Abstract

Hegel’s lectures on fine art, given in the 1820s, were published for the first time in 1835 and continued to influence thinking about aesthetics for the rest of the nineteenth century. After a long period of relative neglect in this century, when idealism in general fell into disfavor, Hegel’s Aesthetics has begun to awaken renewed interest. Appropriately, the larger questions of the relation of art, beauty, and truth have attracted the most attention. His treatment of musical aesthetics, on the other hand, has generally been regarded as much less satisfactory, in spite of his being more qualified than most philosophers of his day to discuss music. It is known that Hegel sang in a choral group at one point, that he had attended operas by Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, and Weber, and that he had heard performances of symphonies and string quartets by Haydn and Mozart. Yet his remarks on music have been dismissed as the product of someone who knew very little about music and who had little sympathy for the newer genres and styles of music that still loom so large in the repertoire today. The important question, however, is whether his aesthetic of music makes sense musically and is philosophically coherent. If so, then his arguments are of more significance than has been recognized. In fact, they reveal the principles and aims of the art of music as it was practiced in his day and as it continued to be understood by many critics in the nineteenth century. They pose a challenge, moreover, to the prevailing ahistorical ways of understanding music in the twentieth century.