ABSTRACT
In view of the affinity between the religious-philosophical world-view of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Schleiermacher and the interesting points of contact between their respective ideas, serves to highlight the interdisciplinary framework within which Hoffmann's musical thought needs to be understood. As the 'father of hermeneutic'', Schleiermacher was as radical in formulating a 'general hermeneutics' as he was as a theologian in writing On Religion. It is this reading of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics on which Ian Bent's critique of Hoffmann's 'musical hermeneutics', as manifest in Hoffmann's 'Review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony', is based. Bent rightly suggests that, in his 'musical hermeneutics', Hoffmann, like Schleiermacher, sought to examine the interrelationship between the component parts of a work, as well as the relationship between the work itself and the broader contexts of its production and reception, as the basis for understanding its meaning.
