Eduard Hanslick´s Reception in English Dicourse

Alexander Wilfings Eduard Hanslicks Rezeption im englischen Sprachraum. Formalismus, Kognitivismus und historische Konstruktion explores the extensive historical reception of Eduard Hanslicks aesthetic treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (VMS, 1854) for the first time. Although the notable impact of Hanslicks little bookarguably the most important aesthetic treatise of the nineteenth centuryon various subsequent authors such as Adler, Adorno, Ingarden, Nietzsche, Popper, Schenker, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Wittgenstein, and numerous exponents of analytical philosophy of music is referred to regularly, meticulous scholarship on the specific results of this historical influence is still sparse. In order to thoroughly investigate a particular dimension of Hanslicks reception, and in virtue of an exhaustive engagement with VMS in numerous respective discourses, this study is primarily concerned with the multi-faceted adaptation of Hanslicks positions by anglophone musicology and analytical philosophy of music. Particular consideration is given to discursive formations surrounding Hanslicks writings, which continue to define modern philosophical elaborations of his aesthetic concepts. Chapter 1 addresses the general outline of Hanslick scholarship and identifies disparate scholarly approaches to current research on Hanslicks writings, primarily exploring significant differences in the language-dependent approaches (German / English) to Hanslicks aesthetic treatise. Chapter 2 scrutinizes several long-held myths in regard to VMS, laying the necessary groundwork for the ensuing analysis. Here, Hanslicks supposedly ahistorical aesthetics, oriented towards an (ostensibly) essentialist concept of music, as well as his general approach to the problem of emotion and musiccommonly interpreted as entirely detached from each otherare evaluated individually. Chapter 3 illustrates the historical framework of Hanslicks reception by indicating differences between the aforementioned language-dependent approaches to VMS, as well as by determining substantial preconditions for Hanslicks influence, primarily exploring musical aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Edmund Gurneys The Power of Sound (1880). Furthermore, it discusses peculiar aspects of the complete English renditions of Hanslicks aesthetic treatise (Cohen 1891 / Payzant 1986), which shaped Hanslicks reception in consequence of partially problematic translational decisions. Chapter 4 resolves numerous narratives regarding Hanslicks formalism, linked closely to specific authors (Kant, Bell, Schenker). It identifies the specific versions of aesthetic formalism commonly attributed to him, and critically assesses whether aesthetic formalism as an abstract category is a viable concept. Finally, Chapter 5 explores the positive reception of VMS in the field of analytical philosophy of music. To this effect, a concise account of the fairly recent emergence of analytical philosophy of music is presented, clarifying important features of Hanslicks influence on current thinkers, motivated primarily by his cognitive theory of emotion. The conclusion investigates subsequent developments of his (implicit) notion of enhanced formalism via recent theories of Stephen Davies and Peter Kivy.