Pritchard, M orcid.org/0000-0003-3534-0956 (2019) Music in Balance: The Aesthetics of Music after Kant, 1790-1810. Journal of Musicology, 36 (1). pp. 39-67. ISSN 0277-9269
Abstract
This essay argues that musicological interpretations of Immanuel Kant’s music aesthetics tend to misread his stance as a defense of artistic formalism and autonomy—traits that, although present in his account of music, in fact reinforce his peculiarly low estimate of music’s value among the fine arts. Kant's position and its subsequent influence can be grasped more securely by analyzing his dichotomy between “free” and “dependent” beauty. Through an exploration of this opposition’s echoes and applications in the thought of three “Kantian” music critics and aestheticians in the two decades after the appearance of the Critique of Judgement—J. F. Reichardt, an anonymous series of articles commonly attributed to J. K. F. Triest, and C. F. Michaelis—this essay argues that Kantian aesthetics as applied in practice involved close attention to the impact of genre, style, function, and compositional aims on the relevant standards of judgment for an individual musical work. The result was not one-sided support for the aesthetic or metaphysical “truth” of absolute music, but a characteristic balance between the claims of “pure” and “applied” art forms—a balance that continued to be maintained in the transition from classical to Romantic aesthetics in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California. Published as Music in Balance: The Aesthetics of Music after Kant, 1790-1810. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by [the Regents of the University of California/on behalf of the Sponsoring Society] for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center. |
Keywords: | Immanuel Kant; C. F. Michaelis; J. F. Reichardt; music aesthetics; autonomy; formalism; classicism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Music (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Oct 2018 11:57 |
Last Modified: | 18 Feb 2020 15:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | University of California Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1525/jm.2019.36.1.39 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:137625 |