"To Tear the Fetter of Every Other Art": Early Romantic Criticism and the Fantasy of

Emancipation
Author(s): Lisa Fishman
Source: 19th-Century Music , Summer 2001, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 75-86
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2001.25.1.75

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 LISA
FISHMA
Early
Romanti
Criticism

“To Tear the Fetter of Every Other Art”:

Early Romantic Criticism and the
Fantasy of Emancipation
LISA FISHMAN

Aesthetic conceptions of music experienced a
dramatic upheaval during the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Time-honored
views of music’s subservience to words, and
the concomitant ranking of the literary arts
above music and vocal music above instrumen-
tal, were turned on their heads. Together with
the changes in musical institutions and modes
of reception, these upheavals have been well
charted, their intricacies documented in sev-
eral major studies.1 Two texts appearing in 1806
are intriguing symptoms of the prevalent anxi-
ety over words and music and offer a new angle
1
See Bellamy Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instru-
mental Music in 18-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, 1981);
and John Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Lan-
guage: Departure from Mimesis in Eighteenth-Century Aes-
thetics (New Haven, 1986). On the relationship between
poetry and music, see James Anderson Winn, Unsuspected
Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and
Music (New Haven, 1981). Mark Evan Bonds argues for the
in uence of idealist philosophy in “Idealism and the Aes-
thetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nine-
teenth Century,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 50 (1997), 387–420.
on the issues at stake in the aesthetic debate.
Belgian theorist Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny and
German critic August Apel added text to in-
strumental compositions by Mozart, the Ž rst
movements of the D-Minor String Quartet, K.
421, and E -Major Symphony, K. 543, respec-
tively. 2 In so doing, Momigny hoped to clarify
2
August Apel, “Musik und Poesi e,” A llgemeine
musikalische Zeitung 8 (16/23 April 1806), 449–57, 465–
70. Momigny’s example appears in his Cours complet
d’harmonie et de composition, 3 vols. (Paris, 1803–06), I,
371–73. For considerations of Momigny’s understanding of
the relationship of music to language, see the following:
Albert Palm, “Mozarts Streichquartett d-moll, KV 421, in
der Interpretation Momignys,” Mozart-Jahrbuch 1962/3
(Salzburg, 1964), p. 268; Rüdiger Görner, “Die Sprache in
der Musiktheorie Jérôme-Joseph de Momignys,” in Logos
musicae: Festschrift für Albert Palm, ed. Rüdiger Görner
(Wiesbaden, 1982), pp. 100–09; Albert Palm, “Musikalische
Analyse als asthetisches Instrumentarium,” Zeitschrift für
Musikpädagogik, 8/23 (1983), 43–50; Roger Parker, “On
Reading Nineteenth-Century Opera: Verdi through the
Looking-Glass,” in Reading Opera, ed. Arthur Groos and
Roger Parker (Princeton, 1988), 288–305; and Hermann
Danuser, “Vers-oder Prosaprinzip? Mozarts Streichquartett
in d-Moll (KV 421) in der Deutung Jérôme-Joseph de
Momignys und Arnold Schönbergs,” Musiktheorie 7 (1992),
245–63.

19th-Century Music, XXV/1, pp. 75–86. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2001 by The Regents of the University of 75
California. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University
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 19 TH the music’s true expression, and Apel strove to
CENTURY
MUSIC show that the same Idee may be projected by
two such diverse arts as poetry and music.3
Both projects deliver the same product: a verbal
complement to Mozart’s musical ideas, or, if
you will, a linguistic translation of musical
prose.
Although Apel creates his verse—a celebra-
tion of love, replete with stock Romantic imag-
ery—as a freestanding monument to Mozart’s
movement, Momigny’s rendition entails an
actual underlay of the music with his own verse
recounting Dido’s lament. As such, it is among
the last in the tradition that includes
Gerstenberg’s underlay of Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach’s C-Minor Probestücke Fantasy with the
German translation of Shakespeare’s “To be or
not to be” soliloquy. The critic Carl Friedrich
Cramer warns his readers in the 1780s not to
consider Gerstenberg’s achievement “mere
whimsy” and confesses his own admiration:
“By my accounting it must be incomprehen-
sible to the keyboard player how this {feat}
becomes possible even once within the con-
Ž nes of a fantasy that wanders with such speed
through all octaves.”4 Appraisals from Cramer
and many others spring from a conviction about
the nature of music: a conviction, deep-seated
3
Gernot Gruber relates Apel’s project to the early Roman-
tic understanding of the symphony in “Johann August Apel
und eine Diskussion um die Ästhetik der Sinfonie im frühen
19. Jahrhundert,” in Studien zur Instrumentalmusik: Lothar
Hoffman-Erbrecht zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. A. Bingmann
et al. (Tutzing, 1988), pp. 261–83.
4
“{Denn ich glaube gern}, daß nach meiner bloßen Erzählung
es den Clavierspielern unbegrei ich seyn muß, wie dieß
bey dem Umfange einer mit solcher Schnelligkeit durch
alle gebiete der Octaven schweifenden Phantasie nur einmal
möglich gewesen sey” (Carl Friedrich Cramer, Magazin
der Musik, 1/2 {1783}, 1253–54). Cramer describes
Gerstenberg’s project, which he published with an intro-
duction in the Flora collection, in more detail in vol. 2.2 of
the Magazin, pp. 1359–63. Eugene Helm sees this project
less as an attempt to unearth the “true” meaning of Bach’s
fantasy than to literalize it in several possible ways, in-
cluding in Socrates’ monologue. See Helm, “The ‘Hamlet’
Fantasy and the Literary Element in C. P. E. Bach’s Mu-
sic,” Musical Quarterly 58 (1972), 277–96. For a broader
discussion of literary-musical collaborations at this time,
see Paul F. Marks, “Aesthetics of Music in the Philosophy
of Sturm und Drang: Gerstenberg, Hamann and Herder,”
Music Review 35 (1974), 247–59.
76
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in eighteenth-century musical aesthetics, that
music is at core a translation of words.5
Cramer’s œuvre of criticism is illuminating
in this respect. In 1783, in an essay titled “On
Beauty and the Expression of Passion in a Can-
tata by J. Haydn,” Cramer offers remarks on
the concert version of the recitative and aria
“Ah, come il core,” from Haydn’s 1781 opera
La Fedeltà Premiata.6 This work was favorably
received from the Ž rst and continues to be held
in high regard.7 Yet as its title implies, Cramer’s
reading of it reverses the modern hierarchy: he
favors textual expression over musical struc-
ture. His comments on mm. 21–22 of the
recitative are typical (ex. 1a, b, and c): “On the
word ‘tu,’ Haydn has not given the note the
correct position. He has assigned it to an up-
beat, when it should fall on a downbeat. It
should be not: tu per salvàrlo, but tù per
salvarlo. One should thus sing it as if notated
{one quarter note and two eighth notes}, or,
even better, one could pause after the word ‘tu’
and sing the two syllables ‘per sal’ in sixteenth
notes.” Thirty-Ž ve measures later, Haydn engi-
neers three shocking fortissimo unisons, each
elongated with a decrescendo to pianissimo,
complete with sudden tympani entrances and
 utter tonguing in the horns (ex. 2, mm. 56–
62). H. C. Robbins Landon calls this moment
an “almost unbelievable . . . interruption,” but
Cramer swallows this camel, remarking only
that the text at this point should be sung with
an anguished tone of voice.8
Throughout his analysis, Cramer’s unspo-
ken assumption is that music’s place is clearly
to illuminate the words, which are of primary
importance within the artwork. This textual
orientation pervades Cramer’s criticism, beyond
5 See Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the
Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumen-
tal Music (Cambridge, 1997).
6
Cramer, “Ueber die Schönheit und den Ausdruck der
Leidenschaft in einer Cantate von J. Haydn,” Magazin der
Musik, 1/2 (1783), 1073–1115.
7 See Marc Vignal, “La Fedeltà Premiata in Holland,” Haydn
Yearbook 8 (1971), 295–98; and H. C. Robbins Landon,
Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, Haydn at Eszterháza,
1766–1790 (Bloomington, 1978), 537–44.
8 Landon, Haydn at Eszterháza, p. 540.
a. “Ah, come il core,” mm. 20–23. LISA
FISHMAN
20 Early
Flute Romantic
Criticism

Oboe

Bassoon

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Vocal
{ }
in - u - ma - na pie - tà, tu per sal - var - lo fo - sti l’em - pia ca gion del - la sua mor - te . . .

Bass

b. Cramer’s first revision. c. Cramer’s second revision.

- tà tu per sal - - tà tu per sal -

Example 1

the Haydn and Gerstenberg examples.9 In his
review of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s fourth
Sammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber (1783),
Cramer struggles to make sense of the two
concluding fantasies.10 Of the second fantasy
(E major), which Bach in jest labeled in
tormentis in reference to his rheumatism,
Cramer fancies that the composer might well
have abstracted an entire theory of gout while
working out the piece. In this way, “the very
original seventh chord in the modulating pas-
sage might be likened to shooting pain whose
pricking stabs would personify vexation in the
soul.”11
The assumption underlying Cramer’s
analytics is that all music has a text—be it a
description or a soliloquy—even if that text is
suppressed. Such an assumption says much
about both Cramer’s understanding of the com-
positional process and his hearing of instru-

9
As a critic, Cramer was unusual in that he was not a
professional musician, but rather a professor of Greek and “Beym zweyten Ansatze so gleich so orginal in die
11

Oriental languages. Nevertheless, his linguistic approach Secondquartsexte ausweichended Laufe ihre herum iegende
to analysis is representative of much of the criticism of his Pein, in den kleinern stoßenden Stellen ihre Stiche, den
day. Eindruck des Aergers auf die Seele u. leibhaftig gewahr
10Cramer, Magazin der Musik, 1/2 (1783), 1239–55. würde” (ibid., p. 1253).

77
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 19 TH 54
CENTURY
MUSIC Flute
{ }

Oboe I
{ }

Oboe II
{ }

Bassoon
{ }
{a sempre tremolante, ma in Ž ne perdendosi}
Horn { . . . .} { . . . .}
{ . . . .} { . . . .}
con un continuo bischero ed in Ž ne perdendosi
Timpani
in D-A
coll’arco

Violin I

coll’arco

Violin II

coll’arco

Viola

Vocal

Te - co - sa - rò . . . Che sen - to! Ah tu sde - gno - sa, dal

coll’arco

Bass

{ }

Example 2: “Ah, come il core,” mm. 54–62.

mental music. Why is it so important for
Cramer that music always serve words, whether
implicitly or explicitly? What is the lack that
words supply? In the gout example, Cramer
wants each tone to correspond to some event
in the external world, in keeping with the man-
date, made popular by Batteux, that all art imi-
tate an object in nature.12 For music, the object
of this imitation is human emotions, and the
means of imitation resides in music’s likeness
to impassioned speech.
Another of music’s inadequacies was that it
stimulated the emotions while offering noth-
ing for the understanding. Here, too, the rem-
edy was to join music to a text. British
aesthetician James Harris expressed the advan-
tage of this union by describing “the genuine
Charm of Music, and the Wonders, which it
works, thro’ its great Professors: a Power, which
consists not in Imitations, and the raising Ideas,
but in the raising Affections, to which Ideas
may correspond {through poetry}.”13

13James Harris, Three Treatises: The First Concerning Art,

Charles Batteux, Les Beaux-arts réduits à un même
12
the Second Concerning Music, Painting and Poetry, the
principe (Paris, 1746). Third Concerning Happiness (London, 1744), p. 99.

78
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 59 LISA
FISHMAN
Flute Early
Romantic
Criticism
Oboe I

Oboe II

Bassoon

Horn { . . . .}
{ . . . .}

Timpani
in D-A

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Vocal

mar - gi - ne di Le - te mi - ri - spon - di, tra so - spi - ri - fu - ne - sti:

Bass

Example 2 (continued)

Thus far, words assure Cramer of two things:
an object of imitation, and a means of engaging
the faculty of reason. A third advantage of a
text also emerges: the provision of structure
and unity. Cramer writes of the Ž rst movement
of the E-Minor Sonata from the fourth collec-
tion for Kenner und Liebhaber: “I am conscious
of no clear character of unity, as in the other
rondos and sonatas in this collection. The in-
terweaving of its melody escapes my memory
when I leave the keyboard; the others, how-
ever, I need to hear only a single time in order
to have imprinted upon my imagination the
most vivid impression of their effect.”14 The
movement in question possesses a motivic,
rather than melodic, character. In contrast, other
movements in this collection—presumably the
movements to which Cramer refers—project a
14
“Ich wüßte mir hierbey keinen solchen bestimmten und
Einheit enthaltenden Character zu denken, wie bey den
übrigen Rondos und Sonaten dieser Sammlung; die
Verwebung seiner Melodie entwischt meinem Gedächtniße
wenn ich vom Clavier aufstehe, dahingegen ich alle die
übrigen nur ein einzigesmal zu hören brauche, um das
lebendigste Bild ihres Ganges meiner Imagination eingeprägt
zu haben” (Cramer, Magazin der Musik, 1/2, p. 1248).

79
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 19 TH structure based on repetition of an easily recog- only with regard to pitch and strength but also with
CENTURY regard to its various tones of sweetness, roughness,
MUSIC nizable melody. In posing this contrast, Cramer
responds to the characteristically instrumental harshness, mellowness, used in their proper places,
nature of the E-minor movement as exhibited then that natural music arises to which every heart
is sure to respond because we feel that it issues from
in two ways: lack of a melodic line, and lack of
the heart, and that art has only part in it so far as art
a melodically based unifying structure. Both of
is nature.16
these attributes (melodic line and unifying struc-
ture) are closely associated with vocal music
Lessing’s requirement for instrumental music
and are the landmarks Cramer seeks out when
contrasts sharply with the above description.
getting his bearings in instrumental music.
Speaking of entr’actes, Lessing speciŽ es that
After such complaints of disunity, Cramer’s
music must maintain a uniŽ ed character be-
praise for the variety that Haydn brings to bear
cause it has no words to perform this task. An
on his text, particularly in connection with
actor declaiming a text, however, must draw
declamation, is striking. He Ž rst invokes a se-
out of this text as much variety as possible,
ries of binary oppositions that encompasses the
because the unity is already provided by the
range of expression that a good declaimer might
sense of the text and the cohesion of the narra-
hope to extract from the text: these include,
tive. For Lessing, a text provides music with
“strength and weakness, slowness and swift-
not only a conceptual unity supplying linguis-
ness, a  owing melody or one interrupted by
tic meaning but also a literal unity by supply-
pauses, gentleness or vehemence, clarity or ob-
ing a skeleton on which the notes themselves
scurity, joy or mournfulness.” Transferring
may hang. For Cramer, then, as for Momigny
these qualities to the art of composition, Cramer
and Gerstenberg, music is not so much an au-
calls on Hiller’s proclamation that “taste re-
tonomous artistic system with its own proper-
quires diversity of all the Ž ne arts, and of none
ties, but rather a voice that articulates words.
more than music. The requirement extends it-
For all their synchronicity, Momigny and
self also to the various gradations of strength
Apel entertain markedly different ideas about
and weakness of which the voice is capable.”15
instrumental music. Apel comments on the
Hiller, like Cramer, stresses the need for vari-
rhythmic Ž nale to Mozart’s E Symphony,
ety particularly in instrumental music.
“which extends itself to the apparent possibil-
In the Bach instrumental works, Cramer
ity of textual underlay.”17 He goes on to cau-
searches for the kind of unity provided by a
tion, however, that the actualization would cre-
text, whereas in the Haydn critique he empha-
ate an impression contrary to the meaning of
sizes the need for variety in vocal music. Why
the music, just as a speaking pantomime would
does the standard invoked for one not hold for
contradict his gestures with his words. In re-
the other? One clue lies in the quotation that
jecting the very notion of text underlay, Apel
Cramer himself provides, from Lessing’s
in fact rejects—or at least throws into ques-
Dramaturgie, regarding proper declamatory
tion—all projects that draw on this technique,
technique:
including Momigny’s. In fact, the very contem-
poraneousness of Momigny and Apel signal not
The effect produced by this constant change {in
only two very different conceptions of the mu-
declamatory expression} is incredible, and if besides
this all changes of voice are taken into account, not sical art, but also the collision of these concep-
tions in theory and practice.

15“Stärke und Schwäche, der Langsamkeit und Schnellig-

keit, des eilenden oder durch Pausen unterbrochnen
Gesangs, der Sanftheit oder Heftigkeit, der Klarheit oder
DumpŽ gkeit, der Fröhlichkeit oder der Trauer” (ibid., p.
1075). “Von allen schönen Künsten fordert der Geschmack
Mannigfaltigkeit, und von keiner mehr als von der Music.
Diese Forderung erstreckt sich auch auf die verschiedenen
Grade der stärke und Schwäche, deren die Stimme fähig
ist” (ibid., p. 1074).
16
Lessing, Hamburg Dramaturgy, trans. Helen Zimmerman
(New York, 1962), p. 24.
17
“Welche bis zur scheinbaren Möglichkeit einer wortlichen
Unterlegung geht” (Apel, “Musik und Poesie,” col. 452).

80
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 II
At the scene of the accident we Ž nd the
age’s chief critical authority, Immanuel Kant.
His aesthetics as detailed in the Kritik der
Urteilskraft (1790) consummate one century
grappling with the relative worth of the Ž ne
arts while anticipating the next. For Kant, the
primary value of any Ž ne art lies in its capacity
to promote what he calls aesthetic ideas, which
he deŽ nes in §57 of the Third Critique as ideas
“referred to a merely subjective principle of the
mutual harmony of the cognitive powers (imagi-
nation and understanding).” This notion that
the imagination and understanding enjoy har-
monious interplay informs Kant’s conception
of the Ž ne arts’ modus operandi, in which the
role of concepts (Begriffe) becomes central. A
concept is a product of our understanding that
enables us to make sense of intuitions, or pre-
sentations, that we encounter. For example, if
presented with a horse, we match this presen-
tation with a concept of a horse that we have
come to possess through our experience of
horses. In contrast to a concept, which is pre-
sented to the understanding, an aesthetic idea
is presented to the imagination: the imagina-
tion for Kant is a productive cognitive power,
which “creates, as it were, another nature out
of the material that actual nature gives it.” In
other words, the imagination contributes to
the production of aesthetic ideas by expanding
on the concepts presented to us. Hence, para-
doxically, although the presence of concepts is
necessary in order for aesthetic ideas to exist,
these aesthetic ideas must, by their very na-
ture, surpass the boundary of the concept. Kant
elsewhere (§49) describes an aesthetic idea as
“a presentation of the imagination which
prompts much thought, but to which no deter-
minate thought whatsoever, i.e., no {determi-
nate} concept, can be adequate, so that no lan-
guage can express it completely and allow us to
grasp it.”18
Possession of aesthetic ideas hereupon
emerges as an essential property for a work of
art and is a primary criterion for assessing and
comparing the various Ž ne arts. In this connec-
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S.
18
Pluhar (Indianapolis, 1987), pp. 215, 182.
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tion (§53) Kant claims the following: “Among LISA
FISHMAN
all the arts poetry holds the highest rank. . . . It Early
expands the mind: for it sets the imagination Romantic
Criticism
free, and offers us, from among the unlimited
variety of possible forms that harmonize with a
given concept, though within that concept’s
limits, that form which links the exhibition of
the concept with a wealth of thought to which
no linguistic expression is completely adequate,
and so poetry rises aesthetically to ideas.”19 By
presenting us with many possible forms for a
single concept, poetry simultaneously works
within a concept and yet transcends it. Poetry
thus engages both the imagination and the un-
derstanding to the highest degree.
In terms of the visual arts, to which Kant
with qualiŽ cations assigns the next rank after
poetry, he gives preference to painting over
sculpture and architecture: “Among the visual
arts I would give priority to painting, partly
because it is the art of design and as such un-
derlies all the remaining visual arts, partly be-
cause it can penetrate much further into the
region of ideas, and in conformity with them
can also expand the realm of intuition more
than the other visual arts can do.”20 We may
infer that for Kant painting possesses a greater
capacity to penetrate into the region of ideas
because it is not as limited by corporeality or
representationalism as are sculpture and archi-
tecture. By the same token, poetry is less lim-
ited still than painting. Freedom to represent
ideas is hindered Ž rst by the visual orientation
of the representation, and second by the mate-
riality of the visual representation itself. Hence,
while corporeality and representationalism are
not in themselves ultimate criteria in assessing
Ž ne arts, they nevertheless determine a par-
ticular medium’s ability to “penetrate into the
region of ideas.”
Kant’s categorization of music among the
Ž ne arts is ambiguous.21 At base, however, mu-
sic lacks concepts, and is thus incapable of
19Ibid., p. 196.
20
Ibid., p. 201.
21Herman Parret duly notes this phenomenon, referring to
Kant’s judgment of music as “mutable, fragmented, and
contradictory” in “Kant on Music and the Hierarchy of the
Arts,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998),
255.
81
 19 TH engendering aesthetic ideas in the same man-
CENTURY
MUSIC ner as poetry or the visual arts. He claims of
music that “it speaks through nothing but sen-
sations without concepts, so that unlike poetry
it leaves us with nothing to meditate about.”22
He reafŽ rms this notion in the Anthropologie
(1798): “As for vital sense, music, which is a
regular play of aural sensations, not only moves
it in a way that is indescribably vivacious and
varied, but also strengthens it; so music is, as it
were, a language of mere sensations (without
concepts.)” 23 Kant does attribute to music the
power to awaken aesthetic ideas. These ideas,
however, are of a different and inferior kind to
the ones provoked by poetry in that they fea-
ture not conformity to a concept, but rather
conformity to what Kant refers to as a theme.
In the case of music, the theme is the principal
affect of that composition (§53). Yet in the end,
aesthetic ideas that rely on themes are no bet-
ter than those provoked by humor, and lead to
no end more exalted than improved digestion.
Kant further complains that music possesses
within it nothing that serves to contain and
delimit it:
Music has a certain lack of urbanity about it. For
owing chie y to the character of its instruments, it
scatters its in uence abroad to an uncalled-for ex-
tent (through the neighborhood) and thus, as it were,
becomes obtrusive and deprives others, outside the
musical circle, of their freedom. . . . The case is
almost on a par with the practice of regaling oneself
with a perfume that exhales its odours far and wide.
. . . This is a thing that the arts that address them-
selves to the eye do not do, for if one is not disposed
to give admittance to their impressions, one has
only to look the other way.24
A few paragraphs later, Kant complains that
“the {visual} arts produce a lasting impression,
the {musical arts} only a transitory one.”25 In
the Ž rst case, Kant seems annoyed at the in-
ability of music to remain within Ž xed bound-
aries, as does a painting. In the second, he lev-
els the converse charge: music will not hold
22Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 198.
23
Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,
trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague, 1974), p. 34.
24
Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 196.
25Ibid., p. 200.
82
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still long enough for him to contemplate it. In
both instances, Kant is missing the physical
containment of both the visual arts and poetry
in music. His vexation is all the more paradoxi-
cal considering Kant’s assertion that poetry’s
lack of corporeality enables it to penetrate fur-
ther than painting or sculpture into the region
of ideas.
Kant echoes Cramer’s anxiety to Ž nd unity
in music. His stance on representationalism,
however, constitutes a departure from the mi-
metic ideal of art that held sway through the
middle of the eighteenth century. For Kant, the
less corporeal the artistic medium, the less con-
strained it is to execute a literal imitation of
nature. Yet music goes too far in dispensing
entirely with physical boundaries that might
serve to impart unity and that deŽ ne it as a
subduable object of contemplation. Kant also
shares Cramer’s concern that music Ž nd for
itself meaning of the sort only supplied by
words. By constructing a system that envisions
both concepts and aesthetic ideas as vital to
the workings of Ž ne art, Kant partakes of his
era’s anxiety to ensure the sort of intelligibility
provided by a text, while yet foreshadowing
Romantic dissatisfaction with the limitations
of both linguistic and corporeal representation.
Kant thus responds to contradictory desires
within the critical community: the desire for
intelligibility, and the desire for freedom from
that very intelligibility. In this way, Kant’s won-
derful ambivalence falls within the penumbra
between his age and the age to come.
III
Kant’s discomfort with Enlightenment aes-
thetics explodes in the work of several music
critics writing for the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung in the Ž rst decade of the nineteenth
century. In the company of Franz Christoph
Horn and Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Au-
gust Apel shows his true colors as a progressive
to Momigny’s conservatism. All three critics
incorporate Kant’s notion of the aesthetic idea
into their philosophical language.26 In each case,
26
As evidenced by his book-length study Ueber den Geist
der Tonkunst mit Rücksicht auf Kants Kritik der
ästhetischen Urteilskraft (Leipzig, 1795 and 1800), Michae-
lis studied Kant’s ideas in particular depth. In addition to
however, the notion veers from the original
such that the importance of the concept dimin-
ishes. For Kant, lack of concepts in music rel-
egates it to the condition of “mere sensations”
and calls into question its status as a Ž ne art;
for the critics, however, this lack of concepts is
an unmitigated asset. Michaelis’s adaptation of
Kant’s formula abolishes the balance and inter-
dependence between idea and concept and em-
phasizes the richness of the former at the ex-
pense of the latter: “These (aesthetic ideas) are
presentations of the imagination so deep and
full in their contents that no concept can ever
attain or encompass them. They serve there-
fore not for cognition, but rather for the anima-
tion of the mind.” Not only does the poet have
to battle with the abstraction of speech and the
generality of the concept, Michaelis indicates,
but “poetry connects itself to an object of
knowledge or an idea of reason; its pronounce-
ment always Ž nds evidence in the actual or the
possible world.”27 The concepts induced by
words entail a second liability: through objec-
tive or rational reference, they bind us to the
possible world, which restricts music to the
function of imitation. Without concepts, an art
form is freed from any obligation to act in a
signifying, linguistic capacity. To Michaelis,
Kant’s dissatisfaction with representationalism
swells to encompass all that reason might de-
note as well. Apel departs yet further from Kant
in demoting the role of the concept not only in
music, but in all the art forms. Hence, it is
“not tones, but the uniting of tones wherein
lies the musical artwork—in the same way it is
not the concept, but the uniting of concepts
his contributions to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,
several articles by Michaelis also appear in Reichardt’s
Berlinische musikalische Zeitung.
27
“Dies sind Vorstellungen der Einbildungskraft, von solcher
Tiefe und Fülle des Inhalts, welche kein bestimmter Begriff
erreichen oder umfassen kann. Sie dienen daher nicht zur
Erkenntniss, sondern zur Belebung des Gemüths” (“Ueber
die wichtigsten Erfordernisse und Bedingungen der
Tonkunst, also schöner Kunst,” Berlinische musikalische
Zeitung 1/33 {1805}, 134). “Auch bezieht sich die Poesie
immer auf Gegenstände der Erkenntnis oder auf Ideen der
Vernunft; ihre Mittheilung Ž ndet immer Belege in der
wirklichen oder möglichen Welt” (“Ueber das Idealische
der Tonkunst,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 10 {13
April 1808}, 451).
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wherein lies the poetic artwork. Thus is po- LISA
FISHMAN
etry, and all art, beyond concepts.”28 Early
Among the three Romantic critics, Horn serves Romantic
Criticism
up the most nihilistic take on Kant, touting
music’s downright inability to deal in concepts:
Poetry, especially dramatic poetry, is still capable of
providing some enjoyment for the intellect in this
way. Even though such enjoyment may be inŽ nitely
less than that which is experienced by the true con-
noisseur, it will still be sufŽ ciently interesting to be
of value. . . . The intellect knows how to derive a
similar pleasure from painting and sculpture, though
it inevitably does greater violence to sculpture, which
needs to be appreciated in its totality if it is fully to
be enjoyed. From this standpoint, however, how can
the intellect, despite all efforts, derive the slightest
bit of pleasure from music? Music cannot form con-
cepts or express truths, nor can it occupy the con-
templative faculty. . . . This may explain the odd
ideas that men have about music, who often judge
things profoundly and correctly, and accounts for
the clumsy remark made by one of our most emi-
nent philosophers {Kant} to the effect that music is
uncouth because it imposes itself on people.29
Such disdain for the role of the intellect in
comprehending art was a trademark of the Ger-
man critical community in the early nineteenth
28“Nicht der Ton, sondern die Verbindung der Töne giebt
das musikalische—eben so nicht der Begriff, sondern die
Verbindung der Begriffe, das poetische Kunstwerk. Eben
darum ist Poesie und alle Kunst über dem Begriff” (Apel,
“Musik und Poesie,” cols. 451–52n.).
29
“Bey den Werken der Poesie, besonders der dramatischen,
weis er sich auf diese Art allerdings noch einigen Genuss
zu verschaffen, der, wenn er gleich unendlich dürftiger ist,
als der, des wahren Kunstliebhabers, doch immer Interesse
genug hat, um sie ihm bedeutend zu machen. . . . Einen
ähnlichen weis er sich auch bey den Werken der Mahlerey
und Bildhauerkunst zu verschaffen, ob er gleich bey der
leztern fast noch gewaltsamer verfahren muss, da sie
durchaus die reine Anschauung seiner Gesammtheit
verlangt, um ganz genossen zu werden; —allein wie wird er
auf seinem Standpunkte, selbst bey der gröss ten
Anstrengung, sich auch nur einen ganz geringen Genuss
verschaffen können, bey der Tonkunst? Sie vermag es nicht,
Begriffe zu bilden, nicht Wahrheiten auszusprechen, nicht
die Re exion zu beschäftigen. . . . Daher denn auch die
seltsamen Urtheile über diese Kunst von Männern, die
sonst in mancher Hinsicht tief und richtig blicken, daher
das harte Wort von einem unsrer ehrwürdigsten Philoso-
phen, sie sey eine schreiende Kunst, die sich aufdringe”
(Michaelis, “Musikalische Fragmente,” Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung 4 {24 March 1802}, 418–19). Trans-
lated in consultation with the excerpt in Peter leHuray and
Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 272–73.
83
 19 TH century. Foreshadowing Apel’s dismissal of the
CENTURY
MUSIC practice of text underlay, Rochlitz hails music’s
capacity to surpass the intellectual limitations
of language: “Language does not let go of its
auxiliary verbs, its particles, and such, which
are merely for the understanding. . . . There is
none of this in tones, the material of music.
They are pliable and  uid, like the softest wax,
in the hand of true artists; they yield to all
changes, shades, and nuances of feeling—they
are, in themselves, for feeling alone.”30
Horn in fact embraces music’s conceptual as
well as physical incomprehensibilities, the very
attributes for whose disparagement he takes
Kant to task. Kant experiences music as impos-
ing itself, but Michaelis remarks that “it speaks
to us through our sense of hearing; its medium,
the air, is invisible, as are tones, in which mu-
sic has its sphere; not offering expansion or
resistance in space, its operation is of an imma-
terial sort.”31 He further invokes Herder to
praise this quality in music: “In coming and
 eeing, in being and becoming lies the trium-
phant power of tones and feeling. In contrast,
the visual arts adhere to limited objects and
appearances, fully to local color; although they
show everything at once, yet they will be un-
derstood only slowly.”32 Apel acknowledges the
same immateriality in music:
The general sign which serves music for representa-
tion is sound, an appearance certainly for the exter-
30“Die Sprache lässt sich ihre Artikel, ihre Hülfszeitwörter;
ihre Partikeln, u. d. gl., die blos für den Verstand sind,
nicht nehmen, u.s.w. Das alles is bey dem Materiale der
Musik, bey den Tönen, nicht. Sie sind bildsamer und
gefügiger, als das weichste Wachs, in der Hand des wahren
Künstlers; sie schmiegen sich in alle Wendungen,
Uebergänge und Nüancen der EmpŽ ndungen—sind, an sich,
allein für die EmpŽ ndung” (Rochlitz, “Einige  üchtige
Worte über die Verbindung der Musik mit der Poesie,”
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 {10 April 1799}, 437).
31“Sie spricht durch den Sinn des Gehöhrs zu uns; ihr
Medium, die Luft, ist unsichtbar, wie die Töne. Indem die
Musik im Unsichtbaren ihre Sphäre hat, nichts Ausgedehn-
tes oder im Raume Widerstehendes darbietet, wirkt sie auf
eine geistige Art” (Michaelis, “Noch einige Bemerkungen
über den Rang der Tonkunst unter den schönen Künsten,”
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 6 {15 August 1804}, 769).
32
“Im Kommen und Fliehen, im Werden und Gewesenseyn
liegt die Siegeskraft des Tons und der EmpŽ ndung. Dagegen
jede Kunst des Anschauens, die an beschränkten
Gegenständen und Gebehrden, gar an Lokalfarben haftet,
obwohl sie auf einmal Alles zeigt, dennoch nur langsam
begriffen wird” (ibid., p. 766).
84
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nal senses, but which is never perceived in space, as
other objects of external sense, but merely in time,
and therefore can be exhibited as a sign for not being
in space. As to what may be represented in music,
we are left to expect with certainty from the mate-
rial of this art, that it either must express an object
of inner appearance, thus our own inner feelings
(affects), or an external object which, heard in the
perception of time, thus can be {expressed} chie y
by its movement.33
The critics emphasize the  eeting, immaterial
quality of music particularly in connection with
its nonrepresentational character, or, more spe-
ciŽ cally, its suitability to express or represent
the inner or the invisible. Flüchtigkeit ensures
the transcendental, transsymbolic nature of
music. In this way, high esteem for music’s
transitory quality is part and parcel of the pre-
vailing move away from the imitative aesthetic.
Music’s stunning liberation from its obliga-
tion to reenact the real world, be it representa-
tionally or conceptually, is what E. T. A. Hoff-
mann delights to celebrate as he exalts music
above any of its sister arts:
Music reveals to man an unfamiliar region, a world
that has nothing in common with the external sen-
sible world which surrounds him: a world in which
he abandons all concepts of deŽ nite feelings in order
to yield oneself to an inexpressible longing. How
insufŽ ciently instrumental composers recognize this
peculiar essence of music, who seek to represent
those deŽ nite emotions or even events, thus per-
versely treating music as a plastic art! . . . In singing,
where the poetry speciŽ es moods through words,
the magical power of music acts like the wondrous
33
“Das allgemeine Zeichen, dessen sich die Musik zu ihren
Darstellungen bedient, ist der Klang, eine Erscheinung zwar
für den äussern Sinn, welcher aber nie im Raume, wie
andre Gegenstände des äussern Sinnes, sondern blos und
allein in der Zeit wahrgenommen wird, und daher schon
deswegen auf kein Seyn im Raume als Zeichen bezogen
werden kann. Was also immer das Darzustellende in der
Musik seyn mag; so lässt sich doch aus dem Material
dieser Kunst soviel mit Sicherheit erwarten, dass es
entweder ein Gegenstand innerer Anschauung, also unsrer
eignen innern EmpŽ ndungen (Affekte) seyn muss, oder
von den äussern Gegenständen nur das, was bey ihrer
Wahrnehmung der Zeit angehört, also hauptsächlich ihrer
Bewegung seyn kann” (“Ueber musikalische Behandlung
der Geister,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 8 {27 No-
vember 1805}, 129).
elixir of wisdom, a few drops of which make any
drink marvelous and exquisite. . . . So strong is the
magic of music, growing as it does ever more power-
ful, that it must tear the fetter of every other art.34
IV
To return to our original dichotomy: if
Momigny’s purpose is to clarify a musical
work’s true expression, then what is Apel’s
purpose? He seeks to effect a representation of
the same idea (Idee) through two very different
media—music and poetry. Furthermore, “this
symphony, as an artwork of a deŽ nite charac-
ter, is the representation of an idea through the
sensuous appearance of tones . . . the idea itself
however is not Ž xed in the tones; these are the
means through which the musical work ap-
pears.”35 The Idee is present in any work of art,
but never through the “stuff” (words, marble,
etc.) of the medium. In this respect, he even
cautions that one must resist the temptation to
underlay the Ž nale with words, because the
two media cannot mix. The Idee is therefore
34“Die Musik schließt dem Menschen ein unbekanntes
Reich auf; eine Welt, die nichts gemein hat mit der äußern
Sinnenwelt, die ihn umgibt, und in der er alle durch Begriffe
besti mmbaren Gefühle zurückläßt, um si ch dem
Unaussprechlichen hinzugeben.Wie wenig erkannten die
Instrumentalkomponisten dies eigentümliche Wesen
der Musik, welche versuchten, jene bestimmbaren
EmpŽ ndungen, oder gar Begebenheiten darzustellen, und
so die der Plastik geradezu entgegengesetzte Kunst plastisch
zu behandeln! . . . In dem Gesange, wo die hinzutretende
Poesie bestimmte Affekte durch Worte andeutet, wirkt die
magische Kraft der Musik, wie das Wunder-Elixier der
Weisen, von dem etliche Tropfen jeden Trank köstlich und
herrlich machen. . . . So stark ist der Zauber der Musik,
und, immer mächtiger wirkend, müßte er jede Fessel einer
andern Kunst zerreißen” (E. T. A. Hoffmann, review of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung 12 {4 and 11 July 1810}, in E. T. A. Hoffmann,
Schriften zur Musik Nachlese {Munich, 1960}, pp. 34–35,
translated in consultation with E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musi-
cal Writings).
35
“Ist die Sinfonie . . . ein Kunstwerk von bestimmtem
Charakter, so ist sie Darstellung einer Idee durch die
sinnlichen Erscheinungen der Töne. . . . Die Idee selbst
aber ist nicht an die Töne gefesselt; diese sind nur das
Mittel . . . in welchem jene als musikalisches Kunstwerk
erscheint” (Apel, “Musik und Poesie,” col. 450).
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transubstantial, holistic, and transferable among LISA
FISHMAN
the arts. Deeming Momigny’s project an “act Early
of translation,” Roger Parker notes that “wher- Romantic
Criticism
ever there is music, Momigny seems to as-
sume, words will lurk beneath the surface.”36
Yet Momigny’s endeavor more closely re-
sembles an excavation: a search for an Ur-text
(albeit arbitrary) of which Mozart’s music is
the translation. “Act of translation” is perhaps
a Ž tter description of Apel’s effort to render
Mozart’s Idee in verse.
With his symbolic conception of musical
works, Apel engages an entire spectrum of early
Romantic critical rhetoric. Michaelis, who else-
where describes the necessity of formal unity,
and who considers form the essence of music,
observes that “the beautiful adheres to the per-
ception of form, not to mere charm for the
senses, not to mere concepts of thought.”37 Horn
qualiŽ es that “music does not give us the feel-
ing itself, but it envelops the highest feelings
within us with the purest form.”38 Form re-
places words as a structuring device: it is in-
voked, however, not merely as a compositional
technique but as a metaphor for the unity that
the listener has come to perceive in absolute
music. Nearly two decades later, the Idee be-
comes the cornerstone of A. B. Marx’s critical
apparatus, now laden to signify a work’s spiri-
tual essence, its outward form, and its connec-
tion to concrete reality, generally manifestable
through extramusical representation.39 As such,
Marx’s Idee is very much the brother of Apel’s.
The search for unity, designation of a symbolic
essence, and the rendering of music in narra-
tive and imagery—still fresh with Horn, Michae-
36Parker, “On Reading Nineteenth-Century Opera,” p. 290.
37
“Das Schöne haftet an der Wahrnehmung der Form, nicht
am blossen Sinnenreiz, nicht am blossen Begriff oder
Gedanken” (Michaelis, “Erfordnerisse und Bedingungen der
Tonkunst,” p. 130).
38
“Die Musik giebt uns nicht die EmpŽ ndung selbst,
sondern sie umhüllt das Höchste derselben in uns mit der
reinsten Form” (Horn, “Fragmente,” col. 417).
39Scott Burnham identiŽ es this unity, within Marx’s dis-
cussions of Beethoven symphonies, as an irreducible sense
of totality. See his “Criticism, Faith, and the Idee: A. B.
Marx’s Early Reception of Beethoven,” this journal 13
(1990), 183–92.
85
 19 TH lis, and Apel—persevered to become clichés of
CENTURY
MUSIC Romantic criticism.40
The Romantic critics’ emancipation of mu-
sic itself turned out to be more symbolic
than actual, much like Napoléon’s liberté.
Aestheticians exchanged representationalism
for structuralism, and music’s coupling with
speech for its coupling with narrative imagery.
The concert hall as the favored venue for musi-
cal enjoyment gave compositions the physical
containment required by the plastic arts, thus
answering Kant’s complaint concerning music’s
imposition. 41 To tear the fetter of every other
art was, perhaps, no more than a dramatic ges-
ture. In this light, Momigny’s project and Apel’s
are not so different after all: both desire to
make sense of absolute music by invoking
analogies with other arts, but they draw on two
distinct paradigms of what the interrelation-
ships among the arts are. Likewise, the critics
to whom we have turned our attention, regard-
less of where in the aesthetic debate they stand,
are all grappling with a common necessity: to
40For the emergence of structuralist criticism, see Wilhelm
Seidel, “Zwischen Immanuel Kant und der musikalischen
Klassik,” in Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Geschichte,
Ästhetik, Theorie Festschrift für Carl Dahlhaus, ed. H.
Danuser et al. (Laaber, 1988), pp. 69–84. For the trend
toward narration and imagery in criticism, see Thomas
Grey, “Metaphorical Modes in Nineteenth-Century Music
Criticism: Image, Narrative, and Idea,” in Music and Text:
Critical Inquiries, ed. Steven Paul Sher (Cambridge, 1992),
p. 94. For unity as a salient criterion of music critics during
this period, see Mary Sue Morrow, “Of Unity and Passion:
The Aesthetics of Concert Criticism in Early Nineteenth-
Century Vienna,” this journal 13 (1990), 193–206.
41
For the nineteenth century’s changing conception of mu-
sic in this regard, see Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Mu-
seum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of
Music (Oxford, 1992).
86
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articulate, mediate, and ultimately make sense
of the myriad forces reshaping their musical
culture. For all its polemical tone, this collec-
tive critical statement was, Ž nally, the concil-
iatory voice that composers, theorists, and lis-
teners alike needed to hear.
The critics teach us one last lesson: the fan-
tasy of emancipation for music (or any other
art) must remain just that—a fantasy. Although
each Ž ne art operates within the parameters of
its own medium, each must always partake
of—in theory and practice, to a greater or lesser
degree, depending on the aesthetics of the
time—qualities associated with other media.
These qualities, be they lyricism, texture, or
 uidity, are abstract yet very real. What we
hear is never Ž nally the work itself, but the
work as invented and reinvented through
reciprocal creative, aesthetic, and phenomeno-
logical processes. In this light, is a reading of
Mozart’s D-Minor String Quartet by Hoff-
mann—or Schenker, for that matter—really
more cogent than Momigny’s? Nearly two hun-
dred years of formalist hearings have given us
ears to hear what lies beneath Mozart’s notes.
Yet Momigny’s reading, not Schenker’s, cel-
ebrates the lyricism that is arguably the most
salient feature of Mozart’s genius, and very
much a consummation of the Enlightenment
speech-based musical aesthetic. Likewise
Cramer’s reading of “Ah, come il core” reveals
a sensitivity to Haydn’s musical idiom that we
today cannot fully share. In the Ž nal analysis,
our hearing of music is in part about what
aestheticians, critics, composers, and even im-
presarios, playing off each other, have chosen
to foreground. What remains in the background
is at times something only history
can show us.