Chapter V: Introduction

[Summary. The principle of subjectivity, as realized in painting, contrasted with its complete emancipation in the art of music. Annihilation of spatial objectivity. Motion with its resultant effect in musical tone. Analysis of the twofold negation of externality in which the fundamental principle of musical tone consists. The inner soul-life exclusively the subject-matter of music. Addressed also in its effect to such]

Division of subject

1. The General Character of Music

(_a_) Comparison of music with the plastic arts and poetry

[(_α_) Both affiliated to and strongly contrasted with architecture. It resembles architecture in the nature of the configuration of its content as based on rigorously rational principles directed by human invention. It supplies the architectonic of the extreme of ideality as architecture supplies that of the external material of sense. The quantitative or measure relation is the basis of both

(_β_) Music further removed from sculpture than painting. This is not merely due to the greater ideality of latter, but also to its treatment of its medium. The unity realized by a musical composition of a different kind to that realized by the plastic arts. In the former case subject to the condition of a time-series

(_γ_) Most nearly related to poetry. Employ the same medium of tone. Poetry possible without speech-utterance. Ideal objectivity of poetry as contrasted with the independence of musical tone as the sensuous medium of music. Music as an accompaniment of the voice]

(_b_) Musical grasp and expression of Content

[(_α_) Primarily must not minister to sense-perception. Must make soul-life intelligible to soul. This abstract inwardness differentiated in human feeling, of every description

(_β_) Natural interjections not music. They are the point of departure. To music belongs intelligible structure, a totality of differences capable of union and disunion in concords, discords, oppositions and transitions. The nature of its relation to positive ideas]

(_c_) Effect of music

[(_α_) The evanescent character of the objectivity of music. It seizes on conscious life where it is not confronted with an object. Its effect due to an elementary force. Appeal to man as a particular person. The soul made aware of its association with Time. Analysis of the notion of Time

(_β_) Must also possess a content. Orpheus. Incentive to martial ardour and enthusiasm

(_γ_) Necessity of repeated reproduction. Personal relation of the executive artist to the same. Excess of this influence]

2. The particular definition of the means of expression in music

(_a_) Time-measure, beat, and rhythm

[The relation of Time to the fundamental principle of subjective life. Time-measure prevents the series being indefinite and devoid of content, and further regulates by intelligible division the nature of its advance. Time-beat possesses the same function as the principle of symmetry in architecture. Coordinates a fortuitous variety. Distinct kinds of time-measure. Rhythm gives vital significance to the time-measure and beat. The accent. The rhythm of melody. The analogous example of verse. Handelian music]

(_b_) Harmony

[(_α_) Difference of sound through different instruments of music. Artificially made. Instruments which possess an oscillating column of air, or a stretched string of gut or metal which vibrates. The kettledrum and harmonica. The human voice. Can be employed in separation or combination

(_β_)Tone in its own essential definition. The constitution of harmony as such. The theory of intervals. The scales and keys. Numerical relations of tones and their pitch. Accordant and discordant tones. The octave and other intervals

(_γ_) The system of chords. The triad. Dissonant chords of the seventh and ninth. The resolution of a dissonance. Transitions and modulations of harmony]

(_c_) Melody

[(_α_) The more poetic aspect of music. Inseparable from the theoretical means which creates it. No real surrender involved in its subjection to rules of harmony

(_β_) Simple melodies. Folk-songs. Part chorales where each note of melody represented by a chord. Musical composition as an illustration of the conflict between the principles of freedom and necessity

(_γ_) General character of genuine melody. As such reflects free self-consciousness of soul-life]

3. The relation between means of expression in music and its content

(_a_) Music as an accompaniment

[(_α_) The melodic expression of such music. Ought not to fall into excess of tumult. Palestrina, Durante, Haydn, Mozart, etc. Beauty of Italian music

(_β_) The differentiation of the mode of musical expression must correspond with the nature of a specific content and its situation. Such a content supplied by the libretto. Distinction from this of a song. The recitative. Defective unity

(_γ_) The nature of the condition of concrete unity in the libretto and declamatory recitative. A good libretto not wholly unimportant. Must be stamped with self-consistency. The libretto of Mozart's "Magic Flute." Comparison of the sustaining soul of music with the fundamental beauty of Raphael's paintings. Different forms of music as accompaniment. Church, lyrical, and dramatic music]

(_b_) Independent music

(_c_) The artist as Executant

[(_α_) The ordinary executant who simply executes what lies before him. Comparison with the rhapsodist or reciter of Epos. Player must lose himself in music and reproduce composer

(_β_) The virtuoso, who himself creates and makes the music a means of personal display. Must not merely show eccentricity, but reveal the life of music and the force of a personality]

THIRD PART

THE SYSTEM OF THE PARTICULAR ARTS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART