[2] September 26 — Music is (not) like language
Section outline
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Assigned reading:Eduard Hanslick, "Music in its relation to nature," from The Beautiful in Music, 7th ed. (1885/1891 [1854]), 143–159. [Consult original German text.] [Polish]
Hanslick makes extended references to Beethoven's Egmont (1810). You may listen to the familiar overture:
Beethoven's Egmont was written for a revival of Goethe's play Egmont (1788), in turn invoking the Count of Egmont, the Flemish grandee executed by the Duke of Alba in 1568 during the Dutch war of independence.
Jonathan Christian Petty, "Hanslick, Wagner, Chomsky: Mapping the linguistic parameters of music," J. Royal Musical Association 123 (1998): 39–67.
Further reading:
Mark Burfurd, "Hanslick's idealist materialism," 19th-Century Music 30 (2006): 166-181.
Alexander Wilfing, "Hanslick, Kant, and the Origins of Vom Musikalisch-Schönen," Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies (2018).
Alexandra Hui, The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910 (2013), 23-53.
Mark Evan Bonds, Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (2014). [781.1 BON][click on image for source]
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