1872: SS17). But if Nietzsche's early
musical aesthetics is close to Schopenhauer in his negative
characterization of what is valuable in music, his positive notion of
musical value departs significantly from Schopenhauer's, as
Nietzsche holds that music's value is partly to be located in
its capacity to arouse emotions or induce a certain psychological
state (Nietzsche 1872: SS2).



It is more daunting a task to reconstruct Nietzsche's views on
music after *The Birth of Tragedy*. In addition to the already
mentioned distancing from Wagner, a relevant change in
Nietzsche's view is found in some remarks from *Human, All
Too Human* (1878), which constitute a wholesale rejection of his
earlier views concerning the relationship between music and language.
In this work, musical meaning and expressiveness are described as a
product of music's longstanding association with poetic language
and expressive gestures (Nietzsche 1878: SS 215-16). Only
through these associations is it possible for instrumental music to
acquire meaning:



> 
> 
> No music is in itself profound and meaningful, it does not speak of
> the "will" or of the "thing in itself".
> (Nietzsche 1878 [1996]: SS 215; on Nietzsche's late musical
> aesthetics, see Higgins 1986; Young 1992: chapters 3-5; and
> Prange 2013: chapter 6)
> 
> 
> 


### 1.6 Absolute Music and the Rise of Formalism



The nineteenth century witnessed the first explicit vindications of
absolute music as an aesthetic ideal (for a history of this concept,
see Dahlhaus 1978 [1989], Pederson 2009, and Bonds 2014). The term was
first used in 1846 by Wagner, who then employed it pejoratively in his
1849-51 writings in order to refer to music lacking any
essential social function--in this sense, music is absolute
insofar as it is socially autonomous (on Wagner's uses of
"absolute music", see Grey 1995: 2; Chua 1999: 225;
Pederson 2009: 241-245; Bonds 2014: 134 ff.). Wagner's
opponents appropriated the term in this second sense, to denote music
that is not accompanied by a text, program, or other conceptual
prompts. In this sense, the symphony was considered the paradigmatic
example of absolute music (see Dahlhaus 1978 [1989: 10-11]).
Absolute music is thus purely instrumental music--this is also
how the expression is typically used today. The concept of absolute
music may be used in a purely descriptive fashion: it denotes a subset
of all musical works. However, nineteenth century aesthetics often
adopted a normative view of absolute music as purely instrumental
music. The view holds that music's value is irreducible to that
of other art forms, and that instrumental music is valuable for its
formal properties, rather than for any content it may disclose (if it
can do so in the first place), or feelings it may arouse. This is
musical *formalism*.



While Kant was likely not a formalist (see the entry
 history of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.6),
 Young (2020: 180) observes that he was considered one from as early
as the 1820s, as evident from the work of the Swiss composer
Hans-Georg Nageli (1773-1836). Nageli gives early
formulations of various standard formalist views. He argues that music
does not have any determinate emotional character, as shown by the
fact that people cannot agree on it if asked. Accordingly, music does
not convey specific affects (*Affekten*), but merely moods
(*Stimmungen*). It does not have any content (*Inhalt*),
but merely form (*Form*) (Nageli 1826: 32).



In addition to Kant's aesthetics (or at least their
interpretation of it), formalists could count on the support of a
major philosopher, Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), who
adopted an influential and undeniably formalist view of art. He
defended the specificity of each art form, and distinguished the
effects of the beautiful from the beautiful itself, the latter being
the proper object of aesthetic appreciation.



To Nageli and Herbart is indebted the greatest representative of
musical formalism, Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) (for a discussion
of Hanslick's forerunners, see Bonds 2014: 157 ff.; Wilfing 2018
debunks the widespread view that Kant exercised a decisive influence
on Hanslick).



Hanslick's brief treatise *On the Musically Beautiful*
(1854) is one of the most influential works in history of musical
aesthetics. The work gives a concise and persuasive formulation of the
cardinal tenets of formalism. The book opens with a series of
arguments against what he calls "the aesthetics of
feeling" (Hanslick 1854 [2018]: chapter 1). This is the Romantic
conception of music as concerned with the representation and arousal
of emotions. The negative part of Hanslick's work establishes
that music cannot represent feelings, and that music's arousal
of feelings, while possible, is irrelevant to its aesthetic
appreciation. Hanslick's positive thesis is that the
appreciation of music involves the intellect (*Geist*) rather
than the emotions, as music's only content is its form.



Hanslick's negative argument against the aesthetics of feeling
passes through two main lines of attack: a series of rather weak
observations, and a brilliant argument grounded on a conceptual
analysis of emotion.



Hanslick observes that, when instrumental music is unaccompanied by a
text, music lovers are unable to indicate the feeling it expresses
with any considerable degree of intersubjective agreement. He famously
adapts an example from Boye, noting that Gluck's famous
aria "Che faro senza Euridice", expressive of
dejection and despair, could express equally well joy if paired with a
happy text (Hanslick 1854: chapter 2). The argument is supposed to
prove that music is expressively neutral, but it only works because of
the tendentious example. Music with a more clearly anguished character
than Gluck's aria is easy to find, and it would resist pairing
with a happy text.



Hanslick further observes that a recitative would lose its poignant
and specific expressive character if played unaccompanied by words.
However, it is unsurprising that music designed to represent emotions
*together with a text* is less able to do so on its own.



Hanslick also notes that music lovers would agree that a large and
important part of the Western repertoire, exemplified by Bach's
*Well-Tempered Clavier*, does not represent any determinate
emotion (Hanslick 1854: chapter 2). While this is a refutation of the
claim that music *necessarily* represents emotions, it is
irrelevant to the view that music may do so.



Finally, Hanslick produces what Kivy (1990b: 7) dubbed an
"argument from disagreement". Music critics will largely
concur about the beauty of various works of music, but they will
disagree when asked about the feeling they represent (Hanslick 1854:
chapter 2). This is once more a weak argument, as it is easy to find
works of music that are consistently characterized as expressive of
some emotions, and not others.



Hanslick's strongest claim against the aesthetics of feeling
involves a subtle conceptual analysis of the structure of emotions.
Hanslick observes that these cannot be identified by means of the
feeling state they produce in us, as the same emotion may arouse
different states, and two different emotions may share a similar one.
The additional component that allows us to discriminate between
different emotions is conceptual content. In Hanslick's example,
hope requires a concept of a future, better condition, whereas
melancholy presupposes a comparison with a happier past. Hanslick
concedes that music may be able to match the dynamic profile
characteristic of a feeling state. However, music cannot provide the
conceptual content that is necessary to the identification of specific
emotions, and it cannot therefore represent them (Hanslick 1854:
chapter 2; Kivy [1990b: 9] observes that Hanslick's analysis
anticipates the contemporary cognitive theory of emotions, first
proposed in Kenny 1963; Alexander Malcolm [1721: 602] adumbrates the
same argument, though he is discussing aroused emotions, as opposed to
represented ones).



Hanslick's positive view is that musical value is specifically
musical, independent from any relation to other art forms, as well as
to any concept derived from extra-musical reality. He does not give up
talk of musical content entirely, but rather holds that this content
is constituted by formal structures, "sonically moved
forms" (*tonend bewegte Formen*; Hanslick 1854
[2018]: chapter 3; an earlier, influential translation [Hanslick 1986]
renders the expression as "tonally moving forms").



Although he denied that music may represent emotions, Hanslick
concedes that it often arouses them. However, the emotions aroused by
music are irrelevant to its aesthetic appreciation, as they do not
have a bearing on the understanding of music's formal
properties.



Hanslick explicitly describes *On the Musically Beautiful* as a
reaction to Wagner and Liszt (see Bonds 2014: 155), and the treatise
is at times explicitly polemical (see for instance the end of chapter
2). There is in principle no tension between Hanslick's claim
that instrumental music's content is limited to its form, and
Wagner's use of music in combination with other art forms. In
fact, the creation of hybrid works is an obvious way to address
instrumental music's alleged semantic and expressive paucity.
However, Wagner's protestations against instrumental music and
its inadequacy to his own goals were so radical that they threatened
the aesthetic legitimacy of absolute music. This is what Hanslick set
out to restore.



The historian and musicologist Ottokar Hostinsky
(1847-1910) attempted to reconcile Wagner's and
Hanslick's views (Hostinsky 1877; see also Lippman 1992:
316-317). His strategy was to argue for the possibility of
hybrid art forms, while at the same time allowing for a specifically
musical beauty that is manifested in absolute music.



While considerably less explored than his controversy with Wagner,
Hanslick's relation to Hegel is also interesting. Hegel's
claim regarding music's ability to express subjective life
surely falls within the scope of the negative argument laid out in
*On the Musically Beautiful*. However, Hanslick makes a
characteristically Hegelian move when he holds that musical form is
music's content. This is not a gratuitously paradoxical
formulation, but rather bears the mark of Hegel's conception of
beauty as constituted by both form and content.



Hanslick's treatise was enormously influential, and it remains
widely discussed (for a review of early reactions, see Bonds 2014:
appendix; recent work on Hanslick includes Landerer and Zangwill 2017,
Sousa 2017, and Wilfing 2018). Recent scholarship has challenged the
predominant formalist interpretation of Hanslick's view (see
Hall 1995, and Wilfing 2016).


### 1.7 Music and the Life Sciences: Darwin, Spencer, Gurney



The role of mathematics in the explanation of musical phenomena has
been explored since Antiquity, and that of physics has become
prominent since the seventeenth century. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, scholars began to examine the relation of music to
the life sciences. A major force behind this shift of attitude is the
work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). His theory of evolution
posits two main processes responsible for changes in a living species,
natural selection and sexual selection. Individual variability and
random mutations introduce differences in the traits possessed by
different individuals belonging to the same species. Traits that favor
the survival of offspring who would themselves go on to reproduce are
more likely to reappear in future generations. This is natural
selection. Sexual selection concerns the selection of mating partners.
Widespread preference for a given trait means that future generations
will be more likely to possess that trait. In both cases, the traits
in question must be heritable.



In *The Descent of Man* (1871) and in *The Expression of
Emotions in Man and Animals* (1872), Darwin proposes that sexual
selection is responsible for the effect of music. He observes that
various species produce vocalizations or other sounds as part of
courtship. For example, he identifies this as the goal of birdsong,
although the consensus today is that birdsong also functions as a
territorial call. In virtue of this origin, music has the power



> 
> 
> of recalling in a vague and indefinite manner, those strong emotions
> which were felt during long-past ages, when, as is probable, our early
> progenitors courted each other by the aid of vocal tones. (Darwin
> 1872: 219 (chapter VIII); a contemporary defense of the view that the
> arts are the product of sexual selections is found in Miller 2001; for
> a recent review on the evidence supporting Darwin's hypothesis,
> see Ravignani 2018)
> 
> 
> 



Darwin's hypothesis implies that music is likely to have
predated language, as it arises from needs that are more basic than
linguistic communication. The inflections typical of impassioned
speech derive from those employed in courtship. Another feature of
this account is that is it better able to explain music's
expression and arousal of positive emotions, such as love, tenderness,
and happiness, than that of negative emotions, as only the former are
typically involved in courtship.



Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) defended an explanation of the
origin of music distinct from Darwin's. Spencer holds as a
general physiological principle that any emotion produces movement.
When movement involves the vocal tract, emotions result in
vocalizations. Music derives from an exaggeration of the usual
features of vocal emotional expression. Thus, "vocal music, and
by consequence all music, is an idealization of the natural language
of passion" (Spencer 1857 [2015: 29]). This view of
music's origin locates its expressive value in the melodic
element, rather than in harmony, as expressive vocalizations do not
produce more than one sound at once. However, Spencer emphasizes that
his explanation of music's origin is not to be taken as a
general theory of music's value, and that elements of music that
are not amenable to its original function (notably harmony) remain
entirely legitimate (Spencer 1890: 466-467). Factual hypotheses
regarding music's origin are thus separated from aesthetic
norms. This is a relevant methodological difference between
Spencer's hypothesis about the origin of music and previous
ones, most notably Rousseau's (see the entry
 history of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.5).



Spencer and Darwin expressed admiration for each other's work,
although Kivy (1959: 47) points out that they were also aware of their
crucial methodological differences. While the former relied on general
laws as ultimate explanatory principles, Darwin accepted
generalizations only insofar as they were supported by empirical
evidence. Exemplary of this contrast is one of Spencer's
arguments against the view that music develops out of vocalizations
employed during courtship. Spencer holds that it is "one of the
fundamental laws of evolution" that "[a]ll development
proceeds from the general to the special" (1890: 458). To say
that a subset of vocalizations (those used during courtship) has
generated a more general class of sounds (all vocalizations expressing
emotions, including music) is to contradict that principle.



While the figure of Edmund Gurney (1847-1888) is often discussed
in association with Darwin and Spencer, and mostly exclusively in
connection with their views, the scope and quality of argumentation in
his work are comparable with few other works in Western musical
aesthetics. In view of this, the relatively little critical attention
he has received is surprising.



Gurney's framework is a formalist one, as he holds music's
value to depend primarily on its presentation of abstract forms. This
is achieved through music's "ideal motion", where
"ideal" refers to music's capacity to convey
abstract forms (Gurney 1880: 164-165). Form and motion are thus
the two essential aspects of music, and specifically of melody.
Although talk of motion may suggests an analogy with physical space,
Gurney is explicit in saying that this is nothing but the
"faintest metaphor" (1880: 337), as the spatial character
of melodic motion is radically different from that of visual arts and
architecture. Through an enlightening contrast with these art forms,
Gurney shows that music's motion is ordered in time, in such a
way that the succession of its elements is already fixed. Not so in
the properly spatial arts, in which we apprehend elements in an order
determined by our act of vision (Gurney 1880: 94). Gurney further
argues the value of music must reside primarily in short sequences we
are able to grasp in one hearing, and not in the understanding of
large-scale structures (Gurney 1880: 96-97; a similar position,
inspired by Gurney, has been recently defended in Levinson 1997).



Musical forms are not merely an object of understanding, but also
arouse a distinctive emotion in us. In fact, Gurney holds that
music's most important feature is its capacity to arouse an
emotion which is specifically musical,



> 
> 
> ...an emotional excitement of a very intense kind, which yet
> cannot be defined under any known head of emotion. (Gurney 1880:
> 120)
> 
> 
> 



Gurney proposes a Darwinian explanation for this. Beautiful music
arouses an emotion that is unlike any other because it produces an
unconscious association with the sexual emotion experienced by our
forebears (Gurney 1880: 116 ff.). However, Gurney points out an
important limit of this explanation: the Darwinian account cannot
explain why only *beautiful* music arouses such an emotion, as
it posits a connection between musical phenomena in general and the
arousal of that emotion (Gurney 1880: 121-124; 1887:
297-98).



Gurney's formalism is more nuanced than views that entirely deny
music's capacity to express emotions. While music's chief
value resides in its capacity to be *impressive*, that is, to
arouse the peculiarly musical emotion that is connected to musical
beauty, Gurney concedes that music may be *expressive*, in that
it may arouse emotions of the ordinary kind, or suggest extra-musical
images and ideas (Gurney 1880: 312). But expressiveness is subordinate
to impressiveness. First, it is not an essential or even typical
element of valuable music, as much beautiful music isn't
expressive of any definite emotion. Second, it does not by itself give
an explanation of the power and value of the art, as expressive
qualities *per se* (e.g., in a face) are not a source of value
(Gurney 1880: 338). Gurney's additional claims, that
impressiveness amplifies a piece's expressiveness (1880: 339)
and is even required for expressiveness to be valuable (1880: 314),
are hard to make sense of unless his theory of expressiveness is
further clarified (an extensive discussion of Gurney's views is
found in Budd 1985: chapter 4).


## 2. Twentieth Century


### 2.1 Phenomenology of Music



Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) developed phenomenology as a
philosophical method aimed at grounding any objectivity in the
first-person experiences through which it is constituted. Husserl
devoted to music only passing observations, the best known of which is
the illustration of his analysis of time consciousness by means of the
experience of perceiving a melody (Husserl 1991). Other philosophers
adopted a phenomenological methodology to carry out more systematic
investigations (for a survey, see Lippman 1992: chapter 14).



In *The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity*, the
Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) adopted a
phenomenological approach to conduct one of the first systematic
investigations of musical ontology. From the methodological point of
view, Ingarden embraces a descriptive approach. In his words:



> 
> 
> However fully developed, every theory of musical works that is not
> mere speculation but seeks a base in concrete facts must refer to the
> presystematic convictions that initially gave direction to the search.
> (Ingarden 1973 [1986: 1])
> 
> 
> 



On this basis, he rejects the identification of musical works with
ideal objects, such as mathematical entities, for musical works come
into existence when they are first composed (Ingarden 1973 [1986: 15];
a phenomenological account of musical works as ideal objects had been
proposed by Waldemar Conrad (1878-1915) (1908), whose view
Ingarden explicitly challenges). Works of music cannot be identified
with their score either, as they can be composed without being notated
and may even exist in the complete absence of notational systems
(Ingarden 1973 [1986: 38]). Ingarden holds instead that musical works
are intentional objects. While they require an experiencing subject,
they cannot be identified with particular subjective experiences. This
also accounts for the temporality that is characteristic of musical
works. While a work's performance is extended in time, the work
itself is not a temporal object. It merely specifies an order of
succession between its elements. The musical work is thus
"quasi-temporal" (Ingarden 1973 [1986: 70]). Ingarden also
accounts for the apparent change of a work through time, a change that
may seem evident when one considers the radical differences in the
performance of the same work at different historical times. However,
insofar as the set of legitimate interpretations of a work is
determined by its score, this change is one not in the work itself,
but merely in what is considered valuable about it (Ingarden 1973
[1986: 156]) (on Ingarden's musical ontology, see Mitscherling
1997: chapter 5).



The phenomenologist Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) is another
philosopher whose work on music deserves mention. Schutz's
*Fragments Toward a Phenomenology of Music* was written in
1944, but published posthumously in 1976, and can be found in the
fourth volume of his collected papers (Schutz 1996: 243-275).
Schutz starts from the rather commonplace observation that music is
meaningful though it lacks a conceptual or representational content.
This feature he connects with a less obvious property of musical
works. Some ideal objects may be grasped both monothetically as well
as polythetically, that is, through a series of passages as well as in
one glance. For instance, I could follow the steps that lead to the
demonstration of Pythagoras's theorem and come to understand it,
but once I have done that I may also grasp the theorem in one single
act, by grasping the proposition that expresses it (Schutz 1996:
247-248). But this is only possible because the theorem has a
conceptual content that may be grasped once it has been understood.
Precisely because it lacks such content, music can only be grasped
polythetically by following its development as we listen to it, or
when we recollect its unfolding. Thus,



> 
> 
> the statement that music cannot be caught monothetically is merely a
> corollary of the thesis that the meaning-content of music is not
> related to a conceptual scheme. (Schutz 1996: 249)
> 
> 
> 



This conclusion allows Schutz to break some ground in quite a
different area, one that remains relatively underexplored in Western
philosophy of music. In the essay *Making Music Together*
(1951), Schutz considers the "mutual tuning-in
relationship" (Schutz 1951: 79) that is necessary to the
interactions between the various actors involved in music-making
(composer, performers, and listeners). The polythetic constitution of
the musical object is what ultimately allows this relationship, as the
various participants in music-making share a common "flux of
experiences in inner time" (Schutz 1951: 96).



Phenomenology remains a widely adopted philosophical method. A more
recent phenomenological analysis of musical experience is found in
Clifton 1983.


### 2.2 Music, Language, and Culture: Wittgenstein



Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), possibly the most influential
philosopher of the twentieth century, was a musically talented
individual. He played the clarinet and had extensive knowledge of the
German classical repertoire.



Wittgenstein's philosophical development is normally divided
into two periods. The earlier one revolves around his *Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus* (1921), in which Wittgenstein claims that
language is only meaningful when it describes contingent states of
affairs. The propositions of logic, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics
are thus strictly speaking meaningless, in that they are normative or
otherwise non-factual. In these early works, Wittgenstein is
predictably almost entirely silent about art. Wittgenstein's
late philosophical views found expression in the posthumously
published *Philosophical Investigations* (1953), as well as
other writings. In these works, Wittgenstein conceives of linguistic
meaning as dependent on the way words are used within particular
situations or activities--this he terms a
"language-game" (*Sprachspiel*). Language-games are
countless and defy systematization, because they depend on the
constantly changing practices that constitute our form of life
(*Lebensform*).



Wittgenstein's late philosophy contains significant, if
characteristically unsystematic, treatments of aesthetic issues, in
which music figures prominently. In an interesting reversal of the
usual strategy, Wittgenstein sometimes uses analogies with music to
shed light on the workings of language. The most famous instance of
this is the remark:



> 
> 
> Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in
> music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence
> lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding
> a musical theme. (*Philosophical Investigations*,
> SS527)
> 
> 
> 



Here Wittgenstein is using an analogy between language and music in
the attempt to move away from a conception of linguistic understanding
as an inner process (see Lewis 1977 and Worth 1997). In both language
and music, as in art more generally, understanding is manifested in
our ability to act in appropriate ways. For example, a criterion for
the understanding of genre pictures could be the ability to describe
or mime the actions that occur in them (*Philosophical
Grammar*, III, 37). In the musical case, an obvious reaction that
evinces understanding is the ability to competently describe or
perform the music. More interestingly, Wittgenstein holds that the
understanding of music is also manifested in our capacity to draw
appropriate comparisons between music and extra-musical reality,
particularly the linguistic domain--a musical phrase may be
described as a question, or remind us of the intonation we use when we
utter a certain sentence (*Philosophical Investigations*,
SS527; *Zettel*, SS175; for discussion, see Budd 2008,
263-67).



The role of extra-musical references in the understanding of music
raises the issue of whether Wittgenstein should be considered a
formalist (see Ahonen 2005, and Szabados 2006; 2014). A decidedly
formalist element in Wittgenstein's aesthetics is his separation
of the understanding and appreciation of music from the effect it has
on us--the move is similar to Hanslick's (see
 SS1.6;
 on Wittgenstein and Hanslick, see Szabados 2014, 39-57;
94-97). Aesthetic value in general, and music's value more
specifically, is not reducible to an object's effect
(*Lectures on Aesthetics*, IV, 2). Thus, an artwork is not
valuable because it conveys this or that emotion, but because it
conveys itself (Wittgenstein 1977 [1998: 67]).



However, the late Wittgenstein's view of musical understanding
does not seem fully compatible with a formalist view (see Szabados
2014: chapter 4). This is partly suggested by his comments on the
appropriateness of extra-musical comparisons. A musical theme,
Wittgenstein observes,



> 
> 
> makes an impression on me which is connected with things in its
> surroundings--e.g. with our language and its intonations; and
> hence with the whole field of our language-games. (*Zettel*,
> SS135)
> 
> 
> 



Much like the understanding and mastery of language presupposes its
competent use in countless situations and activities, the
understanding of music depends on our ability to use it and describe
it appropriately in ways that are ultimately determined by our form of
life (see Hagberg 2017).



Finally, it is worth mentioning that Wittgenstein's main
contribution to the philosophy of music is probably something he
almost never relates to music. This is the concept of aspect
perception, exemplified by Joseph Jastrow's famous duck-rabbit
ambiguous figure, but also replicable in the auditory
domain--e.g., hearing the metronome's ticking as groupings
of two or three. Contemporary philosophers of music have appealed in
various ways to aspect perception, to shed light on issues that range
from musical understanding to the phenomenology of musical
expressiveness (see for instance Kivy 1989 and Arbo 2009; Guter 2020
observes that Wittgenstein's interest in aspect perception was
likely spurred by empirical studies on musical rhythm he made as a
student).


### 2.3 Music as Symbol: Langer and Goodman



A recurring feature of twentieth century reflection on music is the
attempt to consider it as a symbol system, and the related interest in
the analogies and differences between music and language.



An early and influential effort in this direction is that of Susanne
Langer (1895-1985). In *Philosophy in New Key* (1942),
she rejects the idea that music is connected to emotional life in
virtue of a causal connection with emotions in the composer,
performer, or listener. Music is neither a "stimulus" to
emotions, nor a "symptom" of them, but rather their
symbol:



> 
> 
> if it [music] has an emotional content, it "has" it in the
> same sense that language "has" its conceptual
> content--*symbolically*. (Langer 1942: 218)
> 
> 
> 



While music and language are alike in that they both have a semantic
function, the analogy does not cut any deeper, according to Langer.
She distinguishes between discursive and presentational symbol
systems. Discursive symbolisms possess a vocabulary composed of
identifiable elements, to which a fixed meaning is associated.
Presentational symbolisms lack such discrete meaningful units.
Language is an example of the former, painting of the
latter--both a sentence and a painting symbolize something, but
the sentence may be broken down into component parts with a fixed
meaning, whereas the painting cannot.



According to Langer, musical symbols are presentational symbols of a
particular sort. The commonplace descriptions of music in emotional
terms ("sad", "happy",
"melancholy", etc.) are due to an isomorphic relation
between the dynamic form of music and that of feelings. For instance,
the musical expression of anxiety is achieved by prolonged, unresolved
tensions, and this is the form of anxiety as we experience it. Because
music matches the form of feelings much more closely than language may
even aspire to do, musical symbols cannot be replaced by linguistic
ones without loss in precision--this is Langer's version of
the ineffability thesis (see
 SS1.1).



However, Langer acknowledges that radically different feelings may
share a common dynamic form, as may happen with an outburst of anger
and one of joy. This means that music cannot have a definite emotional
meaning, but rather ranges over a variety of possible interpretations.
Thus, music is an "unconsummated symbol", the exact import
of which is not fixed (Langer 1942: 240).



Langer's view has been attacked on various grounds (see Budd
1985: chapter 6 and S. Davies 1994: chapter 3). Perhaps the most
obvious objection is that music's dynamic structure matches that
of emotions just as well as that of many other phenomena, but
Langer's view does not explain why music is not a symbol of them
too (Budd 1985: 114; Green 2007 offers a more plausible view of the
congruence between music and emotions).



Nelson Goodman's (1906-1998) *Languages of Art*
(1968) is both a product of the already established theory of symbols,
exemplified by Langer and Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), and a
foundational work in the development of analytic philosophy of art
(see
 SS2.6).
 This is borne out by the tightly-knit weave of semiotics and ontology
that characterizes the book: Goodman develops a general theory of
notation that should account for the ontological status of works in
different art forms. He introduces a crucial distinction between
*autographic* and *allographic* arts. Painting and
sculpture are autographic, as only a determination of the work's
history of production (that is, an attribution) guarantees the
work's authenticity. Music and literature are allographic, as
work identity depends on the presence of essential features as
determined by a notation--a word sequence in the case of a work
of literature, and a score in the case of music. Forgeries of
autographic works are works that claim a false history of production.
Forgeries of allographic works are impossible, as notation provides a
test for work-identity. If the candidate object meets it, it is an
instance of the work, if not, it is a different work.



For a notation to perform this function, it must meet certain strict
syntactic and semantic requirements (Goodman 1968: chapter 4). Goodman
thinks that these requirements are met by most elements in Western
modern musical notation, with the important exceptions of dynamics,
tempo indications, and others, which therefore become irrelevant to
the work's identity (but see Webster 1971). A performance counts
as an instance of a given work if and only if it complies with its
score, and a work of music is nothing other than the class of
performances compliant with that score.



The notational systems that characterize allographic arts prescribe
absolute compliance, as a series of minor deviations could otherwise
result in a completely different work being considered an acceptable
instance of the original one. This means that only a note-for-note
accurate performance of a musical work should count as an instance of
it (see Predelli 1999).



This result is in tension not only with a sensible view of successful
performance, but also with one of Goodman's stated
methodological principles. He holds that the notational systems
characteristic of allographic arts should provide rigorous identity
conditions, while at the same time respecting our intuitive notion of
what counts as a given artwork (Goodman 1968: 121-122,
197-198). But Goodman's account of compliance between
score and performance is both too strict and too permissive to respect
our intuitions: It fails to make room for pre-theoretically valid
performances (e.g., a rendition with a single wrong note), while
accepting ones that we would consider incorrect (e.g., a performance
that is note-for-note correct, but played at a tempo that renders the
work unrecognizable). Subsequent work on the ontology of music has
inherited from *Languages of Art* the notion of compliance and
the related idea that some features are determinative of a
work's identity, while also attempting to avoid Goodman's
notational strictures (see S. Davies 2001).



Goodman's semiotic analysis also accounts for musical
expression. In his nominalist framework, for an object to possess a
property is for it to be *denoted* by a predicate. If the
object refers back to that predicate, it *exemplifies*
it--a red swatch of cloth is denoted by the predicate
"red", but it also exemplifies it when it is used as a
sample by a tailor. But properties may also be possessed
metaphorically--a cloth is literally red, but a work of music is
only metaphorically sad. When an object exemplifies a property it
possesses metaphorically, it *expresses* it. Expression is
metaphorical exemplification (Goodman 1968: 95). Note that this view
explains the logical structure of the description of music in
emotional terms, but it does not attempt an explanation of why emotion
terms are applied to music in the first place. In the philosophy of
music, as in the philosophy of art more generally, Goodman was a
pivotal figure in setting the methodological tone of the subsequent
inquiry in the English-speaking world, although his preferred
solutions have been largely disputed.


### 2.4 Music and the Emotions: Pratt, Meyer, Cooke



Over the course of the twentieth century, Anglophone philosophy of
music produced various accounts of music's relationship to the
emotions. In addition to the contributions of Langer and those of
analytic philosophers (see
 SS2.3
 and
 SS2.6),
 it is important to mention the views put forward by psychologist
Carroll C. Pratt (1894-1979) and musicologists Leonard B. Meyer
(1918-2007) and Deryck Cooke (1919-1976).



Pratt clarifies that he is not interested in music's arousal of
emotions (Pratt 1954: 291-292). We apply emotional words to
music without implying that the music is arousing or may arouse such
emotions in us or others. If this is the case, we need to explain why
we describe music, an inanimate object, using words that refer to
psychological states.



Pratt argues that some dynamic qualities are common to both music and
the subjective experience of emotions. Thus, the agitation we hear in
fast-paced, wayward music is an external, objective counterpart of the
subjective, internal sensation we experience when we feel agitated.
This correspondence between psychological states and perceptual
features of external objects is what grounds the description of the
latter in emotional terms. Pratt's view, conveyed *in
nuce* by his slogan "the music sounds the way the emotions
feel", shares with Langer's theory the idea of an
isomorphism between the structure of music and the phenomenology of
emotional life. However, Pratt does not conceive of music as a sign of
the emotions, as their correspondence in terms of dynamic structure
does not imply any representational relation from the former to the
latter (Pratt 1954: 290). This claim, along with Pratt's
separation of musical emotions from those it arouses in the listener,
gives his view a clear formalist slant. The persuasiveness of
Pratt's hypothesis is ultimately dependent on whether we can
produce clearer evidence for the structural correspondence that is
central to the account (criticism of Pratt's view is found in
Budd 1985: chapter 3, and S. Davies 1994: chapter 3; Green [2007: 206]
advances a theory of expressiveness that partly vindicates
Pratt's intuition).



Meyer's influential *Emotion and Meaning in Music* (1956)
attempts to makes sense of musical emotions by holding that these
depend on the syntactical features of the music itself. Meyer's
view rests on the questionable assumptions that emotions arise when a
tendency to respond is inhibited. A tendency to respond is one's
inclination to behave in a certain way. For instance, a smoker who
feels like smoking but is unable to find any cigarettes will feel
increasingly frustrated and upset. This person's emotion is
generated by the inhibition of his tendency to respond (Meyer 1956:
13-14; for criticism, see Budd 1985: 155-157). In music, a
tendency to respond is generated by the expectations that naturally
arise in more or less sophisticated listeners with regard to the
syntactic development of the piece. Music, and valuable music
especially, momentarily frustrates our expectations whenever it
develops in unforeseen ways, and thereby arouses emotions without
requiring any reference to extra-musical reality.



Meyer claims that his theory is able to reconcile two apparently
opposite solutions to the problem of musical value and understanding.
These are the "formalist option", according to which
emotions are irrelevant to the appreciation of music, and the
"absolute expressivist" one, which holds music valuable
for the emotions it arouses in us. Meyer proposes that, if the
expectation is a conscious one, the response will be intellectual,
rather than emotional. But if it is an unconscious expectation, as is
the case for most listeners, then its frustration will give rise to an
emotional response. The formalist and the expressivist are thus two
different modes of engagement with music, as opposed to being
incompatible views of its meaning and value (Meyer 1956:
38-40).



In *The Language of Music* (1959), Cooke proposes that Western
classical composers have utilized an identifiable stock of melodic,
harmonic, and rhythmic structures in order to convey emotion through
their works. Cooke's model is linguistic not only in that it
attempts to identify a vocabulary of musical expressiveness, but also
because it conceives of music as a form of communication, and
specifically as the composer's communication of emotional states
to the listener. It is thus a version of the expression theory (see
 SS1.1;
 Gabriel 1978 provides empirical evidence against Cooke's
view).


### 2.5 Marxist Approaches: Adorno and Bloch



The development of the sociology of music, as well as that of Marxist
societal critique, gave rise to an interest in the socio-political
nature of music-making that is unmatched in previous Western
philosophy (for an overview, see Fubini 1991: chapter 8).



Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) is the foremost example of this
approach, and one of the most significant philosophers of music in the
Western tradition. A philosopher and sociologist, in 1958 he became
director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. His dense
writing is made more difficult by his frequent and highly technical
musicological observations--he was a trained musician and an
active composer, having studied with Arnold Schoenberg's pupil
Alban Berg (Paddison 1993 and Witkin 1998 are book-length studies of
Adorno's philosophy of music; for a shorter overview, see
Hamilton 2007: chapter 6).



A central theme in Adorno's work is represented by the tension
between the autonomy of the artwork as an aesthetic object and its
social function (Adorno 1970 [1997: 252]). As a member of the
Frankfurt School, Adorno's outlook is broadly Marxist, in that
he is interested in art as a product of society, as well as in its
potential as vehicle of social critique.



However, Adorno's advocacy of music as a critical tool does not
result in an endorsement of politically engaged music. The critical
function of music is achieved once societal contradictions are
embodied in the formal features of artworks, as opposed to being
explicitly denounced (see for instance Adorno 1970 [1997: 257]).
Adorno writes:



> 
> 
> In all art that is still possible, social critique must be raised to
> the level of form, to the point that it wipes out all manifestly
> social content [*Inhalt*]. (1970 [1997: 250])
> 
> 
> 



According to Adorno, art achieves this critical capacity by becoming
autonomous, that is, by rejecting direct social functions, including
explicitly political ones. However, it is not obvious how societal
dynamics or contradictions could be embodied in works of pure
instrumental music (Zangwill 2012: 380-381 is skeptical about
this possibility).



It is this framework that grounds Adorno's endorsement of
Schoenberg against Stravinsky, which he develops in his *Philosophy
of New Music* (1949). Schoenberg's atonal music is true to
the society that generated it because it rejects tonality, the
possibilities of which Adorno considers thoroughly explored. Musical
material is thus historically "pre-formed", in that the
use of tonal structures has a fundamentally different significance
today than it had when tonal music was still developing.
Schoenberg's music is progressive because it follows the laws of
development intrinsic to the musical material he inherited from
tradition. Stravinsky instead pulls musical structures from an
irretrievable past, thereby producing music that is well-crafted, but
ultimately untrue (for a detailed analysis of Adorno's view of
Schoenberg and Stravinsky, see Witkin 1998: chapters 7 and 8).



The attitude just described grounds Adorno's notorious
reservations regarding popular music, which he elaborated in a number
of essays, as well as in his influential *Introduction to the
Sociology of Music* (1962 [1976]). His view of "jazz",
a label he employed liberally and at times confusingly (see Gracyk
1992), and of popular music in general, is that its primary function
is that of easily available entertainment, despite jazz's
attempts to dissimulate this behind musical structures that are only
apparently novel. Standardization is the essential feature of popular
music (Adorno 1962 [1976: 25]), and its result is music that
"listens for the listener" (Adorno 1962 [1976: 29]), as it
does not require any effort. The invisible hand that standardizes
taste and produces art having the sole function of entertaining the
masses is the culture industry, a concept which Adorno had elaborated
in *Dialectic of Enlightenment* (1947), co-authored with Max
Horkheimer (1895-1973) (Horkheimer & Adorno 1947: chapter
4).



Adorno's qualms with regard to popular music may understandably
appear elitist (see Baugh 1990). However, as Martin Jay points
out,



> 
> 
> The real dichotomy, Adorno contended, was not between
> "light" and "serious" music--he was never
> a defender of traditional cultural standards for their own
> sake--but rather between music that was market-oriented and music
> that was not. (Jay 1973: 182)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, although popular music possesses standardized features that
favor its commodification, the culture industry also includes music
from the past that has been commodified and reduced to a mere
distraction.



Music is also related to social change in the thought of the
unorthodox Marxist philosophy of Ernst Bloch (1885-1977). The
concepts of utopia and hope are fundamental to his view, which finds
its chief expression in *The Spirit of Utopia* (1918) and in
*The Principle of Hope* (1954). "Utopia" refers to
a potential future state to which humanity aspires, whereas hope is
the process of striving toward that utopic state. Art creates visions
of alternative realities which, far from being mere illusions or
distractions, have utopian potential.



Bloch devotes a central chapter of his *Spirit of Utopia* to
music, which he conceives of as a concerned with the inward side of
the utopian dimension, and thus with humanity's striving toward
self-awareness and understanding. The chapter traces the unfolding of
music's utopian potential in the Western tradition. This
restriction in focus seems to follow from an intentionally narrow
conception of music, motivated by Bloch's characterization of
this art as concerned with the manifestation and development of
interiority. He thus denies that civilizations such as the Greek and
the Egyptian produced any music worth of interest, because their
worldview was focused on exteriority and visuality (Bloch 1918,
"The Mystery").



In Bloch's reconstruction, Western music develops through three
stages, or "carpets" (*Teppiche*), a concept he
borrows from Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) (Bloch 1918,
"The Problem of a Historical Philosophy of Music"). The
first stage is represented by dance and chamber music, the second by
the music of Bach and Mozart, and particularly by the fugue, while the
third culminates in the symphonies of Beethoven and Bruckner. It is
over the course of this development that music progressively realizes
humanity's awareness of itself (on Bloch's philosophy of
music, see Zabel 1990, Korstvedt 2010, and Vidal 2003 [2010]).


### 2.6 Analytic Philosophy of Music



Analytic approaches are presented in detail in the entry on
 the philosophy of music
 (for a book-length introduction, see Kania 2020). Here I shall focus
on two representative debates and indicate some general trends.



Analytic philosophy of music is at times regarded as exclusively
centered on linguistic and conceptual analysis, and dismissed on the
grounds of this narrow focus (see for instance Lippman 1992: 353). But
this picture is only faithful to its first stages of development.
Analytic philosophy of music has evolved, hybridized, and fragmented,
much like analytic philosophy at large. In fact, contemporary analytic
work on music often includes sustained discussion of scientific or
historical research (see for instance Robinson 2005, Nussbaum 2007,
Dyck 2014). A different feature is perhaps distinctive of the analytic
approach, namely its systematic and often tacitly assumed veto on
value judgments regarding the works, traditions, styles, etc. under
investigation. Artistic value is not discovered or ascertained through
philosophical speculation, it is merely accounted for. This is in
quite striking contrast with the approach of many other figures
discussed in this entry, who first developed philosophical theories,
and then on that basis produced sweeping dismissals of music that is
widely regarded as valuable--think of Rousseau on French music or
Adorno on jazz (on the differences between analytic and continental
philosophy of music, see Roholt 2017).



The systematic development of musical ontology is perhaps the most
characteristic thematic focus of analytic philosophy, as the area had
been almost entirely neglected by previous philosophical theories. The
most popular ontological views are type theories, according to which
musical works are repeatable entities, tokened by multiple sound
events. Some type theorists are Platonists. They hold that musical
works are abstract objects that do not come into existence (Kivy
1983a, 1983b; Dodd 2007). A different approach holds that musical
works are created types, a feature that proponents argue makes sense
of music as a human, contingent practice (Levinson 1980).



Against Platonism, nominalist theories reject types and construe
musical works as collections of particulars (Goodman 1968; Predelli
2001; Caplan & Matheson 2006). A less popular option is to
consider musical works as actions. Gregory Currie (1989) and David
Davies (2004) have defended such a view with respect to artworks in
general, including musical ones. It has also been proposed that
musical works are best regarded as useful fictions that sustain our
critical and appreciative discourse about music (Kania 2008; Killin
2018; for a recent overview of analytic ontology of music, see S.
Davies 2020).



Recent work has tackled meta-ontological questions, asking what
principles should guide the construction of ontological theories (see
for instance Stecker 2009; Dodd 2013; D. Davies 2017). A useful
distinction is the one between descriptive and revisionary ontologies
(Kania 2008), the former adhering to pre-theoretical conceptions of
what a musical works is, the latter sacrificing intuitions for the
sake of theoretical virtues.



Though she ultimately rejects analytic approaches to the ontology of
music, it is worth mentioning here Lydia Goehr's *The
Imaginary Museum of Musical Works* (1992), an extraordinarily
influential study on the origin of the concept of musical work. Goehr
argues that this concept emerged relatively recently in Western music
history.



Along with ontology, musical expressiveness is probably the most
frequently discussed issue in analytic philosophy of music (for an
introduction to the debate, see Matravers 2007). An important advance
in this area is represented by the distinction between the emotions
music *expresses* and those it is *expressive of* (Kivy
1989, elaborating on Tormey 1971). The saggy features of a Saint
Bernard dog make it look sad, but they do not stand in a causal
relation with a psychological state of sadness. The dog's face
is expressive of sadness, but does not express sadness. Likewise,
sadness is attributed to music regardless of whether it is the
expression of sadness or of any other emotion--that
Mozart's *Requiem Mass in D minor* is expressive of
anguish is something we can determine independently from the anguished
state its author may have found himself in when composing it. The
emotions the music is expressive of are also conceptually distinct
from those it may arouse in the listener--the *Requiem*
may arouse anguish in me, but it would be an anguished work even if it
didn't. As intuitive as these distinctions may appear, previous
accounts of the relationship between music and emotions did not trace
them explicitly, and at times seem to move from one notion to the
other.



We thus have (1) the emotions a composer may have felt when writing
the piece (2) the emotions music may arouse in the listener, and (3)
the emotion we attribute to the music itself. Accounts of
expressiveness that construe it as dependent on (1) or (2) are named,
respectively, arousal and expression theories. Both approaches are
generally considered as discredited, although a sophisticated version
of the arousal theory has been defended by Derek Matravers (1998), and
a qualified defense of the expression theory has been advanced by
Jenefer Robinson (2005). Accounts of expressiveness that regard it as
independent from (1) and (2) need to explain why we use emotion words
to describe a non-sentient object. Resemblance theories of musical
expressiveness argue that this is because of a perceived similarity
between the music and the characteristic vocal and behavioral human
expressions of emotions (S. Davies 1980, 1994; Kivy 1989). Appeal to
such resemblance in accounting for musical expressiveness is as old as
philosophy of music itself, but the careful separation of the emotions
in the music from those aroused in the listener distinguishes these
views from virtually all their predecessors. The same distinction
allows Peter Kivy (1934-2017) to develop a formalist view of
musical appreciation that recognizes the role of expressive properties
but unties them from the emotions aroused by music (Kivy 1990a).
Jenefer Robinson (2005) has developed a sophisticated hybrid theory of
expressiveness, arguing that the music's arousal of emotions at
the sub-personal level is partly responsible for the resemblances we
perceive in the music.



An alternative way to flesh out the view of musical emotions as
properties of the music itself is the so-called *persona*
theory of expressiveness, according to which expressive music is
experienced as the emotional expression of a fictional persona
(Levinson 2006). This proposal sidesteps the problems generated by the
puzzling description of a non-sentient being in emotional terms, by
positing that music is the emotional expression of a fictional
individual.



Analytic philosophy has so far manifested relatively little interest
in matters of musical value and music's connection with moral,
social, and political issues. Roger Scruton (1944-2020) deserves
mention in this connection. His work shares with analytic philosophy
some broad thematic areas of interest, but generally defies
categorization. The sustained discussion of matters such as the
socio-cultural dimension of music and musical value sets his
humanistic approach apart from much other philosophical writing on
music in the Anglophone world (see particularly Scruton 1997).