ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idea of aesthetic identification in music in 1977 on the occasion of recently published essay on beethoven reception Zur Geschichte der Beethoven-Rezeption. The word 'aesthetic' within the concept of aesthetic identification has the meaning of 'sensory', related to music and employed in accordance with concept of the aesthetic as developed in authors' concept of musical understanding so far. The definition processes which constitute music's sense aesthetically can also be discussed in terms of the concept of play. Aesthetic identification, the absorption of the subject in the object, takes effect when listening to music primarily through playing along with or enacting the play of musical definitions, the play of sense creation which inheres in music in and for itself. Sociologically motivated aesthetic theory can also be designed to obstruct or counteract occupation in favour of a kind of critical listening which makes conscious of social and ideological inconsistencies in the music and distances from it accordingly.
