SOME PHASES OF MUSICAL AESTHETICS IQ 



It follows that the relative merit and importance of different periods of a 

 literature should be determined by the relative degrees of spirituaUty which these 

 different periods exhibit. The intellectual power of two or more periods, as 

 exhibited in their Kteratures, may show no marked difference, while the spiritual 

 vitality of these same periods may very distinctly differ. 



Julian Schmidt in his Geschichte der deutschen Kunstliteratur also 

 refers to this phase of music in the following: 



With Beethoven's symphonies we feel that there is in question something 

 quite different from the alternation of pleasure and pain, in which speechless 

 music otherwise lives. We forbode the abyss of a spiritual world, and torture 

 ourselves in trying to understand it. The attempt has often been made to make 

 these feelings clear to one's self, to translate for one's self the tones into words. 

 By strict musicians this has been censured, and rightly, for it is a fruitless attempt; 

 the attempt is, however, too natural. We wish to know what so impelled the 

 tone-poet to boundless desperation, to extravagant jubUation; we seek an explana- 

 tion from the mysteriously beautiful features of this sphinx. The necessity 

 obtrudes itself the more when the music becomes more and more finely subtilized, 

 as in Beethoven's last period. 



It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss systematically the phi- 

 losophy and aesthetics of music, but rather merely to call the attention 

 of the reader to certain phases of these subjects, for it is the general con- 

 fusion of ideas pertaining to music that is to be regretted. The clear 

 vision of modern investigation has ehminated much that was often mere 

 nonsense but, veiled in mysterious language, passed for wisdom. It 

 has emphasized the necessity of considering every art as inseparable 

 from its own pecuKar medium of expression, instead of attempting 

 to explain all the arts from the same standpoint, or at least of applying 

 certain principles to each and all. To classify the principles of any 

 art, especially music, is as difficult a task as that of classifying the 

 religious emotions of humanity. If a religion, as expounded by its 

 founder, be the expression of the so-called behef of a certain class, 

 shall we say that an art is hkewise the expression of the behef of a class 

 in the views of its founder or founders — if it were possible actually to 

 discover such a parallel relation? Or shall we accept the view of 

 Buckle ?^ that— 



' History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, p. 8. 



