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Civilizing the Savage: Johann Georg Sulzer and the ‘Aesthetic Force’ of Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Matthew Riley
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Abstract

Johann Georg Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (1771–4) exerted considerable influence on late eighteenth-century German musical writers. But for many modern commentators, it typifies the negative attitude to instrumental music characteristic of much Enlightenment rationalism. A reassessment of Sulzer, taking account of his philosophical background in Leibniz, Wolff and Baumgarten, shows that in fact he considered music the first of the fine arts. The arts have an ethical, civilizing role; but while most can affect only people who are already partly civilized, music possesses a special ‘aesthetic force’ which energizes the minds of cognitively passive people or ‘savages’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 127 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2002

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References

1 On the connection with Koch, see Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Thomas Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995), 116–29. Forkel's references to Sulzer can be found in his ‘Genauere Bestimmung einiger musikalischen Begriffe: Zur Ankündigung des akademischen Winter-Conzerts von Michaelis 1780 bis Ostern 1781’, Magazin der Musik, ed. Carl Friedrich Cramer (Hamburg, 1784), i, 1068; and Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1788–1801; repr. Graz, 1967), i, 17; ii, 6–7. Kirnberger, who struggled to get his thoughts down on paper in a coherent manner, collaborated closely with Sulzer on his treatise Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1771–9). In fact, Sulzer may have fashioned much of the text. Georg von Dadelsen, ‘Kirnberger, Johann Philipp’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume, vii (Leipzig, 1958), cols. 950–5 (col. 955).Google Scholar

2 For useful summaries of Sulzer's life, see Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 6–13; andJohan Van der Zande, ‘Orpheus in Berlin: A Reappraisal of Johann Georg Sulzer's Theory of the Polite Arts’, Central European History, 56 (1995), 175–208 (pp. 181–8).Google Scholar

3 See Sulzer, Johann Georg, Vermischte philosophische Schriften, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1773–81; repr. Hildesheim, 1974; henceforth Schriften). The essays were originally read in French and published in the Proceedings of the Academy. The first volume was translated by Sulzer himself, the second after his death by Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburg.Google Scholar

4 See Kerslake, Lawrence, ‘Johann Georg Sulzer and the Supplement to the Encyclopédie’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 148 (1976), 225–47. For modern English translations of some of Sulzer's articles, including some which pertain directly to music, see Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, and James Day and Peter Le Huray, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1987), 129–39. Christensen's translations are good, but his focus is as much on Sulzer's theory of the creative process – which applies to all the arts – as on his aesthetics of music as such. He thus omits significant articles such as ‘Beautiful’ ('Schön'), ‘Fine Arts’ ('Schöne Künste') and ‘Force’ (‘Kraft‘), which provide much insight into Sulzer's view of music.Google Scholar

5 To be precise, Sulzer worked with Kirnberger on the articles in vols. i and ii, with Schulz contributing from ‘Modulation’ onwards. Owing to Sulzer's declining health, Schulz wrote almost all the music articles of vol. iii himself (from letter S); see Sulzer's Preface to vol. ii and Schulz, ‘Abhandlung über die in Sulzers Theorie der schönen Künste … zwei Beispiele …’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 2 (1806), cols. 257–65, 276–80 (cols. 276–7). Some commentators have assumed that the ideas found in articles by Schulz such as ‘Sonata’ and ‘Symphonie’ can be safely attributed to Sulzer. See Bonds, Mark Evan, ‘The Symphony as Pindaric Ode’, Haydn and his World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton, 1997), 131–53 (pp. 150–1); Daniel Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999), 136–44; Bellamy Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, 1981), 145; Peter Vít, ‘Die Musik und Sulzers Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste’, Die Instrumentalmusik (Struktur–Funktion–Ästhetik), Musikwissenschaftliche Kolloquien der Internationalen Musikfestspiele in Brno, 26, ed. Petr Macek (Brno, 1994), 23–8 (pp. 26–7). However, those articles were written at a time when Sulzer's health was poor and he no longer had significant input into the project. Schulz took a quite different view from Sulzer regarding the instrumental genres, attributing to the symphony, for instance, the qualities of the sublime. Sulzer himself hardly ever mentions the sublime in connection with music, and never with instrumental music.Google Scholar

6 ‘Lebhaftes und nicht unangenehmes Geräusch’; ‘artiges und unterhaltendes, aber das Herz nicht beschäftigendes Geschwäz’. Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Musik’, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1771–4), ii, 780–93 (p. 788).Google Scholar

7 The best account of the negative valuation of instrumental music among German critics is Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views. She records other vivid responses of the time, including ‘formless clanging’, ‘incomprehensible mishmash’ and ‘ear-tickling jingle-jangle’ (‘unförmliches Geklängel’, ‘unverständliches Mischmasch’, ‘ohrkitzelndes Klingklang’; p. 1).Google Scholar

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9 Three criticisms of Sulzer recur in the literature: his work is said to be eclectic, unsystematic (this is reinforced by the article format) and, for the 1770s, out of date. Hosler's judgment is especially harsh; she declares that his thought ‘can only be described as incorrigibly eclectic, if not altogether self-contradictory at times’ (Changing Aesthetic Views, 145). The unfavourable reception of Sulzer was first set in motion by Goethe in a review of the Allgemeine Theorie for the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeiger; see Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 15.Google Scholar

10 Dr. Burney's Musical Tours in Europe, ed. Percy A. Scholes, 2 vols. (London, 1959), ii, 200.Google Scholar

11 The passages either concern general aesthetics or appear in the article ‘Music’ (‘Musik‘). They do not deal with musical technicalities, the area in which Sulzer felt he needed help, and, as will become clear, they are marked by his own characteristic ideas and terminology. It is very unlikely that Kirnberger, who was no philosopher, had much input in aesthetic matters. Schulz's aesthetic ideas were certainly not identical with Sulzer's (see note 5 above), and I have been careful not to introduce them from any of his articles.Google Scholar

12 The poor behaviour of amateurs (Liebhaber) was a frequent complaint of the experts (Kenner) who attended concerts in the late eighteenth century. The problem was acute at this time because private concert societies in Germany were increasingly opening their doors to a public which was used to the extremely informal atmosphere of the so-called Liebhaberkonzert, where eating, drinking, smoking, walking around and continual conversation were the norm. See Schleuning, Peter, Das 18. Jahrhundert: Der Bürger erhebt sich (Hamburg, 1984), 169–97.Google Scholar

13 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 788.Google Scholar

14 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Gesang’, Allgemeine Theorie, i, 459–61 (p. 460). Kirnberger devoted a whole section of his treatise – which was a collaboration with Sulzer (see note 1 above) – to the notion of Gesang, where it simply means something like ‘melody’ or ‘melodic progression’ and has no connection with words. Kirnberger, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik, 2 vols. (Berlin and Königsberg, 1776–9; repr. Hildesheim, 1988), ii, 77–104.Google Scholar

15 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Instrumentalmusik’, Allgemeine Theorie, i, 559–60 (p. 559).Google Scholar

16 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Berlin and Libau, 1790; repr. Indianapolis, 1987), §15 (pp. 73–5).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., §5 (pp. 51–3).Google Scholar

18 See Wellbery, David, Lessing's Laocoon: Semiotics and Aesthetics in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, 1984), 256–8, notes 22, 29; Jeffrey Barnouw, ‘The Beginnings of “Aesthetics” and the Leibnizian Conception of Sensation’, Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, ed. Paul Mattick Jr (Cambridge, 1993), 52–95 (p. 78); and Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge, 1993), 84–90.Google Scholar

19 The most concise statement of Leibniz's late metaphysics is found in his Monadology; see Rescher, Nicholas, G. W. Leibniz's ‘Monadology’: An Edition for Students (London, 1991). For a more extensive discussion of the thought of Leibniz, Wolff and Baumgarten and its importance for late eighteenth-century German music theory, see Riley, Matthew, ‘Attentive Listening: The Concept of Aufmerksamkeit and its Significance in German Musical Thought, 1770–1790‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2000), 50–64, 80–92.Google Scholar

20 Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Hans Werner Arndt, Jean École, Joseph Ehrenfried Hoffman and Marcel Thomann, 3 divs., 57 vols. (Hildesheim, 1962–), 1/ii, §794; 2/v, ‘Index capitum’ (p. 721).Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 1/ii, §§386, 277, 235.Google Scholar

22 See Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, Texte zur Grundlegung der Ästhetik, trans. and ed. Hans Rudolf Schweizer (Hamburg, 1983), 16–17. Baumgarten's main works on aesthetics are Reflections on Poetry, trans. Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther (Halle, 1735; repr. Berkeley, 1954), and Aesthetica (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1750–8; repr. Hildesheim, 1961).Google Scholar

23 See, for instance, Georg Friedrich Meier, Theoretische Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen überhaupt (Halle, 1744), §97; Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Leidenschaften’, Allgemeine Theorie, ii, 692–703 (p. 693). For commentary, see Wellbery, Lessing's Laocoon, 59–62.Google Scholar

24 The idea of ‘moral feeling’ indicates an affinity with the British ‘moral sense’ school of aesthetics represented by Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and others. Sulzer's identification of the beautiful and the good recalls the early eighteenth-century thought of Lord Shaftesbury, whose works were widely read in Germany at this time. On Shaftesbury, Sulzer and the close alliance between ethics and aesthetics at this time, see Robert E. Norton, The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1995), 27–38, 191–5.Google Scholar

25 Wirksamkeit literally means ‘effectiveness’, but Sulzer uses it to denote the employment of the soul's active force in so far as it is used freely and independently. In translating his Academy papers (see note 3 above), Sulzer used Wirksamkeit for the original action. I shall use ‘activity’ or ‘action’ as appropriate.Google Scholar

26 I prefer ‘beast’ to ‘animal’ because it conveys the pejorative connotations of Sulzer's use of Tier and excludes humanity – at least, what Sulzer would have regarded as healthy, rational humanity. Since the beast represents a lack of activity, it is quite different from the rapacious inner beast conceived by Plato (Republic, 9.571c) and others.Google Scholar

27 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Psychologische Betrachtungen über den sittlichen Menschen’, Schriften, i, 282–306 (pp. 288–9). All translations from Sulzer's writings are mine.Google Scholar

28 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Gedanken über den Ursprung und die verschiedenen Bestimmungen der Wissenschaften und schönen Künste’, Schriften, ii, 100–28 (p. 118); idem, ‘Schöne Künste’; Allgemeine Theorie, ii, 609–25 (p. 612).Google Scholar

29 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses together with the Replies to Critics and Essay on the Origin of Languages, trans. and ed. Victor Gourevitch (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

30 The state of nature has been theorized in a variety of ways in Western thought. For Aristotle and the scholastics it was simply life in the ideal polis. Stoicism and Christianity postulated a utopian, pre-civil condition, while the Epicureans believed that human beings had originally been free, but solitary and at odds. In the seventeenth century, Hobbes notoriously developed the latter view into the idea of a savage ‘war of all against all’. See the helpful remarks by Michael Seidler in his edition of a treatise of 1678 by Samuel Pufendorf, On the Natural State of Man, trans. Michael Seidler (New York, 1990), 28–30. For more detailed discussion regarding the eighteenth century, see Günther Bien, ‘Zum Thema des Naturstands im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 15 (1971), 257–98; and Werner Kraus, Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhundert: Die Frühgeschichte der Menschheit im Blickpunkt der Aufklärung (Berlin, 1978), 103–18, 170–5.Google Scholar

31 Sulzer saw the arts as having an important role in modern-day politics (‘Schöne Künste’, 614–15). The best account of his opinions regarding the civilizing effects of the arts is found in Van der Zande, ‘Orpheus in Berlin’, despite the relative lack of direct quotation. In some respects, Sulzer anticipates the thought of Schiller, who argued that one could not make ‘the sensory human being’ ('der sinnliche Mensch') rational without first making him aesthetic, and spoke of ‘the aesthetic state’ (‘der ästhetische Staat‘). See Schiller, Friedrich, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, trans. and ed. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and Leonard A. Willoughby (Oxford, 1967), 161, 218.Google Scholar

32 Sulzer, ‘Schöne Künste’, 610.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 612.Google Scholar

34 Sulzer, ‘Gedanken’, 117–18.Google Scholar

35 Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, 2/v, §237; 1/ii, §268. There is very little modern literature on this important aspect of eighteenth-century German thought; see Riley, ‘Attentive Listening’, 64–79.Google Scholar

36 Sulzer, ‘Zergliederung des Begriffs der Vernunft’, Schriften, i, 244–81 (p. 253).Google Scholar

37 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Sinnlich’, Allgemeine Theorie, iii, 1083–8 (p. 1084).Google Scholar

38 Ibid. Sulzer had first developed these ideas in an earlier essay, ‘Anmerkungen über den verschiedenen Zustand, worinn sich die Seele bey Ausübung ihrer Hauptvermögen, nämlich des Vermögens, sich etwas vorzustellen, und des Vermögens zu empfinden, befindet’, Schriften, i, 225–43.Google Scholar

39 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Empfindung’, Allgemeine Theorie, i, 311–16 (p. 312).Google Scholar

40 Georgia Cowart provides an informative discussion of the terms ‘sentiment’, sentiment and Empfindung as they apply to eighteenth-century musical writings in general; see her ‘Sense and Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Musical Thought’, Acta musicologica, 46 (1984), 251–66.Google Scholar

41 Sulzer, ‘Empfindung’, 315.Google Scholar

42 Sulzer, ‘Untersuchung über die angenehmen und unangenehmen Empfindungen’, Schriften, i, 1–98 (p. 11).Google Scholar

43 Ibid., 13.Google Scholar

44 See Springorum, Friedrich, ‘Über das Sittliche in der Ästhetik Johann Georg Sulzers’, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 72 (1929), 1–42 (pp. 14–15).Google Scholar

45 Sulzer's theory of pleasure was informed both by Wolff's work and by an influential treatise of the mid-eighteenth century by Louis Jean Levesque de Pouilly (Théorie des sentiments agréables; numerous editions). On these influences, as well as the sometimes complex relationships between the concepts of pleasure, perfection and beauty in his thought, see Altmann, Alexander, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (London, 1973), 60; and Riley, ‘Attentive Listening’, 179 (note 19).Google Scholar

46 Other translations are possible. Sulzer himself offers the alternative term Energie: ‘Von der Kraft (Energie) in den Werken der schönen Künste’, Schriften, i, 122–45. Springorum finds parallels with John Locke's notion of ‘power’ (‘Über das Sittliche’, 21–2). Herder used the term Kraft in his aesthetic theory, although in a rather different – and more obscure – way. See Clarke, ‘Herder's Conception of “Kraft”’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 57 (1942), 737–52; and, for a more recent view, Robert E. Norton, Herder's Aesthetics and the European Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1991), 141–9. ‘Force’ as predicated on aesthetic objects should not be confused with its use when applied to the soul: the two meanings are not directly related.Google Scholar

47 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Kraft’, Allgemeine Theorie, ii, 602–5 (p. 602).Google Scholar

48 Sulzer, ‘Kraft’, 602.Google Scholar

49 Ibid.Google Scholar

50 See especially Sulzer's earlier explanation of aesthetic force, ‘Von der Kraft’, 125–6.Google Scholar

51 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Schön’, Allgemeine Theorie, iii, 1037–40 (pp. 1037–8).Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 1038. For Sulzer, knowing ‘what it should be’ was a mark of the intellectual recognition of the perfect. Christensen observes that the formula was common in German rationalist philosophy; Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 43.Google Scholar

53 Sulzer, ‘Schön’, 1039. Sulzer's threefold division of forces superficially resembles Kant's later distinction between ‘the agreeable’, ‘the beautiful’ and ‘the good’; Critique of Judgement, §5 (pp. 51–2). (Sulzer's ‘good’ would correspond to Kant's ‘agreeable’, and Sulzer's ‘perfect’ to Kant's ‘good’.) However, as I have indicated, the Kantian principle of disinterested pleasure runs against the grain of Sulzer's theory as a whole.Google Scholar

54 Sulzer, ‘Von der Kraft’, 126.Google Scholar

55 Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte, i, 58–9. To be precise, these are a subset of Forkel's figures, which he says appeal only to the attention. There are many types of figure (Forkel developed an elaborate theory of musical rhetoric), many of which affect the attention by means of some other cognitive faculty, such as the imagination. See Riley, ‘Attentive Listening’, 134–5, 140–1.Google Scholar

56 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Hauptsatz’, Allgemeine Theorie, i, 522–3.Google Scholar

57 Riley, ‘Attentive Listening’, 115–20.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 188–96.Google Scholar

59 Johan Van der Zande has noted Sulzer's liking for the Orpheus myth (‘Orpheus in Berlin’, 176, 202–3). However, his observation that Orpheus became Sulzer's ‘constant companion’ during the writing of the Allgemeine Theorie can be taken only in a weak sense, namely to mean that Sulzer always kept in mind the civilizing task of the fine arts. It would be an exaggeration to suppose that he constantly refers to the actual name of Orpheus.Google Scholar

60 I follow the version of the story given by Virgil (Georgics, iv, 453–527), one of the earliest and most substantial sources despite the Greek origin of the myth.Google Scholar

61 Horace, Ars poetica, 391–3; Leon Golden and Osborne B. Hardison, Horace for Students of Literature: The ‘Ars poetica’ and its Tradition (Gainsville, 1995), 19, 76–7. For a similar Roman interpretation of the legend, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, I.x.9.Google Scholar

62 Sulzer, ‘Gedanken’, 118.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., 119–20. See Horace, Ars poetica, 391–3. In translating the Latin passage, I have followed Golden and Hardison, Horace for Students, 19.Google Scholar

64 Sulzer, ‘Schöne Künste’, 613–14.Google Scholar

65 On the significance of music in this debate, see Downing A. Thomas, Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995); Christine Zimmermann, Unmittelbarkeit: Theorien über den Ursprung der Musik und der Sprache in der Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1995); and Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language, 85–102.Google Scholar

66 Sulzer, ‘Anmerkungen über den gegenseitigen Einfluß der Vernunft in die Sprache und der Sprache in die Vernunft’, Schriften, i, 166–98.Google Scholar

67 See Norton, Herder's Aesthetics, 106–7. Condillac, whose friend Maupertuis had been appointed President of the Academy by Frederick the Great, and against whose ideas Süssmilch's arguments were largely directed, believed that there had been a ‘stepping-stone’ period between an unreflective initial state of humanity and the time of the emergence of true verbal language. At this stage, Condillac believed, human communication had consisted of quasi-musical utterances (see Thomas, Music and the Origins of Language, 72).Google Scholar

68 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Mannigfaltigkeit’, Allgemeine Theorie, ii, 741–3 (p. 741).Google Scholar

69 Ibid., 741–2. Sulzer refers to a travel report by Charles Marie de la Condamine to support his remarks. This was certainly the source for his comment about the Americans' supposed modest ability at arithmetic, although probably not for the flute image. See Condamine, Relation abrégée d'un voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale (Paris, 1745), 67. Peter A. Hoyt has discussed the figure of the savage in the music theory of Sulzer and his contemporaries; see his ‘On the Primitives of Music Theory: The Savage and Subconscious as Sources of Analytical Authority’, Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Suzannah Clark and Alexander Rehding (Cambridge, 2001), 197–212 (pp. 205–7).Google Scholar

70 Sulzer, ‘Schöne Künste’, 612.Google Scholar

71 Sulzer, ‘Von der Kraft’, 136–7.Google Scholar

72 Sulzer, ‘Untersuchung’, 54–6. Norton discusses this passage and its relevance to Herder's aesthetics; Herder's Aesthetics, 190–1.Google Scholar

73 This way of thinking about nerves was very characteristic of the second half of the eighteenth century, and to an extent underlies the literary cult of sensibility. The principle – inherited from the late seventeenth century – that the soul was located in the brain meant that nerves seemed to offer the crucial link between body and soul. People were thought to possess a delicate sensibility to the extent that they had a ‘refined’ or ‘exquisite’ nervous system. See George S. Rousseau, ‘Nerves, Spirits and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origin of Sensibility’, Studies in the Eighteenth Century III, ed. Robert F. Brissenden and John C. Eade (Toronto and Buffalo, 1976), 137–57 (p. 152).Google Scholar

74 On this eighteenth-century concept, see especially Wellbery, Lessing's Laocoon, 24–30. It was applied to music by the abbé Du Bos and the Encyclopedists as well as by many of Sulzer's German contemporaries; see Riley, ‘Attentive Listening’, 84–7.Google Scholar

75 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 781.Google Scholar

76 Ibid.Google Scholar

77 Sulzer does not address the obvious (to a modern reader) question of how all other things ever could be equal, or, as he puts it, how colours could be comparable in disharmony to notes.Google Scholar

78 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 781.Google Scholar

79 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 781.Google Scholar

80 Sulzer, ‘Schöne Künste’, 623.Google Scholar

81 Peter Schnaus interprets ‘erste’ as ‘unterste’ (lowest), which would imply that Sulzer is here describing music as the most primitive of the fine arts. ‘Sulzer, Johann Georg’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume, xii (Leipzig, 1965), cols. 1733–8 (col. 1753). I hope to have shown by the end of this article that Sulzer's view was rather more generous than this.Google Scholar

82 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 789.Google Scholar

83 Ibid. Despite Van der Zande's awareness of the importance of the figure of Orpheus in Sulzer's thought, he makes no reference to this passage and does not recognize that Sulzer changes the meaning of the myth when it comes to music. Similarly, he is aware of the concept of attention in Sulzer's theory, but does not explain its significance or make a definite link with Orpheus (‘Orpheus in Berlin’, 203). Sulzer was not the only thinker in Berlin at this time to praise the art of music by referring to the Orpheus myth. With Lessing, according to James Upton (‘The Music Esthetics of G. E. Lessing’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1969, 93), the legend ‘seems at times to have become an obsession’, and it appears in many of his poems.Google Scholar

84 Sulzer, ‘Musik’, 789.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., 788.Google Scholar

86 I should emphasize that my conclusions here by no means exhaust the possibilities for research into Sulzer's views on music. For instance, it would be instructive to examine his ideas about music's effect on the body as opposed to the soul in the light of the special aesthetic force (I am grateful to Daniel Chua for pointing this out to me); his notion of Empfinden in terms of the values of eighteenth-century German Evangelical Pietism, which highlighted the need to contemplate one's own soul and experience inner spiritual rebirth; and his theory of aesthetic forces in general as a counterpart to the Prussian State's robust efforts to stamp out ‘irrational’ practices among its citizens and ‘enlighten’ them even against their wills.Google Scholar