SOME PHASES OF MUSICAL AESTHETICS 29 



every detail, so consistent in its development that it seems to be the 

 inspiration of a single mood — such a problem can but reveal to us that 

 to neither philosophy nor science can we look for a final explanation of 

 the strange phenomena of musical composition. To further empha- 

 size its difficulty I quote the following from Wagner's writing: 



He [Schopenhauer] starts from the surprise we all feel that music speaks a 

 language immediately intelligible to each of us without the mediation of intellectual 

 conceptions, in which respect it differs entirely from poetry, the sole materials 

 of which are concepts serving to transmit the idea. According to the philosopher's 

 lucid and convincing definition, the ideas of the world and its essential phenomena 

 are in a Platonic sense the object of the fine arts in general; whilst the poet brings 

 these ideas home to our consciousness by the use of rational concepts in a manner 

 peculiar to his art, Schopenhauer believes it imperative to recognize in music 

 itself an idea of the world, since whosoever could completely elucidate music, or 

 rather translate it into rational concepts, would at the same time have produced 

 a philosophy explaining the world. 



Schopenhauer puts forth this hypothetical elucidation as a paradox, seeing 

 that music cannot, properly speaking, be explained by concepts at all. Yet, on 

 the other hand, he furnishes the sole sufiicient material for a more extended illus- 

 tration of the correctness of his profound view; to which, probably, he did not 

 apply himself more closely, as he, a layman, was not sufficiently master of and 

 familiar with the art; and, moreover, as he could not refer his knowledge of it 

 definitely enough to an understanding of the works of that musician who first 

 revealed to the world the deepest mysteries of music; for it is impossible to 

 estimate Beethoven exhaustively as long as Schopenhauer's profound paradox is 

 not correctly explained and solved. 



If now we turn from the phenomena of musical composition to 

 that of the effect on the hearer, we may well ask, Can philosophy or 

 science explain any direct relation between the process of a musical 

 creation and the emotions of the hearer as awakened by music? 

 The importance of Hanslick's views as contrasted with the super- 

 ficiality of much that was previously, and is still, written about music, 

 is at once apparent. It is as impossible to perceive the boundary 

 line which separates the hearing of music from the effect of that 

 hearing on the imagination as it is to perceive the separation of that 

 which we discussed as the inspiration of the composer from the objec- 

 tive element included in the process of composition. 



