Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (EN)

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, *27 August 1770 Stuttgart, †14 September 1831 Berlin, German philosopher and the founder of a philosophical system based on idealist dialectics. Although he did not receive a thorough musical education, he was an avid listener; wishing to explore the fundamentals of music, he sought out experts and practising musicians. From Hegel’s letters, it is known that as early as during his stay in Frankfurt am Main (1797–1800) he regularly attended the opera house, seeing, among others, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, and may also have become acquainted with other Mozart operas in the repertoire at that time (Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito), P. Wranitzky’s Oberon and Singspiele by K. Dittersdorf. Between 1801 and 1806, Hegel lectured in Jena; during this period, he attended musical evenings held in private homes. From 1808 to 1816 he lived in Nuremberg, where he was headmaster and professor of philosophy at the classical Gymnasium. There he was able to pursue his musical interests, as the theatre repertoire at the time included Mozart’s operas, and he was also able to familiarise himself with Haydn’s oratorios. In 1816, he took up the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg; during the winter semester of 1816/17 and the summer semester of 1817, he lectured on aesthetics. At that time, he met the composer B. Klein and attended choral music concerts performed by a local ensemble led by A.F.J. Thibaut. In 1818 he moved to Berlin, where he continued to lecture on aesthetics during the summer terms of 1820, 1823 and 1826, and during the winter term of 1828/29. It was during this period that he became acquainted with the prima donna Anna Milder-Hauptmann, through whom he discovered Gluck’s operas. He travelled regularly to Vienna to listen to Italian opera, which he valued for its performance quality, and his comments in letters indicate that he saw Rossini’s operas (Otello, Zelmira, The Barber of Seville). On his journeys to Vienna, he would stop off in Dresden, where he used to meet with C.M. Weber. He was also friends with C. Zelter, then director of the Singakademie in Berlin, and was able to become acquainted with Handel’s oratorios in the ensemble’s repertoire (Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, Jephtha, Samson, Joshua) and Haydn, as well as Mozart’s Requiem. He attended both performances of J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829, conducted by F. Mendelssohn and C. Zelter. His lectures on aesthetics were published as Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik (1835) after Hegel’s death, based on his notes from 1820 and the students’ notes.

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of art, is an integral part of Hegel’s philosophical system. In his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, Hegel placed art in the third section of the philosophy of spirit, alongside religion and philosophy. According to Hegel, art is not the highest form of the manifestation of the spirit; religion and philosophy, as fields of thought, stand above it, for they enter the supersensual world. Art and its products originate from the spirit; they are the alienation of the spirit into a sensory form, a “sensory exteriority”. Only through scholarly inquiry and reflection on art does the spirit, recognizing itself in its own externalization, reappropriate what has become alienated and transform it into thought. Art thus finds its justification in science. Hegel conceives the history of the development of art as the spirit’s passage through successive stages of perfection, each of which has its own characteristic form of art. The first stage is a symbolic form of art, the art of the ancient East, that is, the first stage of the absolute spirit’s transition from the natural world to the spiritual realm. This stage is represented by architecture. There is as yet no identity between the external and internal aspects; the material of architecture is devoid of spirituality. Architectural structures, present in space and enduring, constitute merely a symbolic setting for the spirit. The second stage is classical form of art, the art of ancient Greece. Its essence is spirituality, which manifests itself in a form perceptible to the senses. Classical art, represented by sculpture, achieves the perfection of beauty: “There neither is nor can there ever be anything more beautiful” (Vorlesung über Ästhetik, English translation in: Lectures on Fine Art). Hegel describes the third stage (from the Middle Ages onwards) as Romantic form of art, in which the spirit moves from the corporeality of the external form towards its own subjectivity, thereby enabling it to find itself. In classical art, there is a division between inner subjectivity and beautiful form; in romantic art, the basis of content and form is the beauty of spiritual subjectivity. Romantic art takes shape in three forms that stand in a dialectical relationship to one another: painting, music, and poetry. In Hegel’s classification of the arts, therefore, it is neither the sensory basis of perception (sight, hearing) nor the type of medium (visual arts, the art of sound, the art of the word) that plays a role, but rather the relationship between external sensibility and internal subjectivity.

The remarks on music are contained in Part 3 of the Lectures on Fine Art [or Lectures on Aesthetics], entitled The System of the Individual Arts [the translations of the quotations in the following paragraphs are original translations into English from Lectures on Fine Art, unless otherwise specified]. Music, as an art form, Hegel states, has no permanent spatial basis of existence, no tangible physical form like painting or architecture. Sound itself, however, is a physical phenomenon and arises through the vibration of a body. Vibration, as an external change in spatial relations, can be defined quantitatively. As something “distinct”, existing outside itself, vibration is a “negation” of material duration, a transition from a state of “material spatiality” to “material temporality”, to movement. Through the transition into temporality, the external, corporeal character of sound fades away, becoming internalised, turning towards the subjective factor. In this way, the objective is perceived as something subjective. Sound is therefore something more ideal than real corporeality and is thus suited to expressing the inner side of our subjectivity. Since sound belongs to the temporal sphere, there is a correspondence between the phenomenon of music and inner experience. Whereas, for example, in painting there is an obvious distinction between the observing subject and the perceived object, in music there is a complete fusion of the spiritual content of the music with inner subjectivity. A musical work therefore has a sensory basis (sounds), but does not acquire objectivity. Since sound is, by its very nature, fleeting, the external material is no different from the spiritual content, and music can penetrate directly into the soul, whilst consciousness identifies with the stream of sounds. This stems from the temporal nature of music. Time causes the “coexistence” of a spatial moment to be reduced to a certain “point of time”, to the “now”. But this point in time immediately proves to be its own negation; it is the abolition of that given point in time and the transition to another “now”. A similar phenomenon occurs in inner consciousness. Subjective existence is defined in a similar way by time. Therefore, musical time intertwines with the time of the self, subjective time. For this identification to take place, the spiritual content of music is necessary; the mere sounding of notes in time is not enough. The role of music, then, is to ensure that its spiritual content is “brought to life” (or materialised) in the subjective realm. Music is not created for observation, but rather makes the inner aspect (feeling) accessible anew to the inner self in an individual, subjective perspective. Music does not, however, express feelings directly (as, for example, speech does), but through specific conventions, for music itself creates its own sensory material before it is capable of expressing anything.

Hegel identifies three basic “music’s means of expression”: rhythm, harmony and melody. Our sense of self finds satisfaction when individual units of time become regular, i.e. when a specific unit of time is repeated. This unit is the bar [beat]. For this unit to be perceived as a rule, and to provide a sense of satisfaction, a moment of irregularity or unevenness is required. There are different types of grouping the beats within the meter (even an odd number of the repeated equal parts), and through the phenomenon of accent, each type of metre acquires its own rhythm. The concept of harmony encompasses: a) the physical character of a sound, dependent on the vibrating material (air column, string, membrane), b) relationships with other sounds forming specific numerical ratios (the study of intervals, scales, keys), c) the system of chords. The concept of harmony is most fully expressed by the triad, for it is the “totality” of various sounds that form a unity. Dissonant chords (of seventh and ninth) stand in opposition to this unity; they are compelled to resolve, that is, to remove the opposition, returning to the triad, to unity. Melody is a combination of rhythm and harmony, and it is only the movement of sounds over time that gives it a specific expression. Melody constitutes the poetic element in music; it is the “language of the soul”, “pours out into the notes the inner joy and sorrow of the heart”. Beat, bar, rhythm and harmony without melody are merely abstractions. Hegel goes on to consider the problems of vocal and instrumental genres. He divides the former into epic (church music), lyrical (song) and dramatic (opera). When combined with text, music does not play a subordinate role, as it does not convey the content in the same way as the text. Music does not define an object from the outside, but expresses its inner nature. The verbal text provides specific content. The same content, when presented in music, is expressed as a feeling, and thus as something general, not particular. Instrumental music, “independent” and freed from text, consists of the purely musical movement of harmonic and melodic forms, and expresses feeling in the most abstract manner. As Hegel argues, connoisseurs give preference to instrumental music, while laypeople prefer vocal music. Hegel also draws attention to the role of performance in an act of “bringing the work into actuality” [indirect translation from Polish], distinguishing between two types of performance: a) reproductive, yet faithful to the composer’s intention, b) co-creating the work through subjective interpretation (especially in opera).

In his Lectures on Fine Art, Hegel cites examples from the music of Bach, Handel, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and Rossini; he also mentions Palestrina, Pergolesi, Piccini, Weber and Reichardt, but makes no reference to Beethoven. In Hegel’s aesthetics, two distinct approaches to music have been brought together. On the one hand, Hegel acknowledges that music is an expression of feeling, thereby continuing the tradition of the ethos and 18th-century doctrine of the affections. On the other hand, he draws on the tradition of the Pythagoreans, Boethius, Kepler and Leibniz, upholding their concepts of linking music to numerical relationships. According to Hegel, the expression of inner emotions in music transforms into something defined quantitatively (vibrations with specific numerical ratios); thus, the manifestation of inner life is at the same time “unconscious counting”. In turn, musical content, not revealing itself in a spatial form, becomes a “sound of interiority” apprehended subjectively. Subjective interiority does not oppose something external, but is the internalisation of what the subject perceives. In Hegel’s musical aesthetics, therefore, the distinction between the external object and the subject perceiving it disappears. The “I” finds itself in music; thus, music not only expresses feeling but also reveals the spirit’s identity to it and makes it self-aware.

Two schools of 19th-century musical aesthetics stem from Hegel’s ideas: the aesthetics of expression and the aesthetics of form. The influence of Hegel’s philosophy on music theory can also be noted, particularly with regard to the concept of A.B. Marx and the theoretical work of M. Hauptmann.

Literature: Briefe von und an Hegel, 4 vols., eds. J. Hoffmeister and R. Flechsig, Hamburg 1952–60; W. Henckmann, Bibliographie zur Ästhetik Hegels, in: Hegel-Studien, vol. 5, Bonn 1969; H. Kuhn, Die Vollendung der klassischen deutschen Ästhetik durch Hegel, Berlin 1931, also in: H. Kuhn, Schriften zur Ästhetik, Munich 1966; H. Glockner, Die Ästhetik in Hegels System der Philosophie, in: Proceedings of the Second International  Hegel Congress 1931, Tübingen 1932; R. Schäfke, Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen, Berlin 1934; M. Bukofzer, Hegels Musikästhetik, in: II Congrès International d’Esthétique et de Science de l’Art, vol. 2, Paris 1937; W. Wiora, Einsichten Hegels in das Wesen der Musik, in: commemorative book of H. Besseler, Leipzig 1961; Th. W. Adorno, Drei Studien zu Hegel, Frankfurt am Main 1963; H. Heimsoeth, Hegels Philosophie der Musik, in: Hegel-Studien, vol. 2, Bonn 1963; Hegel-Jahrbuch, ed. W. R. Beyer, Meisenheim 1965 (includes, among others, papers by G. Brelet, Z. Lissa and J. L. Döderlein); Z. Lissa, O procesualnym charakterze dzieła muzycznego, “Studia Estetyczne” II 1965; Z. Lissa, Hegel und das Problem der Formintegration in der Musik, in: commemorative book of W. Wiora, Kassel 1967; A. Horn, Kunst und Freiheit. Eine kritische Interpretation der Hegelschen Ästhetik, The Hague 1969; A. Nowak, Hegels Musikästhetik, «Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts» XXV, Regensburg 1971; A. Nowak, Religiöse Begriffe in der Musikästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Religiöse Musik in nicht-liturgischen Werken von Beethoven bis Reger, «Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts» LI, Regensburg 1978; S. Jarociński, Musica libera i musica adhaerens, “Teksty” 1978, No. 1; G. Henneberg, Der Einfluss der Philosophie Hegels auf das Mozart-Bild in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Mozart-Jahrbuch 1980–83; G. W. F. Hegel Vorlesung über Ästhetik, English edition Lectures on Fine Art, vols. 1 and 2, translated by T. M. Knox, pub. Oxford University Press, 1973.