ABSTRACT
Eduard Hanslick’s ambition to place aesthetics on a scientific footing signaled a decisive break with romantic sensibilities. Hanslick’s determination to advance a theory of the beautiful in music, based on the ideal of music’s self-perfecting form, turned against the idea that music’s chief purpose was to represent emotions and feelings. By concentrating on principles and systems of organization internal to a work, Hanslick laid the ground for formalist aesthetics. At the same time, his effort to rid aesthetics of its metaphysical underpinnings elicited a response that set musical hermeneutics at the pinnacle of music theory. In order to combat the scientific tenor of Hanslick’s aesthetics, Hermann Kretzschmar advanced a theory and method of interpretation that would restore the humanistic content stripped away by Hanslick’s abstractions.
