Vom Musikalisch-Schönen / Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst

The author argues that musical beauty resides in tone relations and formal organization rather than in the depiction of feelings, rejecting the notion that music should represent or dramatize emotions. Beginning with a critique of feeling-centered aesthetics and program music, the text develops a positive account of the musically beautiful as immanent to sound structures, offers methods for analyzing subjective musical impressions, contrasts aesthetic listening with pathological responses, and examines music's ties to nature and the meanings of content and form. The work combines polemical responses to contemporary trends with close theoretical and analytical reflection.