*This essay was delivered at the Second International Conference for Organ and Church Music in Bayreuth, 1963. It is printed in Musik und Kirche, Nov.–Dec. 1963, pp. 249–258. It appears in this volume in an English translation by John Nicholas by special permission of the Bärenreiter Verlag.

The following observation should be valid particularly for aesthetics of music. Aesthetics—what lies hidden behind this word? Two hundred years have passed since Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher of Königsberg, appended a footnote to his “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements” which reads:

The Germans are the only ones who are now using the word “aesthetics” to describe what others call the critique of taste. This is founded upon a false hope . . . namely, to subject the critical judgment of beauty to the principles of reason and to elevate the principles thereof to a science. These efforts, however, are useless. . . . It is, therefore, advisable now to drop this terminology.[1]

The advice of Kant was not heeded. On the contrary, his own later inquiries into the phenomenon of the beautiful (das Schöne) were by no means the least to bring essential knowledge to the aesthetics of art and to secure for this entire field the rank of a fundamental philosophical discipline. Since that time the number of those has been legion who have added penetrating observations, insecure intuitions, and more or less untenable speculation to this subject.

What were all these attempts about? Briefly stated: the criteria of art. They concerned themselves with the question: Why is it that something is considered beautiful, artistically significant or insignificant, superior or inferior, overwhelming or unenjoyable?

Our task, therefore, is to let our minds plumb the depths and search the hidden reaches of all music, to ascertain the essential standard according to which the beauty, significance, and power of a musical composition is measured.

But are we not, with the first step in our quest for beauty and significance in art, entering a wilderness of conflicting opinions and views? The one experiences beauty in classical music, the other in jazz; the third states that electronic montages of sound are the fulfillment of his ideal of beauty; the fourth selects popular songs. And behind this division of musical interests the opinions really begin to divide. What is more beautiful: symphonic or chamber music, Baroque or Romantic, organ or other keyboard music, Mozart or Stravinsky? And so it goes on, and the possibility of finding more opposites is endless. You will gladly excuse me from not offering even an approximate enumeration. In any case, one thing is indisputably true: it is very difficult to express a unanimous viewpoint concerning aesthetics in music as well as in other areas. And if we are honest, we shall also admit that the criterion of pleasure and displeasure has changed in the course of our life; we shall admit that a second hearing of a work has already caused us to wonder how we could have been so enthusiastic about it before.

In view of this undeniable situation many have again and again come to the wholly understandable conclusion that in the last analysis an aesthetic evaluation is a purely subjective matter and only gives the appearance of having objective, general validity. Mozart’s father once formulated this answer more strikingly: “Beauty is not what is beautiful but what pleases.” Let us, nevertheless, look into this matter to see whether in the final analysis the paths of aesthetics really become confused and disappear in the thicket of subjective opinions or whether there is not a way out of this wilderness into areas freed of arbitrariness and subjectivity.

I

Let us first of all get a much closer look at the subjective aspect of our problem. What actually happens when we experience music?

Think of any work which pleases you in particular. When you hear this work, it does not come into being in an instant, but it is formed tone by tone in a succession of sounds. It is not at rest, static, stationary, like sculptured marble or cast bronze, but is rather a living event, a continuous birth and death of tones and sounds. And that which we perceive to be its beauty comes forth from this uninterrupted process of sound production and decay. It comes forth not from something which exists unchanged outside us in finished form, like a sculpture, but rather from something which occurs outside us and “objectively” exists in reality as a sounding work of art only as long as this event lasts. But—and now I must draw your attention to an important point—in this sounding form the work is never entirely present in objective, physical reality at any given moment. When the work begins, everything which follows has not yet occurred; and when the final chord sounds, the beginning sonorities have long passed away, and instruments a thousand times more sensitive than our ears are no longer able to identify them. A sculpture, in all its parts, always exists in objective reality at one time, as an entity. A musical work, in its entirety, never exists outside us at one time but has physical reality only in the portions which are sounding at the moment.

We can, nevertheless, judge the work in its completed form. But where? In the room in which we are enjoying the music the tones which have been sounded leave no traces by which the entire work might be observed, like a picture. Where, then, does the music take on the form which we do perceive in spite of everything? Within us—thanks to the power which gives form to memory images and retains them—thanks to this mysterious power which preserves the past and keeps it for us as something “present.”

Thereby we have discovered the “subjective,” integrating moment in the process of aesthetic perception. There are many things outside us that we cannot grasp and have as an entity because we cannot leap back in time and have as a living object that which is past and outside us. But we are able to put them all together as they are impressed upon us, shaped within us, and constructed as a comprehensible form. The actual event which we as listeners did not produce has penetrated our consciousness, has come into being there, and has left a permanent mark. This mark may be impressed to a greater or lesser degree, sometimes vague, almost imperceptible, sometimes branded upon the innermost part of our being. As listeners we were not entirely without participation in the creation of that which appeared to be beautiful to us. Even though we did not consciously cooperate, we contributed something decisive. This is the fundamental power of the mind, to retain the past as present, the power to put together the pieces which time has scattered and shape the work of art into a diverse cosmos so that it seems to be experienced as an entity. Here is a significant fact: we never directly judge a musical event as it is happening on the stage, but we judge that which this objective event creates within us.

For insight into the essence of the musical experience it is also important to know clearly where the event we have discussed takes place, in which part of our being the objective musical event meets the powers of our life. This does not really happen in the area of our reason nor essentially in the corporeal region but rather in the region whose function it is to mediate between body and spirit, the region of the psyche. This region is like a river which flows between two countries, its waters touching both. It separates and at the same time joins them. So also the region of the psyche touches both the areas of reason and of the body. And an event that comes into being within it equally influences both sides, the conceptual powers of reason and the biological function of the body.

In this region between body and spirit, music achieves the form which we directly comprehend in the experience. Better yet—here, in this area of our being, we ourselves directly live that which we comprehend as music. Our psychic life is the substance in which the objective musical event is completely formed into any entity which has been put together by the power of memory. What takes place here has its effect in two directions. So it is also with the musical event. It is able, without traversing the path of rational concepts, to move us directly, to undo us, to give us joy, to lift us up, and to depress us. At the same time it also offers substance directly for the activity of the spirit. That is why the double countenance of music appears, its sensuous and spiritual aspect, the potential cleft between sensuous desire and greatest intellectual dislike for one and the same work, or stated in reverse, between pronounced torture of the senses and greatest attraction for reason. The music itself remains an undivided unity, but its effects always move in two directions, and the music, therefore, always meets two general criteria by which it is judged. The one depends upon whether music arouses physical, corporeal, biological, vegetative pleasure; the other, whether it arouses intellectual pleasure.

As an illustration of both fundamental criteria, you need but think of the world-encompassing extremes of contemporary musical practice. On the one hand there is the world market of popular songs, with their emphasis upon unbridled, emotional, biological excitement but very primitive intellectual demands. On the other hand there is the abstract, thoroughly rationalized tonal mathematics of the intellectual avant-garde of music.

Do not think, however, that both of these criteria can be employed according to one’s own pleasure. Both are directly and continuously engaged with the work. The body measures all music with its criterion, and reason likewise. There is latitude in choice only in the degree to which we wish to yield to one or the other. Here the degrees of difference in need and taste which form the basic character of an individual, are countless. Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said that the philosophy of a person is dependent on his essential character. The same can be applied to music: A person’s taste in music is dependent on his essential character. Music and life have very much in common. Nether is static but is rather a durative event. Not only external characteristics mark the difference between us as individuals but much rather the nature of our innermost life and being. Many things influence us, but in the last analysis only the things we cherish influence us significantly.

From this source, then, we already bear all our criteria hidden within us. The experiences we desire please us. But our experiences are not always pleasant, and our life often takes devious paths. Even then, more or less clear images of the life we desire still accompany us. And we might stress that everything pleases us which corresponds to our dream of life, which happens according to it. This pleasure, to be sure, is aroused spontaneously without lengthy reflective thinking or observation. But music, as we observed, is not only an outward physical event, but it becomes part of our inner life. Our pleasure in it, therefore, is governed by whether the nature of this event has been formed within us to correspond to the dream of our life pattern.

As we leave the purely subjective aspect of aesthetics, we can never say that our particular dream of life is indeed the one which is in reality good for us. And for this reason neither is all music that pleases us good in a higher sense merely because it gives us pleasure. Where then are the criteria of music to be found that are outside the realm of the subjective?

II

So far we have considered the end of the musical process, so to speak. That is the point at which the tonal event comes together from its expanse in time and unites again into a comprehensible whole. Let us now give our attention to the opposite pole, the point of origin of the musical work. By that I mean the process by which the work takes on its original form at the hand of its creator. We as listeners did not create the music we encountered. Even the interpreters, with all their influence on the life of the music, were only intermediaries in its total genesis. Let us then revert to the original composition. How are its criteria determined?

First of all, according to what the composer, in the highest sense, is able to do (for art cannot divorce itself from ability). Secondly, according to what the composer sees.

What do I mean when I say the form of a work is determined by “what is seen”? We often say that inspiration is everything in music. Inspiration is, of course, an essential moment in musical composition. And it becomes evident if the composer has no inspiration at all. And yet it is by no means the case that every inspiration is automatically the one the composer is seeking for his work. Think of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, of his incessant labor to find a motive or a theme that would present not just anything but that which was, so to speak, hovering before him in its sounding form. Is this not significant? Before he has found the motive he has been seeking, he already knows exactly how it should not be; he already has a fixed criterion for the music not yet composed! He has not created the music as yet, but he has something according to which he can measure, according to which he can search for his music in the elemental substance of all music.

This is what I mean when I stated that the laws of creation and formation of a work are dependent on what a composer “sees.” Before and during the time the music is being formed in the composer’s spirit for its final sounding form, his attention is directed toward something according to which he will construct his composition. This original model of his work, if we may call it that, can by no means be the sounding music of the kind that we perceive afterwards, nor can it be that which the composer sought to form in his composition. If that were the case, then he would have to do no more than take it down and transcribe it, like dictation. But it does not work this way. In the act of composing it is more the artist’s task to transmit. He must form what he “sees” as faithfully as possible with the means and materials of sounding music and translate it at the same time into the language of music. For this transmission he needs inspiration. The elemental material of music is also necessary, together with as full a measure of technical skill as tradition from past generations and his native ability place at his disposal. He needs neither of these, however, to “see” the original model of his work; this is an entirely different process. But they are necessary to transmit the “picture” into the sensuous medium of music. Paul Klee once said that art does not reproduce what is visible; it rather makes visible. This is exactly what happens in all genuine musical composition. The composer transmits what he perceives into a form that makes it comprehensible for the world of the senses, in this case, for our ears. His ability for such transmission, his ability to make the inexpressible perceptible in the language of music—this constitutes his peculiar art. And the more clearly and adequately he succeeds in his transmission, the more he succeeds in being what we call a genius.

This does not mean that others are not able to perceive the same thing. The difference is whether and to what extent an individual is gifted to make visible with the means of music that which he has perceived. In his Munich lectures, Thrasybulous Georgiades once referred to the noteworthy fact that two outstanding events in the more recent history of world thought happened not only in the same decade but in the same year: the appearance of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and of the Russian String Quartets of Haydn, both in 1781. The amazing thing is not the outward coincidence but rather the fact that a spiritual experience of reality, identical in its innermost core, should appear in two completely different media. Development of motives in a pervading contrapuntal texture (diskontinuierlicher Satz, as Georgiades called it), which Haydn first used consciously in these quartets, and the Copernican trend of thought, which manifested itself in the Critique of Pure Reason—both are representative of one and the same spiritual experience which broke forth into music and philosophy at the same time with a power determinative for the history of both fields. One does not get very far in this case with the hypothesis of chance or of a reciprocal influence conditioned by a given period of history. Kant was one of the most unmusical people of his time, a man who incidentally saw the main purpose of music to be the same as laughter: to excite the lower viscera. And, to my knowledge, Haydn bothered even less about philosophy than Kant about music, let alone transcendental philosophy! The cause of this parallel occurrence was by no means something “in the air,” nor was it the external circumstance of the day. On the contrary, it lay in the depths, in the hidden foundations of all being and of world-events (geschichtliches Geschehen).[2] Something happened in the continuing genesis of history which each of them saw and, independently of each other, made “visible” in his own manner. How little these fundamental discoveries were common property of his contemporaries is witnessed by the fact that only Mozart and Beethoven, certainly with tremendous creative powers, and to a certain extent Schubert, were able to impart to their music the very heart of Haydn’s discovery. In the field of philosophy, it was Fichte alone who was able fully to develop the embryonic ideas of Kant.

We may adduce a few more examples of the striking parallelism between music and philosophy. One might think of the legacy of the two contemporaries, Descartes and Monteverdi, each of whom in his own medium brought the fundamental theme of the new era to light: an awareness of the possibilities and dangers in man’s conscious turning to himself and to his power over nature. Today, at the end of the portion of history begun in the 16th century, one may observe the division of music into abstract exclusivity and primitive biopsychic hedonism. And the resulting double countenance of an abstract world of science which can be explored only by specialists matches it. It is a world which has, from a practical standpoint, little more to offer man than a more or less sublime satisfaction of human needs. Think of Schönberg, for example, who brought about, between 1908 and 1921, the conscious dissolution of the traditional rules of functional harmony that are brought to fulfillment through the senses, into the nonsensuous laws of twelve-tone technique which one can follow only through the intellect. During this time Einstein in 1906 formulated his specific, and in 1961, his general theory of relativity, through which a most decisive step was taken from the perceptible world of Newton to the imperceptible, abstract world of modem physics. This did not stem, as many think, from certain irresponsible individuals. These people rather perceived a fateful event in the foundations of all being; they saw, so to speak, the unlocking of gates previously closed and sought, with their media, music or mathematical symbols, to make that which they had “seen” visible and fruitful to all.

As we summarize this second part of our investigation, let us remember that in the previous consideration of the subjective criteria we stressed the fundamental character of music as an event. In the subjective area it was the individual preference of a person for a particular mode and manner of all events which unconsciously became the plumb line for pleasure or displeasure in a particular work. In the suprasubjective area of the historical process, we are dealing likewise with events, namely, the fundamental world-events, that is, the basic substance and fundamental element in which our personal existence is rooted like a plant in the ground to which it owes its nourishment.

In this fundamental area of world-events, we have found another entirely suprasubjective criterion for a musical work: the criterion, whether a work, as it comes into being, is a true picture of the fundamental world-events in and from which its age is living.

We may state it another way. The significance of a work depends upon whether and to what extent the work is able to make visible the hidden, and because they are hidden, much stronger elemental powers of the historical process. The great works in music history are significantly not always the works which elicit the cheers of contemporaries. They are the ones rather wherein the elemental powers of their age, hidden particularly to contemporaries, have achieved a form perceptible to the senses. The progress of history itself has made the great works of art legitimate, so to speak, as a true expression of their respective eras.

In passing, it should also be noted that it belongs to the character of larger epochs in the history of world thought to develop with preference within the entire area of the arts the particular art form that is closest to the essential character of the epoch. Among all the overpowering contributions in the arts which the West has made in the one thousand years approximately since the conclusion of its Christianization, there is no doubt that music is the characteristic and specific art form of this era. Europe has accomplished two things in this period, each of which stands without parallel and without further example in other cultures. The one is the tremendous development of music through polyphony, a world of form suited only to the West. The other is the vast development of science. This Goethe unfortunately overlooked in his conception of Faust: that the fundamental spiritual disposition of western man is a key not only to the world of nature but equally to the world of music. Here Thomas Mann was more perceptive when he made his Doktor Faustus a demonic musical genius.

III

Are we now at the end of our search for the absolute criterion of music? I do not think so. We have found a criterion, to be sure, according to which music pleases us personally. We have also developed a criterion according to which a musical work takes on its significance as high art, whether it suits our own taste or not. In both cases, however, a decisive factor is lacking, namely, firm connection with an absolute measure of all being.

We, with our individual inclinations, strengths, and weaknesses, are not suited to be this absolute measure. When we attempt to measure, then we are being measured; and we do not always fare particularly well. But neither is history, in its entire course, the measure, for not every event happens the way it should. Now that we have made a distinction between that which happens throughout the history of man and often distorts its course, and that which in all truth should happen, we have arrived at the most essential point of our investigation.

Why do the events of history, which appeared to give us a suprasubjective measure, fail when they are measured according to the criterion of what should in all truth happen? How can a work be very significant because it grasps the essential evil character of a distorted historical situation, and why, at the same time, are we not able to perceive it as essentially beautiful?

The answer is relatively simple: history does not transpire without the cooperation of man. Augustine once said, “we can do nothing without God; God chooses not to act without man.” But at the same time everyone is also free to determine the mode of his life’s activity. History has an absolute beginning and goal. That which “should be” is the event and part of the path which leads to this goal. Every individual is free to cooperate with the strength given him in bringing about the events that should be or to seek other fictional goals and to separate himself from the hidden source of life in history, as a tree from its roots, and finally dry up in the desert of absurdity.

In this fundamental freedom we have the basic situation before us in which every encounter takes place, not with one of the relative criteria but with the absolute measure of all art: “that which should be.” For that which exists, as it should in the light of absolute truth, is at the same time absolutely beautiful.

With this knowledge we come to realize a dimension of art still deeper than mere connection with the empirical events of history. In the latter case the work of art was measured according to that which occurred in history. But with this deeper tension the work reaches beyond the events of history to the picture of that which should truthfully occur. It envisions this picture in its own way as that of a real work and thus actually places a criterion to the events of history. The work of art does not thereby become timeless in a naive sense; it is not dissociated from everyday living, from all the stresses and movements of life. On the contrary, its real-life character increases, and thereby it acquires for the first time its true foundation. For the work of art does not only appear in its era as a representation of that which has already occurred, but it speaks much more of that which is true for its time; it demands that which actually should be. It proves to be a picture of that which is actually able to supply the specific need of the time. It turns out to be a picture of the conquest of that which should not be. And thereby it stands as something much more than mere diagnosis, than a mere copy or report of the situation. It is rather an answer to a situation, a demand upon the situation, and a summons for man.

This noblest meaning of a work of art is accomplished not in an area of unlimited possibilities but rather within the bounds set for each art form by its very nature. We stated before that the creation of a ranking work of art is identical with the transmission of an original vision into the sensuous medium of the particular art form. We also stated that this original vision might also be transmitted into another medium there to become visible. (This is comparable to describing a landscape with words or sketching it with a crayon.) But we should be mistaken to think that the various means of reproducing the same vision are interchangeable at one’s pleasure. By no means! The purpose of their different natures is rather to complement than to replace one another. There are trends in the hidden events of history which only language can bring to light. There are other tendencies which only music can make visible, nothing else, neither language, nor gestures, nor the plastic or graphic arts. This does not mean that all arts have to be brought on the stage simultaneously. Land and sea complement each other meaningfully without being mixed together. It is enough that the arts complement one another within a given historical situation.

Let us now ask a final question within the framework of our theme (and thereby we point to the original meaning of the word “aesthetics”[3]): Wherein lies the unique quality of music, relative to our perception, which nothing else, neither language nor any other art form, can replace?

In the region of the psyche we found the place where music achieves its perceptible form. If we observe carefully, we discover, moreover, that the essence of music is suited to the nature of the psyche in a manner that cannot be found in any other art form. We had stated that the mediary position between reason and body was significant for the region of the psyche, that it was neither a forum for concepts nor an organized substance but rather a third entity by which body and spirit are bound together, inseparably united. In exactly the same way music is true to its nature by hovering between the sensuous, spatial, corporeal world and the nonsensuous, abstract world of concepts. It touches both, is surrounded by both, and yet it is something else. All arts which use words, the symbols of concepts, must proceed via reason, whether they want to or not, for reason alone is able to grasp concepts and draw conclusions. Conversely, every art form which needs the eye invariably draws its life from material corporeal images; for the eye is the sense which, for the most part, transmits the perception of the corporeal world. Music, on the other hand, meets man directly in the center, in the place which binds reason and substance, body and spirit, and holds them in a fruitful balance. And the directness with which it unites itself in this area to the source of our life gives it an irreplaceable advantage.

Through this, its characteristic place, will the essential and profound beauty of music break through in perfection, if it is created as a picture of the harmony of the spiritual and corporeal world, a harmony which should be according to the law of creation. In this form its beauty is not only aesthetic enjoyment, but, if you will permit the expression, also allurement to that which is good, attraction for reason and the senses alike to come with the center of their existence into the world of its laws.

Cited Reference and Notes

1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, I, i.
2. The term “world-event” is used to indicate the conditioned and consequential event of history.
3. The term “aesthetics,” from the Greek aisthetike episteme, means, in the broadest sense, the teaching about sensuous perception.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VII (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1970). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.