Enlightened and Romantic German music criticism, 1800-1850
Abstract
Factors that helped consolidate music criticism in crucial ways--the concept of aesthetic autonomy, the idea of a public sphere, and a national ideology--all began emerging around 1800. Fifty years later the concept of criticism in its "strong," philosophical sense collapsed along with Hegelian idealist philosophy. At that time, the failure of the 1848 revolutions marked a significant crisis not only for the nation but also for the institutions of art and criticism. During this period, music criticism maintained some basic premises. For Friedrich Rochlitz and his Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1798-1818), music criticism was part of the Enlightenment project to disseminate information and to promote reasoned debate. The foundational principle of the public sphere--that is, the conceptual space between the state and the private home which enables individuals to meet freely and discuss as equals matters of common interest--was not rejected by later critics. The contradictions inherent in the concept of the public sphere also remained constant, however; particularly enduring issues involved what qualified the critic to overrule the public, and what criticism was supposed to do for composers and their music. A. B. Marx, editor of the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1824-1830), and Robert Schumann, editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (1834-1843), finessed these problems and made authoritative critical judgments not by invoking the Kantian sensus communis of all human beings, but rather the sensus communis of the German nation. This nationalistic approach to questions of aesthetic value had two components: it positioned all music perceived as foreign as "other" or inimical to the values of one's own music, and it consolidated German music as a central feature of German identity. Music criticism took on a new dimension in the 1840s, when Franz Brendel infused the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik with the Young Hegelian goal of furthering knowledge through the critical process of constructing the grand historical narrative of spirit. At mid-century, however, this type of abstract historical idealism lost viability with the failure of the 1848 revolutions.
Recommended Citation
Sanna Florence Pederson,
"Enlightened and Romantic German music criticism, 1800-1850"
(January 1, 1995).
Dissertations from ProQuest.
Paper AAI9532255.
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9532255
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