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MUSIC_AS_MUSIC

                                             August   31, 2012
                                             December  9, 2013
   Dutton brings up the writings of
   "Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904)":                  CURIOUS_FICTIONS

   " ... Hanslick was the champion of Brahms against Wagner,
   for which Wagner pilloried him as Beckmesser in Die
   Meistersinger. In his 1854 tract, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen
   (On the Musically Beautiful), he attacked the idea that
   the purpose of music was to excite emotions-- a common
   opinion then as now. While he granted that sometimes
   incidental emotions can be produced by music (parades,
   church music, dance music, nostalgic music, perhaps),
   there was no reliable connection between the emotions in
   music and those putatively produced in listeners-- 'no
   invariable and inevitable nexus between musical works and
   certain states of mind,' as he put it. The beauties of
   music are peculiar to it, and can be perceived in music
   even when perhaps little or no emotion is felt by a
   sensitive and perceptive listener. (A fine discussion of
   Hanslick is found in Geoffrey Payzant's 2002 monograph,
   Hanslick on the Musically Beautiful)."


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