For the past 150 years, the dominant theory of music has been the formalism of Immanuel Kant and Eduard Hanslick. Kant was the first and fundamental progenitor of this view. In his Critique of Judgment and other works he set down the pattern of 1) formalism, the view that art is, and should be, pure form; and 2) the method of subversion, of using a concept to destroy itself.
Eduard Hanslick was the specialist who translated Kant’s philosophy straightforwardly into the subject of music, which he did in his 1854 treatise On the Musically Beautiful. His thesis is that the content of music is not emotion but "tonally moving forms."
Hanslick acknowledged that music is emotional in some limited or secondary sense, and used emotional concepts like “yearning” and “soaring”—all in a comprehensive attack against the idea of musical emotion. It’s "negative side," he wrote, “could not be too vigorously swept away.”
Thus his theory seems nuanced, like it acknowledges the full complexity of the situation; it has a veneer of moderation and reasonableness. And yet its result is to take “triumphant battering rams” against the “feeling theory."
Hanslick operates by setting up a false alternative: either music “represents” emotion like a painting represents the world; or it “describes” emotion the way literature does; or, if neither of those, then it just is not legitimately emotional. That is quite a false setup.
He uses the idea of “objectivity” in the sense of casting off biases and prejudices, in the sense of “just the facts; keep feelings out of the picture”—to separate two domains: 1) a domain of pure logical cogitation which is divorced from values, personal interest, emotion, and pleasure rewards; and 2) an irrational feeling domain which is entirely subjective and arbitrary, the denigrated fog of “emotion.” Just what sort of results do you think *that* will lead to in practice?!
Morris Weitz wrote in 1957 that Hanslick’s book is “a devastating critique of unsupportable views.” First sentence of Hanslick's book is: “Musical aesthetics up to now has for the most part labored under a serious methodological error, in that it occupies itself, not so much with careful investigation of that which is beautiful in music, but rather with giving an account of the feelings which take possession of us when we hear it."
But this flies in the face of what we all know by direct experience: that music moves us, that it makes us feel and feel profoundly. It is indeed richly evocative and emotional. And that aspect of things is not some trivial afterthought or secondary implication, but an essential, at the very heart of what music is and what it gives us.
What is needed is not further analysis of formalist views, however. What is needed is a new substantive theory which provides the positive answers to the questions of the field, a comprehensive system of thought which lays out the laws and principles of musical content including emotion, and which demonstrates them by rational proof.
What is needed is to make musical emotion (and emotion more generally as well), into something rationally intelligible.
That's what I will do in my new course
Emotion in Life and Music
http://igg.me/at/EmotionInLifeAndMusic/x/6997187
Eduard Hanslick was the specialist who translated Kant’s philosophy straightforwardly into the subject of music, which he did in his 1854 treatise On the Musically Beautiful. His thesis is that the content of music is not emotion but "tonally moving forms."
Hanslick acknowledged that music is emotional in some limited or secondary sense, and used emotional concepts like “yearning” and “soaring”—all in a comprehensive attack against the idea of musical emotion. It’s "negative side," he wrote, “could not be too vigorously swept away.”
Thus his theory seems nuanced, like it acknowledges the full complexity of the situation; it has a veneer of moderation and reasonableness. And yet its result is to take “triumphant battering rams” against the “feeling theory."
Hanslick operates by setting up a false alternative: either music “represents” emotion like a painting represents the world; or it “describes” emotion the way literature does; or, if neither of those, then it just is not legitimately emotional. That is quite a false setup.
He uses the idea of “objectivity” in the sense of casting off biases and prejudices, in the sense of “just the facts; keep feelings out of the picture”—to separate two domains: 1) a domain of pure logical cogitation which is divorced from values, personal interest, emotion, and pleasure rewards; and 2) an irrational feeling domain which is entirely subjective and arbitrary, the denigrated fog of “emotion.” Just what sort of results do you think *that* will lead to in practice?!
Morris Weitz wrote in 1957 that Hanslick’s book is “a devastating critique of unsupportable views.” First sentence of Hanslick's book is: “Musical aesthetics up to now has for the most part labored under a serious methodological error, in that it occupies itself, not so much with careful investigation of that which is beautiful in music, but rather with giving an account of the feelings which take possession of us when we hear it."
But this flies in the face of what we all know by direct experience: that music moves us, that it makes us feel and feel profoundly. It is indeed richly evocative and emotional. And that aspect of things is not some trivial afterthought or secondary implication, but an essential, at the very heart of what music is and what it gives us.
What is needed is not further analysis of formalist views, however. What is needed is a new substantive theory which provides the positive answers to the questions of the field, a comprehensive system of thought which lays out the laws and principles of musical content including emotion, and which demonstrates them by rational proof.
What is needed is to make musical emotion (and emotion more generally as well), into something rationally intelligible.
That's what I will do in my new course
Emotion in Life and Music
http://igg.me/at/EmotionInLifeAndMusic/x/6997187
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