On Hanslick and the musically beautiful
The content of music is not the representation of specific feelings, rather the content of music is forms realised in tone. Eduard Hanslick is known for his negative story and formalistic claims. After having discussed the claims of the negative story the main emphasis of this thesis is to enable a proper reading of Hanslick's positive story. Hanslick's main aim is to find what can stand as a foundation of a principle of the musically beautiful, and concludes that this foundation cannot be feeling. This negation of feeling as the content and purpose of music is founded on a belief of music as contentless. It is concluded that this idea of contentlessness is merely another way to claim that there is no form and content distinction in art, as there is no independent content. This distinction, as will be shown with the help of R.G. Collingwood, is what separates art from craft, as art has two kinds of ends, a technical end and an expressive end. Hanslick offers a similar distinction between Inhalt and Gehalt. This distinction is essential to understanding the picture Hanslick offers, as this distinction not only suggests the way in which we understand music by alluding to different aspects of understanding, but
Mjaaland Sele, Maria
On Hanslick and the musically beautiful. The content of music is not the representation of specific feelings, rather the content of music is forms realised in tone. Eduard Hanslick is known for his negative story and formalistic claims. After having discussed the claims of the negative story the main emphasis of this thesis is to enable a proper reading of Hanslick's positive story. Hanslick's main aim is to find what can stand as a foundation of a principle of the musically beautiful, and concludes that this foundation cannot be feeling. This negation of feeling as the content and purpose of music is founded on a belief of music as contentless. It is concluded that this idea of contentlessness is merely another way to claim that there is no form and content distinction in art, as there is no independent content. This distinction, as will be shown with the help of R.G. Collingwood, is what separates art from craft, as art has two kinds of ends, a technical end and an expressive end. Hanslick offers a similar distinction between Inhalt and Gehalt. This distinction is essential to understanding the picture Hanslick offers, as this distinction not only suggests the way in which we understand music by alluding to different aspects of understanding, but
beautiful content music representation specific feeling rather content music form realise tone know negative story claim discuss claim negative story main_emphasis enable proper reading positive story main_aim stand foundation principle beautiful conclude foundation feeling negation feeling content purpose music found belief music conclude idea merely another way claim form_content distinction art independent content distinction show help rg_collingwood separate art craft art two_kind end technical end expressive end offer similar distinction distinction essential picture offer distinction suggest_way music allude different_aspect