With a characteristically broad and provocative treatment, Dahlhaus examines a single music-aesthetical idea from various historical and philosophical viewpoints. "Essential reading for anyone interested in the larger intellectual framework in which Romantic music found its place, a framework that to a remarkable degree has continued to shape our image of music."--Robert P. Morgan, Yale University Carl Dahlhaus (1928-1989) is the author of a highly influential body of works on the foundations of music history and aesthetics.

This book is an introduction to the esthetics of music. Aesthetics, which were of prime importance in thinking about music in the nineteenth century, are today sometimes suspected of being idle speculation. Yet judgments about music and every sort of musical activity are based on aesthetic presuppositions. Carl Dahlhaus gives an account of developments in the aesthetics of music from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. He combines a historical and systematic approach. Central themes in music are grouped together to illustrate both (...) the historical course of events and a systematic unity of the essential elements in the aesthetics of music. For this edition, the late Carl Dahlhaus provided an annotated bibliography. William Austin has added books for the English-speaking reader, and has also supplied notes to the text to help the student. (shrink)

Volume I, Substance, contains, under the heading Substance, the writings of Plato, Plotinus, Boethius, Marsilio Ficcino, Tommaso Campanella, Johannes Kepler, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Feruccio Busoni. Under the heading Essence and Distinctness are found the writings of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Philodemus, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich W.J. Schelling, George W.F. Hegel, Johann Herbart, and Eduard Hanslick.