Hanslick

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chris:
I see. Man, that guy seems to turn up all over the place. If I remember correctly, he also wound up getting Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 dedicated to him.

Yes, he was also a passionate Wagnerian, even after the humiliation of Wagner stealing his wife (Liszt's daughter, Cosima)and marrying her.

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'Man know thyself'

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by chopithoven:
The third B should not be a B, but an M for Mozart.

But doesn't Buxtehude have a much nicer ring? I could have said Borodin or Bruckner, you know, for the third 'B'!

[Joy]

Originally posted by Peter:
How right you are! Perhaps we should have 3 M's - Monteverdi, Mozart and Monet! (cheating I know!)

Monet! why not include Manet as well! now that might be a bit of a stretch although some associate Debussey's music with the Impressionistic art era. Maybe it's not such a stretch after all.

[Joy]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
But doesn't Buxtehude have a much nicer ring? I could have said Borodin or Bruckner, you know, for the third 'B'!

How about Bartok, Berlioz, or Bruckner. There's a lot of 'B's you know.

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by Peter:
Some of what Hanslick says is similar to our earlier debate on great music - i.e Beethoven's 9th is a great piece of music, regardless of what x or y may think of it. Some people can recognise this greatness and respond to it, others cannot. I agree with this. I disagree with his assertion that great music is necessarily beautiful - there is nothing beautiful about the recapitulation of the main theme in the 1st mov of the 9th, or the coda to that mighty piece - the emotion aroused is terror. A great piece can contain many different emotions - there are moments of great beauty in the 9th, but it is not a word I'd use to describe the whole work.

Beauty has nothing to do with emotions in this sense. The piece does not contain the emotions, but the beauty which arouses them.

[Peter]

Originally posted by chopithoven:
Beauty has nothing to do with emotions in this sense. The piece does not contain the emotions, but the beauty which arouses them.

Well all music has this quality - all music arouses emotions of one kind or another! You can't conclude from that that all music is beautiful or great.

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'Man know thyself'

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by Peter:
Well all music has this quality - all music arouses emotions of one kind or another! You can't conclude from that that all music is beautiful or great.

Well, music is certainly beatiful or great in a first instance. Ludwig did not think "I will arouse this or that emotion when somebody listens to my Lebewohl Sonata". The emotions are not expressly marked, but they exist only because of the humans. As Hanslick said "although the beautiful exists for the gratification of an observer, it is independent of him". And I will cite Hanslick again: "An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination". This seems irrefutable to me.

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by Peter:
Well all music has this quality - all music arouses emotions of one kind or another! You can't conclude from that that all music is beautiful or great.

I didn't say all music is beautiful. I think that beuaty in music is not only represented by a nice, lyrical melody (eg: the 2nd movement of Mozart's piano concerto No.21, or one of Chopin's nocturnes, to mention something which is undoubtedly considered simply beautiful), but also rough and frightening music as the main theme in the 1st mov of the 9th, or the coda to that mighty piece, that you mentioned.
Thus, the concept of beauty in music is different than the beauty of a woman or a landscape. The intellectual object of an eventual piece of music makes it more beautiful than what it emotionally is or isn't, as the example of the 1st movement of the Ninth.

[Peter]

Originally posted by chopithoven:
I didn't say all music is beautiful. I think that beuaty in music is not only represented by a nice, lyrical melody (eg: the 2nd movement of Mozart's piano concerto No.21, or one of Chopin's nocturnes, to mention something which is undoubtedly considered simply beautiful), but also rough and frightening music as the main theme in the 1st mov of the 9th, or the coda to that mighty piece, that you mentioned.
Thus, the concept of beauty in music is different than the beauty of a woman or a landscape. The intellectual object of an eventual piece of music makes it more beautiful than what it emotionally is or isn't, as the example of the 1st movement of the Ninth.

Well I agree you can interpret the word beautiful in many ways, especially when applying it to the arts.

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'Man know thyself'

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by Peter:
Well I agree you can interpret the word beautiful in many ways, especially when applying it to the arts.

It is nice to find somebody who can accept these kind of theories, because it's not easy to interpret intellectuallity as beauty.