The Beautiful in Music

Eduard Hanslick's On the Beautiful in Music (1854) is a foundational text in musical aesthetics. Hanslick, an influential Austrian music critic, argued against the idea that music's primary function is to express or evoke emotions. Instead, he proposed that music is an art of "purely musical elements" and that its beauty lies in its formal structure and the interplay of sounds.123

Hanslick, a proponent of nonreferentialism, believed music is autonomous and "means itself," rather than referring to external ideas or emotions. He emphasized formalism, suggesting that the aesthetic experience of music comes from understanding its internal dynamics and patterns, not from associating it with feelings or narratives. This perspective positioned him as a critic of Romanticism's emphasis on emotional expression in music.312