Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic

Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic reviewed by Martine Prange Hyperion, Volume V, issue 1, May 2010 a review of Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic James H. Donelan Cambridge University Press, 2008 reviewed by Martine Prange University of Amsterdam & University of Maastricht (The Netherlands) 135 Hyperion—Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic wo hundred years have passed since the premiere of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the publication of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the end of Wordsworth’s Golden Decade, and the beginning of Hölderlin’s madness, yet these four key figures of Romanticism and Idealism—all born in the year 1770—still occupy a tremendous place in the collective cultural imagination, for the reason that, as James Donelan argues in his fine Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic, in their works they addressed issues of ‘identity, freedom, and beauty that still matter’ (p. 176), i.e., they express ‘hope for the reintegration of the self through beauty’ (p. 177). That is the wider, extra-musical meaning that absolute (instrumental/non-programmatic) music conveys, particularly Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13, according to Donelan. ‘How can music represent self-consciousness?’ is the central question of an account that soon admits that music indeed can represent self-consciousness, according to the Romantic-Idealist aesthetic, which goes so far as to imagine music and self-consciousness as ‘mutually positing, reciprocal dialectical structures’ (p. xi). Recently, Andrew Bowie already demonstrated the intimate, mutually qualifying relationship between music and modern subjectivity in Modern German philosophy, while inquiring the meaning of music ‘qua music’ (instead of as ‘language’) in Aesthetics and Subjectivity from Kant to Nietzsche (2nd ed. 2003) and Music, Philosophy, and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Donelan operates along similar lines, covering the fields of literary criticism, musicology, and philosophy, and likewise starting from the Oldest System Programme. Remarkably, though, Donelan denies that other landmark framework of nineteenth-century musical discussions: the binary opposition between beauty (produced by visual arts and poetry) and the sublime (music), for undeclared reasons, as well as the question of music’s unique power to create universal understanding and community, due to its independence of language. His contextualization does not go so far as to raise questions about music’s changing political and cultural function at the time, although these questions indeed relate directly to the central question of the expression (or representation) of self-awareness in music (as well as to the question of the genius composer and the experience of the sublime) as it rises with Romanticism and German Idealism. Donelan confines his research methodologically to this single question, historically to the years 1795-1831, thus focusing on the new ontology of music that emerged in the wake of Mozart’s struggle to overcome the patronage system of his time and the celebratory character of music that went with it (i.e., celebrating God or the patron), and geographically/culturally to the German-speaking (Hölderlin, Hegel, Beethoven) and English-speaking (Wordsworth) worlds. Concentrating on Hegel, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, and Beethoven, Donelan moreover avoids the larger part of both German/English and wider Romantic music. Of course, all Romantic music relates in one way or another to Beethoven, but not accounting for skipping Wagner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hyperion—Volume V, issue 1, May 2010 136 Verdi, and Strauss, while speaking of ‘the Romantic musical aesthetic’ in the book title, is a substantial omission, next to its being a smart move if one wants to shun discussion of one’s own essentialist characterization of Romanticism. Would it not have been more obvious to discuss E.T.A. Hoffmann, Brendel, Liszt, Wagner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the ‘war’ between Old and New German School of Music over Beethoven’s symphonic legacy, if one claims to discuss ‘the’ Romantic musical aesthetic rather than Hegel, Hölderlin, and Wordsworth, the first being a philosopher and the other two being poets? Rather than pointing out the variety and development in different Romantic musical aesthetic theories, however, Donelan sets out to explore how and why the conception of the human self as an autonomous, free mind became an object of artistic, more specifi cally musical reflection in early Romantic poetry and music. In other words, why was music, rather than poetry and visual arts, so apt to express or represent selfhood? That Donelan chooses Hegel, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, and Beethoven in this investigation is not only because they were all born in 1770, but also for the reason that they, or rather the works they produced discussed by Donelan, may be conceived as exemplary for a whole range of scholars and artists that regarded music as of utmost relevance for philosophy and aesthetics—their artworks expressing a growing sense of self-awareness. Donelan analyses representative art works as products and representations of the particular feelings and thoughts of the individual artist. In this regard, however, it is rather estranging that so little attention is paid to the Romantic cult of ‘genius.’ ‘Self-consciousness,’ of course, is an invention of Enlightenment philosophy and culture, subsequently explored by Romantic art and thought. Donelan is aware of this, given his accuracy to outline, in a very clear, rather brief yet narrative way (i.e., drawing upon secondary literature rather than arguing his position in discussion with it) the developments intimating the Romantic interest in ‘self-consciousness’ in chapter 1 (‘Self-Consciousness and Music in the Late Enlightenment’). He points out its roots in Kant’s critical works and Mozart’s transformation of Enlightenment musical aesthetics, discusses further the Oldest System Programme fragment, after which he devotes consecutive chapters to Hölderlin’s implementation of musical forms in the Deutscher Gesang poems, the place of music in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, Wordsworth’s poetical interest in sounds of nature, and the expression of selfhood in Beethoven’s String Quartets. He does so in an very readable, lucid, and elegant prose, however not always questioning or explicating the different philosophical and aesthetic concepts (‘Idealism,’ ‘subjectivity,’ ‘beauty’) and sometimes drawing more on secondary sources for the interpretation of primary literature than on his own understanding. Despite the book’s focus on the years 1795-1831, chapter 1 shows that the turning point must be located in 1781, when Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason 137 Hyperion—Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic came out and Mozart gave up his position as court composer in order to continue autonomously, thus planting the seeds of the later Romantic project. Donelan shows that the combined power of Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgement, published nine years later, should be held accountable for the Romantic defence of art and self-expression. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant set the limits of human knowledge, arguing the active role of the human mind in structuring the reception of appearances. This focus on appearances led him to explore the aesthetic judgement, i.e., the judgement of sense data, in Critique of Judgement. Thus directing the metaphysical focus to aesthetics and the subjectivity of knowledge, Kant paved the way for scientifi c and philosophical reflections on the subject, aesthetics, and, despite his focus on the beauty of nature, art. In the same period, Mozart forged an independent career as a public composer, soloist, and conductor, making his control over the musical performance nearly absolute, and, negating the rules of decoration by focusing in its place on the expression of inner thought, feeling, and freedom in the newly created stile brillante, changed and professionalized European musical culture. Mozart’s influence reached its pinnacle in the opera Don Giovanni of 1787, in which he not only innovated musical style but also challenged social conventions in asserting his individual freedom. Thus, the year 1781 was a landmark year, the year in which art and philosophy hooked up, albeit still rather unconsciously, in order to be wedded and blossom in Romantic philosophy of music, launched by the Oldest System Programme Fragment (very probably conceived in 1796 by Hegel, Schelling, and Hölderlin), which Donelan then discusses in the same chapter. It offers a solution to the problem of self-consciousness, stated by Kant, referring to the aesthetic imagination, beauty, and freedom and thus unifying ideas put forward by Kant, Schiller, Fichte, and Schelling. Through an act of the imagination (the presentation of the Hyperion—Volume V, issue 1, May 2010 138 ... - tailieumienphi.vn