History of Western Philosophy of Music: since 1800 (2024)

1. Nineteenth Century

1.1 Romantic Musical Aesthetics

At the end of the eighteenth century, a new aesthetic sensibilityemerges in Europe. The imitation of nature loses ground to new valuessuch as the expression of feelings and the autonomy of art. No longerconfined to the imitation of the sensible world, art is conceived as away to attain knowledge of a transcendent reality. This shift inattitude is of paramount importance for the position of music amongthe arts. If the eighteenth century had struggled to fit the growinginstrumental repertoire into the clothes of imitation, the Romanticsproclaimed music’s superiority precisely in virtue of itsabsolute nature. And while the early modern period had occasionallytouted the pleasures of listening, the Romantics raised the bar,stressing that music’s value is not primarily hedonic, butrather cognitive.

The rise of this new musical aesthetics is particularly evident in theworks of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798). HisFantasies on Art for Friends of Art [Phantasien überdie Kunst für Freunde der Kunst] (1799), while unsystematicand lacking argumentation, is rich in suggestions. For instance, wefind in it a tell-tale comparison between music and the visual arts.The latter can at best aim at a convincing imitation of naturalobjects, though their productions hardly compare to the beauty ofnature. Not so with music, as natural sounds have little value whencompared to musical tones, since these

are of an entirely different nature; they don’t imitate, theydon’t beautify, but rather represent a separate world in itself.(Wackenroder 1799: 241, my translation)

If music does not deal with the world as we know it from ordinaryperception, but rather with a transcendent reality, then language willfail to describe music effectively. This is what we could call theineffability thesis, which emerges in various forms in thewritings of Romantic philosophers, critics, and musicians. The view isconveyed not so much by the weak claim that we do not currently havewords to name what music means or expresses, but rather by thestronger claim that we could not possibly find them. While it isperhaps Arthur Schopenhauer who is responsible for the mostinfluential philosophical account of ineffability (see followingsection), the composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) gives theineffability thesis its most famous formulation when he statesthat

[t]he thoughts which are expressed to me by a piece of music which Ilove are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrarytoo definite. (letter to Marc-André Souchay 15 October 1842,quoted in Fubini 1991: 307)

The composer and historian of music August Wilhelm Ambros(1816–1876), further away from the heyday of the Romanticmovement, makes a somewhat weaker claim:

Poetry, much like music, is able to express feelings, for which itwould be almost impossible to find a corresponding term. (Ambros 1885:70, my translation)

The ineffability thesis was put into question around the middle of thecentury by the growing support for formalist tendencies, which saw inour inability to name the feelings expressed by music a symptom of itsexpressive poverty (see§1.6).

Precisely because of its strikingly Romantic tinge, it is tempting tobrush off the ineffability thesis as a historical curiosity. However,it is worth noting that the rejection of language as a model for theunderstanding of music is a move that allows us to look at music as asymbol in its own right, with its own syntactic and semantic rules.Fubini writes:

Instrumental music had always been charged with indeterminacy; yet itis only indeterminate when it is viewed from the standpoint of verballanguage. Herein lies the great discovery of the Romantic thinkers,that the idiom of music is of a quite different order, and is to bemeasured with an entirely different yardstick. (Fubini 1991: 266)

Far from being confined to a Romantic curiosity, the differencebetween language and music qua symbol systems will beexplored in the twentieth century by proponents of semiotic approachessuch as Susanne Langer and Nelson Goodman (see§2.3).

Wackenroder also voices another typically Romantic view, according towhich the emotions expressed by an artwork bear a relation to the onesfelt by the artist as she composed the work. In Wackenroder’sOutpourings of an Art-Loving Monk [Herzensergiessungeneines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders] (1797), the fictional JosephBerglinger

filled his soul with the most sublime poetry, with a full and exultanthymn, and, in a marvelous inspiration, but still violently shakenemotionally, he set down a passion music which, with its deeplyaffecting melodies, embodying all the pains of suffering, will foreverremain a masterpiece. (Wackenroder 1797 [1950: 762])

In its strongest formulation, this view holds that a work of musicbeing sad, happy, and the like, requires the author to have been inthat emotional state when composing the work. This is known today asexpression theory (for a classic exposition, see Abrams 1971:chapter 4), and is sometimes paired with the further claim that, uponappreciating the work, one will be put in an emotional state similarto the artist’s. Although it is now largely discredited (Tormey1971; Budd 1985: chapter 7), the expression theory is a paradigmaticview of artistic production as (emotional) communication between twoindividuals. Wackenroder, again through the character of Berglinger,is comforted by the thought that

there may be someone whom Heaven has made so sympathetic to my soulthat he will feel on hearing my melodies precisely what I felt inwriting them—precisely what I sought to put in them.(Wackenroder 1797 [1950: 759])

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), is arguably the most importantcomposer who described his compositional practice in ways that aresuggestive of the expression theory:

[…] like the poet who is inspired by the feelings that hetransmutes into words, I too am inspired to turn my feelings into themusic that sounds within me and torments me until finally it has beenput down in notes on the sheet of paper in front of me. (Beethoven1961, quoted in Fubini 1991: 288)

Wackenroder’s writings already show evidence of the change inattitude toward instrumental music. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann(1776–1822), a writer, composer, and critic, is a crucial figurein this process. The start of his essay Beethoven’sInstrumental Music (1813) is a quintessential expression of theRomantic conception of music:

When we speak of music as an independent art, should we not alwaysrestrict our meaning to instrumental music, which, scorning every aid,every admixture of another art (the art of poetry), gives pureexpression to music’s specific nature, recognizable in this formalone? It is the most romantic of all the arts—one might almostsay, the only genuinely romantic one—for its sole subject is theinfinite. (Hoffman 1813 [1950: 775])

The glorification of instrumental music is paired with thecondemnation of imitation. Extra-musical imagery, however, is notaltogether banned, at least on the listener’s side: much likeWackenroder, Hoffmann helps himself to fanciful descriptions of music,and uses these in order to bring out the differences among the threegreatest representatives of the Viennese School. Thus, Haydn“leads us into vast green woodlands” (Hoffman 1813 [1950[776]), Mozart “leads us into the heart of the spiritrealm” (1813 [1950: 777]), whereas Beethoven’sinstrumental music “opens up to us also the realm of themonstrous and the immeasurable” (1813 [1950: 777]).Hoffman’s essay also contains a version of the ineffabilitythesis:

music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world that has nothing incommon with the external sensual words that surrounds him, a world inwhich he leaves behind him all definite feelings to surrender himselfto an inexpressible longing. (Hoffman 1813 [1950: 775–776])

While many of these claims are advanced by early Romantics withoutmuch argumentative support, at least some of these views are given amore systematic defense by Schopenhauer.

1.2 Romantic Metaphysics of Music: Schopenhauer

The art of music occupies a central place in ArthurSchopenhauer’s (1788–1860) philosophical system, withwhich it is inextricably linked. A brief overview ofSchopenhauer’s system is thus in order. He accepts the Kantiandistinction between the world as it is in itself and as it appears tous, but rejects Kant’s claim that we cannot know reality as itis independently from its phenomenal manifestation. As representingsubjects, our knowledge is bound by what Schopenhauer termsprincipium individuationis, which orders representationsaccording to a spatio-temporal structure and determines causalrelationships between them. Objects are thus given to us in a mediatedfashion, as representations. But one object is given to us asexperiencing subjects both in a mediated and in an unmediated fashion.This is our own body, which is experienced both from the outside, as arepresentation, and from the inside, as an incessant succession ofdrives and impulses. Schopenhauer claims that this reveals thefundamental noumenal essence of the world as Will. Since the Will isendless striving and desiring, and since desiring and striving are bynature sources of pain, the world is essentially characterized bysuffering. Additionally, Schopenhauer claims that the Will objectifiesitself in the world through a set of Platonic Ideas, which existbeyond the principium individuationis, and are rankedaccording to the degree in which the Will is objectivized in them.

In Schopenhauer’s system, art acquires its value from itscapacity to represent the Ideas, exploiting a form of cognition thatis different from rational and intellectual cognition, which by naturecannot go beyond the principium individuationis. Thiscognition is valuable because it removes us from the network ofdeterministically linked representations and motives that constituteour ordinary existence in the thralls of our desires and longings.

Schopenhauer ranks the various arts according to the Ideas theyrepresent. The higher the degree of objectivation of the Will in agiven Idea, the higher the hierarchical position of the artrepresenting that Idea. Accordingly, architecture is found at thebottom of the hierarchy, as it deals with the Ideas of basic physicalforces and inanimate matter, whereas tragedy occupies the highestposition, as it represents the struggles of the human condition, wherethe Will is most evidently manifest.

In this hierarchy of the arts, music’s value is superior even tothat of tragedy. According to Schopenhauer, music is not arepresentation of Ideas, but rather of the Will itself. Music and theworld are expressions of the same metaphysical principle, the Will.This motivates Schopenhauer’s remark that music could exist evenif there were no world at all (1819: §52). If music is anexpression of the Will just as the world is, and given that the Willobjectifies itself in the world through the Platonic Ideas, one cantrace a parallel between music and degrees of objectivation of theWill. Particularly, Schopenhauer sets up an analogy between pitchrange and degrees of objectivation. Thus, the lowest areas of theaudible pitch range are associated with the lowest degrees, such asinorganic nature and physical forces, whereas the higher regions ofthe pitch range match with the highest level of objectivation of theWill, self-conscious human beings. Schopenhauer motivates thisanalysis through a rather audacious interpretation of both acousticsand music theory. This series of correspondences between music and theextra-musical world is reminiscent of the Pythagorean notion ofcelestial harmony (see the entryhistory of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 1.1).Schopenhauer questionably and conveniently identifies high pitch withmelody. This is questionable because the melodic element in music isnot determined by pitch range, but rather by relational properties,nor is a melody always composed of the highest notes in a given piece.It is convenient, because the parallel between pitch range and degreesof objectivation allows Schopenhauer to consider the unfolding of amelody as analogous to human emotional life. Much as human life ischaracterized by an alternation of need and satisfaction, melodiesfeature continuous shifts from tension to relaxation. The emotions weencounter in music have a peculiar status: they are neitherparticular, for they are beyond the principiumindividuationis, nor general, as they are not abstracted fromparticular cases as concepts are, and cannot therefore be capturedlinguistically.

It should be stressed that, according to Schopenhauer, music does notarouse such emotions in the listener, and if it did, it wouldnot be valuable on those grounds. In fact, the value of music residesexactly in its capacity to present us with the Will in its highestdegree of objectivation, without having to experience its stirringsourselves—the latter experience would be an inherentlyunpleasant one, according to Schopenhauer. The value of music as artis thus, according to Schopenhauer, eminently cognitive.

From this view of music, some normative consequences follow. First,because the analogy between music and the world depends on their beingexpressions of the same metaphysical Will, and because the Will liesbeyond the scope of conceptual knowledge, Schopenhauer condemnsimitative music, as this depicts the world by imitating its sonicappearance to a subject, rather than its inner essence. Second,because the knowledge provided by music is superior to discursiveknowledge, Schopenhauer dismisses works and genres in which the musicis subservient to the lyrics. Third, because Schopenhauer holds themusic’s melodic element to be central to its value, he isdismissive of music in which melody is inconspicuous (“In thecompositions of today there is more emphasis on the harmony than themelody; I however take the opposite view and regard melody as the coreof music, to which harmony relates as does sauce to a roast”Schopenhauer 1851: chapter 19, § 219).

Schopenhauer’s view of music influenced a number of composers.His impact on Richard Wagner could hardly have been greater (see§1.4;Magee 1997: chapter 17; Karnes & Mitchell 2020; onSchopenhauer’s musical aesthetics, see Alperson 1981; Budd 1985:chapter 5; Wicks 2008: 106–111).

1.3 Idealist Musical Aesthetics: Schelling and Hegel

Music’s rise to prominence among the arts is signaled by theincreasing number of major philosophers who find space for it in theirsystems. These include Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling(1775–1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).The greatest contribution of idealist philosophy to the aesthetics ofmusic is perhaps the idea that music’s temporal nature iscrucial to its peculiar status among the arts (see Johnson 1991:159).

Schelling developed his philosophy of art in a series of lectures hegave in the years 1802–03 and 1804–05, although the resultof these efforts was published only posthumously in 1859. He conceivesof art as the manifestation of the Infinite in the Finite, and dividesthe arts into formative (bildende, often rendered as“figurative”) and verbal (redende). Formativearts function by manipulating their characteristic material, that is,their medium, whereas verbal arts convey content semantically. Musicbelongs to the formative arts, alongside painting and sculpture.Schelling distinguishes three elements in music: rhythm, modulation(harmony), and melody. On these he projects the triad of the formativearts, claiming that rhythm is the musical in music, modulation thepainterly, and melody the sculptural. As this suggests, Schellingbelieves rhythm, and more generally music’s temporal dimension,to be of fundamental importance. Music’s necessary form istemporal succession. Rhythm allows us to perceive a multiplicity oftemporally contiguous moments as a unity, and thereby performs afunction similar to that of self-consciousness, which allows us toperceive various experiences as a unified whole (Schelling 1859:§79).

Similar ideas are developed in more rigorous and systematic fashion byHegel, whose reflections on music are embedded in an articulatedsystem of the arts (see Moland 2019: chapter 9). This system is itselfrelated to a historical analysis of art’s development, which inturn is grounded in an idealist metaphysics. According to Hegel,reality coincides with a self-determining spiritual principle, or Idea(Idee). The Idea develops historically through branchingtriadic patterns constituted by a thesis, or positive moment, itsnegation or antithesis, and a synthesis of the two. Each moment mayitself branch into a further triadic pattern, which is thus nestedunder the higher-order ones. The highest forms of development of theIdea involve self-conscious Spirit (Geist), as we find it inhuman life and society. Spirit’s third moment is absolutespirit, which in turn branches into art, religion, and philosophy, thelatter being the culmination of the Idea’s unfolding.Art’s relative proximity to philosophy is an indication of itsrelatively high value in Hegel’s eyes, and its contiguity toreligion will mean that at least some art will share some featureswith religion. Whereas philosophy expresses the Spirit throughconcepts, and religion does so through metaphors and representations,art is the sensuous expression of the Spirit’s freedom. Beautyis thus defined as “the pure appearance of the Idea tosense” (Hegel 1835: part I, chapter I, 3).

According to Hegel, art may be further analyzed in terms of a triadicstructure, in such a way that we may distinguish its developmentthrough symbolic, classical, and romantic art. Hegel’s system ofthe individual arts is dependent on this historical unfolding, as thevarious art forms are differently suited to each of the three stages.Symbolic art falls short of art proper, and is in fact described byHegel as pre-art (Vorkunst), as it limits itself to offeringsymbols of the Spirit, as opposed to giving an adequate sensorypresentation of its freedom. Classical art is art at its fullest, asit gives a perfectly adequate sensuous presentation of the spiritual.Hegel holds that this is best exemplified by classical Greek art, andparticularly sculpture. Romantic art (by which Hegel means Christianart from the Middle Ages onwards) is characterized by the expressionof a content that transcends the visible realm, since it expresses aninward freedom, as opposed to an external one. Hegel writes:

The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and itscorresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of itsindependence and freedom. (Hegel 1835: part II, section III,Introduction, 2)

This content will then best be represented by religion, which followsart in the triadic sequence.

Because romantic art’s content is inward freedom, sculpture isno longer adequate, as it is bound to the representation ofthree-dimensional figures. Painting, however, abandons the thirddimension, and is further able to express interiority through the useof color. But in subjective inwardness the spatial dimension isaltogether absent. Its only appreciable dimension is that of thetemporal unfolding of our mental life, characterized by the rapidsuccession of states that replace one another in our consciousness.Music is the art that is best suited to the expression of this inwarddimension, as it abandons spatial extension entirely, and developssolely through time. Music is thus the art form that is best suited toromantic art.

1.4 Music and Drama: Wagner

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) is the most important major Westerncomposer to have left a sizable body of philosophical writings onmusic. In addition to the intrinsic interest of his own views andtheir relation to the composer’s musical production,Wagner’s place in the history of the philosophy of music issecured by the influence Schopenhauer exercised on him, and by the onehe in turn had on another major philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (see§1.2and§1.5).

Despite the vast literature on Wagner’s music, relatively fewworks take seriously the philosophical details of his writings, andsome are openly dismissive of his undeniably meandering, rhetoricallycharged prose (see for instance Fubini 1991: 325; significant works onWagner’s philosophy and aesthetics are Grey 1995, Magee 2000,and Young 2014).

Wagner’s first substantial theoretical contributions are theso-called Zurich writings (1849–52), from the name of the citywhere he spent his exile for having taken part in the 1848 revolution,political movements inspired by democratic and liberal ideals. Inthese works, Wagner objects to the current state of art in society,and argues that only a new kind of artwork, a “total”artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) uniting the various art forms,could reestablish art’s role as the “living utterance of afree, self-conscious community” (Wagner 1849a [1892: 41]).According to Wagner, contemporary art is enslaved to either politicalor financial power. It will become a genuine expression of thecommunity that produces it only after its liberation from theconstraints imposed by both the government and the market. Thus,Wagner claims in Art and Revolution (1849) that art is notessentially revolutionary, although it need be revolutionary given thecurrent conditions, “because its very existence is opposed tothe ruling spirit of the community” (Wagner 1849a [1892:52]).

Wagner’s paradigm of the total artwork is the Greek tragicfestival. While he does not call for its literal restoration, Wagnerargues that the artwork of the future should be like the Greek one insome crucial respects. It should involve all strata of society (Wagner1849a; Wagner 1852b: part II, 2). Most famously, it should unite thevarious art forms (Wagner 1849a; Wagner 1849b: IV). Aside from hisreliance on the authority of the Greek model, at least two additionalargument are advanced by Wagner in support of theGesamtkunstwerk. First, Wagner argues that its multi-sensorynature is best apt to give rise to an immersive, lifelike experience(Wagner 1852b: part II, 2; for discussion, see Young 2014:46–48). Second, Wagner holds that an art is unfree(unfrei) when in isolation, free when it cooperates withother art forms (Wagner 1849b: II, 2). The argument seems to rely onan analogy with human freedom, which Wagner conceived as possible onlyfor an individual who is part of a collective. In both cases, absenceof limitations is equated with an absence of freedom.

Wagner’s admiration for Greek tragedy is only superficiallysimilar to the Camerata’s attempt to revive it (see the entryhistory of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.2).In Opera and Drama (1852), he argues that opera’sfundamental mistake has been that of subordinating opera’s end(drama) to its means (music). He then describes opera as misguidedfrom its very origins in Italy (Wagner 1852b: Introduction).

In 1854 Wagner encountered for the first time the work of ArthurSchopenhauer. This produced a decisive and immediate influence onWagner’s worldview, which in turn had an impact on his musicalproduction and theoretical works. Although Wagner’s latewritings are less systematic than those of 1849–52, a new viewof music and drama finds expression in his essay Beethoven(1870) and in The Destiny of Opera (1871).

In the Beethoven essay, Wagner describes Schopenhauer as the firstphilosopher who gave a clear treatment of music’s place amongthe arts. Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music gives a privilegedstatus to pure instrumental music (see§1.2),an assumption that contrasts with Wagner’s central commitmentto a union of the arts, as well as with his related reservations aboutmusic alone. Under Schopenhauer’s influence, the late Wagnersurrenders some central points of his earlier view, as evident fromhis claim that “a piece of music loses nothing of its charactereven when the most diverse texts are laid beneath it”, and thesubsequent contention that the union of music and poetry alwaysresults in the subordination of the latter (Wagner 1870 [1896: 104).This stands in stark contrast with Wagner’s earliercharacterization of melody as an element that should not attract thelistener’s attention, functioning merely as “the mostexpressive vehicle for an emotion already plainly outlined in thewords” (Wagner 1851 1852a: 372). Wagner denies a contradictionbetween his earlier and late views, although Young (2014:101–107) notes that changes are evident both from Wagner’swritings as well as from the musical production that follows hisencounter with Schopenhauer—especially the three works in theRing cycle that follow Das Rheingold.

1.5 Nietzsche

The main elements of Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900)musical aesthetics are laid out in his first book, The Birth ofTragedy (1872), which bears the clear influence of Schopenhauerand is dedicated to Wagner. The book describes the world as tornbetween two tendencies or principles, the Apollonian and theDionysian.

The Apollonian element is the rational view of reality as subject tothe principium individuationis, a concept that Nietzscheborrows from Schopenhauer (see§1.2).While ultimately an illusion, the Apollonian order of reality isnecessary to the formation of any civilization. In opposition to theApollonian, the Dionysian is the awareness of the fundamental unity ofall beings, again in analogy with Schopenhauer’s metaphysicalWill. If the former impulse is expressed in peaceful contemplation,the latter is manifested in states of ecstatic frenzy, which oughthowever to be contained in order to spare individuals andcivilizations from self-destruction. According to Nietzsche, only inthe balance between the two tendencies is life bearable.

In this picture, the arts differ in to the degree to which they embodyone of these two tendencies. Sculpture is the Apollonian art parexcellence, while music possesses to the highest degree theDionysian component. The reasons for the identification of music asDionysian are complex to reconstruct. Sorgner (20003 [2010:147–149]) isolates three: (1) music relies on an experience offlow and temporal change; (2) music represents pain and strife throughits use of dissonances; (3) music induces states of intoxication andself-forgetfulness through which we experience the fundamental unityof the world.

Greek tragedy is characterized by Nietzsche as the supreme artisticachievement because it expresses both tendencies. This, at least, istrue of Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ tragedies. Euripides,influenced by Socratic rationalism, expunged the Dionysian elementfrom tragedy. Once tragedy lost its Dionysian element, it was alsodeprived of its redeeming power. According to Nietzsche,Wagner’s operas are to be credited for having brought back thesynthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian elements, and thus to have madeagain available the redeeming power of the Greek tragedy.

The second part of The Birth of Tragedy is wedded to theWagnerian agenda to such an extent that is has been defined as“by far the most ambitious defence of an individual artist evermounted by a philosopher” (Ridley 2007: 31). DespiteNietzsche’s early enthusiastic endorsem*nt of Wagner’swork, his infatuation with the composer soon began to fade, andfinally turned into outright condemnation (on Nietzsche–Wagnerrelations, see Ridley 2007: appendix; Young 2014: epilogue; Prange2013: chapters 1–6). While the reasons for this are complex, itseems clear that Wagner’s failure to embody the values of trulyDionysian music was crucial. This failure depended not only onWagner’s own stylistic development, but also onNietzsche’s reconsideration of the composer’s earlierachievement. Nietzsche later contrasts German and Romantic music withDionysian music, which clashes with Nietzsche’s own earliercharacterization of German music, and especially Wagner’s, astruly Dionysian (Nietzsche 1872: §19; about the contrast betweenDionysian and Romantic art more generally, see Ridley 2007:122–128). In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzschecontrasts the decadent music of the North to that of the South,epitomized by Bizet’s work, the chief value of which lies in itslife-affirming quality (Nietzsche 1886: §554).

As is apparent from the above, Nietzsche’s evaluation of musicalstyles changed along with his philosophical views. Concrete examplesof music he praises vary from Wagner’s Tristan andIsolde to Bizet’s Carmen. The clearest set ofevaluative claims is found in The Birth of Tragedy, whereopposition emerges between Apollonian and Dionysian music. The latteris obviously considered by Nietzsche as superior to the former, as hedefines music as the art in which the Dionysian is present in thehighest degree. Nietzsche offers little in terms of a cleardistinction between the two, but he seems to think of Dionysian musicas privileging melodic and harmonic components, whereas Apollonianmusic stresses rhythmical ones. Two other elements ofNietzsche’s view of music can be singled out, andSchopenhauer’s influence on both is evident. First, Nietzschebelieves that music should never be subservient to a text (Nietzsche1872: §19). Secondly, Nietzsche holds that music ought to avoidtone-painting, which is merely an imitation of the world’sappearance (Nietzsche 1872: §17). But if Nietzsche’s earlymusical aesthetics is close to Schopenhauer in his negativecharacterization of what is valuable in music, his positive notion ofmusical value departs significantly from Schopenhauer’s, asNietzsche holds that music’s value is partly to be located inits capacity to arouse emotions or induce a certain psychologicalstate (Nietzsche 1872: §2).

It is more daunting a task to reconstruct Nietzsche’s views onmusic after The Birth of Tragedy. In addition to the alreadymentioned distancing from Wagner, a relevant change inNietzsche’s view is found in some remarks from Human, AllToo Human (1878), which constitute a wholesale rejection of hisearlier views concerning the relationship between music and language.In this work, musical meaning and expressiveness are described as aproduct of music’s longstanding association with poetic languageand expressive gestures (Nietzsche 1878: § 215–16). Onlythrough these associations is it possible for instrumental music toacquire meaning:

No music is in itself profound and meaningful, it does not speak ofthe “will” or of the “thing in itself”.(Nietzsche 1878 [1996]: § 215; on Nietzsche’s late musicalaesthetics, see Higgins 1986; Young 1992: chapters 3–5; andPrange 2013: chapter 6)

1.6 Absolute Music and the Rise of Formalism

The nineteenth century witnessed the first explicit vindications ofabsolute music as an aesthetic ideal (for a history of this concept,see Dahlhaus 1978 [1989], Pederson 2009, and Bonds 2014). The term wasfirst used in 1846 by Wagner, who then employed it pejoratively in his1849–51 writings in order to refer to music lacking anyessential social function—in this sense, music is absoluteinsofar as it is socially autonomous (on Wagner’s uses of“absolute music”, see Grey 1995: 2; Chua 1999: 225;Pederson 2009: 241–245; Bonds 2014: 134 ff.). Wagner’sopponents appropriated the term in this second sense, to denote musicthat is not accompanied by a text, program, or other conceptualprompts. In this sense, the symphony was considered the paradigmaticexample of absolute music (see Dahlhaus 1978 [1989: 10–11]).Absolute music is thus purely instrumental music—this is alsohow the expression is typically used today. The concept of absolutemusic may be used in a purely descriptive fashion: it denotes a subsetof all musical works. However, nineteenth century aesthetics oftenadopted a normative view of absolute music as purely instrumentalmusic. The view holds that music’s value is irreducible to thatof other art forms, and that instrumental music is valuable for itsformal properties, rather than for any content it may disclose (if itcan do so in the first place), or feelings it may arouse. This ismusical formalism.

While Kant was likely not a formalist (see the entryhistory of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.6),Young (2020: 180) observes that he was considered one from as earlyas the 1820s, as evident from the work of the Swiss composerHans-Georg Nägeli (1773–1836). Nägeli gives earlyformulations of various standard formalist views. He argues that musicdoes not have any determinate emotional character, as shown by thefact that people cannot agree on it if asked. Accordingly, music doesnot convey specific affects (Affekten), but merely moods(Stimmungen). It does not have any content (Inhalt),but merely form (Form) (Nägeli 1826: 32).

In addition to Kant’s aesthetics (or at least theirinterpretation of it), formalists could count on the support of amajor philosopher, Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), whoadopted an influential and undeniably formalist view of art. Hedefended the specificity of each art form, and distinguished theeffects of the beautiful from the beautiful itself, the latter beingthe proper object of aesthetic appreciation.

To Nägeli and Herbart is indebted the greatest representative ofmusical formalism, Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) (for a discussionof Hanslick’s forerunners, see Bonds 2014: 157 ff.; Wilfing 2018debunks the widespread view that Kant exercised a decisive influenceon Hanslick).

Hanslick’s brief treatise On the Musically Beautiful(1854) is one of the most influential works in history of musicalaesthetics. The work gives a concise and persuasive formulation of thecardinal tenets of formalism. The book opens with a series ofarguments against what he calls “the aesthetics offeeling” (Hanslick 1854 [2018]: chapter 1). This is the Romanticconception of music as concerned with the representation and arousalof emotions. The negative part of Hanslick’s work establishesthat music cannot represent feelings, and that music’s arousalof feelings, while possible, is irrelevant to its aestheticappreciation. Hanslick’s positive thesis is that theappreciation of music involves the intellect (Geist) ratherthan the emotions, as music’s only content is its form.

Hanslick’s negative argument against the aesthetics of feelingpasses through two main lines of attack: a series of rather weakobservations, and a brilliant argument grounded on a conceptualanalysis of emotion.

Hanslick observes that, when instrumental music is unaccompanied by atext, music lovers are unable to indicate the feeling it expresseswith any considerable degree of intersubjective agreement. He famouslyadapts an example from Boyé, noting that Gluck’s famousaria “Che farò senza Euridice”, expressive ofdejection and despair, could express equally well joy if paired with ahappy text (Hanslick 1854: chapter 2). The argument is supposed toprove that music is expressively neutral, but it only works because ofthe tendentious example. Music with a more clearly anguished characterthan Gluck’s aria is easy to find, and it would resist pairingwith a happy text.

Hanslick further observes that a recitative would lose its poignantand specific expressive character if played unaccompanied by words.However, it is unsurprising that music designed to represent emotionstogether with a text is less able to do so on its own.

Hanslick also notes that music lovers would agree that a large andimportant part of the Western repertoire, exemplified by Bach’sWell-Tempered Clavier, does not represent any determinateemotion (Hanslick 1854: chapter 2). While this is a refutation of theclaim that music necessarily represents emotions, it isirrelevant to the view that music may do so.

Finally, Hanslick produces what Kivy (1990b: 7) dubbed an“argument from disagreement”. Music critics will largelyconcur about the beauty of various works of music, but they willdisagree when asked about the feeling they represent (Hanslick 1854:chapter 2). This is once more a weak argument, as it is easy to findworks of music that are consistently characterized as expressive ofsome emotions, and not others.

Hanslick’s strongest claim against the aesthetics of feelinginvolves a subtle conceptual analysis of the structure of emotions.Hanslick observes that these cannot be identified by means of thefeeling state they produce in us, as the same emotion may arousedifferent states, and two different emotions may share a similar one.The additional component that allows us to discriminate betweendifferent emotions is conceptual content. In Hanslick’s example,hope requires a concept of a future, better condition, whereasmelancholy presupposes a comparison with a happier past. Hanslickconcedes that music may be able to match the dynamic profilecharacteristic of a feeling state. However, music cannot provide theconceptual content that is necessary to the identification of specificemotions, and it cannot therefore represent them (Hanslick 1854:chapter 2; Kivy [1990b: 9] observes that Hanslick’s analysisanticipates the contemporary cognitive theory of emotions, firstproposed in Kenny 1963; Alexander Malcolm [1721: 602] adumbrates thesame argument, though he is discussing aroused emotions, as opposed torepresented ones).

Hanslick’s positive view is that musical value is specificallymusical, independent from any relation to other art forms, as well asto any concept derived from extra-musical reality. He does not give uptalk of musical content entirely, but rather holds that this contentis constituted by formal structures, “sonically movedforms” (tönend bewegte Formen; Hanslick 1854[2018]: chapter 3; an earlier, influential translation [Hanslick 1986]renders the expression as “tonally moving forms”).

Although he denied that music may represent emotions, Hanslickconcedes that it often arouses them. However, the emotions aroused bymusic are irrelevant to its aesthetic appreciation, as they do nothave a bearing on the understanding of music’s formalproperties.

Hanslick explicitly describes On the Musically Beautiful as areaction to Wagner and Liszt (see Bonds 2014: 155), and the treatiseis at times explicitly polemical (see for instance the end of chapter2). There is in principle no tension between Hanslick’s claimthat instrumental music’s content is limited to its form, andWagner’s use of music in combination with other art forms. Infact, the creation of hybrid works is an obvious way to addressinstrumental music’s alleged semantic and expressive paucity.However, Wagner’s protestations against instrumental music andits inadequacy to his own goals were so radical that they threatenedthe aesthetic legitimacy of absolute music. This is what Hanslick setout to restore.

The historian and musicologist Ottokar Hostinský(1847–1910) attempted to reconcile Wagner’s andHanslick’s views (Hostinský 1877; see also Lippman 1992:316–317). His strategy was to argue for the possibility ofhybrid art forms, while at the same time allowing for a specificallymusical beauty that is manifested in absolute music.

While considerably less explored than his controversy with Wagner,Hanslick’s relation to Hegel is also interesting. Hegel’sclaim regarding music’s ability to express subjective lifesurely falls within the scope of the negative argument laid out inOn the Musically Beautiful. However, Hanslick makes acharacteristically Hegelian move when he holds that musical form ismusic’s content. This is not a gratuitously paradoxicalformulation, but rather bears the mark of Hegel’s conception ofbeauty as constituted by both form and content.

Hanslick’s treatise was enormously influential, and it remainswidely discussed (for a review of early reactions, see Bonds 2014:appendix; recent work on Hanslick includes Landerer and Zangwill 2017,Sousa 2017, and Wilfing 2018). Recent scholarship has challenged thepredominant formalist interpretation of Hanslick’s view (seeHall 1995, and Wilfing 2016).

1.7 Music and the Life Sciences: Darwin, Spencer, Gurney

The role of mathematics in the explanation of musical phenomena hasbeen explored since Antiquity, and that of physics has becomeprominent since the seventeenth century. In the second half of thenineteenth century, scholars began to examine the relation of music tothe life sciences. A major force behind this shift of attitude is thework of Charles Darwin (1809–1882). His theory of evolutionposits two main processes responsible for changes in a living species,natural selection and sexual selection. Individual variability andrandom mutations introduce differences in the traits possessed bydifferent individuals belonging to the same species. Traits that favorthe survival of offspring who would themselves go on to reproduce aremore likely to reappear in future generations. This is naturalselection. Sexual selection concerns the selection of mating partners.Widespread preference for a given trait means that future generationswill be more likely to possess that trait. In both cases, the traitsin question must be heritable.

In The Descent of Man (1871) and in The Expression ofEmotions in Man and Animals (1872), Darwin proposes that sexualselection is responsible for the effect of music. He observes thatvarious species produce vocalizations or other sounds as part ofcourtship. For example, he identifies this as the goal of birdsong,although the consensus today is that birdsong also functions as aterritorial call. In virtue of this origin, music has the power

of recalling in a vague and indefinite manner, those strong emotionswhich were felt during long-past ages, when, as is probable, our earlyprogenitors courted each other by the aid of vocal tones. (Darwin1872: 219 (chapter VIII); a contemporary defense of the view that thearts are the product of sexual selections is found in Miller 2001; fora recent review on the evidence supporting Darwin’s hypothesis,see Ravignani 2018)

Darwin’s hypothesis implies that music is likely to havepredated language, as it arises from needs that are more basic thanlinguistic communication. The inflections typical of impassionedspeech derive from those employed in courtship. Another feature ofthis account is that is it better able to explain music’sexpression and arousal of positive emotions, such as love, tenderness,and happiness, than that of negative emotions, as only the former aretypically involved in courtship.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) defended an explanation of theorigin of music distinct from Darwin’s. Spencer holds as ageneral physiological principle that any emotion produces movement.When movement involves the vocal tract, emotions result invocalizations. Music derives from an exaggeration of the usualfeatures of vocal emotional expression. Thus, “vocal music, andby consequence all music, is an idealization of the natural languageof passion” (Spencer 1857 [2015: 29]). This view ofmusic’s origin locates its expressive value in the melodicelement, rather than in harmony, as expressive vocalizations do notproduce more than one sound at once. However, Spencer emphasizes thathis explanation of music’s origin is not to be taken as ageneral theory of music’s value, and that elements of music thatare not amenable to its original function (notably harmony) remainentirely legitimate (Spencer 1890: 466–467). Factual hypothesesregarding music’s origin are thus separated from aestheticnorms. This is a relevant methodological difference betweenSpencer’s hypothesis about the origin of music and previousones, most notably Rousseau’s (see the entryhistory of western philosophy of music: from antiquity to 1800, section 3.5).

Spencer and Darwin expressed admiration for each other’s work,although Kivy (1959: 47) points out that they were also aware of theircrucial methodological differences. While the former relied on generallaws as ultimate explanatory principles, Darwin acceptedgeneralizations only insofar as they were supported by empiricalevidence. Exemplary of this contrast is one of Spencer’sarguments against the view that music develops out of vocalizationsemployed during courtship. Spencer holds that it is “one of thefundamental laws of evolution” that “[a]ll developmentproceeds from the general to the special” (1890: 458). To saythat a subset of vocalizations (those used during courtship) hasgenerated a more general class of sounds (all vocalizations expressingemotions, including music) is to contradict that principle.

While the figure of Edmund Gurney (1847–1888) is often discussedin association with Darwin and Spencer, and mostly exclusively inconnection with their views, the scope and quality of argumentation inhis work are comparable with few other works in Western musicalaesthetics. In view of this, the relatively little critical attentionhe has received is surprising.

Gurney’s framework is a formalist one, as he holds music’svalue to depend primarily on its presentation of abstract forms. Thisis achieved through music’s “ideal motion”, where“ideal” refers to music’s capacity to conveyabstract forms (Gurney 1880: 164–165). Form and motion are thusthe two essential aspects of music, and specifically of melody.Although talk of motion may suggests an analogy with physical space,Gurney is explicit in saying that this is nothing but the“faintest metaphor” (1880: 337), as the spatial characterof melodic motion is radically different from that of visual arts andarchitecture. Through an enlightening contrast with these art forms,Gurney shows that music’s motion is ordered in time, in such away that the succession of its elements is already fixed. Not so inthe properly spatial arts, in which we apprehend elements in an orderdetermined by our act of vision (Gurney 1880: 94). Gurney furtherargues the value of music must reside primarily in short sequences weare able to grasp in one hearing, and not in the understanding oflarge-scale structures (Gurney 1880: 96–97; a similar position,inspired by Gurney, has been recently defended in Levinson 1997).

Musical forms are not merely an object of understanding, but alsoarouse a distinctive emotion in us. In fact, Gurney holds thatmusic’s most important feature is its capacity to arouse anemotion which is specifically musical,

…an emotional excitement of a very intense kind, which yetcannot be defined under any known head of emotion. (Gurney 1880:120)

Gurney proposes a Darwinian explanation for this. Beautiful musicarouses an emotion that is unlike any other because it produces anunconscious association with the sexual emotion experienced by ourforebears (Gurney 1880: 116 ff.). However, Gurney points out animportant limit of this explanation: the Darwinian account cannotexplain why only beautiful music arouses such an emotion, asit posits a connection between musical phenomena in general and thearousal of that emotion (Gurney 1880: 121–124; 1887:297–98).

Gurney’s formalism is more nuanced than views that entirely denymusic’s capacity to express emotions. While music’s chiefvalue resides in its capacity to be impressive, that is, toarouse the peculiarly musical emotion that is connected to musicalbeauty, Gurney concedes that music may be expressive, in thatit may arouse emotions of the ordinary kind, or suggest extra-musicalimages and ideas (Gurney 1880: 312). But expressiveness is subordinateto impressiveness. First, it is not an essential or even typicalelement of valuable music, as much beautiful music isn’texpressive of any definite emotion. Second, it does not by itself givean explanation of the power and value of the art, as expressivequalities per se (e.g., in a face) are not a source of value(Gurney 1880: 338). Gurney’s additional claims, thatimpressiveness amplifies a piece’s expressiveness (1880: 339)and is even required for expressiveness to be valuable (1880: 314),are hard to make sense of unless his theory of expressiveness isfurther clarified (an extensive discussion of Gurney’s views isfound in Budd 1985: chapter 4).

2. Twentieth Century

2.1 Phenomenology of Music

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) developed phenomenology as aphilosophical method aimed at grounding any objectivity in thefirst-person experiences through which it is constituted. Husserldevoted to music only passing observations, the best known of which isthe illustration of his analysis of time consciousness by means of theexperience of perceiving a melody (Husserl 1991). Other philosophersadopted a phenomenological methodology to carry out more systematicinvestigations (for a survey, see Lippman 1992: chapter 14).

In The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity, thePolish philosopher Roman Ingarden (1893–1970) adopted aphenomenological approach to conduct one of the first systematicinvestigations of musical ontology. From the methodological point ofview, Ingarden embraces a descriptive approach. In his words:

However fully developed, every theory of musical works that is notmere speculation but seeks a base in concrete facts must refer to thepresystematic convictions that initially gave direction to the search.(Ingarden 1973 [1986: 1])

On this basis, he rejects the identification of musical works withideal objects, such as mathematical entities, for musical works comeinto existence when they are first composed (Ingarden 1973 [1986: 15];a phenomenological account of musical works as ideal objects had beenproposed by Waldemar Conrad (1878–1915) (1908), whose viewIngarden explicitly challenges). Works of music cannot be identifiedwith their score either, as they can be composed without being notatedand may even exist in the complete absence of notational systems(Ingarden 1973 [1986: 38]). Ingarden holds instead that musical worksare intentional objects. While they require an experiencing subject,they cannot be identified with particular subjective experiences. Thisalso accounts for the temporality that is characteristic of musicalworks. While a work’s performance is extended in time, the workitself is not a temporal object. It merely specifies an order ofsuccession between its elements. The musical work is thus“quasi-temporal” (Ingarden 1973 [1986: 70]). Ingarden alsoaccounts for the apparent change of a work through time, a change thatmay seem evident when one considers the radical differences in theperformance of the same work at different historical times. However,insofar as the set of legitimate interpretations of a work isdetermined by its score, this change is one not in the work itself,but merely in what is considered valuable about it (Ingarden 1973[1986: 156]) (on Ingarden’s musical ontology, see Mitscherling1997: chapter 5).

The phenomenologist Alfred Schutz (1899–1959) is anotherphilosopher whose work on music deserves mention. Schutz’sFragments Toward a Phenomenology of Music was written in1944, but published posthumously in 1976, and can be found in thefourth volume of his collected papers (Schutz 1996: 243–275).Schutz starts from the rather commonplace observation that music ismeaningful though it lacks a conceptual or representational content.This feature he connects with a less obvious property of musicalworks. Some ideal objects may be grasped both monothetically as wellas polythetically, that is, through a series of passages as well as inone glance. For instance, I could follow the steps that lead to thedemonstration of Pythagoras’s theorem and come to understand it,but once I have done that I may also grasp the theorem in one singleact, by grasping the proposition that expresses it (Schutz 1996:247–248). But this is only possible because the theorem has aconceptual content that may be grasped once it has been understood.Precisely because it lacks such content, music can only be graspedpolythetically by following its development as we listen to it, orwhen we recollect its unfolding. Thus,

the statement that music cannot be caught monothetically is merely acorollary of the thesis that the meaning-content of music is notrelated to a conceptual scheme. (Schutz 1996: 249)

This conclusion allows Schutz to break some ground in quite adifferent area, one that remains relatively underexplored in Westernphilosophy of music. In the essay Making Music Together(1951), Schutz considers the “mutual tuning-inrelationship” (Schutz 1951: 79) that is necessary to theinteractions between the various actors involved in music-making(composer, performers, and listeners). The polythetic constitution ofthe musical object is what ultimately allows this relationship, as thevarious participants in music-making share a common “flux ofexperiences in inner time” (Schutz 1951: 96).

Phenomenology remains a widely adopted philosophical method. A morerecent phenomenological analysis of musical experience is found inClifton 1983.

2.2 Music, Language, and Culture: Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), possibly the most influentialphilosopher of the twentieth century, was a musically talentedindividual. He played the clarinet and had extensive knowledge of theGerman classical repertoire.

Wittgenstein’s philosophical development is normally dividedinto two periods. The earlier one revolves around his TractatusLogico-Philosophicus (1921), in which Wittgenstein claims thatlanguage is only meaningful when it describes contingent states ofaffairs. The propositions of logic, philosophy, ethics, and aestheticsare thus strictly speaking meaningless, in that they are normative orotherwise non-factual. In these early works, Wittgenstein ispredictably almost entirely silent about art. Wittgenstein’slate philosophical views found expression in the posthumouslypublished Philosophical Investigations (1953), as well asother writings. In these works, Wittgenstein conceives of linguisticmeaning as dependent on the way words are used within particularsituations or activities—this he terms a“language-game” (Sprachspiel). Language-games arecountless and defy systematization, because they depend on theconstantly changing practices that constitute our form of life(Lebensform).

Wittgenstein’s late philosophy contains significant, ifcharacteristically unsystematic, treatments of aesthetic issues, inwhich music figures prominently. In an interesting reversal of theusual strategy, Wittgenstein sometimes uses analogies with music toshed light on the workings of language. The most famous instance ofthis is the remark:

Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme inmusic than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentencelies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understandinga musical theme. (Philosophical Investigations,§527)

Here Wittgenstein is using an analogy between language and music inthe attempt to move away from a conception of linguistic understandingas an inner process (see Lewis 1977 and Worth 1997). In both languageand music, as in art more generally, understanding is manifested inour ability to act in appropriate ways. For example, a criterion forthe understanding of genre pictures could be the ability to describeor mime the actions that occur in them (PhilosophicalGrammar, III, 37). In the musical case, an obvious reaction thatevinces understanding is the ability to competently describe orperform the music. More interestingly, Wittgenstein holds that theunderstanding of music is also manifested in our capacity to drawappropriate comparisons between music and extra-musical reality,particularly the linguistic domain—a musical phrase may bedescribed as a question, or remind us of the intonation we use when weutter a certain sentence (Philosophical Investigations,§527; Zettel, §175; for discussion, see Budd 2008,263–67).

The role of extra-musical references in the understanding of musicraises the issue of whether Wittgenstein should be considered aformalist (see Ahonen 2005, and Szabados 2006; 2014). A decidedlyformalist element in Wittgenstein’s aesthetics is his separationof the understanding and appreciation of music from the effect it hason us—the move is similar to Hanslick’s (see§1.6;on Wittgenstein and Hanslick, see Szabados 2014, 39–57;94–97). Aesthetic value in general, and music’s value morespecifically, is not reducible to an object’s effect(Lectures on Aesthetics, IV, 2). Thus, an artwork is notvaluable because it conveys this or that emotion, but because itconveys itself (Wittgenstein 1977 [1998: 67]).

However, the late Wittgenstein’s view of musical understandingdoes not seem fully compatible with a formalist view (see Szabados2014: chapter 4). This is partly suggested by his comments on theappropriateness of extra-musical comparisons. A musical theme,Wittgenstein observes,

makes an impression on me which is connected with things in itssurroundings—e.g. with our language and its intonations; andhence with the whole field of our language-games. (Zettel,§135)

Much like the understanding and mastery of language presupposes itscompetent use in countless situations and activities, theunderstanding of music depends on our ability to use it and describeit appropriately in ways that are ultimately determined by our form oflife (see Hagberg 2017).

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Wittgenstein’s maincontribution to the philosophy of music is probably something healmost never relates to music. This is the concept of aspectperception, exemplified by Joseph Jastrow’s famous duck-rabbitambiguous figure, but also replicable in the auditorydomain—e.g., hearing the metronome’s ticking as groupingsof two or three. Contemporary philosophers of music have appealed invarious ways to aspect perception, to shed light on issues that rangefrom musical understanding to the phenomenology of musicalexpressiveness (see for instance Kivy 1989 and Arbo 2009; Guter 2020observes that Wittgenstein’s interest in aspect perception waslikely spurred by empirical studies on musical rhythm he made as astudent).

2.3 Music as Symbol: Langer and Goodman

A recurring feature of twentieth century reflection on music is theattempt to consider it as a symbol system, and the related interest inthe analogies and differences between music and language.

An early and influential effort in this direction is that of SusanneLanger (1895–1985). In Philosophy in New Key (1942),she rejects the idea that music is connected to emotional life invirtue of a causal connection with emotions in the composer,performer, or listener. Music is neither a “stimulus” toemotions, nor a “symptom” of them, but rather theirsymbol:

if it [music] has an emotional content, it “has” it in thesame sense that language “has” its conceptualcontent—symbolically. (Langer 1942: 218)

While music and language are alike in that they both have a semanticfunction, the analogy does not cut any deeper, according to Langer.She distinguishes between discursive and presentational symbolsystems. Discursive symbolisms possess a vocabulary composed ofidentifiable elements, to which a fixed meaning is associated.Presentational symbolisms lack such discrete meaningful units.Language is an example of the former, painting of thelatter—both a sentence and a painting symbolize something, butthe sentence may be broken down into component parts with a fixedmeaning, whereas the painting cannot.

According to Langer, musical symbols are presentational symbols of aparticular sort. The commonplace descriptions of music in emotionalterms (“sad”, “happy”,“melancholy”, etc.) are due to an isomorphic relationbetween the dynamic form of music and that of feelings. For instance,the musical expression of anxiety is achieved by prolonged, unresolvedtensions, and this is the form of anxiety as we experience it. Becausemusic matches the form of feelings much more closely than language mayeven aspire to do, musical symbols cannot be replaced by linguisticones without loss in precision—this is Langer’s version ofthe ineffability thesis (see§1.1).

However, Langer acknowledges that radically different feelings mayshare a common dynamic form, as may happen with an outburst of angerand one of joy. This means that music cannot have a definite emotionalmeaning, but rather ranges over a variety of possible interpretations.Thus, music is an “unconsummated symbol”, the exact importof which is not fixed (Langer 1942: 240).

Langer’s view has been attacked on various grounds (see Budd1985: chapter 6 and S. Davies 1994: chapter 3). Perhaps the mostobvious objection is that music’s dynamic structure matches thatof emotions just as well as that of many other phenomena, butLanger’s view does not explain why music is not a symbol of themtoo (Budd 1985: 114; Green 2007 offers a more plausible view of thecongruence between music and emotions).

Nelson Goodman’s (1906–1998) Languages of Art(1968) is both a product of the already established theory of symbols,exemplified by Langer and Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), and afoundational work in the development of analytic philosophy of art(see§2.6).This is borne out by the tightly-knit weave of semiotics and ontologythat characterizes the book: Goodman develops a general theory ofnotation that should account for the ontological status of works indifferent art forms. He introduces a crucial distinction betweenautographic and allographic arts. Painting andsculpture are autographic, as only a determination of the work’shistory of production (that is, an attribution) guarantees thework’s authenticity. Music and literature are allographic, aswork identity depends on the presence of essential features asdetermined by a notation—a word sequence in the case of a workof literature, and a score in the case of music. Forgeries ofautographic works are works that claim a false history of production.Forgeries of allographic works are impossible, as notation provides atest for work-identity. If the candidate object meets it, it is aninstance of the work, if not, it is a different work.

For a notation to perform this function, it must meet certain strictsyntactic and semantic requirements (Goodman 1968: chapter 4). Goodmanthinks that these requirements are met by most elements in Westernmodern musical notation, with the important exceptions of dynamics,tempo indications, and others, which therefore become irrelevant tothe work’s identity (but see Webster 1971). A performance countsas an instance of a given work if and only if it complies with itsscore, and a work of music is nothing other than the class ofperformances compliant with that score.

The notational systems that characterize allographic arts prescribeabsolute compliance, as a series of minor deviations could otherwiseresult in a completely different work being considered an acceptableinstance of the original one. This means that only a note-for-noteaccurate performance of a musical work should count as an instance ofit (see Predelli 1999).

This result is in tension not only with a sensible view of successfulperformance, but also with one of Goodman’s statedmethodological principles. He holds that the notational systemscharacteristic of allographic arts should provide rigorous identityconditions, while at the same time respecting our intuitive notion ofwhat counts as a given artwork (Goodman 1968: 121–122,197–198). But Goodman’s account of compliance betweenscore and performance is both too strict and too permissive to respectour intuitions: It fails to make room for pre-theoretically validperformances (e.g., a rendition with a single wrong note), whileaccepting ones that we would consider incorrect (e.g., a performancethat is note-for-note correct, but played at a tempo that renders thework unrecognizable). Subsequent work on the ontology of music hasinherited from Languages of Art the notion of compliance andthe related idea that some features are determinative of awork’s identity, while also attempting to avoid Goodman’snotational strictures (see S. Davies 2001).

Goodman’s semiotic analysis also accounts for musicalexpression. In his nominalist framework, for an object to possess aproperty is for it to be denoted by a predicate. If theobject refers back to that predicate, it exemplifiesit—a red swatch of cloth is denoted by the predicate“red”, but it also exemplifies it when it is used as asample by a tailor. But properties may also be possessedmetaphorically—a cloth is literally red, but a work of music isonly metaphorically sad. When an object exemplifies a property itpossesses metaphorically, it expresses it. Expression ismetaphorical exemplification (Goodman 1968: 95). Note that this viewexplains the logical structure of the description of music inemotional terms, but it does not attempt an explanation of why emotionterms are applied to music in the first place. In the philosophy ofmusic, as in the philosophy of art more generally, Goodman was apivotal figure in setting the methodological tone of the subsequentinquiry in the English-speaking world, although his preferredsolutions have been largely disputed.

2.4 Music and the Emotions: Pratt, Meyer, Cooke

Over the course of the twentieth century, Anglophone philosophy ofmusic produced various accounts of music’s relationship to theemotions. In addition to the contributions of Langer and those ofanalytic philosophers (see§2.3and§2.6),it is important to mention the views put forward by psychologistCarroll C. Pratt (1894–1979) and musicologists Leonard B. Meyer(1918–2007) and Deryck Cooke (1919–1976).

Pratt clarifies that he is not interested in music’s arousal ofemotions (Pratt 1954: 291–292). We apply emotional words tomusic without implying that the music is arousing or may arouse suchemotions in us or others. If this is the case, we need to explain whywe describe music, an inanimate object, using words that refer topsychological states.

Pratt argues that some dynamic qualities are common to both music andthe subjective experience of emotions. Thus, the agitation we hear infast-paced, wayward music is an external, objective counterpart of thesubjective, internal sensation we experience when we feel agitated.This correspondence between psychological states and perceptualfeatures of external objects is what grounds the description of thelatter in emotional terms. Pratt’s view, conveyed innuce by his slogan “the music sounds the way the emotionsfeel”, shares with Langer’s theory the idea of anisomorphism between the structure of music and the phenomenology ofemotional life. However, Pratt does not conceive of music as a sign ofthe emotions, as their correspondence in terms of dynamic structuredoes not imply any representational relation from the former to thelatter (Pratt 1954: 290). This claim, along with Pratt’sseparation of musical emotions from those it arouses in the listener,gives his view a clear formalist slant. The persuasiveness ofPratt’s hypothesis is ultimately dependent on whether we canproduce clearer evidence for the structural correspondence that iscentral to the account (criticism of Pratt’s view is found inBudd 1985: chapter 3, and S. Davies 1994: chapter 3; Green [2007: 206]advances a theory of expressiveness that partly vindicatesPratt’s intuition).

Meyer’s influential Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956)attempts to makes sense of musical emotions by holding that thesedepend on the syntactical features of the music itself. Meyer’sview rests on the questionable assumptions that emotions arise when atendency to respond is inhibited. A tendency to respond is one’sinclination to behave in a certain way. For instance, a smoker whofeels like smoking but is unable to find any cigarettes will feelincreasingly frustrated and upset. This person’s emotion isgenerated by the inhibition of his tendency to respond (Meyer 1956:13–14; for criticism, see Budd 1985: 155–157). In music, atendency to respond is generated by the expectations that naturallyarise in more or less sophisticated listeners with regard to thesyntactic development of the piece. Music, and valuable musicespecially, momentarily frustrates our expectations whenever itdevelops in unforeseen ways, and thereby arouses emotions withoutrequiring any reference to extra-musical reality.

Meyer claims that his theory is able to reconcile two apparentlyopposite solutions to the problem of musical value and understanding.These are the “formalist option”, according to whichemotions are irrelevant to the appreciation of music, and the“absolute expressivist” one, which holds music valuablefor the emotions it arouses in us. Meyer proposes that, if theexpectation is a conscious one, the response will be intellectual,rather than emotional. But if it is an unconscious expectation, as isthe case for most listeners, then its frustration will give rise to anemotional response. The formalist and the expressivist are thus twodifferent modes of engagement with music, as opposed to beingincompatible views of its meaning and value (Meyer 1956:38–40).

In The Language of Music (1959), Cooke proposes that Westernclassical composers have utilized an identifiable stock of melodic,harmonic, and rhythmic structures in order to convey emotion throughtheir works. Cooke’s model is linguistic not only in that itattempts to identify a vocabulary of musical expressiveness, but alsobecause it conceives of music as a form of communication, andspecifically as the composer’s communication of emotional statesto the listener. It is thus a version of the expression theory (see§1.1;Gabriel 1978 provides empirical evidence against Cooke’sview).

2.5 Marxist Approaches: Adorno and Bloch

The development of the sociology of music, as well as that of Marxistsocietal critique, gave rise to an interest in the socio-politicalnature of music-making that is unmatched in previous Westernphilosophy (for an overview, see Fubini 1991: chapter 8).

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) is the foremost example of thisapproach, and one of the most significant philosophers of music in theWestern tradition. A philosopher and sociologist, in 1958 he becamedirector of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. His densewriting is made more difficult by his frequent and highly technicalmusicological observations—he was a trained musician and anactive composer, having studied with Arnold Schoenberg’s pupilAlban Berg (Paddison 1993 and Witkin 1998 are book-length studies ofAdorno’s philosophy of music; for a shorter overview, seeHamilton 2007: chapter 6).

A central theme in Adorno’s work is represented by the tensionbetween the autonomy of the artwork as an aesthetic object and itssocial function (Adorno 1970 [1997: 252]). As a member of theFrankfurt School, Adorno’s outlook is broadly Marxist, in thathe is interested in art as a product of society, as well as in itspotential as vehicle of social critique.

However, Adorno’s advocacy of music as a critical tool does notresult in an endorsem*nt of politically engaged music. The criticalfunction of music is achieved once societal contradictions areembodied in the formal features of artworks, as opposed to beingexplicitly denounced (see for instance Adorno 1970 [1997: 257]).Adorno writes:

In all art that is still possible, social critique must be raised tothe level of form, to the point that it wipes out all manifestlysocial content [Inhalt]. (1970 [1997: 250])

According to Adorno, art achieves this critical capacity by becomingautonomous, that is, by rejecting direct social functions, includingexplicitly political ones. However, it is not obvious how societaldynamics or contradictions could be embodied in works of pureinstrumental music (Zangwill 2012: 380–381 is skeptical aboutthis possibility).

It is this framework that grounds Adorno’s endorsem*nt ofSchoenberg against Stravinsky, which he develops in his Philosophyof New Music (1949). Schoenberg’s atonal music is true tothe society that generated it because it rejects tonality, thepossibilities of which Adorno considers thoroughly explored. Musicalmaterial is thus historically “pre-formed”, in that theuse of tonal structures has a fundamentally different significancetoday than it had when tonal music was still developing.Schoenberg’s music is progressive because it follows the laws ofdevelopment intrinsic to the musical material he inherited fromtradition. Stravinsky instead pulls musical structures from anirretrievable past, thereby producing music that is well-crafted, butultimately untrue (for a detailed analysis of Adorno’s view ofSchoenberg and Stravinsky, see Witkin 1998: chapters 7 and 8).

The attitude just described grounds Adorno’s notoriousreservations regarding popular music, which he elaborated in a numberof essays, as well as in his influential Introduction to theSociology of Music (1962 [1976]). His view of “jazz”,a label he employed liberally and at times confusingly (see Gracyk1992), and of popular music in general, is that its primary functionis that of easily available entertainment, despite jazz’sattempts to dissimulate this behind musical structures that are onlyapparently novel. Standardization is the essential feature of popularmusic (Adorno 1962 [1976: 25]), and its result is music that“listens for the listener” (Adorno 1962 [1976: 29]), as itdoes not require any effort. The invisible hand that standardizestaste and produces art having the sole function of entertaining themasses is the culture industry, a concept which Adorno had elaboratedin Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), co-authored with MaxHorkheimer (1895–1973) (Horkheimer & Adorno 1947: chapter4).

Adorno’s qualms with regard to popular music may understandablyappear elitist (see Baugh 1990). However, as Martin Jay pointsout,

The real dichotomy, Adorno contended, was not between“light” and “serious” music—he was nevera defender of traditional cultural standards for their ownsake—but rather between music that was market-oriented and musicthat was not. (Jay 1973: 182)

Thus, although popular music possesses standardized features thatfavor its commodification, the culture industry also includes musicfrom the past that has been commodified and reduced to a meredistraction.

Music is also related to social change in the thought of theunorthodox Marxist philosophy of Ernst Bloch (1885–1977). Theconcepts of utopia and hope are fundamental to his view, which findsits chief expression in The Spirit of Utopia (1918) and inThe Principle of Hope (1954). “Utopia” refers toa potential future state to which humanity aspires, whereas hope isthe process of striving toward that utopic state. Art creates visionsof alternative realities which, far from being mere illusions ordistractions, have utopian potential.

Bloch devotes a central chapter of his Spirit of Utopia tomusic, which he conceives of as a concerned with the inward side ofthe utopian dimension, and thus with humanity’s striving towardself-awareness and understanding. The chapter traces the unfolding ofmusic’s utopian potential in the Western tradition. Thisrestriction in focus seems to follow from an intentionally narrowconception of music, motivated by Bloch’s characterization ofthis art as concerned with the manifestation and development ofinteriority. He thus denies that civilizations such as the Greek andthe Egyptian produced any music worth of interest, because theirworldview was focused on exteriority and visuality (Bloch 1918,“The Mystery”).

In Bloch’s reconstruction, Western music develops through threestages, or “carpets” (Teppiche), a concept heborrows from Georg Lukács (1885–1971) (Bloch 1918,“The Problem of a Historical Philosophy of Music”). Thefirst stage is represented by dance and chamber music, the second bythe music of Bach and Mozart, and particularly by the fugue, while thethird culminates in the symphonies of Beethoven and Bruckner. It isover the course of this development that music progressively realizeshumanity’s awareness of itself (on Bloch’s philosophy ofmusic, see Zabel 1990, Korstvedt 2010, and Vidal 2003 [2010]).

2.6 Analytic Philosophy of Music

Analytic approaches are presented in detail in the entry onthe philosophy of music(for a book-length introduction, see Kania 2020). Here I shall focuson two representative debates and indicate some general trends.

Analytic philosophy of music is at times regarded as exclusivelycentered on linguistic and conceptual analysis, and dismissed on thegrounds of this narrow focus (see for instance Lippman 1992: 353). Butthis picture is only faithful to its first stages of development.Analytic philosophy of music has evolved, hybridized, and fragmented,much like analytic philosophy at large. In fact, contemporary analyticwork on music often includes sustained discussion of scientific orhistorical research (see for instance Robinson 2005, Nussbaum 2007,Dyck 2014). A different feature is perhaps distinctive of the analyticapproach, namely its systematic and often tacitly assumed veto onvalue judgments regarding the works, traditions, styles, etc. underinvestigation. Artistic value is not discovered or ascertained throughphilosophical speculation, it is merely accounted for. This is inquite striking contrast with the approach of many other figuresdiscussed in this entry, who first developed philosophical theories,and then on that basis produced sweeping dismissals of music that iswidely regarded as valuable—think of Rousseau on French music orAdorno on jazz (on the differences between analytic and continentalphilosophy of music, see Roholt 2017).

The systematic development of musical ontology is perhaps the mostcharacteristic thematic focus of analytic philosophy, as the area hadbeen almost entirely neglected by previous philosophical theories. Themost popular ontological views are type theories, according to whichmusical works are repeatable entities, tokened by multiple soundevents. Some type theorists are Platonists. They hold that musicalworks are abstract objects that do not come into existence (Kivy1983a, 1983b; Dodd 2007). A different approach holds that musicalworks are created types, a feature that proponents argue makes senseof music as a human, contingent practice (Levinson 1980).

Against Platonism, nominalist theories reject types and construemusical works as collections of particulars (Goodman 1968; Predelli2001; Caplan & Matheson 2006). A less popular option is toconsider musical works as actions. Gregory Currie (1989) and DavidDavies (2004) have defended such a view with respect to artworks ingeneral, including musical ones. It has also been proposed thatmusical works are best regarded as useful fictions that sustain ourcritical and appreciative discourse about music (Kania 2008; Killin2018; for a recent overview of analytic ontology of music, see S.Davies 2020).

Recent work has tackled meta-ontological questions, asking whatprinciples should guide the construction of ontological theories (seefor instance Stecker 2009; Dodd 2013; D. Davies 2017). A usefuldistinction is the one between descriptive and revisionary ontologies(Kania 2008), the former adhering to pre-theoretical conceptions ofwhat a musical works is, the latter sacrificing intuitions for thesake of theoretical virtues.

Though she ultimately rejects analytic approaches to the ontology ofmusic, it is worth mentioning here Lydia Goehr’s TheImaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992), an extraordinarilyinfluential study on the origin of the concept of musical work. Goehrargues that this concept emerged relatively recently in Western musichistory.

Along with ontology, musical expressiveness is probably the mostfrequently discussed issue in analytic philosophy of music (for anintroduction to the debate, see Matravers 2007). An important advancein this area is represented by the distinction between the emotionsmusic expresses and those it is expressive of (Kivy1989, elaborating on Tormey 1971). The saggy features of a SaintBernard dog make it look sad, but they do not stand in a causalrelation with a psychological state of sadness. The dog’s faceis expressive of sadness, but does not express sadness. Likewise,sadness is attributed to music regardless of whether it is theexpression of sadness or of any other emotion—thatMozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor is expressive ofanguish is something we can determine independently from the anguishedstate its author may have found himself in when composing it. Theemotions the music is expressive of are also conceptually distinctfrom those it may arouse in the listener—the Requiemmay arouse anguish in me, but it would be an anguished work even if itdidn’t. As intuitive as these distinctions may appear, previousaccounts of the relationship between music and emotions did not tracethem explicitly, and at times seem to move from one notion to theother.

We thus have (1) the emotions a composer may have felt when writingthe piece (2) the emotions music may arouse in the listener, and (3)the emotion we attribute to the music itself. Accounts ofexpressiveness that construe it as dependent on (1) or (2) are named,respectively, arousal and expression theories. Both approaches aregenerally considered as discredited, although a sophisticated versionof the arousal theory has been defended by Derek Matravers (1998), anda qualified defense of the expression theory has been advanced byJenefer Robinson (2005). Accounts of expressiveness that regard it asindependent from (1) and (2) need to explain why we use emotion wordsto describe a non-sentient object. Resemblance theories of musicalexpressiveness argue that this is because of a perceived similaritybetween the music and the characteristic vocal and behavioral humanexpressions of emotions (S. Davies 1980, 1994; Kivy 1989). Appeal tosuch resemblance in accounting for musical expressiveness is as old asphilosophy of music itself, but the careful separation of the emotionsin the music from those aroused in the listener distinguishes theseviews from virtually all their predecessors. The same distinctionallows Peter Kivy (1934–2017) to develop a formalist view ofmusical appreciation that recognizes the role of expressive propertiesbut unties them from the emotions aroused by music (Kivy 1990a).Jenefer Robinson (2005) has developed a sophisticated hybrid theory ofexpressiveness, arguing that the music’s arousal of emotions atthe sub-personal level is partly responsible for the resemblances weperceive in the music.

An alternative way to flesh out the view of musical emotions asproperties of the music itself is the so-called personatheory of expressiveness, according to which expressive music isexperienced as the emotional expression of a fictional persona(Levinson 2006). This proposal sidesteps the problems generated by thepuzzling description of a non-sentient being in emotional terms, bypositing that music is the emotional expression of a fictionalindividual.

Analytic philosophy has so far manifested relatively little interestin matters of musical value and music’s connection with moral,social, and political issues. Roger Scruton (1944–2020) deservesmention in this connection. His work shares with analytic philosophysome broad thematic areas of interest, but generally defiescategorization. The sustained discussion of matters such as thesocio-cultural dimension of music and musical value sets hishumanistic approach apart from much other philosophical writing onmusic in the Anglophone world (see particularly Scruton 1997).