Romantic Music Aesthetics

Creating a Politics of Emotion

Matthew Pritchard

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009491624
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

This book reassesses the place of politics and emotion within Romantic music aesthetics. Drawing together insights from the history of emotions, cultural history, and studies of philosophical idealism, 'affective relationality' – the channelling of emotion through music's social and cultural synergies – emerges as key to Romantic aesthetic thought. Now familiar concepts such as theatrical illusion, genius, poetic criticism, and the renewed connection of art to mythology and religion opened new spaces for audiences' feelings, as thinkers such as Rousseau, Herder, Germaine de Staël, Joseph Mainzer, Pierre Leroux and George Sand sought alternatives to the political status quo. Building on the sentimental tradition in eighteenth-century art and politics, the Romantics created ways of listening to music imbued not just with melancholic longing for transcendence but also with humour, gothic fantasy, satire, and political solidarity. The consequences have extended far beyond the classical concert hall into numerous domains of popular culture from melodrama, romances and political songwriting to musical theatre and film.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Music Examples
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Translation
• Introduction
• 1 Staging Sentimentality
• 2 The Legacy of Rousseau
• 3 The Composer as Genius
• 4 Idealist Aesthetics and the Music Critic
• 5 Picturing the Musical Absolute
• 6 Between Idealism and Realism I: The French Socialists
• 7 Between Idealism and Realism II: After Hegel
• 8 From Hanslick to the Twentieth Century
• Conclusion: The Fate of Feeling
• Bibliography
• Index