Also like to share some quotes from Hanslick's famous book "The Beautiful in Music".
“Music has no subject beyond thecombinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, itspeaks nothing but sound.”
“An art aims, above all, at producingsomething beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of purecontemplation, our imagination.”
“The course hitherto pursued in musicalaesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that theobject was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as todescribe the feelings which music awakens.”
“Grant that the true organ with which thebeautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts arelikely to affect the feelings indirectly.”
“So long as we refuse to include lotterytickets among the symphonies, or medical bulletins among the overtures, we mustrefrain from treating the emotions as an aesthetic monopoly of music in generalor a certain piece of music in particular.”
“That the sweetly intoxicating three-fourrhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great &serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goeswithout saying.”
“On the one hand it is said that the aimand object of music is to excite emotions, i.e., pleasurable emotions; on theother hand, the emotions are said to be the subject matter which musical worksare intended to illustrate. Both propositions are alike in this, that one is asfalse as the other.”
