Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic - Hardcover

Donelan, James H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521887615 ISBN 13: 9780521887618

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Considers the idea of self-consciousness in the work of Hölderlin, Hegel, Wordsworth and Beethoven.

About this title

Book Description:

Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher and a composer – Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel and Beethoven – developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. He considers how their different fields were connected at a crucial time in their formation: the beginning of Romanticism.

Synopsis:

James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer - Holderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven - developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures - all born in 1770 - developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in music. Beethoven still carries the image of the heroic composer today; this book describes how it originated in both his music and in how others responded to him. Bringing together the fields of philosophy, musicology, and literary criticism, Donelan shows how this development emerged from the complex changes in European cultural life taking place between 1795 and 1831.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0521887615
• ISBN 13: 9780521887618
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236