Hanslick, Eduard (EN)

Hanslick Eduard, *11 September 1825 Prague, †6 August 1904 Baden (near Vienna), German music writer. From 1844, he studied law at the University of Prague, and from 1846, he continued his law studies at the University of Vienna, where he obtained his doctorate in 1849, after which he took up a position in the state administration: in 1850, he was a clerk at the tax office in Klagenfurt, and from 1852, he was employed at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In Vienna, he was active in the field of music and theatre. In 1886, he was awarded the title of court councillor, and in 1895, he retired. However, Hanslick’s life passion was music; he inherited his love of music from his father, a scholar and university lecturer. Between 1843 and 1847, he studied piano, theory and composition with V.J. Tomášek in Prague (Hanslick’s early works have been lost, apart from Lieder aus der Jugendzeit, Berlin 1882), and during his university studies he befriended A.W. Ambros and became interested in literature on the history of music and musical aesthetics. At the age of 19, he published (under the pen name Renatus) his first music column in the Prague weekly “Ost und West”. From 1846, he began working as a music critic, a profession he pursued for over 50 years: in 1846, he wrote for the “Wiener Musikzeitung” (including an extensive 11-part article on Wagner’s Tannhäuser), from 1848 he was a music reviewer for the newly established “Wiener Zeitung”, and from 1855 for the daily newspaper “Presse” (from 1864 the “Neue freie Presse”). In 1854, his famous work Vom Musikalisch-Schönen was published, which in 1856 was accepted by the philosophy department of the University of Vienna as a habilitation thesis. Between 1856 and 1894, he lectured at the university, initially as a private lecturer, in 1861 as an associate professor, and in 1870 as a full professor; these were the first lectures on music at the University of Vienna. In 1869–70, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien was published – Hanslick’s only comprehensive work, the second part of which (Aus dem Concertsaal…) contains a collection of music reviews; Hanslick’s later books (Die moderne Oper and others) also consist of such collections. His autobiography, Aus meinem Leben (1894), written at the end of his life, is a valuable source for learning about Hanslick’s views and his opinions on contemporary composers. Hanslick was friends with Brahms, knew Berlioz, Robert and Clara Schumann, Wagner, Verdi and Mascagni personally, and maintained contacts with many prominent musicians.

Music criticism was Hanslick’s second profession, alongside law, but he went down in music history as a leading representative of formal aesthetics, author of the treatise On the Musically Beautiful (Vom Musikalisch-Schönen). This treatise grew out of the spirit of criticism and was described by the author himself as “a kind of sketch”, slightly modified in some subsequent editions. Written in a sharp, even aggressive tone, equipped with the provocative subtitle A Contribution to the Revision of Musical Aesthetics, it provoked a wide response, finding many opponents and supporters of the ideas it contained and is today considered a classic in the field of musical aesthetics. Hanslick launched an uncompromising attack on the prevailing 19th-century aesthetics of content, rooted in the aesthetics of imitation and the doctrine of the affections. He challenged the heteronomous treatment of music and opposed the subjective, poeticising interpretations that had been abundant in musical literature since the time of L. Tieck, Novalis, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Schumann. On the Musically Beautiful is a polemical treatise on the aesthetic attitudes prevailing in the 19th century. Hanslick considered beauty to be the fundamental aesthetic category; at a time when the correspondance des arts was gaining ground and Wagner was promoting the idea of syncretic art in the form of Gesamtkunst (a “total work of art” combining music with other art forms), Hanslick emphasised the distinctiveness and inadequacy of the expressive means of each art, stressing that the beauty of music is “specifically musical”.  He argued for the autonomy of music. His principal theses, especially in relation to pure instrumental music (i.e., not tied to words). can be summarised as follows: 1. the purpose of music is not to convey extra-musical content, express emotions, or depict phenomena; the purpose of music is music itself (“[Mozart’s] G-minor symphony is music and nothing further. That is in any case sufficient.”); 2. the content of music is not feelings, but purely musical ideas; music can only convey the dynamics of feelings, but not their semantically ambiguous unity; in the process of composing, feelings accompany the artist, but the “creative factor” is not feelings, but imagination and musical abilities, because composing is a thought process – from the original idea to the specific formal shape of the musical material; 3. the content of music is “sonically moved forms” (“tönend bewegte Formen” – this succinct phrase shocked contemporaries), the “primal element of music is harmonius sound, its essence rhythm”, “music consists of tone successions, tone forms; these have no content other than themselves”. Hanslick thus separates that which can be perceived from that which cannot be perceived (“the artist is inscrutable, the artwork scrutable”), and contrasts literary deliberations on music with an objective approach based on rational premises: at the heart of music is the sound material, which, organised according to logical musical principles (the interaction of melody, rhythm and harmony), creates a musical shape – the form of the piece. The issues of musical form (including the musical theme) addressed by Hanslick in On the Musically Beautiful were for the first time placed at the centre of musical aesthetics. Hanslick did not create an aesthetic-theoretical system, but his “contribution” nevertheless compelled 19th-century music writers to revise their research approach. He drew attention to the essence of music – sound and movement – and raised fundamental questions that remain relevant to this day, such as content versus form, absolute music versus program music, the specificity and ambiguity of music, and the objective and subjective aspects of musical studies.

By writing reviews for daily newspapers throughout most of his life, Hanslick created a model of a professional music critic, possessing musical and aesthetic knowledge, decisively evaluating the presented works, and involved in the issues of musical life. The thematic scope of his writings covered both dramatic and instrumental music, as well as performance (he reviewed, among others, a recital by the 7-year-old R. Koczalski), concert events and institutions, and publications. When discussing works, Hanslick did not abandon expressive categories, but he did bring the analysis of sound material to the fore. He was guided by the ideals of classical form, i.e. perfection and clarity of structure, uniformity and order ensured by the leading role of melody. In the great dispute that arose in the second half of the 19th century between composers who, drawing on Beethoven’s creative ideas, moved towards classical or programme music, Hanslick played a significant role as an advocate of Brahms’ music and a staunch opponent of Wagner. Thanks to his strong views, passionately expressed in the press and in lectures delivered in a concise, sharp style, Hanslick became one of the most famous figures in the music world of his time.

Literature:

Eduard Hanslick. Aus meinem Leben, 2 vols., Berlin 1894, 4th edition: 1911, reprinted in 1 vol. Farnborough 1971.

F.P. Laurencin d’Armond, Dr. Eduard Hanslicks Lehre vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Eine Abwehr, Leipzig 1859; F. Stade, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Mit Bezug auf Dr. Eduard Hanslicks gleichnamige Schrift, Leipzig 1870, 2nd ed.: 1904; R. Zimmermann, Kritiken und Studien zur Philosophie und Ästhetik, vol. 2, Vienna 1870; O. Hostinský, Das Musikalisch-Schöne und das Gesamtkunstwerk vom Standpunkte der formalen Ästhetik, Leipzig 1877; F. von Hausegger, Die Musik als Ausdruck, Vienna 1885, 2nd ed.: 1887, Polish edition Muzyka jako wyraz, transl. A. Chybiński and J. W. Reiss, “Przegląd Muzyczny” V-VII, 1912–14; R. Hirschfeld, Das kritische Verfahren Eduard Hanslicks, Vienna 1885; F. Printz, Zur Würdigung des musikästhetischen Formalismus Eduard Hanslicks, Leipzig 1918; R. Schäfke, Eduard Hanslick und die Musikästhetik, Leipzig 1922; S. Deas, In Defence of Hanslick, London 1940, reprint 1972; H. Böhmer, Musik als tönend bewegte Form. Von Hanslick zu Stravinsky, “Melos” XVII 1950; M. Mila, Verdi e Hanslick, “La rassegna musicale” XXI 1951; A. Della Corte, Le critiche di Eduard Hanslick alle opere di R. Wagner, “La rassegna musicale” XXIX 1959; A. Wilhelmer, Der Junge Hanslick, Klagenfurt 1959; C. Dahlhaus, Eduard Hanslick und der musikalische Formbegriff, “Die Musikforschung” XX 1967; J. Clapham, Dvořák’s Relations with Brahms and Hanslick, “The Music Quarterly” LVII 1971; D. Glatt, Zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung der Musikästhetik Eduard Hanslicks, Munich 1972; W. Abegg, Musikästhetik und Musikkritik bei Eduard Hanslick, Regensburg 1974; Eduard Hanslick’s “On the Musically Beautiful”: A New Translation, trans. by Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018.